“
Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
“
Van Houten,
I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently.
Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease.
I want to leave a mark.
But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.
(Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.)
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other.
Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either.
People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm.
The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invented anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.
After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar.
A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.” A desert blessing, an ocean curse.
What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park / Congo)
“
Granny and Elsa used to watch the evening news together. Now and then Elsa would ask Granny why grown-ups were always doing such idiotic things to each other. Granny usually answered that it was because grown-ups were generally people, and people are generally shits. Elsa countered that grown-ups were also responsible for a lot of good things in between all the idiocy – space exploration, the UN, vaccines and cheese slicers, for instance. Granny then said the real trick of life was that almost no one is entirely a shit and almost no one is entirely not a shit. The hard part of life is keeping as much on the ‘not-a-shit’ side as one can.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises)
“
Falling out of love was much harder than Gabe would have liked. Normally led through life by the heart attached to his sleeve, finding logic in love proved to be a bit like getting vaccinated for some dread disease: a good idea in the end, but the initial pain certainly wasn’t any fun. He came to appreciate that there were worse ways to live than to live without love. For instance, if he didn’t have arms, Gabe wouldn’t be able to hide in his work. Yes, a life without arms would be quite tragic, indeed.
”
”
Leslye Walton (The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender)
“
Parents refusing to vaccinate their children are doing something akin to allowing their kids to run about in traffic because they are irrationally afraid of sidewalks or they believe being struck by an oncoming car might be good in the long run.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
”
”
Charles Darwin (The Descent of Man)
“
While I don't think sociopaths have any sort of moral urge to do good things, I think they can and do act morally in the context of pursuing their own advantage. A good analogy would be a corporation. There are a lot of corporations that do things that you like, maybe even good things, like produce vaccines or electric cars, although the primary motivation is to make a profit. But just because you are trying to make a profit doesn't mean you can't do it by doing things you like, or that you are good at, or that comport with the way you see the world, or want the world to see you.
”
”
M.E. Thomas (Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight)
“
I am & have been for years a confirmed anti-vaccinationist. Anti-vaccination has no backing from the orthodox medical opinion. A medical man who expresses himself against vaccination loses caste. Tremendous pecuniary interests too have grown around vaccination.
”
”
Mahatma Gandhi
“
The world is filled with human toxins -- not the darkness that we all occasionally crave, but actually people who are so unwilling to bask in the angelic light that is offered us all that they grow poisonous -- and you can pray for their eventual recovery and healing. And sometimes those prayers will be answered. But sometimes these individuals have been vaccinated against goodness and against angels and they are so unwilling to give an inch to their God that often they never (and I use this expression absolutely literally) see the light.
”
”
Chris Bohjalian (Secrets of Eden)
“
Ask the Aztecs and the Incas whether or not they would have liked to have access to vaccines. Oh, wait, you can't. They're dead. Vaccination is one of the best things that has happened to civilization. Empires toppled like sandcastles in the wake of diseases we do not give a second thought to today. If taking a moment to elaborate on that point will make this book unpopular with a large group of antivaxxers, that’s okay. This feels like a good hill to die on. It’s surely a better one than the Incas got.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
Refusing to vaccinate puts at risk not just your children but the people in our communities who most require our protection. This is a substantial downside for people deciding to protect their kids via star signs and “good vibes” instead of medicine.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
Nationalism emerged to agitate the world only after the war, and the first visible phenomenon which this intellectual epidemic of our century brought about was xenophobia; morbid dislike of the foreigner, or at least fear of the foreigner. The world was on the defensive against strangers, everywhere they got short shrift. The humiliations which once had been devised with criminals alone in mind now were imposed upon the traveler, before and during every journey. There had to be photographs from right and left, in profile and full face, one’s hair had to be cropped sufficiently to make the ears visible; fingerprints were taken, at first only the thumb but later all ten fingers; furthermore, certificates of health, of vaccination, police certificates of good standing, had to be shown; letters of recommendation were required, invitations to visit a country had to be procured; they asked for the addresses of relatives, for moral and financial guarantees, questionnaires, and forms in triplicate and quadruplicate needed to be filled out,
”
”
Stefan Zweig (The World of Yesterday)
“
Vaccination is a very good thing. It makes you tell your left hand from your right.
”
”
Betty Smith
“
Imagine a society’s discovering a vaccine against a deadly disease that has been ravaging its people and continues to ravage people in neighboring societies, where the cause of the disease is incorrectly attributed to improper diet. What would be the judgment on such a society if it withheld its vaccine on the grounds that it would be ethnocentric to try to instruct members of another culture that their medical ideas are incorrect, and to induce them to adopt the effective treatment? If one accepts that one has the good fortune to be in possession of the true religion and thereby has access to the most valuable possible rewards, is one not similarly obligated to spread this blessing to those less fortunate?
”
”
Rodney Stark
“
Some people say love is contagious. You might start writing verses of your own next.”
“I believe my constitution can handle it. But what about yours?”
“Fortunately, I have been vaccinated against love by a mixture of intelligence and good common sense.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Summer Days and Summer Nights: Twelve Love Stories)
“
Vaccinated with love,
boosted with reason,
mind becomes a powerhouse,
putting an end to all discrimination.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion)
“
Normally led through life by the heart attached to his sleeve, finding logic in love proved to be a bit like getting vaccinated for some dread disease: a good idea in the end, but the initial pain certainly wasn’t any fun.
”
”
Leslye Walton (The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender)
“
Bullshit is everywhere.” (...) Then there’s the more pernicious bullshit… It comes in three flavors: Making bad things sound good… “Patriot Act.” Because “Are You Scared Enough to Let Me Look at All Your Phone Records Act” doesn’t sell… Number two: hiding bad things under mountains of bullshit. “Hey, a handful of billionaires can’t buy our elections, right?” “Of course not. They can only pour unlimited, anonymous cash into a 501( c)( 4) if 50 percent is devoted to ‘issue education’”… And finally, my favorite: the bullshit of infinite possibility… “We cannot take action on climate change until everyone in the world agrees gay marriage vaccines won’t cause our children to marry goats who are coming for our guns. Until then, I say we teach the controversy.”
So I say to you, friends: The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something.
~Jon Stewart
”
”
Chris Smith (The Daily Show (The Audiobook): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests)
“
It’s very important the person being vaccinated has healthy kidneys as they are a vital part of eliminating aluminum (Al) from the blood. We wonder if many doctors test infants and children for healthy kidneys before vaccinating them. A good test for this would be to check the Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR)[105]. This tells us how well the kidneys (glomerulus) are filtering the blood. To know how much aluminum the kidneys can handle, we must know their GFR.
”
”
James Morcan (Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed? (The Underground Knowledge Series, #8))
“
Sir,” I said, “except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
“
Obviously, the more kids who are vaccinated, the better our country is protected and the less likely it is that any child will die from a disease. Some parents, however, aren't willing to risk the very rare side effects of vaccines, so they choose to skip the shots. Their children benefit from herd immunity (the protection of all the vaccinated kids around them) without risking the vaccines themselves. Is this selfish? Perhaps. But as parents you have to decide. Are you supposed to make decisions that are good for the country as a whole? Or do you base your decision on what's best for your own child as an individual? Can we fault parents for putting their own child's health ahead of the other kids' around him?
