The Medical Malpractice Of Rush Limbaugh

So I heard the other day that Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, has said that coronavirus is just the “common cold,” and liberals are vastly exaggerating its deadliness is a deliberate attempt to attack Donald Trump. Yet, somewhat contradictorily, he then said the virus was a thoroughly diabolical bio-weapon engineered by the Chinese. (1)

Houston, we have a problem. The disease is, or isn’t a mortal danger. Pick one.

Limbaugh’s claims are, of course, non-sense. The coronavirus isn’t the common cold. It probably isn’t a weapon. It is a real danger. It does kill people. And if the media does exaggerate its threat, then it is because scary headlines sell, not because anyone is after Trump. (Though, frankly, the media probably isn’t exaggerating the problem a whole lot. Any disease which has a mortality rate of about 2% needs to be taken very carefully.)

Oh, and special kudos, by the way, to Chelsea Clinton, who took time out of her busy schedule to call out Limbaugh. It was well done. And, unfortunately, that took courage in an age when simple truth telling is to invite abuse on a grand scale.(2)

But, anyway, this isn’t the first time that Limbaugh has spread medical misinformation. You’ll recall that he denied the dangers of smoking for years. Right up to the moment he was diagnosed with a late stage version of the disease, he was saying that there was no provable link between smoking and lung cancer. (3)

We have no way of knowing how many people continued to smoke, or took up the practice, because they heard Limbaugh say it wasn’t a problem. But we can guess that many did. And of those, many, many have suffered because of it, or will suffer in future.

Now, he has said that coronavirus is no danger.  That is a case where he may not have negatively impacted individual behavior -- no one is going and deliberately expose themselves to coronavirus because he told them to -- but it could be problematic to us all, anyway. If his audience believes him, then its members could work against the policies and individuals who could mitigate the spread and danger of the disease. Does the CDC say we have a problem and must take countermeasures? Nonsense. Fake news. The alarmist lies of libtard Eastern Elites...

And recall, already, Limbugh’s hero, Donald Trump, has done much to defund the very organizations -- like the CDC -- which could have helped stop or at least slowed coronavirus while there was still time. Trump and his administration should receive no support in continuing that policy.

My point? I have always, always been a proponent of unlimited free speech. I have always thought that people should be able to say whatever they damn well pleased. If what they said was false, well, eventually that would proven by public debate and experimentation.

This is different. This is telling millions upon millions of listeners that they may ...indeed, should! ...endanger their lives, and ours. This rates up there with Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook conspiracy theories (and, in the process, encouraging gun rights lunatics, to stalk and threaten the parents of slain children). It rates up there as well with anti-Vaxxers proselytizing dubious theories of autism, and encouraging parents to endanger their children by not having them vaccinated. 

It is, in other words, a genuine public health care risk, and should be treated as such. There should be--and it pains me to say this--some sort of consequence for people who willingly spread health care falsehoods which could all too easily threaten the entire society.

Or, at the very least, we should have legions of fact checkers -- like Ms. Clinton -- who are willing and able to oppose lies and outright ignorance, and who would be protected afterwards.

Otherwise we are left at the mercy of plagues...

Whether those spread by insects, or foul water, or contact...

Or by men and women with access to microphones, and no restraint of conscience.


***

Two updates.

First, since I wrote this, I learned that Donald Trump has, indeed, begun to say things that sound very much as if they were taken from the Limbaugh play book (4)

Second, somehow I missed the fact that Rush Limbaugh lost his hearing a while back. I didn’t know it until I saw photos of him with cochlear implants.

The other thing I didn’t realize is why he became deaf. It hasn’t been proven, but there is some well-informed speculation that it was caused by his overuse of prescription pain killers.(5) In other words, he may have deafened himself, just as his constant recourse to cigars may have caused his lung cancer.

There is something terribly metaphoric in that.




