Many people have already piled on Aaron Rodgers for his selfish and misinformed actions and words regarding Covid 19 vaccinations. I won’t focus so much on him since others have so ably pointed out his many errors. Instead, I’m going to look at what Kylee Zempel is doing in her article for The Federalist where she tries to claim that Rodgers dropped nine “truth bombs”. See Federalist Zempel article.
She frames these “bombs as things “you aren’t allowed to say”. Right wingnuts love to play this card. They like to pretend that others are trying to “cancel” them even as their words get plenty of publicity. Neither Rodgers nor Zempel will go to prison for spewing their misinformation, and The Federalist will not be shut down by the government for publishing their nonsense. Because the truth is not on Aaron Rodgers’ or Kylee Zempel’s side, they deserve to be criticized harshly. Yes, Rodgers and Zempel, you can say all of what you’ve said, no one’s stopping you, but you will deservedly be called a stupid, uninformed person for propagating false information.
I won’t call Rodgers’ claims to be “truth bombs” because they are actually lies and misleading statements. That said, how does Zempel react to Rodgers’ lies. First off, she doesn’t react to most of them, just repeats them, and so provides an excellent example of the copy-and-paste method of op-ed writing.
Lie #1: She simply quotes Rodgers on his claim that calling the unvaccinated “selfish” is media propaganda. Rodgers words are “You’re selfish for making a decision that’s in the best interest of your body”. Zempel and Rodgers show no awareness that his statement blatantly reflects selfishness. Of course, a person does want to make decisions in their own best interest, but if at the same time they are clearly ignoring the impacts of their decisions on others, they are being selfish. Men who disguised themselves as women in order to sneak on to lifeboats as the Titanic was sinking were clearly making decisions “in their own best interest” and thus perhaps survived the tragedy. They were also selfish cowards.
Lie #2: Rodgers claims personal health information should be private. This is something that is true in many cases, but it is not true in this case. Rodgers vaccination status is something that his employers had a right to know. If he had simply reported it to them honestly, his lying would not have been exposed and his personal information would not have hit the news. Contagious diseases don’t care about the privacy of your health information and so society has a right that trumps your desire for privacy.
Lie #3: This is really “lies”, not lie. Rodgers says that it’s a lie to call the pandemic a pandemic of the vaccinated because the vaccinated can still be infected, can still spread the disease, and even still die from it. He also says it must not be safe because the vaccine makers were given immunity from lawsuits. Recent studies show that the incidence of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are multiple times higher among the unvaccinated. Even though vaccinations do not prevent infections in every case, they do reduce transmission because they do prevent some cases and the cases last a shorter time. And the major reduction in hospitalizations and deaths is a huge advantage to getting vaccinated. The vaccination manufacturers got immunity because they needed more incentive to develop a new vaccine as fast as possible. That does not mean the vaccine wasn’t tested. And, significantly, at this point, the vaccines has now been administers to hundreds of millions of people around the world, with no pattern of harm or negative reactions.
Lie #4: Rodgers claims falsely that the left politicized vaccines. He bases this on a willful distortion of what Kamala Harris said. She said she would not take a vaccine if Trump were promoting it because Trump could not be trusted. She would take it if medical experts recommended it. Rodgers misquotes this into saying the left was saying Americans should not take the vaccines.
Lie #5: Here Rodgers brings up the fact that the vaccinated can still be infectious. Rodgers actually has said something true here, shocking, I know. However, he does not acknowledge that the vaccinated are not as infectious as the unvaccinated and he does not acknowledge the better outcomes for those who are vaccinated if they do become infected. He claims, without any evidence, that he must have caught the virus from a vaccinated person. This is a convenient accusation to make. As an unvaccinated person, and presumably also as someone who goes out in public on occasion, there would have been ample opportunities to become infected from other unvaccinated and unmasked individuals who are too numerous in this country.
Lie #6: Rodgers says he is allergic to an ingredient in the mRNA vaccines, and so pushes the idea that health care rules cannot always be applied the same to everyone. The problem here is that the Johnson & Johnson is not an mRNA vaccine, so he could have taken that one. He also does not mention what he is allergic to. Even though he should not have to divulge his allergies to the public, he certainly could have told his team doctor and/or the NFL doctors what his allergic concerns were that justify his not being vaccinated. He then of course should not have claimed to be “immunized”.
Lie #7: On Rodgers claims he will have a more robust immunity by catching Covid 19 rather than by getting a vaccine, Zempel steps into explain more about the Israeli study that seems to support this view. Zempel and Rodgers are like the climate deniers who jump on any study that seems to support their own view and which they claim overturns numerous studies that they don’t like. The Israeli study has in fact been criticized itself as severely flawed. There are studies that have measured the quantities of antibodies in people who were infected versus those who had a vaccine and the numbers were significantly better for the vaccinated. For those with mild Covid cases, the antibodies were very low. But the most important thing to consider is why would you want to risk hospitalization or death by waiting to be infected “naturally” versus getting a shot in the arm? As an athlete, why would you want to risk getting damaged lungs or heart inflammation from a severe case of Covid 19? It’s like Zempel and Rodgers are advocating for a kind of Russian roulette.
Lie #8: Rodgers whines about “cancel” culture, about shaming of those who aren’t vaccinated. Why can’t you shame those who aren’t vaccinated? It’s not like people should be shamed willy nilly. And they aren’t. Exceptions are always made for those who have valid reasons for not getting vaccinated. It’s just that many people aren’t getting vaccinated for invalid reasons, because of the misinformation that people like Rodgers and Zempel are too eager to spew.
