Typhoid Donald

[lookin]

Ever since 2016 when Trump rode down the escalator and started his rant about Muslims and immigrants, I realized that he was a voice dedicated to causing division and not unity.  The best analogy I could think of was that he was spreading pathogens without regard for those who would catch the social illness he was causing.  I’ve posted about this over the years and have wondered why the analogy has not become mainstream.  There are certainly enough examples of damage to individuals and to social groups, including our nation and the democracy which has bound us together for 250 years.  While Trump is still, in my opinion, the super-spreader, there are many around him who have picked up the disease and passed it on to those around them and, over time, throughout the nation and abroad.  It has mystified me that we often seem to be sleepwalking through a plague that is every bit as damaging to our species as typhoid, HIV and Covid.  Even more damaging when you realize we don’t have any vaccines against a social plague.

To further explore the analogy between a physical plague and a social plague, I went back to the case of Typhoid Mary, a cook in the New York City area in the early 1900’s, and an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever.  At the time, there was little awareness that someone could carry and pass along typhoid germs without showing any symptoms herself.  It took a private investigator to track down several families who had been infected by typhus and learn that they had all hired Mary Mallon as a cook shortly before they became ill.  When she was contacted by the investigator, she refused to give urine and stool samples and denied that she could have passed on the disease to others.  The New York City Health Department stepped in, had her arrested as a public health threat, and forced her to provide samples.  They determined that she was loaded with typhus germs and kept her confined for nearly three years.  There was a lot of disagreement about the way she was treated and she was eventually released, after promising she would no longer work as a cook.  She soon realized she could make $50 a month as a cook and only $20 a month as a maid, so went back to cooking again.  Of course, more infections and deaths followed her around and she was once again arrested and put into quarantine for the rest of her life.

I shared this analogy with a friend last week and he asked about conditions back in the early 1900’s versus today.  He hit the nail on the head and we discussed the fact that no one really understood that an apparently healthy carrier could pass on pathogens to others causing sickness and death.  So it was difficult to trace the illnesses back to an individual asymptomatic carrier and, even once that had happened, there were few laws in place to remove the source of the infections.  Today we’ve got that knowledge, along with the tools to stop the spread of pathogens.  At least that’s true for biological pathogens.

But when it comes to social pathogens that can cause social disease among a broad segment of the population, we’re right back to where we were more than a century ago.  I don’t think we’ve yet documented the types and amounts of social damage that can be done by spreading divisiveness, fear, anger, and hatred throughout our society.  We can see the results all around us and many of us will experience a decline in social bonds as our brains fill up with negative feelings and disconnection from large parts of our society.  We could easily make a case that this decline in social health ends up in a world war.  We’ve often considered that the human species could be wiped out by a physical plague but, to me anyway, it seems just as likely that we could be wiped out by a social plague.

The role of social media seems abundantly clear in this process.  It gives one antisocial individual the opportunity to infect millions of others in less than a minute.  And the algorithms are tuned so that the antisocial pathogens are transmitted most efficiently to those who are vulnerable to a message of divisiveness.  It’s the equivalent of setting up a Typhoid Mary kissing booth in every home connected to the internet.

I think the analogy also extends to the lack of awareness and the lack of tools available to New York City doctors dealing with typhus a century ago compared with the lack of awareness and lack of tools we have today in dealing with the spread of social illness.  Just as Typhoid Mary complained that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and that she had the right to cook for anyone who would hire her, we have social disruptors complaining that they’re not doing anything wrong and that the First Amendment gives them the right to say anything they want, no matter how many people they infect and no matter how damaging it is to our society.

Mary Mallon took her first cooking job and began to infect her employers’ families in 1900.  She was tracked down and written up in 1907.  She was first quarantined between 1907 and 1910.  She was released and continued to cook and infect others for eight more years until she was again tracked down and placed in quarantine until her death twenty-three years later.

Donald Trump came down his escalator in 2016 and began spreading pathogens when he got to the bottom and faced the cameras.  I believe he’s been a superspreader in the eight years since.

I wish I knew when the public health experts will start including social pathogens in their battle against physical pathogens.  Until we develop a mental immune system, or a herd immunity, and/or some kind of vaccine against social pathogens, I guess it will be up to us as individuals to be aware of what kind of ideas we let enter our brains and damage us.  To those already infected, it will be difficult to stop them from spreading the damage simply because passing these social pathogens along is part of the illness.

 

I don’t know if anyone will bother reading this lengthy post, or - inshallah - responding with their own ideas.  But it sure helped me get a few thoughts together.

Please consider it a social sneeze, behind a mask of course and on my way to wash up.  