”
”
Robert W. Sears (The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child (Sears Parenting Library))
“
A study we came across revealed that p80 is very efficient at removing mercury from contaminated water[245]. This sounds good right? Read on… If p80 is attracting mercury, we can only assume it is likely some of the mercury is being escorted to the brain. So, if we receive traces of mercury in the vaccines or are exposed to mercury from other sources, and receive a p80 containing vaccine, then a mercury-free vaccine could still potentially cause mercury accumulation in the brain.
”
”
James Morcan (Vaccine Science Revisited: Are Childhood Immunizations As Safe As Claimed? (The Underground Knowledge Series, #8))
“
What I'm going to do," the doctor continued, "is take my modified, time-released Dewrilium and market it as a new Varicella vaccine. My original plan was to do something wonderful for the world, out of the goodness of my heart, but Devon and Eli convinced me to take my idea to the next level.
”
”
Laurence St. John (Metatron: The Angel Has Risen (Metatron Series Book 1))
“
In 1997, the NCI director, Richard Klausner, responding to reports that cancer mortality had remained disappointingly static through the nineties, argued that the medical realities of one decade had little bearing on the realities of the next. “There are far more good historians than there are good prophets,” Klausner wrote. “It is extraordinarily difficult to predict scientific discovery, which is often propelled by seminal insights coming from unexpected directions. The classic example—Fleming’s discovery of penicillin on moldy bread and the monumental impact of that accidental finding—could not easily have been predicted, nor could the sudden demise of iron-lung technology when evolving techniques in virology allowed the growth of poliovirus and the preparation of vaccine. Any extrapolation of history into the future presupposes an environment of static discovery—an oxymoron.
”
”
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer)
“
Sonnet of Conspiracy
Perhaps there's a monster under the bed,
Perhaps there's a boogeyman in the closet.
Perhaps they're sterilizing kids with vaccine,
Perhaps they're controlling all with a radio set.
Yes our science is well advanced,
But not advanced enough to control minds.
Besides mind-control needs no fancy tech,
When people are run by smartphone chimes.
Tales like these are good for entertainment,
Amongst a bunch of kindergarteners.
But being adult requires the use of reason,
Without submitting to prehistoric fears.
Treating insecurities with common sense,
Anyone can manifest civilized sentience.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Mucize Insan: When The World is Family)
“
The lift that comes from sending girls like Sona to school is stunning—for the girls, their families, and their communities. When you send a girl to school, the good deed never dies. It goes on for generations advancing every public good, from health to economic gain to gender equity and national prosperity. Here are just a few of the things we know from the research. Sending girls to school leads to greater literacy, higher wages, faster income growth, and more productive farming. It reduces premarital sex, lowers the chance of early marriage, delays first births, and helps mothers plan how many children to have and when. Mothers who have had an education do a better job learning about nutrition, vaccination, and other behaviors necessary for raising healthy children.
”
”
Melinda French Gates (The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World)
“
If we are not given a choice to choose whether we want the vaccine / ID2020 or not ? Why should we think the vaccine/ ID2020 is meant to help us and it is good for us. Why they want us to believe they are trying to help us by killing us without giving us a choice. Sick or not everyone should be given a choice to choose ,even if it means they have to die for their choices or because of their choices.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
we have one weakness that, considering our political maturity as a nation, is rather immature. We continue to expect the world to be grateful to us and to love us. We are hurt and indignant when we do not receive gratitude and love. Gratitude and love are not to be had for the asking; they are not to be bought. We should not want to think that they are for sale. What we should seek, rather than gratitude or love, is the respect of the world. This we can earn by enlightened justice. But it is rather naïve of us to think that when we are helping people our action is entirely unselfish. It is not. It is not unselfish when we vaccinate the public against smallpox. It is a precautionary measure, but nonetheless good in itself. Other nations are quite aware that when we try to bolster up their economy and strengthen their governments and generally help them to succeed there is a certain amount of self-interest involved.
”
”
Eleanor Roosevelt (The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt)
“
Among religious writings the Bible is unique in its attitude to its great men. Even many Christian biographies puff up the men they describe. But the Bible exhibits the whole man, so much so that it is almost embarrassing at times. If we would teach our children to read the Bible truly, it would be a good vaccination against cynical realism from the non-Christian side, because the Bible portrays its characters as honestly as any debunker or modern cynic ever could.
”
”
Francis A. Schaeffer
“
Undoubtedly well-meaning billionaires do it too. For example, an American software billionaire called Bill Gates has apparently donated $10 billion to create new vaccines. If Gates wants to do some good with his money he would surely be better advised to spend it on providing roads, clean water and reliable food supplies for the many oppressed countries where these things are desperately needed. Or he could spend some of his money campaigning against the selfish, imperialist and wicked policies of the American Government
”
”
Vernon Coleman (Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe And Effective Is Lying. Here's The Proof.)
“
No medicine and none of the vaccines developed then could prevent influenza. The masks worn by millions were useless as designed and could not prevent influenza. Only preventing exposure to the virus could. Nothing today can cure influenza, although vaccines can provide significant—but nowhere near complete—protection, and several antiviral drugs can mitigate its severity. Places that isolated themselves—such as Gunnison, Colorado, and a few military installations on islands—escaped. But the closing orders that most cities issued could not prevent exposure; they were not extreme enough. Closing saloons and theaters and churches meant nothing if significant numbers of people continued to climb onto streetcars, continued to go to work, continued to go to the grocer. Even where fear closed down businesses, where both store owners and customers refused to stand face-to-face and left orders on sidewalks, there was still too much interaction to break the chain of infection. The virus was too efficient, too explosive, too good at what it did. In the end the virus did its will around the world.
”
”
John M. Barry (The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History)
“
resilience—“good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development.” Resilience isn’t simply something one is born with; it grows out of an interaction between factors that promote it (like hyperthymic personality) and harmful life events—producing a good outcome in the end. In psychology research, two lines of evidence support this notion. First, when people experience harmful events, some are injured psychologically, but others are not. Second, sometimes people even get stronger after such events, a “steeling” effect that protects them against future stresses. Resilience is the mind’s vaccine.
”
”
S. Nassir Ghaemi (A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness)
“
You all right, sis?” Kaden asked, pausing between heaping spoonfuls of oatmeal. “Of course.” “You look a little stressed.” “You would, too, if you were going to run the country,” I teased. “Sometimes I think about that,” he said, getting all serious. “Like, what if a disease swept over all of Illéa, and you and Mom and Dad and Ahren got sick and died. Then I’d be in charge and have to figure out everything on my own.” In my periphery I saw Dad lean forward, listening to his son. “That’s a little morbid, Kaden.” Kaden shrugged. “It’s always good to plan ahead.” I propped my chin on my hand. “So what would be King Kaden’s first order of business?” “Vaccinations, obviously.” I
”
”
Kiera Cass (The Heir (The Selection, #4))
“
In the first summer of the Iraqi war, on the crabby, sweaty second day of a blackout that shut down the northeast’s power grid, I stood in line for questionable foodstuffs in my dark neighborhood deli. It reeked of souring milk. An annoyingly upbeat fellow-shopper chirped, “Cheer up, everybody, we’re part of history!” Maybe because I was suffering the effects of allergy eyes brought on the night before by trying to read by the light of lilac-scented candles about a political murder committed around the time of the Spanish-American War, I snapped at him. “Sir,” I said, “except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.