Lie #9: Rodgers tries to deflect from the need to be vaccinated by claiming that more focus should be on getting people healthier in general. He emphasizes the comorbidities that put some people at risk. The problem with his whining here is two-fold. First, the government puts a lot of effort into encouraging healthy living. To their efforts you can add those of schools, health care providers, and employers. And note how Michelle Obama was criticized by rightwing people when she tried to promote healthier lunches and reducing obesity in children. Trump’s administration worked to reverse some of her initiatives. Also, even though obesity does seem to lower immune responses in general, not just to Covid, and obesity can interfere with treating breathing difficulties, it’s also been shown recently that the initial view that obesity was a major contributor to Covid hospitalizations and deaths may have been exaggerated. So, when Zempel points out that 78% of people hospitalized with Covid were overweight or obese, she fails to note that 74% of the population is overweight or obese. A lot of people were hospitalized who were overweight/obese because a lot of people in this country are in that category.
That’s a whole lot of lies from Rodgers and The Federalist’s Zempel. They won’t help America get past the pandemic. They will only help selfish, misinformed, easily fooled people hurt others (and sometimes themselves as well).
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One of Steven Milloy’s claims to infamy is that he runs a web site called JunkScience.com where he purports to debunk all sorts of “junk”, which is anything he thinks is false science. However, you should be aware that JunkScience.com was originally funded by the tobacco industry, then later gained funding from many major industry polluters. That’s who Milloy has worked for and lied for over many years.
His latest attempt to deceive is regarding recent moves by the new EPA director to remove scientists from some of the advisory committees. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (link to Milloy op-ed), Milloy lauds this action as something that will bring “scientific integrity” to the EPA. What he really is trying to do is erode the public’s trust in real scientists and enable polluters to profit more while poisoning our country and its people.
Milloy starts his deception by saying that there is no evidence to support the idea that fine particulate matter (PM) kills thousands of people. In fact, there is ample evidence and it continues to grow. Everyone’s homework assignment is to do an internet search on this topic. You will see the usual blatantly biased right-wing sites repeating the same old tired lies, and then you will find many other sites pointing to valid scientific studies that prove the harmfulness of fine particulates. The right-wing sites will seldom if ever point to a serious scientific study.
Milloy tries to bolster his case by saying that an advisory committee (CASAC) to the EPA in 1996 “concluded that the scientific evidence did not support the agency’s regulatory conclusion,” and he links to a CASAC published report (link to CASAC report). Yet when I looked at this publication, I found praise for the EPA’s work on PM: for example, the EPA report was “its best ever example of a true integrative summary of the state of knowledge about the health effects of airborne PM.” It is true that some CASAC members thought the EPA’s case “may be overstated” but other members felt it was appropriate. The committee definitely did not say there was no support for the idea of increased mortality from fine particulates.
Milloy tries to cast doubt on the EPA and the scientists it employs by claiming that the CASAC became more biased as the years went on, and that’s why its membership must be radically changed. Yet Milloy’s claim is obvious bunk. For one thing, he points to changes during the Bush administration where more and more committee members were recipients of EPA grants and thus supposedly were simply doing the agency’s bidding by producing studies that came to pre-determined conclusions. Then the membership became even more biased with more scientists getting EPA grants during the Obama administration.
But are we really supposed to believe that the Republican Bush administration, an administration so deeply tied to the fossil fuel industry, would be packing EPA-related committees with biased scientists? The CASAC actually recommended tighter restrictions on PM in 2006 during the Bush years, and I’m sure they would not make scientifically unsupportable claims, knowing that their claims were likely to be scrutinized closely. Yet this is what Milloy is saying. He thinks that to make committees more unbiased you should fire the scientists who do real science and hire people from the industries being regulated. However, it’s obvious that anyone who comes from an industry background is highly likely to be biased. Their current and future paychecks may very directly depend on the views they express. The scientists on the committee, if they truly wanted to get more grants, would not push a specific conclusion; they would push for the need for more research.
And are the EPA scientists biased? No. One only need look at the source of the many studies on particulate matter. You will find that they are done by researchers from around the world. If the EPA scientists were biased, their conclusions would differ from those of non-American scientists. And, no, it’s not reasonable to reply that all the scientists around the world are in a global conspiracy to trick everyone in to believing false ideas so that they can achieve world domination.
There will always be people who persist in taking contrarian points of view. Just the other day, I saw lengthy comments on a science web site by someone confidently attacking Einstein’s theories, only of course to be mercilessly shredded by people who understood the theories better and could even explain them! Yet Milloy is in a different category. He is not limited to making crackpot claims in a comment thread. He gets to appear in major publications and he was part of Trump’s EPA transition team, so his wrong and potentially dangerous ideas get more distribution than they deserve.
That’s a problem that America faces more now than perhaps at any time in the past, and it’s not likely to get better until people take upon themselves the responsibility to educate themselves and view anything they read or hear with a healthy skepticism, whether it’s from scientists or non-scientists.
Trump, of course, does not have the intelligence to understand the science nor does he have the wisdom or judgment to select advisors who know the science. It is that type of ignorance that all citizens of a democracy must constantly fight against, or the ignorant among them will throw away that democracy.
