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Pauline Hansons comments about vacinations, and how we should rely on Dr Google rather than qualified medical doctors for information, remind us how tricky it is to deal with political nut-baggery.
Political nut-baggery, by the way, is the tendency of politicians who dont know what theyre talking about, to keep on talking about it.
On the one hand you dont want to encourage it, but on the other it does tend to render people unelectable.
Pauline excels at it, having declared in an interview with Barry Cassidy, from ABCs Insiders program, that people should do their own research into whether to vaccinate their kids, that there is a test that can tell them whether their child might be allergic to the vaccinations, and suggesting the governments no jab, no pay policy is akin to dictatorship.
Barry must have thought hed gone to interview heaven as Pauline proceeded to throw in a few words of admiration for Vladimir Putin, deflecting claims that the Russian leader may have been responsible for the deaths of 38 Australians in the downed airliner over Ukraine with the cryptic defence: But did he press the button Barry?
And to be fair, its hard to know precisely whether Putin pulled the trigger on the missile that brought down airline MH17. Just as its hard to say, exactly, whether he is personally responsible for the annexation of Crimea. But all the guns seem to point in his direction and all his critics seem to end up arrested or dead. Something Pauline was apparently lauding, without trying to sound too pro-tyrant.
What most medical experts knew immediately the moment Pauline opened her mouth on vaccinations is that no test exists, on Wikipedia or anywhere else, that indicates vaccination allergy or connection to autism, and that Pauline should stop encouraging people to think otherwise. She vaccinated her own kids and concedes that vaccination is critical to public health, despite what the anti-vax lobby say.
Its all well and good to fast-track natural selection when it come to anti-vax believers. But if you let the child disease genie out of the bottle with things like polio or whooping cough, it wont only be the anti-vax brigade who suffer. Something Pauline seemed ignorant of when she let fly.
Which gets us back to the tricky challenge of dealing with political nut-baggery.
You dont want to encourage anyone advocating public health epidemics, even if they dont realise theyre doing it. And yet, the more Pauline wades into issues she doesnt understand on national TV, the less likely it seems her lackeys are of getting elected, as the WA election indicated.
It may be a different story in the upcoming Queensland ballot, because those Maroons are a bit different. And it might be more dangerous letting Pauline off the leash on murkier issues like race relations and religion, where the facts arent as vulnerable to things like science. But in a democracy where all arguments have to stand up to critical analysis, it should be informative in a political nut-baggery sort of way.
We havent yet got so politically correct that we stop people who dont know what theyre talking about from having their say.
We haven’t yet got so politically correct that we stop people who don’t know what they’re talking about from having their say.
Which moves me on to doctors without qualifications who can operate for 10 years in NSW hospitals without being noticed.
And when I say operate, I hope the alleged individual didn't operate on anyone at Manly, Hornsby, Wyong and Gosford hospitals over that time.
The fact that he was allegedly able to steal someones identity, slip into the system and get away with it for years raises the question how hard is it to impersonate a doctor?
Scary thought, but not as scary as copping a procedure off one practising medicine who hasnt had any training emphasis on the word practise, given the lack of training.
Time will tell if its the media making all this up, as people like Pauline tend to allege when theyre under the pump, but for the time being, perception is reality, and so is the hope that my GP went to uni.
Which gets me onto alternate energy debate. And how its been turned around lately by a lot of scare-mongering so that now the alternate energy to alternate energy seems to be coal and gas.
A crisis in supply brought on by not being able to make as much money selling gas at home compared to selling gas overseas, sees us likely to experience blackouts as soon as we get our next gas bill if we dont let the major energy companies frack the country.
And thankfully, the gas companies came together with the Prime Minister this week and promised to have a real crack. Hopefully it wont be in the water table.
Just seems to prove that when it comes to working out when all this political nut-baggery will end, your gas is as good as mine.