[Suckrates]

I did read the whole thing, and found it thoughtful and intriguing.   You are not the only one fearful of another Trump Presidency.  Anyone familiar with ME knows I have been pretty much consumed since Trump lost the last one, and fearful he might return because his mission was UNfinished.   Everything you wrote about Trump is True, and you would think any sane rational person WOULDN'T want him in power again.  YET it appears a huge swath of America likes what this man represents, and wants him back in the White House.  I truly believe they dont understand what it would mean FOR THEM, falsely believing that THEY will be exempted from any hard core actions Trump takes against citizens and non-citizens of this country.  I think they believe that IF they are Trump supporters, nothing he does will be meant for THEM, so they continue to egg him on and lift him up to where it seems he already has one foot in the White house door.   And even IF he loses, we will not be rid of him since he lost in 2020 and has been assaulting Americans and the democratic process since then, and will do the same if he loses 2024. So either way, we are damned to at least 4 more years of Trump, unless he loses and is sent to prison,  which I dont believe will EVER happen with our current Supreme court.

I dont think that Jack Smiths October surprise will have any effect on polling results or peoples opinions, since most people are set in their decision even IF they choose not to admit it.  I dont know what has to happen to break the Trump fever in this country, or at least tilt favor substantially in Harris's direction.   Any misstep she might have will tank HER numbers, but NOTHING he does will affect HIS.....Not even his wife wants to be his first lady, but that means nothing to his supporters as well....

So all we can do is pray for a miracle and cast our vote.  Stop focusing on policy and foreign wars, the economy and all that other bullshit which will mean Nothing in a Trump Presidency, where the only thing that will matter to Trump is TRUMP.....This election is about Democracy or dictatorship, full stop, period......

You asked for our thoughts, after hearing MINE I bet you regret That ?   

[Pete1111]

20 hours ago, lookin said:

Ever since 2016 when Trump rode down the escalator and started his rant about Muslims and immigrants, I realized that he was a voice dedicated to causing division and not unity.  The best analogy I could think of was that he was spreading pathogens without regard for those who would catch the social illness he was causing.  I’ve posted about this over the years and have wondered why the analogy has not become mainstream.  There are certainly enough examples of damage to individuals and to social groups, including our nation and the democracy which has bound us together for 250 years.  While Trump is still, in my opinion, the super-spreader, there are many around him who have picked up the disease and passed it on to those around them and, over time, throughout the nation and abroad.  It has mystified me that we often seem to be sleepwalking through a plague that is every bit as damaging to our species as typhoid, HIV and Covid.  Even more damaging when you realize we don’t have any vaccines against a social plague.

To further explore the analogy between a physical plague and a social plague, I went back to the case of Typhoid Mary, a cook in the New York City area in the early 1900’s, and an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever.  At the time, there was little awareness that someone could carry and pass along typhoid germs without showing any symptoms herself.  It took a private investigator to track down several families who had been infected by typhus and learn that they had all hired Mary Mallon as a cook shortly before they became ill.  When she was contacted by the investigator, she refused to give urine and stool samples and denied that she could have passed on the disease to others.  The New York City Health Department stepped in, had her arrested as a public health threat, and forced her to provide samples.  They determined that she was loaded with typhus germs and kept her confined for nearly three years.  There was a lot of disagreement about the way she was treated and she was eventually released, after promising she would no longer work as a cook.  She soon realized she could make $50 a month as a cook and only $20 a month as a maid, so went back to cooking again.  Of course, more infections and deaths followed her around and she was once again arrested and put into quarantine for the rest of her life.

I shared this analogy with a friend last week and he asked about conditions back in the early 1900’s versus today.  He hit the nail on the head and we discussed the fact that no one really understood that an apparently healthy carrier could pass on pathogens to others causing sickness and death.  So it was difficult to trace the illnesses back to an individual asymptomatic carrier and, even once that had happened, there were few laws in place to remove the source of the infections.  Today we’ve got that knowledge, along with the tools to stop the spread of pathogens.  At least that’s true for biological pathogens.

But when it comes to social pathogens that can cause social disease among a broad segment of the population, we’re right back to where we were more than a century ago.  I don’t think we’ve yet documented the types and amounts of social damage that can be done by spreading divisiveness, fear, anger, and hatred throughout our society.  We can see the results all around us and many of us will experience a decline in social bonds as our brains fill up with negative feelings and disconnection from large parts of our society.  We could easily make a case that this decline in social health ends up in a world war.  We’ve often considered that the human species could be wiped out by a physical plague but, to me anyway, it seems just as likely that we could be wiped out by a social plague.

The role of social media seems abundantly clear in this process.  It gives one antisocial individual the opportunity to infect millions of others in less than a minute.  And the algorithms are tuned so that the antisocial pathogens are transmitted most efficiently to those who are vulnerable to a message of divisiveness.  It’s the equivalent of setting up a Typhoid Mary kissing booth in every home connected to the internet.