Sources

1. https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/rush-limbaugh-coronavirus-trump-023911730.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_04
2. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/484603-chelsea-clinton-rips-limbaugh-for-peddling-fake-news
3. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rush-limbaugh-nicotine-addictive/
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/25/white-house-struggles-contain-public-alarm-over-coronavirus-despite-panic/
5.https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=128270&page=1

~~~

Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life.

Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly.

It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long.

How to download: look at the image of the book and the text below. Scroll down until you see the words “Name A Fair Price.” In the blank space below that, type “0” — that is, a zero, because the book is free. Then click on the button below that which is marked “I want this!” After that, you should be given the option of either downloading the book and reading it at your leisure, or reading it on the Gumroad site. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

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***

Mad Mike, Rest In Peace

I was saddened to learn today of the death of Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes, who was among many other things a daredevil and a prominent flat earth proponent. He was killed in the line of duty when his homemade rocket crash landed with him at the controls. He had hoped to reach an altitude of 5000 feet (1524 meters), from whence he thought he could take pictures of the earth and show that it did not curve.

As I say, I am saddened. He was a colorful and eccentric figure, and the world needs more of those.

Still, there is something amazingly metaphoric here. His mission was to prove that the scientific conception of the world, and the laws of physics behind it, were at least flawed and maybe deliberate lies. In our present age, that is accepted and even encouraged—after all “everyone has the right to an opinion” and “reality is socially created.”

The problem is that the real world (which really is round) and the laws of physics are not so accepting of eccentricity as we might be, and in that real world reality steadfastly refuses to be socially created, no matter how certain are our professors of postmodernism and professional decriers of “Fake News” may be that it is.

And therein lies the great danger of dismissing reality as an illusion, for it may not agree, and its whims are truly deadly.

 

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)



 Tucker’s most recent book is Padre: To The Island, a meditation on life and death based on the passing of his own parents



.       This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Santa Fe: The Movie!

Okay, I’ve made another video…

As you know, a while back I wrote a short book (or is it a booklet?) entitled With Luther, God, and Tourists in Santa Fe. It’s part travel log, part essay on progressive Christianity, and part personal recollection of a trip Martha and I took to Santa Fe to attend something called “The Lutheran Advocacy Ministry Bishop’s Luncheon and Issues Briefing.” We’re not Lutherans ourselves, but our church sent us as representatives to see what our co-religionists were up to—which was a lot. They were involved in several social programs that impressed us no end.

Anyway, I wrote the book (which I’m giving away as a pdf. Instructions of where to get it are below), and then…

I got the urge to make it into a video. Or, more precisely, a slide animation with one my long-winded voice overs.

 

And, after much reading aloud and other fiddling around, I got the video done. It is on my Vimeo site and you can see it here: https://vimeo.com/390884002

Now, if you get tempted to watch it, great! But a word of warning. It is a long one — just about thirty minutes, making it one of the longest videos I’ve ever done.

Still, I think you might enjoy it, particularly if you have an interest in Progressive Christianity, a.k.a., The Christian Left.

Also, it is a chance for me to show off my sterling reading voice, which (I’m told) isn’t that bad.

So, give it a listen, and if you have the urge to have me read your audio book, drop me a line.

Cheers
mjt


Want the book (for free?) Go here: https://gumroad.com/l/TouristsAndGodInSantaFeFe

How to download: look at the image of the book and the text below. Scroll down until you see the words “Name A Fair Price.” In the blank space below that, type “0” — that is, a zero, because the book is free. Then click on the button below that which is marked “I want this!” After that, you should be given the option of either downloading the book and reading it at your leisure, or reading it on the Gumroad site. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!


And, again, you can see the video here: https://vimeo.com/390884002

The Last Ulysses

So not exactly political, but you can’t do politics all the time: I read in The Guardian the other day that Stephen Joyce, the “last direct descendant of James Joyce” had passed on at 87.

He was James Joyce’s grandson, and was known -- says the article -- “for his fierce guardianship of his grandfather’s works...” That is, if anything, an understatement. Stephen was the terror of academia and many a scholar suffered from his legal attentions for unauthorized quotations from James Joyce’s material.

As a former academic myself (well, sort of), it is hard for me to fully understand or sympathize with Stephen Joyce’s position. Still, you have to admire his energy and tenacity. He was definitely the sort of defender every family needs.

Particularly families that are literary.

