It's not over until the Cat Lady sings - Trump thread #133

[Spandauer]

Bigly Thanks to BruceAndNosh for the thread title.

Hopefully people can open this link OK.
https://x.com/amy_siskind/status/1818015701023735951?s=46&t=sQEeBsNjiTta_B_D1Qh6IQ

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/politics/5058103-trump-trial-time-banish-all-memories-of-mueller

News just in ...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/jd-vance-never-trump-guy-song-tiktok-b2601212.html

Was he looking in a mirror?😁

Just talking about himself as usual.

Folk may need to know this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DredScott

( from https://www.rawstory.com/kamala-harris-2669019452/ )

The videos have really tickled me on a morning when I was feeling a bit down. Thanks all!

You know, DH and I are old enough to remember polio. Fear of dirty water puddles, people in iron lungs, seeing people of all ages in leg braces & wheelchairs, terror in our parents if we showed the least symptoms. And we both remember the whole town lining up at the high school gym for 'the sugar cube' even though we lived 600+ miles apart as children. I can also remember a niece born with the effects of her mum having had rubella when she was pregnant. And I remember having chicken pox, mumps, and rubella because there were no vaccines available.

I thank God for immunizations.

What the actual fuck?

I have no words.

I’m also old enough to remember polio. A boy in the year above me at primary school had to wear leg braces after contracting it. He was considered to have been fortunate not to have been more badly affected.
People were suspicious of swimming pools, as some outbreaks had been associated with them.

My mother remembered the harrowing experience of nursing in the diphtheria wards in 1930s Liverpool. Whole families died of the disease, one person after another.

My father got polio in India during the war, and we as a family were incredibly pleased when the vaccine was made available, even if it hurt to have it (which in those very early days it did: we were not offered sugar cubes, it was a jab in the arm more than once), because he had been crippled for life (his word: he was absolutely firm that he was not "disabled", he was able in a different way) and we saw this every day. I had measles and was left with impaired eyesight, and mumps, and German measles, and we think scarlet fever, and I thank God my children didn't have to go through any of those. Why I didn't have chicken pox I have no idea, but that one seems to have missed me.

If I had a time machine, I'd go back to the early eighties and shoot Andrew Wakefield. The damage that charlatan did and the lives he ruined (or outright destroyed) for the money he was paid to tell his lies is horrendous.

You and me both, though I was literally @AcrossthePond55 from you, born in 1956. I remember the polio sugar cube; I knew about kids in calipers and even iron lungs as the after effects of polio; I had a bad bout of German Measles (rubella) when I was 3 and nearly lost either my sight or my hearing or both (I can't remember and my parents aren't alive for me to ask them now, though at the tender age of 68 I'm thinking it must have been both). Also had chickenpox and mumps when I was under 12, both badly and extremely unpleasant. There wasn't a chickenpox vaccine available even when my only child was young and I'm afraid the chickenpox they had when I was in my first trimester with my much wanted second child is the reason I lost that baby, though it was never confirmed to me by medics. All this to say, though it wasn't the question, this is why I accepted the Covid vaccine with open arms, as who knows what the alternative might yet be.
Sorry for the waffle, am in a one woman nostalgic pity-party today.

One of my friends had polio, she is v disabled in one leg but copes remarkably well, she can drive in an adapted car, cycle and is fearless. she has never let it hold her back but puts it down to her parents who told her she can do anything she puts her mind to. And she does!

Polio from being eradicated is making a resurgence. I have no time for anti vaxxers. That is me being polite.

I had mumps and german measles as a child, the mumps particularly badly. I remember looking in the mirror and not recognising myself!

I think I may have solved the whole JD Vance eyeliner mystery.

US TV networks can get my details from MNHQ 😀

(I hope someone in this thread knows why I post this)

A cousin a couple of years older than me had his sugar cube polio vaccine delayed because he was poorly the day he was due to have it. He caught polio before he could have it. He was lucky and only had a weak arm but he died of post polio syndrome in his 50s. A school friend's mum had a withered arm from polio and people with that or leg calipers were a common sight growing up.
At my small village school there were 2 children permanently disabled - 1 deaf, one with brain damage - from common childhood illnesses that are now rare to to vaccinations.

To all the 'oldies' because I can't remember who else posted about childhood diseases lol

Gosh yes, so many of us either experienced horrible bouts of now-preventable diseases or saw the devastation they caused in others. I think for many younger folks who never lived through it, it's easy to pooh pooh the dangers and spout 'herd immunity' or now disproven 'medical research' as a reason not to vaccinate. But the dangers are still real, they've just never seen them. Mumps can still cause male sterility (albeit rarely) and the dangers of Rubella to an unborn child is still all too real. And chicken pox can still cause encephalitis and can be deadly in an adult.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US it's standard procedure to test a woman for immunity to Rubella pre-pregnancy or when she first finds out she's pregnant. I have lifelong immunity because I had it, but my younger vaccinated cousin had to be revaccinated when they decided to TTC. Immunity from the Rubella vaccine wears off apparently.

At the time I married, one of the then required blood tests where I live was for Rubella.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I had measles and was left with impaired eyesight, and mumps, and German measles,

I had measles twice too. When I was probably 3 I had what Mum called either the 'hard' or 'black' measles and was deathly ill. That disease is Rubeola. Then when I was probably 10-ish my cousin and I contracted Rubella at the same time. Both diseases are now preventable with vaccines.

