Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
NYT: Behind Low Vaccination Rates Lurks a More Profound Social Weakness
Over the past four decades, governments have slashed budgets and privatized basic services. This has two important consequences for public health. First, people are unlikely to trust institutions that do little for them. And second, public health is no longer viewed as a collective endeavor, based on the principle of social solidarity and mutual obligation. People are conditioned to believe they’re on their own and responsible only for themselves. That means an important source of vaccine hesitancy is the erosion of the idea of a common good.
...
Americans began thinking about health care decisions this way only recently; during the 1950s polio campaigns, for example, most people saw vaccination as a civic duty. But as the public purse shrunk in the 1980s, politicians insisted that it’s no longer the government’s job to ensure people’s well-being; instead, Americans were to be responsible only for themselves and their own bodies. Entire industries, such as self-help and health foods, have sprung up on the principle that the key to good health lies in individuals making the right choices.
...
Of course, there’s a lot of good that comes from viewing health care decisions as personal choices: No one wants to be subjected to procedures against their wishes. But there are problems with reducing public health to a matter of choice. It gives the impression that individuals are wholly responsible for their own health. This is despite growing evidence that health is deeply influenced by factors outside our control; public health experts now talk about the “social determinants of health,” the idea that personal health is never simply just a reflection of individual lifestyle choices, but also the class people are born into, the neighborhood they grew up in and the race they belong to.
...
Research shows that private systems not only tend to produce worse health outcomes than public ones, but privatization creates what public health experts call “segregated care,” which can undermine the feelings of social solidarity that are critical for successful vaccination drives. In one Syrian city, for example, the health care system now consists of one public hospital so underfunded that it is notorious for poor care, a few private hospitals offering high-quality care that are unaffordable to most of the population, and many unlicensed and unregulated private clinics — some even without medical doctors — known to offer misguided health advice. Under such conditions, conspiracy theories can flourish; many of the city’s residents believe Covid vaccines are a foreign plot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/vaccine-hesitancy-covid.html
Yes there is a paywall. Unfortunately, while lies are free, truth costs money.
23 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
or at least they used to. Now they have a new golden, fatted calf, one who makes Ronnie Rayguns look like Chairman Mao.
Interesting that the NYT mentions "the 80s" as the turning point in U.S. healthcare, but doesn't lay it at the feet of Rayguns and his right-wing cronies. 
Yes, the NYT is such a "liberal" news agency. 
The 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic: The Washingtons, Hamilton and Jefferson
May 28, 2020 by Neely Tucker
In December 1793, Martha Washington bought a new book by Mathew Carey called A Short Account of the Malignant Fever Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia. The following February she bought a similar title, A Short Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, for the Reflecting Christian, by Henry Helmuth. Her interest was personal. In the summer of 1793 when a devastating yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia she was in the city, then the U.S. capital, as the wife of the president. Carey, a publisher and bookseller, was also there. He joined a committee that helped the poor and sick who stayed behind when the wealthy fled. The Rev. Helmuth stayed to care for his congregants. The Washingtons remained in Philadelphia through the summer, but on Sept. 10 they left, as did nearly every member of city, state, and national government.
(snip)
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote: “It is called a yellow fever, but is like nothing known or read of by the Physicians. The week before last the deaths were about 40. the last week about 80. and this week I think they will be 200. and it goes on spreading.” Carey described how “acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into such disuse, that many were affronted at even the offer of the hand.” Carey estimated that out of a population of 50,000, about 17,000 left the city and 4,000 died. Later estimates put the death total as high as 5,000.
(snip)
The president, at home at Mount Vernon, described Philadelphia as “now almost depopulated by removals & deaths.” Thomas Jefferson commented snidely about treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was sick with the fever: “A man as timid as he is on the water, as timid on horseback, as timid in sickness, would be a phaenomenon if the courage of which he has the reputation in military occasions were genuine.” Politics filtered into debates about yellow fever. “Contagionists” were likely to be Federalists who advocated restored trade with Britain and feared revolutionary France. They believed that yellow fever arrived on ships with refugees from France and its West Indian possessions. Pro-French Republicans, meanwhile, believed yellow fever was not contagious and that its causes were local.