~~~

Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life.

Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly.

It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long.

How to download: look at the image of the book and the text below. Scroll down until you see the words “Name A Fair Price.” In the blank space below that, type “0” — that is, a zero, because the book is free. Then click on the button below that which is marked “I want this!” After that, you should be given the option of either downloading the book and reading it at your leisure, or reading it on the Gumroad site. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

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***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

War Without Mercy

I don’t know why, but I’ve gotten interested in Balkan history lately. Right now, I’m reading Misha Glenny’s book, The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-2011. Great read, by the way, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Anyway, part of the book deals with the Balkans during World War I. Of course, the Great War started there when the heir to the throne of Austro-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated by a Serbian ultra-nationalist. Gavrilo Princip. That led, obviously, to war…though, in retrospect, it’s not clear that Serbia’s conduct was entirely responsible for the outbreak of hostilities. Mostly, maybe, but not entirely. The Austro-Hungarians had been looking for a reason to go to war with the Serbia for quite some time. The death of their crown prince provided a handy excuse.

But, that’s a story for another day.

What I’m interested in right now, though, is what happened immediately after war was declared. Austria (well, Austro-Hungary, but let’s keep things short and simple) invaded Serbia. The very first shot fired in that invasion, and indeed, in the war itself, was from an Austrian gunboat on the Danube.(1) This was the Bodrog, which was a “monitor,” in the language of the time.

Monitors were boats meant to fight on rivers.  And, yes, they took the name from the original one that served with the United States Navy in the American Civil War. Most of the bigger nations of the time possessed them, and they were sometimes quite heavily armed.  The Bodrog, for instance, or so says Wikipedia, "was armed with two 120 mm (4.7 in)L/35[c] guns in single gun turrets, a single 120 mm (4.7 in)L/10 howitzer in a central pivot mount, and two 37 mm (1.5 in) guns.[1] The maximum range of her Škoda 120 mm guns was 10 kilometres (6.2 mi), and her howitzer could fire its 20 kg (44 lb) shells a maximum of 6.2 km (3.9 mi).”

The Bodrog

See below for source

It was, in other words, a pretty fearsome weapon, and when it and other Austrian monitors steamed into Serbian waters, there wasn’t much the defenders could do about them. This was particularly unfortunate for the Serbs because first target for the monitors was the city of Belgrade—and, particularly, its civilian population.

The whole business sounds pretty awful. Glenny writes about the civilians watching while their city was turned into a battlefield, “At night almost every street in Belgrade was lit up either by the huge network of floodlights constructed by the Austrian army or by the fires raging out of control at the cigarette factory, saw mill and oil depot. Early on, the waterworks was destroyed, leading to a rapid deterioration in sanitary conditions. Drinking water was soon in short supply, and swarms of mosquitoes tormented the flesh of the hundreds of homeless people who had been forced to abandon their homes to seek shelter in a huge cave in Topčider.”

I’ll spare you the rest of the history lecture. Suffice to say that Serbs did mount a counterattack which stunned the world by driving the Austro-Hungarians out of the country. But, then the Empire struck back, with much German aid, and eventually occupied the whole country. Oh, and in there too was a horrific retreat of the Serbian army across snow covered mountains—a brilliant maneuver, but one which left thousands of Serbian men (and Austrian POWs) dead along the way. If you want to know more, Wikipedia has an entry on The Serbian Campaign of World War I. (2)

But, I’m writing about all of this because I realized two things. First…and I’m embarrassed to admit this…but I was startled to learn that almost from the beginning, the Great War included urban warfare and attacks on non-combatants. Somehow I had gotten the naive idea that most of the Great War’s battles were out in the countryside — like Flanders Field — or in small towns or villages when those places were unfortunate enough to get caught in the action.

Which meant that I somehow had the idea the Great War was minutely less deadly to civilians than the wars that came before it and those many that came after it. I didn’t think that the combatant nations were particularly chivalrous, though that may have played a role, but simply that they conceived of war as something that was done outside the confines of urban areas.