”
”
Sarah Vowell (Assassination Vacation)
“
All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.
”
”
Richard Fariña (Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me)
“
According to Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, for example, one’s “cultural worldview”—that would be political leanings or ideological outlook to the rest of us—explains “individuals’ beliefs about global warming more powerfully than any other individual characteristic.”16 More powerfully, that is, than age, ethnicity, education, or party affiliation. The Yale researchers explain that people with strong “egalitarian” and “communitarian” worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong “hierarchical” and “individualistic” worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.17 The evidence is striking. Among the segment of the U.S. population that displays the strongest “hierarchical” views, only 11 percent rate climate change as a “high risk,” compared with 69 percent of the segment displaying the strongest “egalitarian” views.18 Yale law professor Dan Kahan, the lead author on this study, attributes the tight correlation between “worldview” and acceptance of climate science to “cultural cognition,” the process by which all of us—regardless of political leanings—filter new information in ways that will protect our “preferred vision of the good society.” If new information seems to confirm that vision, we welcome it and integrate it easily. If it poses a threat to our belief system, then our brain immediately gets to work producing intellectual antibodies designed to repel the unwelcome invasion.19 As Kahan explained in Nature, “People find it disconcerting to believe that behavior that they find noble is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behavior that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it.” In other words, it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today. Furthermore, leftists are equally capable of denying inconvenient scientific evidence. If conservatives are inherent system justifiers, and therefore bridle before facts that call the dominant economic system into question, then most leftists are inherent system questioners, and therefore prone to skepticism about facts that come from corporations and government. This can lapse into the kind of fact resistance we see among those who are convinced that multinational drug companies have covered up the link between childhood vaccines and autism. No matter what evidence is marshaled to disprove their theories, it doesn’t matter to these crusaders—it’s just the system covering up for itself.20 This kind of defensive reasoning helps explain the rise of emotional intensity that surrounds the climate issue today. As
”
”
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate)
“
All week, we’ve heard pep talks like this one from Scott at last night’s post-Razzle’s debrief: “To me, here’s the motivation to evangelize: If I’m a doctor, and I find the cure for a terminal illness, and if I care about people, I’m going to spread that cure as widely as possible. If I don’t, people are going to die.”
Leave the comparison in place for a second. If Scott had indeed found the cure to a terminal illness and if this Daytona mission were a vaccination campaign instead of an evangelism crusade, my group members would be acting with an unusually large portion of mercy—much more, certainly, than their friends who spent the break playing Xbox in their sweatpants. And if you had gone on this immunization trip, giving up your spring break for the greater good, and had found the sick spring breakers unwilling to be vaccinated, what would you do? If a terminally ill man said he was “late for a meeting,” you might let him walk away. But—and I’m really stretching here—if you really believed your syringe held his only hope of survival, and you really cared about him, would you ignore the rules of social propriety and try every convincement method you knew?
”
”
Kevin Roose (The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University)
“
It wasn’t until nearly 400 years later [since capitalist privatizations at home in Britain, i.e. the Enclosures starting in 1500s] that life expectancies in Britain finally began to rise. […] It happened slightly later in the rest of Europe, while in the colonised world longevity didn’t begin to improve until the early 1900s [decolonization]. So if [capitalist economic] growth itself does not have an automatic relationship with life expectancy and human welfare, what could possibly explain this trend?
Historians today point out that it began with a startlingly simple intervention […]: [public] sanitation. In the middle of the 1800s, public health researchers had discovered that health outcomes could be improved by introducing simple sanitation measures, such as separating sewage from drinking water. All it required was a bit of public plumbing. But public plumbing requires public works, and public money. You have to appropriate private land for things like public water pumps and public baths. And you have to be able to dig on private property in order to connect tenements and factories to the system. This is where the problems began. For decades, progress towards the goal of public sanitation was opposed, not enabled, by the capitalist class. Libertarian-minded landowners refused to allow officials to use their property [note: the Enclosures required state violence to privatize land], and refused to pay the taxes required to get it done.
The resistance of these elites was broken only once commoners won the right to vote and workers organised into unions. Over the following decades these movements, which in Britain began with the Chartists and the Municipal Socialists, leveraged the state to intervene against the capitalist class. They fought for a new vision: that cities should be managed for the good of everyone, not just for the few. These movements delivered not only public sanitation systems but also, in the years that followed, public healthcare, vaccination coverage, public education, public housing, better wages and safer working conditions. According to research by the historian Simon Szreter, access to these public goods – which were, in a way, a new kind of commons – had a significant positive impact on human health, and spurred soaring life expectancy through the twentieth century.
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Jason Hickel (Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World)
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1. The future is not a “point”—a single scenario that we must predict. It is a range. We should bookend the future, considering a range of outcomes from very bad to very good. • Investor Penstock bet on Coinstar when his bookend analysis showed much more upside than downside. • Our predictions grow more accurate when we stretch our bookends outward. 2. To prepare for the lower bookend, we need a premortem. “It’s a year from now. Our decision has failed utterly. Why?” • The 100,000 Homes Campaign avoided a legal threat by using a premortem-style analysis. 3. To be ready for the upper bookend, we need a preparade. “It’s a year from now. We’re heroes. Will we be ready for success?” • The producer of Softsoap, hoping for a huge national launch, locked down the supply of plastic pumps for 18 to 24 months. 4. To prepare for what can’t be foreseen, we can use a “safety factor.” • Elevator cables are made 11 times stronger than needed; software schedules include a “buffer factor.” 5. Anticipating problems helps us cope with them. • The “realistic job preview”: Revealing a job’s warts up front “vaccinates” people against dissatisfaction. • Sandra rehearsed how she would ask her boss for a raise and what she’d say and do at various problem moments. 6. By bookending—anticipating and preparing for both adversity and success—we stack the deck in favor of our decisions.
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Chip Heath (Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work)
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Activity pouch on airplanes Buttons and pins Crayons and coloring place mats from restaurants Disposable sample cup from the grocery store Erasers and pencils with eraser tops Fireman hat from a visit to the fire station Goodie bags from county fairs and festivals Hair comb from picture day at school Infant goods from the maternity ward Junior ranger badge from the ranger station and Smokey the Bear Kids’ meal toys Lollipops and candy from various locations, such as the bank Medals and trophies for simply participating in (versus winning) a sporting activity Noisemakers to celebrate New Year’s Eve OTC samples from the doctor’s office Party favors and balloons from birthday parties Queen’s Jubilee freebies (for overseas travelers) Reusable plastic “souvenir” cup and straw from a diner Stickers from the doctor’s office Toothbrushes and floss from the dentist’s office United States flags on national holidays Viewing glasses for a 3-D movie (why not keep one pair and reuse them instead?) Water bottles at sporting events XYZ, etc.: The big foam hand at a football or baseball game or Band-Aids after a vaccination or various newspapers, prospectuses, and booklets from school, museums, national parks . . .
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Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
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It reminds me about Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, said when asked what the main aim of his life had been: ‘to be a good ancestor.’ A comment like that can only come from a man profoundly aware of his place in the universe.