I think the analogy also extends to the lack of awareness and the lack of tools available to New York City doctors dealing with typhus a century ago compared with the lack of awareness and lack of tools we have today in dealing with the spread of social illness.  Just as Typhoid Mary complained that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and that she had the right to cook for anyone who would hire her, we have social disruptors complaining that they’re not doing anything wrong and that the First Amendment gives them the right to say anything they want, no matter how many people they infect and no matter how damaging it is to our society.

Mary Mallon took her first cooking job and began to infect her employers’ families in 1900.  She was tracked down and written up in 1907.  She was first quarantined between 1907 and 1910.  She was released and continued to cook and infect others for eight more years until she was again tracked down and placed in quarantine until her death twenty-three years later.

Donald Trump came down his escalator in 2016 and began spreading pathogens when he got to the bottom and faced the cameras.  I believe he’s been a superspreader in the eight years since.

I wish I knew when the public health experts will start including social pathogens in their battle against physical pathogens.  Until we develop a mental immune system, or a herd immunity, and/or some kind of vaccine against social pathogens, I guess it will be up to us as individuals to be aware of what kind of ideas we let enter our brains and damage us.  To those already infected, it will be difficult to stop them from spreading the damage simply because passing these social pathogens along is part of the illness.

 

I don’t know if anyone will bother reading this lengthy post, or - inshallah - responding with their own ideas.  But it sure helped me get a few thoughts together.

Please consider it a social sneeze, behind a mask of course and on my way to wash up.  

The role of social media and "big data" may mean that superspreaders will continue to haunt us long after Trump is hunched over his walker, and/or confined to prison.

Trump used terms like “drain the swamp,” “crooked Hillary,” “deep state” and “lock her up."

Yet those terms were invented by the likes of British enterprise Cambridge Analytica and Steve Bannon who was associated with them.

Hopefully the messages of truth and joy will overpower the pathogens, though I worry how in the future we'll be able to hear the truth.

Perhaps the world will come to understand that leaders that partner with the likes of  Cambridge Analytica (now defunct but replaced by others), and that try to control the news media, ultimate goal is to enrich themselves at our expense.

Chinese billionaire and associate of Steve Bannon arrested in $1 billion fraud conspiracy, officials say

 

Who is Guo Wengui, the Chinese billionaire who owns the boat Steve Bannon was arrested on?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

22 hours ago, lookin said:

I don’t know if anyone will bother reading this lengthy post

Oh, sweetie.  You bet I will!  I never deduct points for reason and logic. 😉

22 hours ago, lookin said:

But when it comes to social pathogens that can cause social disease among a broad segment of the population, we’re right back to where we were more than a century ago.

Or a millennium ago.  As long as we have society, we will have social disease.  Nuthin new here.

I recall stories in 2012 about how social media helped Barack Obama win.  There was some line I read somewhere about how Obama won Florida because young voters who Mitt Romney didn't even know existed were organized to vote against him on Facebook or other social media.  True.  We also had that wonderful meme, put out by savvy Democrats, about how Mitt Romney thought the real enemy of truth and justice was ...............wait for it ............... Big Bird!

My point is that I think we are all to blame for letting ignorance and dumb memes take over for logic and reason.  But this is nothing new, and is not really a product of the iternet (see 20th Century, McCarthyism, Maoism, Stalinism, Nazi ideology, etc.)

The good news is we live in a world that is less poor and more educated than ever.  If Kamala Harris and leaders like her win all over the world, and grow the economy and keep the peace, that's why.  We did that.  The glass is half full. The US is on its way to being the strongest multi-racial capitalist democracy in the world.  Woo hoo!  What does an economy like Russia in the 1990's - drunk and weak - bestow on the world? The plague of Putinism.  Death, genocide, economic decay and rot.  No freedom and little hope.

22 hours ago, lookin said:

There was a lot of disagreement about the way she [Typhoid Mary] was treated and she was eventually released, after promising she would no longer work as a cook.  She soon realized she could make $50 a month as a cook and only $20 a month as a maid, so went back to cooking again.  Of course, more infections and deaths followed her around and she was once again arrested and put into quarantine for the rest of her life.

And that nicely sums it up.  Economic self interest.  Or, more pointedly, short-term economic self-interest.  Or, you could argue, short-sighted economic self interest.  This also is nothing new, as your example of Typhoid Mary aptly demonstrates.  It took a slaughtered German economy in the 1920's and 30's to stir up the Holocaust of Hitler.  Poor Mary is small ball by comparison.

If Trump wins, which he could, one Never Trump Republican politico summed it up nicely.  There is a "wall of lava" coming at Kamala, he said, because lots of people - especially working class people - are pissed about inflation, interest rates, higher prices, etc.  There's no evidence whatsoever that more tax cuts for billionaires and corporations and more attempts to cut Obamacare will make anything better for anyone working class.  So all we can hope for is that Harris sells her message well and people think it through.