As far as why you 'never got' chicken pox, you may have done. My MiL said she couldn't remember DH ever having them so when our sons had them (pre-vaccine) he went and stayed with her since it can be devastating in an adult. When they came out with the shingles vaccine his doctor tested him ahead of time and the titre test showed that he did have immunity so had had CP! The doctor said he could have had a mild enough case that his symptoms went either unnoticed or were put down to bug bites or hives.

@borntobequiet

My dad (born 1914) had diphtheria as a child (probably in the early '20s) and at one point from what he said they thought he wouldn't survive it. He lost an entire school year to disease and recovery, though.

My mum had diphtheria too in the 1940s and almost died. I knew quite a few children - I can think of half a dozen including the sister of my next door neighbour - who had their hearing severely affected because their mothers contracted GM.

I also saw the effects of CP on my DH who caught it in his forties from our four year old. I’ve never seen anything like it - there wasn’t a place that didn’t have a spot, the whites of his eyes, the soles of his feet, inside his mouth, his breathing was severely affected, he was off work for months and his immune system took years to recover. Our four year old had half a dozen spots. Our DD didn’t catch it so she might have previously had it and we didn’t realise.

There's only one thing more terrifying than another Trump term, and that's a Trump administration with RFK as Secretary of Health

When I was planning to ttc in 1981 I asked a locum GP if he could please test me to see if I'd had rubella as a child or would need to be inoculated. Not only was this something he hadn't heard of, he then asked if I had had medical training, since I was asking for something so unusual. Shocking ignorance for that decade.

Later, my four-year-old and my four-month-old both caught chicken pox: they had 100 pocks between them, four for the elder and ninety-six for the baby. I nursed them devotedly but didn't catch it.

Holy Hell!

Spin three times, spit on the ground, stomp on it! That should give that possibility the whammy!!!

That's crazy!!! Even for a GP, that's crazy!

In the US women normally see an OB/Gyn as soon as we're sexually active or at the point we're either getting married or TTC.

A friends sister went to A&E 4 times with intense abdominal pains. Each time to be packed off with laxatives. She was 31.

Not one of the 6 doctors that saw her suggested a pregnancy test that would have detected the ectopic pregnancy that she died in agony of.

If at times my attitude seems a bit up myself, it's because even I would have known a test should have been the very first action. And I didn't go to medical school.

https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1827394931209502940

😂😂😂

Another 1950's child here with similar memories to those posted by others. And those memories are why the possibility of another Trump administration is just unconscionable. Not only will vaccines and medical science be ignored and potentially criminalised but the removal of women's rights over their own bodies and pregnancies will be the future in a Republican USA. Phyllis Schlafly will seem totally reasonable in comparison to what the Project 2025-ers want to accomplish.

In answer to Serendipity - Ian Dury caught polio probably from public swimming baths in Southend.

@Spandauer

Phyllis Schlafly. That's a blast out of the past and not in a good way. Beware of saying her name three times. With the GOP as it is we can't afford to have her suddenly materialize. She'd end up replacing Vance as VP nom.

Her and Anita Bryant. A nightmare version of the Doublemint Twins!

Bryant is still alive apparently! (I wonder who she'll vote for... can't see her approving of JD's guyliner)

Was never checked for rubella (I presume) antibodies when I was pregnant with ds in 2000. I also don't think I had the MMR vaccine as I'm too old But I was an "elderly primagravida" and nowadays, most pregnant women would have had the MMR and there is therefore (or was until recently ) a degree of get immunity.

Ds however had every vaccine going as soon as he could. My dad was a paediatric radiologist and what he had to say about Wakefield would make even this site, which allows swearing, blush!

We weren't sure if ds had had chicken pox as he only had one maybe two vesicules on his back when he was 6 months old (MIL spotted them). As I was still breastfeeding him, we presumed he'd fought it with "my" immunity and maybe hadn't built up any of his own. But he then went through countless outbreaks at the nursery and then primary school without catching it

However when he was 14, he was due to go skiing with the school on the 1st Saturday of the Easter holidays and he complained about itchy spots on one side of his back on his back on the Thursday (to be fair, he'd mentioned a couple of spots on his shoulder on the Monday, but I'd put them down to urticaria). I had a look at it again .... and took a picture to show my dad, who I was just off to see. He diagnosed what I suspected : shingles

Managed, at 4.55, to arrange to see the nurse/possibly the GP at 5.15 (following day was Good Friday and they were shut). GP confirmed shingles, prescribed a painkiller in case he needed it and an anti-viral (iirc) to reduce the reaction - and fortunately said he was fine to go on the skiing trip, as long as he avoided skin-to-skin contact Saved me money as I was going to go out on the Friday to buy tight swimming trunks in case they went swimming if they couldn't ski Equally fortunately, the school also took a common sense approach to him going - especially as he felt ok in himself

At least we now know he has had chicken pox

@prettybird

Shingles at 14??? Wow, poor kid. My mum had them in her 60s and was in pain until they all cleared up. I don't think I'd ever seen her as miserable in my life.