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Eric Weiner
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Prayer, in the sense we alluded to, is always a proof of good will and understanding in our testimony as indebted spirits… Of course, it cannot change the course of the laws, whose transgressions have made us defendants subject to multiple corrections, but it does renew our way of being, representing not only a blessed sowing of solidarity on our behalf, but also a vaccine against a return to evil. In addition, prayer makes it possible for us to draw closer to the great benefactors who guide our steps, helping us to organize a new route for a secure journey.
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Francisco Cândido Xavier (Action and Reaction)
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Ask the Aztecs and Incas whether or not they would have liked to have vaccines available to them. Oh, wait, you can’t, they’re dead. Vaccination is one of the best things that has happened to civilization. Empires toppled like sandcastles in the wake of diseases we do not give a second thought to today. If taking a moment to elaborate on that point will make this book unpopular with a large group of antivaxxers, that’s okay. This feels like a good hill to die on. It’s surely a better one than the Incas got.
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Jennifer A. Wright
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Your attitude toward other people can have a big effect on your health. Being lonely increases the risk of everything from heart attacks to dementia, depression and death, whereas people who are satisfied with their social lives sleep better, age more slowly and respond better to vaccines. The effect is so strong that curing loneliness is as good for your health as giving up smoking, according to John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, Illinois, who has spent his career studying the effects of social isolation.
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Jeremy Webb (Nothing: Surprising Insights Everywhere from Zero to Oblivion)
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Morris’s research found that flu vaccines often induced fever in children and in pregnant women, and serious harm to the fetus. He worried that there were hidden risks for everyone because the vaccine was “literally loaded with extraneous bacteria.”18 According to Dr. Morris, “There is a great deal of evidence to prove that immunization of children does more harm than good.”19 In what serves as a concise epithet for his crosses, Dr. Morris stated, “There is a close tie between government scientists and manufacturing scientists. My results were hurting the market for flu vaccines.”20
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
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train me, nice as could be other than acting like she’s my mom, all honey-this and honey-that and “You think you can remember all that, sweetie?” Just three or four years out of high school herself. But she did have three kids, so probably she’d wiped so many asses she got stuck that way. I didn’t hold it against her. Coach Briggs’s brother stayed upstairs in the office. Heart attack guy was a mystery. First they said he might come back by the end of summer. Then they all stopped talking about him. As far as customers, every kind of person came in. Older guys would want to chew the fat outside in the dock after I loaded their grain bags or headgates or what have you. I handled all the larger items. They complained about the weather or tobacco prices, but oftentimes somebody would recognize me and want to talk football. What was my opinion on our being a passing versus running team, etc. So that was amazing. Being known. It was the voice that hit my ear like a bell, the day he came in. I knew it instantly. And that laugh. It always made you wish that whoever made him laugh like that, it had been you. I was stocking inventory in the home goods aisle, and moved around the end to where I could see across the store. Over by the medications and vaccines that were kept in a refrigerator case, he was standing with his back to me, but that wild head of hair was the giveaway. And the lit-up face of Donnamarie, flirting so hard her bangs were standing on end. She was opening a case for him. Some of the pricier items were kept under lock and key. I debated whether to go over, but heard him say he needed fifty pounds of Hi-Mag mineral and a hundred pounds of pelleted beef feed, so I knew I would see him outside. I signaled to Donnamarie that I’d heard, and threw it all on the dolly to wheel out to the loading dock. He pulled his truck around but didn’t really see me. Just leaned his elbow out the open window and handed me the register ticket. He’d kept the Lariat of course, because who wouldn’t. “You’ve still got the Fastmobile, I see,” I said. He froze in the middle of lighting a smoke, shifted his eyes at me, and shook his head fast, like a splash of cold water had hit him. “I’ll be goddamned. Diamond?” “The one,” I said. “How you been hanging, Fast Man?” “Cannot complain,” he said. But it seemed like he wasn’t a hundred percent on it really being me loading his pickup. He watched me in the side mirror. The truck bounced a little each time I hefted a mineral block or bag into the bed. Awesome leaf springs on that beauty. I came around to give him back his ticket, and he seemed more sure.
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Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead)
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Emotional Vaccination to Prepare for the End of Screen Time Parent: “Before we begin screen time, let’s think about how it’s going to feel when we end. It’s hard to stop things we love, right? For me too.” Child: “Can you just turn the show on now?” Parent: “We will, soon. I’m going to take a deep breath now and get my body ready for when we stop watching screens.” Model this pause. “Also . . . I’m wondering if we can get out some of those end-of-screen-time protests now, to get our bodies ready.” Find a lighthearted, but not mocking, tone as you protest: “Five more minutes! My friends get so much more! I was just about to . . . please please . . . you never let me do anything I want to do!” What are you doing here? You’re infusing connection and silliness into a difficult transition before it happens. This doesn’t mean that at the end of the show, your child will say, “Here’s the iPad, Mom, easy-breezy!”; it does mean that you’re building the skill of managing tough emotions, and there will be a moment soon that your child looks at you and says, “Aw, I wish I could watch another episode!” instead of screaming and throwing a remote control.
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Becky Kennedy (Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction)
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The explanation didn’t seem quite so simple to Tom, but he let it suffice. “And what happened to ancient Earth?” he asked. “Oh dear, now you ask too much,” Michal said, turning. “That story is not so simple. We would have to start with the great virus at the beginning of the twenty-first century—” “The French,” Gabil cut in. “The Raison Strain.” “Not really the French,” Michal said. “A Frenchman, yes, but you can’t say it was . . . never mind. They thought it was a good thing, a vaccine, but it mutated under intense heat and became a virus. The whole business ravaged the entire population of Earth in a matter of three short weeks—” “Less than three,” Gabil inserted. “Less than three weeks.” “—and opened the door to the Deception.” “The Great Deception,” Gabil said. “Yes, the Great Deception.” Michal gave his friend a let-me-tell-the-story look. “From there we would have to move on to the time of the tribulations and wars. It would take a full day to tell you how other Earth—ancient Earth—saw the end. Clearly you don’t know all of the histories, do you?” “Obviously not.
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Ted Dekker (Black (The Circle #1))
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Racism is the ultimate societal bug, spreading its nasty influence far and wide. But here's the kicker: unlike those pesky biological viruses that have us reaching for hand sanitizer, this one's entirely curable. All it takes is a potent mix of education to disinfect ignorance, a hefty shot of empathy to build immunity, and a collective action booster to wipe it out for good. It's like a global vaccine campaign, but instead of needles, we're armed with open minds and big hearts.
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Life is Positive
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There is mounting evidence that white evangelicals are particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories and misinformation about a wide range of issues, including vaccine safety and the validity of the 2020 election… ‘ People of faith believe there Is a divine plan – that there are forces of good and forces of evil at work in the world. QAnon is a train that runs on the tracks that religion has already put in place.
