A spokesperson for the Israeli government was interviewed recently by Michal Hussain on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. The interviewer referred to a report published by an Israeli human rights group that documented mistreatment of Palestinians detainees by Israeli soldiers. The spokesperson began his response by aggressively attacking the person asking the question, congratulating Hussain sarcastically for winning the Hamas journalist of the year award. He then dismissed the human rights group as representing a very small minority of Israeli opinion. Finally, he dismissed the notion that Palestinian detainees are mistreated as nonsense, but offered no evidence and did not address the evidence produced by the human rights NGO.
The method here was immediately to discredit the interviewer as biased (especially since her name was Hussain). Next discredit the source as not worthy of credence. Then deny without addressing any evidence to the contrary.
Friday 15 November we were watching Channel 4 news, which included a report about Robert F. Kennedy’s appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Now, Channel 4 is not in the least sympathetic to president-elect Trump and his supporters, so the tone of the report was somewhat acerbic and. It noted his anti-vaccine opinions, his intention to remove fluoride from drinking water, and observed that he criticized Donald Trump when he was campaigning as an independent candidate but is now a Trump loyalist. The report did not mention Kennedy’s criticism of the damage to health caused by ultra-processed foods, which a more balanced report might have referred to. Nevertheless, as far as I could tell nothing in the report was untrue.
The report was followed by an interview with a “Republican strategist” who responded to the interviewer’s first question not by answering it, but by attacking the news report as “Orwellian.” The interviewer asked him to explain himself. The strategist replied that Kennedy had criticized Trump and that it is therefore false to describe him as a loyalist. The interviewer responded that the report had made precisely the point that Kennedy had initially criticized Trump, but is now a loyal supporter. The strategist was then asked whether Kennedy’s views about vaccines make him a suitable Secretary of Health. He responded that “big pharma” and those in power (not defined) were over-medicalizing the population. As evidence of this he asserted that restrictions on school attendance and mandatory mask-wearing in schools had done more harm than Covid itself. He then said that it is absurd that children are vaccinated against Covid every three months. The interviewer looked puzzled and ask the strategist to confirm whether this latter claim is correct; the strategist confirmed that it is. The interviewer, presumably having no information to the contrary did not challenge the statement further. Finally, the strategist limed that Kennedy’s critics oppose his appointment only because it threatens their power.
I could not quite believe the claim that children are vaccinated every three months, so the next morning I checked the website of the Centers for Disease Control. The detailed advice there recommends the following:
Ages 6months-4 years and unvaccinated: 2 doses of the 2024–2025 Moderna vaccine
OR 3 doses of the 2024–2025 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Children who have been previously vaccinated should receive 1 or 2 doses depending on the vaccine administered.
Aged 5-11 years: 1 dose of the 2024–2025 Moderna OR Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
Aged 12 years+: 1 dose of the 2024–2025 Moderna OR Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, OR 1 dose of the 2024–2025 Novavax vaccine unless you are receiving a COVID-19 vaccine for the very first time. If you have never received any COVID-19 vaccine and you choose to get Novavax, you need 2 doses of 2024–2025 Novavax COVID-19 vaccine to be up to date.
If the child is immunocompromised, the recommendations, as one might expect, depend on age and the child’s previous vaccine history, but to summarize:
· Children not previously vaccinated should receive 3 doses.
· Those who have been vaccinated previously should receive 1 or 2 doses, depending on their vaccination history and the vaccines received.
Nowhere in the CDC recommendations is it stated that any child should receive vaccine doses every quarter. But I doubt that any such fact could inhibit the strategist from confidently propagating his lie.
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