by Travis Mateer
Darrel Ehrlick, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Montanan, has crapped out a piece-of-shit article he describes as “commentary” about our dire situation in Montana. This condescending fucker has the audacity to lecture readers about “history” without realizing the historical correlative he is reaching for more closely resembles a mustached dictator with short-man’s complex than the Spanish Influenza pandemic.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s Ehrlick pumping up his home state before lamenting over its Republican leadership:
Like many states, Montana is tearing itself apart debating masks, vaccines, mandates and public health measures. With absolutely no help from leaders like Gov. Greg Gianforte who, instead of finding middle ground or being a peacemaker, has stoked the division by issuing a needless and pointless proclamation about parents having the choice to opt out of public schools, a right and choice they’ve always had. That alone would have been sound and fury signifying nothing and adding to the discord. But, Gianforte went a step farther to cause confusion and sow mistrust of masking in schools even though the vaccine hasn’t been approved for young children, and despite the rise in COVID-19-related illness in youth. Face coverings are among the only defenses available to that age group during these times of kamikaze politics.
While there is a lot of bullshit in this paragraph, I added the emphasis at the end because of what IS NOT referenced, which is a healthy immune system and ALL THE THINGS that can be done to ensure kids have healthy immune systems, like eating right, playing outside in the dirt, and getting plenty of sleep.
No, Darrel Ehrlick doesn’t mention anything about a healthy, natural immune defense because his “commentary” isn’t about the health of my kids, it’s about using Covid as a blunt instrument to hit Montana Republicans with, which is why he says shit like this:
I am shocked and angered by the callous attitude of my home state – a place that I have always prided for having a common-sense community ethos. Other states may go off the rails, but we’re happy to do our own thing. Now, our own thing seems to have transformed into a selfish ethic of my freedom at all costs, even at the expense of life or the lives of those around me. Forgive me if the next time I hear someone tearfully talking about the sanctity of life I roll my eyes.
I would LOVE for Darrel Ehrlick to call me selfish to my face, but this fucking coward isn’t about to engage, in-person, with people like me because he’s already made up his mind about the kind of “ethos” I represent.
Unlike Darrel Ehrlick, I’m not going to preemptively ask for forgiveness (the disingenuous prick) for any future eye-rolling the next time I hear the liberal inclusivity mantra about minority populations. Instead I’ll just keep reminding these hollow virtue-signalers about the death of Sean Stevenson and the unanswered questions his family still has about what happened to him at the Poverello Center.
Since one of Ehrlick’s many hats he claims is as a “historian”, the following is a pathetic attempt to graft the legacy of east coast resource exploiters onto our current batch of Republicans, all while minimizing the concern people have over Big Pharma’s latest product-line, and the continued push to approve MORE AND MORE shots for YOUNGER AND YOUNGER consumers, something that not everyone at the FDA is happy about.
Here is Ehrlick’s selective histrionics:
The leaders and people who came to Montana from the East sought fortunes and meant to take what they could for their own benefit, regardless of the Natives who were here. In history and mythology, Montana has always represented the epitome of rugged individualism and the apotheosis of freedom. If you don’t believe that, just look at the murals in the Capitol depicting White men seeking material fortune, a sentiment enshrined in oil paintings in the epicenter of our state. They don’t often show what happened next.
So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the craven political ambitions of leaders who would make something as simple as a vaccine and a mask the next instruments of battle in a cultural war dressed up as freedom’s last stand, when, in reality, it’s nothing more than staying healthy and getting through a pandemic the likes of which hasn’t been seen in several generations.
As simple as a vaccine and a mask? What the fuck is “simple” about requiring health interventions that someone like me refuses to take?
I’ll wrap this post up with a big THANK YOU to Darrel Ehrlick. Why? Because it’s “commentaries” like his that reinforces the need to fight back with the legal processes still available to us.
And to do that money needs to be raised, like this effort, which is closing in on $12,000.
Please donate if you can, and thanks for reading!
JC
I was listening to a comedian just yesterday, and have already forgotten his name … talking with Jeff Foxworthy. He talked about being in college, pre-med, when he realized he was funny and that comedy was his real calling. He wanted a degree, and so asked his advisor about what would be the quickest and easiest way out of college. He was advised to switch to journalism. He did. Those folks, and I have met no exceptions, are the most Dunning-Krueger-ish folks around, completely wedded to authority, unable to reason their way out of a paper bag, even one made of newspaper. Ehrlick is a dumbass, and because he is a dumbass, he is unable to understand what a dumbass he is. More than that, after “leading” the Billings Gazette, he honestly thinks his opinions are of better quality than any other WalMart shopper. Fuck him.
I continue to be impressed by those who disdain religious dogma, yet are deeply enmeshed in the same phenomenon with their scientism.
This rant is really disjointed, hypocritical and full of non-sequiturs.
Could you please provide evidence that the 20 children each week dying from the Delta variant in the U.S. are not eating well, didn’t play outside in the dirt, and don’t have healthy immune systems? No, you won’t, because you can’t.
You’re bashing someone for allegedly politicizing the pandemic, yet you are deliberately indifferent to science, refuse to examine it when it’s provided to you, and fly off the rails with hate speech based entirely on your opinion that those not with you on this are either brainwashed dupes, or malevolent co-conspirators.