Public officials, uncertain what to do, ordered quarantine and sanitation. Philadelphia’s free black citizens, including church leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, were forced to fight back prejudice during the epidemic. Doctors were divided about treatment. Rush favored purging and bloodletting, while David Hosack and Edward Stevens, physician friends of Alexander Hamilton, believed in a milder treatment of quinine, wine and cold baths. Rush, whose methods were controversial, sighed, “I shall sooner or later be believed and forgiven.”
https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/05/the-1793-yellow-fever-epidemic-the-washingtons-hamilton-and-jefferson/
May 28, 2020 by Neely Tucker
In December 1793, Martha Washington bought a new book by Mathew Carey called A Short Account of the Malignant Fever Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia. The following February she bought a similar title, A Short Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, for the Reflecting Christian, by Henry Helmuth. Her interest was personal. In the summer of 1793 when a devastating yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia she was in the city, then the U.S. capital, as the wife of the president. Carey, a publisher and bookseller, was also there. He joined a committee that helped the poor and sick who stayed behind when the wealthy fled. The Rev. Helmuth stayed to care for his congregants. The Washingtons remained in Philadelphia through the summer, but on Sept. 10 they left, as did nearly every member of city, state, and national government.
(snip)
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote: “It is called a yellow fever, but is like nothing known or read of by the Physicians. The week before last the deaths were about 40. the last week about 80. and this week I think they will be 200. and it goes on spreading.” Carey described how “acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into such disuse, that many were affronted at even the offer of the hand.” Carey estimated that out of a population of 50,000, about 17,000 left the city and 4,000 died. Later estimates put the death total as high as 5,000.
(snip)
The president, at home at Mount Vernon, described Philadelphia as “now almost depopulated by removals & deaths.” Thomas Jefferson commented snidely about treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was sick with the fever: “A man as timid as he is on the water, as timid on horseback, as timid in sickness, would be a phaenomenon if the courage of which he has the reputation in military occasions were genuine.” Politics filtered into debates about yellow fever. “Contagionists” were likely to be Federalists who advocated restored trade with Britain and feared revolutionary France. They believed that yellow fever arrived on ships with refugees from France and its West Indian possessions. Pro-French Republicans, meanwhile, believed yellow fever was not contagious and that its causes were local.
Public officials, uncertain what to do, ordered quarantine and sanitation. Philadelphia’s free black citizens, including church leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, were forced to fight back prejudice during the epidemic. Doctors were divided about treatment. Rush favored purging and bloodletting, while David Hosack and Edward Stevens, physician friends of Alexander Hamilton, believed in a milder treatment of quinine, wine and cold baths. Rush, whose methods were controversial, sighed, “I shall sooner or later be believed and forgiven.”
https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/05/the-1793-yellow-fever-epidemic-the-washingtons-hamilton-and-jefferson/
Here's the house located in Germantown that the Washingtons fled to in 1793 & 1794 to get away from the epidemic (and summer heat) -
The house is still there and Germantown became a neighborhood in Philly, incorporated in 1854 when the "outer boroughs and townships" were folded into the city proper.
So the idea of "everyone for themselves" predates anything that we might think as some time period when suddenly America didn't care about public health. Any purported societal "collectivism" for care of the sick and poor never really existed except for a brief period when it wasn't automatically pawned off to religious institutions. So sadly, what we see today, is "as American as apple pie".
No kids that I knew of opted out. There was no screaming or wild hysterics at school board meetings. No one protested vaccinations in front of the school. Rubella was a killer and we all needed to be vaccinated. Of course, ideas of the common good and mutual obligation were strong in our parents, seeing as they survived the Great Depression, WW2, etc., etc., along with polio and a host of other diseases that proved preventable through collective efforts.
Sometimes I feel like we've all been transported to a world filled with nothing but selfish assholes. Thanks Ronnie Raygun and the rest of your neo-libertarian psychos. Great job, Republiscum. 
