Im almost positive that Andrew Wakefield has caused more harm to modern medicine than any other person in the last 200 years.
His human megaphone, Jenny McCarthy, isn’t much better. No one heard of him before she advocated for his findings to be mainstream.
Don’t forget Oprah who amplified the idea more than they ever could have done on their own
Lol jokes on you. I already have autism. So, vaccines just make me stronger.
I’m getting tested for autism as an adult next week. If it turns out I am, who do I contact from the Autistic community? Or does a representative contact me? I don’t want to mess this up and I have a costume ready and everything.
I tried to think of a witty response to your funny joke but I’m apparently too tired for that, so instead, I’ll wish you good luck for next week, and the weeks that follow it; getting a diagnosis as an adult is often cathartic in the short term, liberatory in the long term, and in between those points is a long period of introspective untangling a web of messy feelings and possibly internalised ableism. I wish you the strength to endure and to emerge with a better understanding of who you are, regardless of the outcome of the assessment.
Can you tell me your secret? I’ve been waiting 8 years for an adult diagnosis. It doesn’t really matter in the sense that I know I’m some flavour of ND, though. And I work in education, and people around me have been pretty accepting.
Secret? I don’t even know if I am neurodivergent, I am getting tested to figure it out, I have taken a dozen online tests of various efficacy and they all come up “borderline” so I am getting a professional diagnosis. It may also be a very strong case of CPTSD mimicking the effects of autism and/or ADHD.
Otherwise, I have been struggling my whole life with things that should be a lot easier for me, and if I DID have a secret, all my best successes and largest achievements have been a result of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and pushing into more challenges, not listening to my reasoning because my reasoning is flawed, our brains just tell stories to explain how we feel and those stories don’t necessarily have to make sense, it’s just stories to make you feel like the world makes sense. It doesn’t.
Understanding nuance of people’s feelings and emotions was always hard for me, so I pushed myself to lead more, to be a team leader or a project leader, and put an emphasis on instead of retreating from giving everyone personal attention, I leaned in harder always and have always made a policy to listen and genuinely be compassionate to others and exercise empathy.
I also pushed myself to do more public speaking and leading lectures, MC’ing social events, and giving speeches when appropriate.
In my last job I was afraid of failure because I have been laid off so many times in the past, so I paid careful attention to that worry about messing up, and every time I had that worry I did the exact opposite of what my gut was telling me. I got laid off from that job as well anyway, because that’s how business is now, but not before becoming a general manager and well-liked by hundreds of people.
The number of times I’ve put myself in trouble by resisting the “Safe” route is not insignificant, but each of those times has been easily navigated and more than rewarded by the successes which were a result of speaking up when I would normally keep quiet.
So your secret should be to value yourself. Even if you don’t feel it, act like it. Pretend you are valuable and important and people will treat you like you’re valuable and important.
I’ve got an appointment in a few months. No idea if you’re in the US but, if so, the secret is the same as everything in American health care - money, debt or navigating insane bureaucracy to get insurance to cover it. And, in my case, also traveling a long way to a place that does adult evaluations and scheduling the appointment nearly a year in advance.
The fact that you have a shred of humor in your system means you aren’t autistic.
Uh…autistic people can absolutely be funny. Like this funny ass mother fucker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k82dywiOjFE
I make this joke every time I get a vaccine. I ask them if it’ll make me extra autistic and for how long. I’ve never gotten a laugh.
There’s a correlation between wearing socks and athlete’s foot. Socks cause athletes foot, clearly, and so we shouldn’t wear socks when wearing shoes.
Amen, brother! I have long freed my feet from the prison that is the sock!
actually yes https://lunasandals.com/products/mono-winged-edition
You wear socks…. With…. Sandals?!?!?
E’eryone, git your pitchforks!! They’re coming to force you to wear SOCKS WITH SANDALS!!!
socks with sandals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7En0z2A38c
It’s because there is no punishment for spreading false information. These cunt celebrities and politicians spread their fucking lies and if they are found out, they make an empty apology that reaches 1% of the people that they lied to, and it’s all forgive and forget. Fuck all of that. Every anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-education cunt out there needs to be strung up from the societal rafters. They have to be made an example of. At the bare minimum they should be doing tours helping to correct the lies they have spread, spending time on social media and running commercials like fucking community service hours. There has to be a punishment for this shit.
I’m curious as to how that law would be written and what it would look like in practice.
Ideally, you wouldn’t have to write a law for it, and the people would be held accountable by others. That’s a BIG wish, though, and I’m a realist–it’ll never happen. Instead, if it were written into law, it would have to be done the same ways that libel and slander laws are written, and there would have to be a criminal trial for it. I understand that up front that seems like a lot of extra work for the courts, but if the punishments were severe enough, then hopefully we would see an outright reduction on it.
Some precedent for it would be libel laws as previously stated, false advertising laws, and public health laws like what Germany has instituted (NetzDG) that required social media to remove false health information within 24 hours.
And just to make it clear, I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s right to free speech, but just like libel and slander laws, when that free speech damages others, then it has to be curbed. The scientific evidence is there for things like the mask mandate and the efficacy of vaccines, we just have to prove it in court and punish those who are guilty of spreading that false information.
I’m all in favour of this, and I try to do keep people accountable for what they say, even though I often end up getting insults for it. But to judge in court someone for spreading lies you would need to know the objective truth, and setting truth into stone would compromise science’a ability to propose radical new ideas.
I think there are ways to do this without compromising science, though. But they are all susceptible to the 50% attack, made famous by cryptocurrencies. If you rely on a community to certify what truth is, you are exposed to a potential attack where a powerful enemy buys more than 50% of the network to make them say their lie is true and the actual truth is a lie. I don’t have a solution for that yet.
I’m collecting vaccines like infinity stones. I’m going to unlock complete autism.
And you know what happens when you unlock complete autism? That’s right: you gain the power to create your own vaccines, making you capable of reaching even new heights.