If all children need to do in order to avoid contracting infectious diseases is to play in the dirt and eat well, then I guess you’d be fine with them hanging out in an Ebola ward. And when they’re of age, you’d be fine with them having indiscrimate, uprotected sex with strangers. The millions upon millions who died of AIDS the last 40 years must not have played in the dirt, and must not have eaten well.
The bankruptcy of this is patent. It is the same process that strengthens the immune system by playing in dirt, that does so by vaccination. One difference is that dirt can also infect a person with pathogens that will cause death in the absence of pre-infection vaccination or administration of vaccine soon after the exposure. You’ve heard of tetanus, right? It’s caused by infection with a species of clostridium bacteria that (ready?) is found in dirt. Inoculation with clostridium tetani bacteria can occur from something as minor as pricking a finger on a rose thorn. Once the disease process manifests, it’s usually fatal and it’s a bad death. The body’s muscles, usually beginning with those of the mandible, begin powerful spasms of contraction that spreads throughout the musculature and becomes increasingly intense. The chest wall muscles and the diaphragm are not spared. Death follows.
Tetanus kills because it multiplies and spreads infection faster than the body can marshall antibodies against it. But, not so quickly that a post-injury inoculation with tetanus toxoid within a few days won’t be nearly 100% effective. It is effective because it stimulates the adaptive immune system. You’re correct that unvaccinated, and vaccinated, kids who play in dirt and aren’t kept in hyper-hygienic households, develop more diversified immune systems due to developing B memory cells that express antibodies to a wide variety of pathogens. They are, indeed, better equipped to stop infections in their tracks. No doubt, kids not vaccinated against tetanus often stop tetanus from causing its fatal disease sequelae when the amount of clostridium tetani with which they are inoculated isn’t great, and/or when a wound is well irrigated right away (it doesn’t have to be a deep wound to produce tetanus). They undoubtedly often avoid deadly tetanus infections that would kill other unvaccinated kids who were “protected” from dirt by helicopter parents. The reason for this is that the frequent presentation of small amounts of the pathogen causes their adaptive immune system to make those B memory cells. But by no means does playing in dirt provide protection against fatal tetanus where the inoculation is sufficient to produce infection in the vast majority of instances.
Can you name a single person who is advocating both for COVID-19 vaccination, and for poor diets? This is just another example of irrational ‘reasoning.’
Condoms have microscopic pores large enough for an HIV virus to pass through, yet they are superbly effective at preventing HIV transmission. Why? Because the virus doesn’t “live,” transmit and produce disease that way. It is passed in bodily fluids. Condoms prevent exchange of bodily fluids that carry large numbers of the virus. This is precisely the way masks greatly diminish the ability of a COVID-19-infected person to transmit SARS-CoV-2 virus to others in concentrations sufficient to produce disease in others: the SARS-CoV-2 virus is transmitted through air in droplets and aerosols. Masks block propagation of droplets, stop and drastically attenuate the amount of exhaled aerosols, and those that still get through the mask don’t travel far.
On this blog, you’ve posted such absolute falsehoods as the assertion that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines “change a person’s DNA,” even though no component ever penetrates a cell’s nuclear membrane, and never enter the nucleus where one’s 23 pairs of chromosomes consisting of coiled DNA reside.
$12,000 raised to fight school mask mandates? Is that ALL? “We fight masking today, because tomorrow it will be the jab!” And anyone critical of the vaccine refuseniks (55% of Republicans vs. 35% of Democrats) is a “Fascist?”
Vaccination in the U.S.against tetanus began in the late 1940s. Before tetanus vaccination became widespread, hundreds of Americans died from it each year. From 1947-49, an average of 580 cases of tetanus were reported, of which an average of 472 caused death (81% mortality rate). As a result of very high rates of tetanus vaccination, it has been reduced to an average of 30 cases per year. Of unvaccinated Americans who contract tetanus, the mortality rate for mild and moderate cases is 6%, and for severe cases is 60%. U.S. mortality for tetanus cases is 30% overall; 52% in persons older than 60, and 13% in those younger than 60. The case fatality rate for tetanus in the U.S. was 91% in 1947, 21-31% from 19872-90, and 18% from 1998 to 2000. This is a reflection of both vaccination, and greatly improved emergency medicine techniques. It’s not the result of more childhood exposure to dirt, because there’s much less. An examination of data concerning masking, vaccination, reported cases of COVID-19, percentages of those cases resulting in hospitalization, percentage resulting in death, percentage involving children since emergence of the Delta variant, the rates of those cases in states banning mandatory school masking vs. those having such mandates, and rates of hospitalizations and deaths among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated COVID-19 patients (in all age groups), cannot produce a rational conclusion that masks and vaccinations aren’t massively superior to playing in dirt.
The rant couldn’t conclude without an utterly non sequitur incorporation of the Sean Stevenson homicide. At least in that matter, your dogged refusal to permit us to forget the failure of law enforcement and others to prosecute or monitor Perry, and prediction of more tragedy as a result, were not only rational but based on expertise garnered on the front lines. Your efforts were highly commendable, and your prediction prescient. I was deeply saddened that no one who might have prevented that episode, listened to you.
I’ve no evidence that your wacky reasoning regarding school masks being the camel’s nose of Fascism entering the tent, has any bearing on the failure of appropriate people to do the right thing in the Stevenson/Perry affair. But that question does enter my mind.
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Do I have the right to say no to a jab? You still haven’t answered my direct question.
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