Everything we need to know about this election boils down to this absolutely clear fact:  if the people who vote the most and are most informed prevail, Harris wins in a landslide. If the people who vote least and are least informed prevail, Trump wins big.  Ignorance is not new.  It will exist as long as humans do.  There are plenty of people who are good decent centrist people who will vote against Harris simply because they don't like higher prices.  Even though Trump has no plan to do anything about it and Harris does.  

Here's a pro-people prediction.  Unlike 2016 and 2020, the polls may not underweight Trump in 2024.  In 2016 he did have the momentum of what I think of as a failed peasants' revolt behind him.  Especially in ailing Rust Belt communities.  In 2020 Democrats did weak grassroots organizing because of COVID.  But since 2020, Democrats have often been underweighted in polls.  In 2024 Harris has driven grassroots organizing and GOTV up.  While the lagging and low energy Trump campaign depends heavily on paid canvassers with no particular loyalty to anything other than getting paid.  If Harris wins, which my soothsayer Alan Lichtman says is inevitable, it will be in part because she inspired millions of informed and motivated voters to do something.

That's how you beat a social disease.  That's how you beat ignorance.

 

[lookin]

On 10/5/2024 at 6:28 PM, Suckrates said:

You asked for our thoughts, after hearing MINE I bet you regret That ?   

Not in the least!  You've had Trump's number from the get-go.  And I agree with you that, even if Trump loses, we will still be vulnerable to the pathogens that come out of his mouth every time he opens it.  We can dismiss it as 'just politics' or 'free speech' but the damage it has done to both individuals and to society as a whole has been, in my opinion, destabilizing to the point of fracture.  If he loses the election, he'll continue to tear at the social bonds that have kept us united to this point.  And I'd like to see us address the past damage and the potential for future damage as a public health issue.  We've tackled nationwide physical health issues in the past and I'd like to see us tackle nationwide mental health issues with the same urgency.

In the meantime, I'll encourage each one of us to pay attention to what is entering our minds, how we feel about it and what we do with those feelings.  If I find myself passing along social pathogens, I become part of the problem.  And that's not good for my mental health or anyone else's.

At least, that's how I've got it figured out so far.

[lookin]

9 hours ago, Pete1111 said:

Perhaps the world will come to understand that leaders that partner with the likes of  Cambridge Analytica (now defunct but replaced by others), and that try to control the news media, ultimate goal is to enrich themselves at our expense.

Chinese billionaire and associate of Steve Bannon arrested in $1 billion fraud conspiracy, officials say

Cambridge Analytica gave me my first insight into how the manipulation was actually done and led to just enough voters in just the right precincts casting their votes for Trump in 2016, and that got him just enough Electoral College votes to win the Presidency.

It claimed to possess detailed profiles on 230 million American voters based on up to 5,000 data points, everything from where you live to whether you own a car, your shopping habits and voting record, the medications you take, your religious affiliation, and the TV shows you watch. This data is available to anyone with deep pockets. But Cambridge professed to bring a unique approach to the microtargeting techniques that have become de rigueur in politics. It promised to couple consumer information with psychological data, harvested from social-media platforms and its own in-house survey research, to group voters by personality type, pegging them as agreeable or neurotic, confrontational or conciliatory, leaders or followers. It would then target these groups with specially tailored images and messages, delivered via Facebook ads, glossy mailers, or in-person interactions.

 

I saw a couple of these ads on the internet once and they were aimed directly at the beliefs and fears of their target audience, which may have been only a handful of people.  But they were likely voters and they were in the precincts that Trump needed to win.  The ads were deleted from the internet soon after they were delivered to their targets.  It was pure manipulation without leaving many tracks.

Steve Bannon is a special case.  I recall him saying clearly that he wanted to tear down 'the system'.  He didn't say what he wanted to replace it with.  He just wanted to tear it down.  And when you take such direct and destructive aim at the bonds that underpin our society, that's when I think you've gone beyond 'free speech' or 'politics' and you've moved into pathogenic behavior.  I think society has a need and a right to protect itself from these assaults.

[Suckrates]

It doesnt matter to Trumps half of the country that he is a bumbling, imbecilic caricature.  He's THEIR man no matter what.  He speaks their language, makes them laugh and they share the common goal of wanting to tear down government.   So facts, logic and common sense have NO place in their world because those things dilute their FANTASY.    

The only thing that will break their Trump fever is the point where he turns on them, and lets them down, BUT if Trump accomplishes the things he is bragging about doing, his stronghold on them will be unbreakable, and their loyalty undying. 

[Stable Genius]

"Only the best people"