Second, though, I realized that I had never heard of the shelling of Belgrade. Oh, I knew that there had been an Austrian invasion of Serbia, and I had some hazy memory of reading about the war in Balkans after that. But, monitors on the river, shelling women and children, that was new to me.

And I worry about my ignorance. I’m hoping that I simply hadn’t paid enough attention to my history books, and that Belgrade’s sufferings were recorded there for all to see.

But, what concerns me is the possibility that the battle of Belgrade is less well known to everyone, not just me, and that is it less well known because it simply isn’t covered as much in English-language texts…and maybe not in French, German, and Dutch ones either. And that the reason it is less well known is because that the city’s sufferings did not particularly and uniquely impact Western Europeans and Americans. And so, since the killings were somewhere out there…beyond the pale…among those Others…it didn’t really matter.

If that sort of willful blindness is at work, then you understand why the tale of Belgrade’s ruin sort of slipped below the horizon. And, if Belgrade, then other things might similarly be subject to directed amnesia—like, for instance, the relative indifference that the West seemed to have shown about many a slaughter—the Holocaust, the destruction of the Armenians, the Gulag, Nanjing, Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia (again the Balkans), and so many, many other places and times.

That is concerning because it suggests that we are only troubled (let alone moved to provide help) only by what we see…and what we see greatly depends on what we are allowed to see by greater powers than ourselves. And those powers may not be particularly interested in what is just and what is humane.

Which worries me because it suggests that perhaps there are terrible things happening right now… in places like Congo and Iraq and Xinjiang…but we are shamefully unaware of them, because it is not in the interests of the elite that we be otherwise.

That’s bad enough…but there is more…

You see, we are now Great and Powerful ourselves. America is the sole remaining superpower in the world. But, all greatness fades. All empires tumble. There may come a time…perhaps even in our lives…when we are not the focus of the world’s fascinated attention.

When that time comes, and should we also be the subject of massacre and horror…will we discover, too late, that we too are ignored, that we too are left the perish…

Because it is not expedient for the Great and the Powerful…

To save us?

*

Two quick asides: One, if I had bothered to research the issue even a little bit, I’d have known that urban areas (at least towns) were being attacked and civilians were being killed from the minute the Great War began in 1914. Indeed, a quick Google search on my part just now revealed that while soldiers seemed to have formed the bulk of those killed in the Great War, civilians made up a lot of the dead. In an article on the British Library site, “The ‘German Atrocities’ of 1914,” Sophie de Schaepdrijver notes that “the war started with massacres of civilians,” mostly Belgian and French who ran afoul of the invading German army. (3)

And, two, I talk about how we ignore genocides if they seem to be far away. Someone could quite legitimately point out that we have had our own genocides right here, and not that long ago—for example, the near extermination of Native Americans. That’s true, of course, but maybe you could argue that in the nineteenth century, massacres going on “way out west” were psychically distant, in that it required days or weeks of travel to actually reach the places where they were happening, newspapers were often more concerned with events in the cites of the East Coast, and there were few among the national elites who had anything to gain from protecting “the Vanishing American.”

Or, maybe my thesis is just fundamentally flawed. If so, I’m willing to (reluctantly) accept that judgment.

But, still, even so, I think I am right to be concerned about national destiny, and whether or not we might find ourselves without friends at some dreadful moment in our future.

Footnotes:

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_monitor_Sava
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_campaign_of_World_War_I
3) https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/civilian-atrocities-german-1914

Source on photo of Bodrog: By Foto Kilophot G.m.b.h. Vienna(Life time: N/A) - Original publication: Vienna, 1914 as a postcard. Immediate source: http://www.kuk-kriegsmarine.it/navi/monitor-fluviali/bodrog/bodrog.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44208609


~~~

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.


***

Michael Jay Tucker is a writer and journalist who has published material on topics ranging from the Jazz Age to computers. (Among his small claims to fame is that he interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.