Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rescinded the flu vaccine requirement in April, and in May influenza began spreading at Lackland, which is the hub of Air Force basic training, graduating 35,000 airmen every year.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Has anyone gotten to the bottom of whether Hegseth really does not wash his hands?

    I mean, even if it was a “joke”, why would anyone take advice from this dumbass about their vaccination schedules?

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      1 day ago

      The US military has long given all new recruits a whole lot of vaccines. Mostly because it keeps them alive, and because it takes away the incentive for potential adversaries to do things like release smallpox again. The politically-appointed leadership has long had the discretion to choose which vaccines. So he took away a requirement for a flu vaccine, even though the flu has a long history of killing more soldiers than combat.

      Combine that with a whole lot of antivax propaganda kicking around, and a large fraction of soldiers didn’t get this vaccine.

      • mkwt@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        This includes several few vaccines that are not normally issued to the general public. Like anthrax, rabies, and the bicillin “peanut butter” shot that is known to be really uncomfortable and delivered straight to the butt.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        and because it takes away the incentive for potential adversaries to do things like release smallpox again

        wow, I never even thought of reasons like that, that would be insane.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    If you’re curious why it’s hitting the AF extra hard, for decades an evangelical cult has been targeting our military with a focus on the AF.

    The recruit in boot camps and move to AF town so their daughters can marry and convert members, then raise their kids to join or do the same.

    That leads to a higher percentage who would refuse the vaccine, endangering everyone.

    It gets written about every couple years, but no one does anything and now Erica Kirk is in charge of the AF academy

    • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
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      2 days ago

      Because the air-force tends to be more of an indoors group… ;-) They don’t call it the “Air-Conditioned Force” for nothing. ;-)

  • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
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    2 days ago

    The good thing about vaccine denial-ism is that it tends to kill people stupid enough to fall for vaccine denial-ism…

      • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        And any vulnerable bystanders who can’t be vaccinated and depend on herd immunity.

      • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
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        2 days ago

        I hate to say it, but yeah… I know this smells of eugenetics, but getting stupid out of the gene-pool is not necessarily a bad thing…

        Watch the first 5 minutes of the movie “Idiocracy” for a great example of why…

        • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          It’s a hilarious premise for a movie, but a lot of ink has already been spilled to explain that it’s not really how intelligence works…

          • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
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            22 hours ago

            It’s not, as someone else explained, it’s nurture, not nature… But kids raised by dumbasses are more likely to grow up to be dumbasses themselves… (I live in SW Virginia, I see it first hand ALL the time.)

            There are, of course, exceptions, but it still holds true more often than not.

        • Malyca@lemmy.zip
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          2 days ago

          The thing is, stupid isn’t a gene thing. A set of intelligent parents can have moronic offspring and dumb ones can have intelligent kids. That’s why so many people break through the indoctrination despite their parents best efforts.

        • NABDad@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I’d argue that allowing people to self-select for extinction isn’t eugenics, particularly if all they have to do to avoid it is accept they don’t know everything and listen to the advice of experts.

          It is unfortunate that they take others with them.

        • LordMayor@piefed.social
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          “Stupid” definitely falls on the nurture side of “nature vs. nurture.” So, it’s not eugenics to want stupid people out of the gene pool. They will nurture stupidity into the next generation not pass on a gene. It is a failure of a society’s education system. The children of stupid people could be raised not-stupid.