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Sarah McCammon (The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church)
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When we get vaccinated against diseases that pose a greater threat to other members of our communities than they do to us, we are saying that all people, no matter their bodily impairments or challenges, are of fundamentally equal value and have a right to equally access the public sphere and a good life.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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those first days, they’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at those infected. Vaccination didn’t work to protect people, and antivirals proved useless, as usual. The CDC had ordered him to abandon the willy-nilly disbursement of the drugs for fear of wasting stores when the nation was on the verge of a pandemic. Somehow the senator had finagled a few crates for them, but Steve hadn’t bothered prescribing them. Why throw good medicine after bad? He
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Dayna Lorentz (No Easy Way Out (No Safety In Numbers, #2))
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In those first days, they’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at those infected. Vaccination didn’t work to protect people, and antivirals proved useless, as usual. The CDC had ordered him to abandon the willy-nilly disbursement of the drugs for fear of wasting stores when the nation was on the verge of a pandemic. Somehow the senator had finagled a few crates for them, but Steve hadn’t bothered prescribing them. Why throw good medicine after bad? He
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Dayna Lorentz (No Easy Way Out (No Safety In Numbers, #2))
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The major credit for the decrease in child mortality and the resultant increase in life expectancy must go to the control of disease through public health measures. At first, this took the form of improvements in sanitation and in water supplies. Eventually science caught up with practice and the germ theory of disease was understood and gradually implemented, through more focused, scientifically based measures. These included routine vaccination against a range of diseases and the adoption of good practices of personal and public health based on the germ theory. The
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Angus Deaton (The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality)
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DISPARITIES AND HIGH COSTS FUEL THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS America’s health crisis is really three crises rolled into one. The first is public health: America’s average life expectancy is now several years below that of many other countries, and for some parts of the population, life expectancy is falling. The second is health inequality: The gaps in public health according to race and class are shockingly large. The third is health care cost: America’s health care is by far the costliest in the world. The Sustainable Development Goals put good health for all in a central place in sustainable development, notably in SDG 3. This goal calls for massive reductions of the burdens of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. SDG 3 (Target 3.8) also emphasizes the need for universal and equitable access to quality health care, in order to “achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs (Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, & Sustainable)
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If we do a really great good job on new vaccines and healthcare, we can lower the world population by 10 to 15%.
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Robin Sacredfire
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Kim Ess So of someone leaves their child vulnerable to deadly diseases like measles by not vaccinating, I will speak up. Parents refusing to vaccinate their children are doing something akin to allowing their kids to run about in traffic because they are irrationally afraid of sidewalks or they believe being struck by an oncoming car might be good in the long run. And it's not only their own children they are putting at risk. If you have children, they're also putting your children at risk. – Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon)
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Jennifer A. Wright
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So of someone leaves their child vulnerable to deadly diseases like measles by not vaccinating, I will speak up. Parents refusing to vaccinate their children are doing something akin to allowing their kids to run about in traffic because they are irrationally afraid of sidewalks or they believe being struck by an oncoming car might be good in the long run. And it's not only their own children they are putting at risk. If you have children, they're also putting your children at risk. – Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon)
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Jennifer A. Wright
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The woman wore a grey knee-length skirt, what once must have been a nicely pressed white blouse. She carried heels in one hand as she ran in the grass, toward Hoover Drive. A fast zombie in a dark business suit, complete with a thin black tie, was right behind her. He reached for her, swiping passes with bloated blue hands. She serpentined. Left. Right. Doubling back. Good moves. She was like an over-dressed running back. Her shoes the ball.
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Phillip Tomasso III (Vaccination (Vaccination Trilogy, #1))
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It still seemed a bit funny to me that we stayed armed with garden tools. One would have thought we’d of come across weapons. Guns? Machetes? Harpoons? Anything. Guns had to be out there. It’s all that was in the news as of late. Civilians and their personal armory stashes. I loved my shovel, felt good in my hands, and now I had one of Josh’s hand shovels in my back pocket, too. Dave’s pitchfork was tough. He had Josh’s other hand shovel. And Allison seemed to have mastered the multitude of hedge clipper uses. We must have resembled crazed farmers scampering between trees and out into the back parking lot of the Distillery.
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Phillip Tomasso III (Vaccination (Vaccination Trilogy, #1))
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Ask the Aztecs and Incas whether or not they would have liked to have vaccines available to the. Oh, wait--you can't. They're dead. Vaccination is one of the best things that has happened to civilization. Empires toppled like sand castles in the wake of diseases we do not give a second thought to today. If taking a moment to elaborate on that point will make this book unpopular with a large group of anti-vaxxers, that's ok. This feels like a good hill to die on. It's surely a better one than the Incas got.
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Jennifer A. Wright
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What a journey it’s been. It’s one narc after the next. These narcs keep approaching me and asking if I needed an archetypal old man in my life. What happened, by the way? Why did we stop using the word narc? Do we think narcs don’t exist? And that there’s no such thing as psy-ops? And that people from the bad side are unable to pose as a member of your good side? Why are all of us so nervous about admitting that psy-ops are real? Do all of us believe that psy-ops conspiracy fuckery is equal to lizard people and nanobot vaccines? The GSN blasted its classic rotten archetype, fnordz, holomultigraphic interfacing proscenium arch eristic analytical overlays.
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Chase Griffin (How To Play A Necromancer's Theremin)
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There is also the matter of my own increasingly unreliable body. From age fourteen to forty it operated with military punctuality; you could have set a watch by the time my uterus kept. No longer. My body has detached itself from its own timeline. On more than a few occasions in the last year I’ve been compelled to ask the question: Virus or perimenopause? (In the winter months this shifts to: Virus, perimenopause, or my century-old radiator?) My doctor, while wonderful, has no answers. “You’re getting to that age” has become the most frequently repeated sentence in my appointments with her. When I press and ask, “Is this normal?” she says, “No one is sure,” because “no one” has ever done the research into the universal experience of half the population. But this might soon change, she assures me after she asks if I’ve scheduled my appointment for the newly released vaccine, which took only a year to create. “Your generation is accustomed to having information,” she tells me. “You’re all furious there is none.” When she says this, I am furious, but it doesn’t last. I can be angry about only so many things at the same time. And even then, I’m not very good at it.
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Glynnis MacNicol (I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris)
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A pandemic would have a cascading effect. Always eager for a sensational story, the media - particularly television - would spread panic. The labor force - because of sickness, fear, or having to tend to sick family members would not report for work. Soon, the economy would come to a standstill as industries shut down, businesses closed, and unemployment soared. Growing shortages of vital goods, from food to fuel to medical supplies would bring chaos. Government would cease to function. Hospitals, mortuaries, and cemeteries would overflow as in 1918, only more so. Taken by surprise, drug companies would not have the time or healthy scientific personnel to develop a new generation of vaccines.
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Marrin, Albert
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A pandemic would have a cascading effect. Always eager for a sensational story, the media - particularly television - would spread panic. The labor force - because of sickness, fear, or having to tend to sick family members would not report for work. Soon, the economy would come to a standstill as industries shut down, businesses closed, and unemployment soared. Growing shortages of vital goods, from food to fuel to medical supplies would bring chaos. Government would cease to function. Hospitals, mortuaries, and cemeteries would overflow as in 1918, only more so. Taken by surprise, drug companies would not have the time or healthy scientific personnel to develop a new generation of vaccines.
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Albert Marrin (Author) (Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918)
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Marrill swiveled toward Fin and Ardent, her eyes wide. “Skullraiders?” Ardent patted her on the head. “No need to worry about those. We keep the Kraken up to date with her vaccines and enchantings.” He stood. “Besides, with all the things on the Stream that can kill you, a bit of ticklish discomfort never hurt anyone.” He paused. “Mostly. Anyway, good night!
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Carrie Ryan (The Map to Everywhere (The Map to Everywhere, #1))
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Vaccinations provide an illustrative example that combines all these models (tragedy of the commons, free rider problem, tyranny of small decisions, public goods), plus one more: herd immunity. Diseases can spread only when they have an eligible host to infect. However, when the vast majority of people are vaccinated against a disease, there are very few eligible new hosts, since most people (in the herd) are immune from infection due to getting vaccinated. As a result, the overall public is less susceptible to outbreaks of the disease. In this example, the public good is a disease-free environment due to herd immunity, and the free riders are those who take advantage of this public good by not getting vaccinated. The tyranny of small decisions can arise when enough individuals choose not to get vaccinated, resulting in an outbreak of the disease, creating a tragedy of the commons.
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Gabriel Weinberg (Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models)
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But a good vaccine maximizes its ability to kindle all of our immune system’s machinery, not only stimulating the production of antibodies but also spurring the activity of T cells and B cells that have memory, and are able to churn out new antibodies and other mediators of our immune response after they come into contact with a virus months or years later.
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Scott Gottlieb (Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic)
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There is no minimum weight requirement for using the Sleep Wave. However, if you are thinking about weaning from night feedings and you have any concerns about your baby’s weight gain, growth, or health in general, consult your doctor. You and your baby are healthy and have no vaccines scheduled in the next 2 weeks. The house is stable for the next two weeks, meaning that you will not travel, go back to work, or undergo any other major changes.
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Heather Turgeon (The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night's Sleep-Newborn to School Age)
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But maybe his father was right. Maybe what had happened in 1918 could never happen again.
"U.S. Reveals Detailed Flu Disaster Plans."
Cole decided to make this the topic for his research report. Plans for manufacturing and distributing vaccines and other medications. Plans to quarantine the sick and to call up extra doctors and nurses and to replace absent workers with retired workers so that businesses wouldn't have to shut down. Plans to keep public transportation and electricity and telecommunications and other vital services operating and food and water and other necessities from running out. Plans to mobilize troops (for Cole this was the only exciting part) in the event of mass panic or violence.
One day he would ask Pastor Wyatt why, despite all these plans, everything had gone so wrong.
"Son, that is just the thing. That is what people did not--and still do not--get. There is no way you can count on the government, even if it's a very good government. The government isn't going to save you, it isn't going to save anyone. There's no way you can count on other people in a situation like we had. People afraid of losing their lives--or, Lord knows, even just their toys--they'll panic. Even fine, decent Christian folk--you can never know for sure what they'll do next. So I say, love your neighbor, help your fellow man all you can, but don't ever count on any other human being. Count on God."
What Cole didn't know was that most of the plans he read about that night would have been sufficient only for an emergency lasting a few weeks.
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Sigrid Nunez (Salvation City)
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Moreover, plenty of people, pregnant and not, have good reasons not to trust both Big Pharma and Big Government, let alone the two acting in coordination. In an era when whole cities like Flint, Michigan, have had their water poisoned; when gas companies tell you that fracking is safe, never mind the earthquakes and flammable tap water; when Monsanto lobbies ceaselessly against attempts to ban its herbicide Roundup despite it having been credibly linked with cancer; and when Big Pharma peddled the drugs that set off the opioid crisis, it is entirely rational to be skeptical toward monopolistic power. Johnson & Johnson, one of the major vaccine makers, not only is caught up in the opioid lawsuits but also has been ordered to pay out billions in legal settlements in recent years over alleged harm caused by several of its prescription medications and even its ubiquitous talcum powder (found to have contained asbestos). Against this backdrop, and given the lack of debate and allowable questioning of the vaccines in many progressive spaces, it’s no surprise that so many went off to “do their own research”—finding my doppelganger, and many more like her, waiting with their wild claims about vaccine shedding and mass infertility.
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Naomi Klein (Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World)
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For any kind of problem, reading good books is the vaccine to prevent it, courage is the treatment to manage it, and love is the cure.
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Rajamanickam Antonimuthu (Dream Big, Move Forward Inch by Inch: A Simple and Effective Guide for Finding Happiness and Success in Your Life)
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Across most of the diseases the Gates Foundation works on, its track record of innovation is quite weak. Gates planted its flag as the leading voice on malaria, working with a number of different companies to develop a vaccine, eventually putting all its weight behind a GSK product. The GSK vaccine’s efficacy was so weak that even the foundation distanced itself from the product. We see a similar story with TB, where the foundation put half a billion dollars into a nonprofit vaccine developer named Aeras, which shuttered in 2018. Gates also poured money into, and grandiosely promoted, its work on an AIDS vaccine and new TB drugs. Again and again and again, the game-changing innovations Gates promised never materialized. Yes, these failures speak to the complexity of these diseases, but many sources say they also speak to the foundation’s bullying and micromanaging, which stifle innovation.
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Tim Schwab (The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire)
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Playlist You’re Mine - Phantogram Animal - Caroline Rose Journal of Ardency - Class Actress Hurts Like Hell - Fleurie So Good - Warpaint Mad About You – Hooverphonic Daft Pretty Boys – Bad Suns Blue Obsession – Geographer Fight or Flight Club – Madge Bending Back – Art School Girlfriend Fall In Love – Phantogram Golden Boy – Bryce Fox American Money – BØRNS Want You So Bad – The Vaccines Swoon – Beach Weather The Love Club – Lorde Affection – BETWEEN FRIENDS striptease – carwash Guilty Pleasures – Georgi Kay Mistakes Like This – Prelow Electric Love – BØRNS The Fool You Need – Son Lux iloveyou – BETWEEN FRIENDS
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Aurora Reed (Spearcrest Knight (Spearcrest Kings #1))
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For example, in 2021 Biden said Latinos in America were resisting vaccinations because “they’re worried that they’ll be vaccinated and deported.” Why would Biden think that all Latinos are automatically here illegally?
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Joe Concha (Come On, Man!: The Truth About Joe Biden's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Presidency)
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[Jonas] Salk never stopped trying to be of “some help to humankind.” In 1962 he founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, which he hoped would serve as “a cathedral to science.” The competition to work there was so steep that Salk joked, “I couldn’t possibly have become a member of this institute if I hadn’t founded it myself.”42 Salk continued to work until he died of heart failure in 1993. During the last years of his life he devoted his attention to finding a vaccine for AIDS. He said he knew that many people expected him to fail in his attempts, but he maintained, “There is no such thing as failure. You can only fail if you stop too soon.”43 He never did develop that vaccine, maybe simply because death stopped him. But he never gave up. And he never stopped believing in the fundamental capacity for goodness in people. “What is important is that we, Number one: Learn to live with each other,” he said in 1985. “Number two: Try to bring out the best in each other. The best from the best, and the best from those who, perhaps, might not have the same endowment … the object is not to put down the other, but to raise up the other.”
Sometimes, as we go about our lives, we’re angry, or other people are angry. We’re idiots, or they are. Maybe it seems a lot to expect that we can lift up our fellow man and bring out the best in everyone. But we’ve done it before. We can work miracles when we come together to help one another. Just look at how we all cured polio.
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Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
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I hope by the time this book is published, that natural immunity will be recognized and those of us who have it will no longer be shamed for choosing not to add a vaccine that may or may not do more than what my body has naturally done, possibly causing more harm than good. I never dreamed that I could be shamed for my choices while witnessing people who continued to smoke, overeat and be sedentary but vaccinated have more respect from the world.
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Karen Campbell Wilkinson (On Borrowed Breath: A memoir of faith, love and advocating through a health crisis)
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This distributed efficiency of the market is indeed extraordinary, and attempting to run an economy without it typically leads to short supplies and long queues. It was out of recognition of this power that the neoliberal scriptwriters put the market centre stage in their economic play. There is, however, a flip side to the market’s power: it only values what is priced and only delivers to those who can pay. Like fire, it is extremely efficient at what it does, but dangerous if it gets out of control. When the market is unconstrained, it degrades the living world by over-stressing Earth’s sources and sinks. It also fails to deliver essential public goods—from education and vaccines to roads and railways—on which its own success deeply depends.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
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What we’re not so good at is getting rid of viruses. Despite all the vaccines, antiviral drugs, and public health strategies at our disposal, viruses still manage to escape annihilation.
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Carl Zimmer (A Planet of Viruses)
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More generally, looking back, it is quite clear that many of the important successes of the last few decades were the direct result of a policy focus on those particular outcomes, even in some countries that were and have remained very poor. For example, a massive reduction in under-five mortality took place even in some very poor countries that were not growing particularly fast, largely thanks to a focus on newborn care, vaccination, and malaria prevention.125 And it is no different with many of the other levers for fighting poverty, be it education, skills, entrepreneurship, or health.We need a focus on the key problems and an understanding of what works to address them.
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Abhijit V. Banerjee (Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems)
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Adam Smith’s great insight was to show that the marketplace can mobilise diffuse information about people’s wants and the cost of meeting them, thereby coordinating billions of buyers and sellers through a global system of prices – all without the need for a centralised grand plan. This distributed efficiency of the market is indeed extraordinary, and attempting to run an economy without it typically leads to short supplies and long queues. It was out of recognition of this power that the neoliberal scriptwriters put the market centre stage in their economic play. There is, however, a flip side to the market’s power: it only values what is priced and only delivers to those who can pay. Like fire, it is extremely efficient at what it does, but dangerous if it gets out of control. When the market is unconstrained, it degrades the living world by over-stressing Earth’s sources and sinks. It also fails to deliver essential public goods – from education and vaccines to roads and railways – on which its own success deeply depends.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
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I stayed home, trying my best to figure out how in the world to be a good mother. It's not like I had anything decent to go on. It's not like I was going to ask my own mother for advice on mothering. I ended up buying a library of parenting books and reading every fucking one of them. For anyone who is thinking of doing the same, allow me to summarize: Sleeping with your baby is good. Sleeping with your baby is bad. Schedules, yes. Schedules, no. Lay them on their stomachs. Lay them on their backs. Bottle. Breast. Wean. Don't wean. Toilet train. Dont toilet train. Pick them up when they cry. Never pick up a crying baby. Public school. Home school. Montessori. Competitive sports are good. Competitive sports are bad. Fluoride. No fluoride. Vaccines. No vaccines.
You're welcome.
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Mary Guterson (We Are All Fine Here)
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Americans now think of democracy as a state of actual equality, in which every opinion is as good as any other on almost any subject under the sun. Feelings are more important than facts: if people think vaccines are harmful, or if they believe that half of the US budget is going to foreign aid, then it is "undemocratic" and "elitist" to contradict them.
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Tom Nichols (The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters)
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And yet the world’s greenhouse gas emissions probably dropped just 5 percent, and possibly less than that. What’s remarkable to me is not how much emissions went down because of the pandemic, but how little. This small decline in emissions is proof that we cannot get to zero emissions simply—or even mostly—by flying and driving less. Just as we needed new tests, treatments, and vaccines for the novel coronavirus, we need new tools for fighting climate change: zero-carbon ways to produce electricity, make things, grow food, keep our buildings cool and warm, and move people and goods around the world. And we need new seeds and other innovations to help the world’s poorest people—many of whom are smallholder farmers—adapt to a warmer climate.
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Bill Gates (How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need)
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How to protect yourself and others from COVID-19?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to this virus.” As the vaccines continue their roll out.
And follow advices to the world health orgranization (WHO), "Stay aware of the latest COVID-19 information by regularly checking updates from WHO and your national and local public health authorities."
What to do to keep yourself and others safe from COVID-19 by WHO
1. Maintain at least a 1-metre distance between yourself and others to reduce your risk of infection when they cough, sneeze or speak.
2. Maintain an even greater distance between yourself and others when indoors. The further away, the better.
3. Make wearing a mask a normal part of being around other people.
How to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 by WHO
If COVID-19 is spreading in your community, stay safe by taking some simple precautions, such as physical distancing, wearing a mask, keeping rooms well ventilated, avoiding crowds, cleaning your hands, and coughing into a bent elbow or tissue. Check local advice where you live and work. Do it all!
A. Wash your hands by CDC
Practicing good hygiene is an important habit that helps prevent the spread of COVID-19. Make these CDC recommendations part of your routine:
Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after you have been in a public place, or after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
Read more on my website
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Letusmakeyourich
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Most Italians consume alcohol every day, but it’s not what we call drinking. For Americans and northern Europeans alcoholic beverages are mind-altering drugs, used as tranquilizers, sleeping potions, inhibition-looseners (“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker”—Ogden Nash), or roads to inebriation. That is to say, to getting tipsy, high, drunk, plastered, smashed, sloshed, sozzled, soused, crocked, wrecked, juiced, stinko, tight, pie-eyed, crosseyed, shit-faced, blitzed, fried, wasted, gassed, polluted, pissed, tanked up, ripped, loaded, pickled, bombed, blasted, blooey, blotto, blind drunk, roaring drunk, dead drunk, falling down drunk, drunk as a lord, stewed to the gills, or feeling no pain—and that’s just my own personal vocabulary. Italians reach that state so infrequently that their language provides only a few tame options—ubriaco (drunk), brillo (tipsy), alticcio (high), sbronzo (drunk)—with at most perso (lost) or fradicio (rotten) tacked on for a touch of color. They don’t even have a proper word for a hangover, though if pressed they’ll come up with the stately postumi della sbornia, aftereffects of overindulgence. For Italians, wine and beer are foods. If they provide a little buzz that’s just a pleasant side benefit, improving the sparkle of the conversation. When I first traveled in Italy, parents regularly fed wine-laced water to their kids (“acquavino”), vaccinating them against later dipsomania. And at lunchtime in the cafeteria of my Nuovo Regina Margherita Hospital the docs would jostle to sit at the chaplain’s table, because he’d always bring a bottle of good country wine. Even the harder stuff fits into a culinary protocol: a seven p.m. Campari is meant to whet the appetite, and the cognac or amaro at the end of a large meal to aid digestion. Which is why, in proportion, Italy has one-tenth as many problem drinkers as America.
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Susan Levenstein (Dottoressa: An American Doctor in Rome)
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This is where conspiracy theories come in handy. It’s not just that vaccines cause autism; it’s that the medical and pharmaceutical industries are getting rich by destroying everyone’s families. It’s not just that pro-choicers have a different view on the biological status of a fetus; it’s that they’re soldiers sent by Satan to destroy good Christian families. It’s not just that climate change is a hoax; it’s that it’s a hoax created by the Chinese government to slow the U.S. economy and take over the world.37
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Mark Manson (Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope)
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She tossed. Turned. Tried to count sheep; in her head, she began examining and vaccinating them, which wasn’t helpful when trying to fall back asleep.
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Nancy Naigle (Christmas In Evergreen)
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When to Get a Flu Shot Plan your vaccination day in advance, and try to get a week’s worth of good sleep beforehand. In one study, when participants had poor sleep for a few days before vaccination, nearly half of them showed significantly delayed response to the vaccine.13 This raises an important issue about the flu vaccine, as some people who are inoculated do not develop protection against the flu. These people might want to pay attention the next year and make sure that they slept well in the week prior to taking the flu shot. In addition to sleep history, time of day appears to be another factor to consider while going for your flu shot. Preliminary studies have shown that morning vaccinations produce better protection than those given in the afternoon.14
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Satchin Panda (The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight)
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Finding a fine British International school can be a challenge if you live in a place like Dubai. Known as a melting pot of cultures, Dubai offers many choices when it comes to curriculum preferences. Digging the web for valuable options can leave in you bind as well.
But, to find the right and affordable British school in Dubai you must have a clear picture of the options available. To make your work easier, here is a list to help you pick the best British curriculum school in Dubai.
The best British International schools in Dubai
Listed below are the top picks of English Schools in Dubai:
The Winchester School
This English school in Dubai is the right example of high-quality education at affordable rates. The Winchester School is an ideal pick as it maintains the desired level of British curriculum standards and has a KHDA rating as ‘good’.
Admission: This school is fully inclusive for kids aged 1-13 and it conducts no entrance exam for foundation level. However, for other phases, necessary entrance tests are taken according to the standard.
Also, admissions here do not follow the concept of waiting lists, which can depend on the vacant seats and disability criteria.
Fees: AED 12,996- AED 22,996
Curriculum: National Curriculum of England-EYFS(Early Years Foundation Stage), IGCSE, International A-Level, and International AS Level.
Location: The Gardens, Jebel Ali Village, Jebel Ali
Contact: +971 (0)4 8820444, principal_win@gemsedu.com
Website: The Winchester School - Jebel Ali
GEMS Wellington Internation School
GEMS Wellington Internation School is yet another renowned institute titled the best British curriculum school in Dubai. It has set a record of holding this title for nine years straight which reveals its commendable standards.
Admission: For entrance into this school, an online registration process must be completed. A non-refundable fee of AED 500 is applicable for registration. Students of all gender and all stages can enroll in any class from Preschool to 12th Grade.
Fees: AED 43,050- AED 93,658
Curriculum: GCSE, IB, IGCSE, BTEC, and IB DP
Location: Al South Area
Contact: +971 (0)4 3073000, reception_wis@gemsedu.com
Website: Outstanding British School in Dubai - GEMS Wellington International School
Dubai British School
Dubai British School is yet another prestigious institute that is also a member of the ‘Taaleem’ group. It is also one of the first English schools to open and get a KHDA rating of ‘Outstanding’. Thus, it can be easily relied on to provide the curriculum of guaranteed quality.
Admission: Here, the application here can be initiated by filling up an online form. Next, the verification requires documents such as copies of UAE Residence Visa, Identification card, Medical Form, Educational Psychologist’s reports, Vaccination report, and TC.
Also, students of all genders and ages between 3-18 can apply here.
Fees: AED 46,096- AED 69,145
Curriculum: UK National Curriculum, BTEC, GCSE, A LEVEL
Location: Behind Spinneys, Springs Town Centre, near Jumeirah Islands.
Contact: +971 (0)4 3619361
Website: Dubai British School Emirates Hills | Taaleem School
Final takeaways
The above-listed schools are some of the best English schools in Dubai that you can find. Apart from these, you can also check King’s School Dubai, Dubai College School, Dubai English Speaking School, etc.
These offer the best British curriculum school in Dubai and can be the right picks for you. So, go on and find the right school for your kid.
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the best affordable school in Dubailand
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This belief in the good of the firm seems to contribute to the commitment to hard work and outperformance, which has benefited the firm, but it has slowly and incrementally changed to also be used as a rationalization for behavior that may not be consistent with the original meaning of the firm’s principles. The sense of higher purpose explains why Goldman brushes off cases of bad behavior as “one-offs” or “exceptions,” why its employees should get swine flu vaccinations ahead of others, and why the firm believes that while its peers may not be able to handle situations where conflicts need to be managed through ethical behavior, Goldman can.
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Steven G. Mandis (What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider's Story of Organizational Drift and Its Unintended Consequences)
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Various preparations of aluminum salts have been used in vaccines since the late 1930s. So, the safety of aluminum in vaccines has been assessed for more than seventy years. Aluminum salts act as adjuvants, enhancing the immune response. Inclusion of aluminum salts in vaccines that otherwise wouldn’t evoke a good immune response makes it possible to reduce the number of doses and the quantity of immunological components within each dose.
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Paul A. Offit (Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All)
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to ask simply whether religion is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is to miss the point. Religion serves as a reason for war and peace, love and hatred, dialogue and narrow-mindedness. Religion can be used for many purposes, just as science can be used to develop life-saving vaccines or to build sophisticated weaponry. We may as well ask whether science is a good or bad thing, or cookery, poetry or politics. The ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of religion depends on the ways in which it is used, applied and lived out.
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Symon Hill (The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion (No-Nonsense Guides))
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Up to 7% or more' of newborn infants are given antibiotics within the first three days after birth and almost all of them will receive a hep-B shot within the first day or two of life. This is a bad combination. To protect them from sepsis is understandable, but it is obviously overdone. This is another reason why hep-B vaccines should not be given routinely to all newborns. Toxins within the hep B vaccine plus antibiotics equals potentially adverse outcomes for these infants which can easily be avoided. After taking antibiotics yeast in the body can grow out of control, causing a variety of problems. Then to make things worse, we add more yeast into the infant’s body with the hep B vaccine, which contains brewer’s yeast. The combination of hep B vaccine and antibiotics directly after birth is not a good idea.
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Stephen Heartland (Louis Pasteur Condemns Big Pharma: Vaccines, Drugs, and Healthcare in the United States)
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South Korea’s pandemic response earned citizens’ trust, which they repaid in dividends. Infected people generally quarantined voluntarily without lockdowns. By the end of 2021, more than 80 percent of eligible South Koreans had been vaccinated, compared to barely 60 percent in the US and less than 70 percent in the UK. As Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun later reflected, “Once you have the trust of the people, it is possible to have a high rate of vaccination.” The opposite was also true. Research found that distrustful people around the globe were less likely to be vaccinated, leading to more infection and death among low-trust nations and countries. According to one analysis, if every country in the world had experienced South Korea’s high level of trust, 40 percent of global infection could have been prevented.
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Jamil Zaki (Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness)