If users didn't flag opinion pieces on hot divisive topics, HN's front page would consist of nothing but opinion pieces about hot divisive topics. As that would be an entirely different site, user flags are vital to preserving HN for its intended mandate. As I put it years ago, we need those white blood cells.
If you want to call that an "organized fringe group trying to control the narrative", I suppose it's really just a different way of wording the same thing.´
When I look at /new and /active, where flagged topics are present, I definitely don't see them "consist of nothing but opinion pieces and hot divisive topics."
I submitted this because I thought the article made insightful points about how an announcement like this can pave the way for downstream policy changes. I’m not trying to start a debate about the announcement itself.
First you've got names that describe the structure in some detail, like the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) & SMILES. For paracetamol, the InChI is `InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10)`.
One level up is the IUPAC name, a systematic name for a compound which is less descriptive than the InChI but still generally allows determining the structure of that compound. For paracetamol, that's N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide.
Next up you've got generic names for drugs. Different countries have different systems for naming generics, but they're usually designed to give some hint as to the sort of drug it is. E.g. drugs with generic names ending in "-vir" are antivirals. Most names are standardized in the International Nonproprietary Name system¹ but some drugs (particularly older ones) have different generic names in different countries.
Last up you've got the brand names. These will often vary quite a lot & tell you nothing about the drug.
The INN wikipedia article¹ actually uses paracetamol/acetaminophen as the example for comparing various national naming standards.
No, N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide is the IUPAC name. Paracetamol & acetaminophen are "generic" names for it when used as a drug. Tylenol, Panadol, and quite a few other brand names are used worldwide¹.
The International Chemical Identifier is InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10).
> Medical experts urge caution over use of acetaminophen-based painkillers during pregnancy
> Ingredient found in hundreds of pain-relief drugs, including Tylenol, may impact fetal development
Is there any serious medication without this warning? I was under the impression they all have it, as they can't 100% rule out any kind of sideeffect, even if it wouldn't be harmful.
In the interest of playing Devil's Advocate - even though it's a fine article, I don't think it's promoted particularly good discussion. Partisan politics in general means that people just dig in their heels angrily rather than have good discussion, and the Trump administration - at risk of falling into my own trap here - is far enough away from conventional wisdom on many issues, including this one, in such a way that their decisions and discussions around them sort of inevitably become partisan.
im nobody, i cant speak for whoever/everyone who flagged it. i try to stay out of foreign politics, but ill reply trying to share my understanding. Probably going to regret trying to help.
I'd say the article is extremely opininated and biased against primarily trump and rfk. the article is very far from neutrally reporting facts. extremely hyperbolic and alarmist; immediately visible in the title itself. emotionally charged and advocating for political action.
Its full of personal attacks, trump is unhinged insane, incompetent, dangerous, and irrational?
The article seems to be entirely rhetorical. There's no audience for it. The only people who will find use if it are those who dont need any convincing.
I submitted the article. I agree that much of the language and style is one-sided and partisan. If I could tone that down, I would. I submitted it because the outlined logical consequences stood out to me that I hadn’t encountered elsewhere—- the announcement itself, regardless of its underlying merits, opens the path to reduce vaccine access for all.
Another commenter here missed that point, thinking that people should just ignore what Trump says. The point is that what Trump says can be used to influence downstream policy in ways that might appear unexpected, but are certainly intentional.
>I submitted the article. I agree that much of the language and style is one-sided and intentional. If I could tone that down, I would.
It certainly crosses a line that makes the article rhetorical at best. It can never convince anyone of anything.
There's so much vitriol that even if there's facts in there to discern, I cant see it through the hyperbole and polarization.
>I submitted it because the outlined logical consequences stood out to me that I hadn’t encountered elsewhere—- the announcement itself, regardless of its underlying merits, opens the path to reduce vaccine access for all.
I dont see any of that there. Maybe it is, but they lose the chance to make these points.
Scientific reference needs to remain objective and seek to maximize the audience.
The section “Breaking up is hard to do” covers this without inflammatory rhetoric. By first declaring Tylenol to cause autism, it can be ruled out as a recommendation for reducing fever. With no alternatives to reducing fever, vaccines can now be not recommended, and therefore not covered by insurance, if there’s any chance of fever complications. The announcement is not really about autism, but providing a justification to portray the fever risk as unavoidable.
Autism, paracetamol, vaccines are celebrity and loaded medical words that they want to relate while there is no scientific correlation between them. These people are at least dangerous and cause deeply bad and guilt feelings to innumerous families.
I think it’s more about allowing people the freedom to make their own medical decisions.
I got the covid vaccine and setup appointments for everyone in my family to get the vaccine and I think not getting the vaccine is crazy, but that doesn’t mean I support the government forcing every person to get the vaccine. However, I think it’s a bit frustrating that by not approving the vaccines for Covid it is a lot harder for people to get these vaccines.
Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier is a legitimate criticism of our system and that we do need a more holistic view on healthcare.
> I think it’s more about allowing people the freedom to make their own medical decisions.
I'm not familiar with how things work in the USA, but this statement from the article seems to say the reverse:
> When Kennedy signs this, the MMRV will not be covered by many insurers and it will be unavailable to most people in practice.
I'm guessing that means currently most people are free to make their own choice on whether to get the vaccine independent of any financial considerations. If is speculations are on target they will have to pay for the vaccine, so the decision has more constraints - and so is correspondingly less free.
About 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children will get Measles, of those about 1 in 1,000 will suffer sever complications like brain damage or death. I guess if you are poor, your pretty likely to means you accept the 0.1% risk.
Vaccines don't work on a "everybody makes their own choice" basis. It's a basic medical science fact that you need a large enough population to take them to make a difference, and for the people who legitimately cannot take a vaccine, it is in society's interest to help them stay safe and healthy by vaccinating most people.
>Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier
Americans don't "have all this healthcare". Americans avoid going to the doctors because they cannot afford it. Other countries pay dramatically less for healthcare and get better results.
Even just prescriptions in the US is absurd. People aren't taking medicine they need because a pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollars a week.
>Vaccines don’t work on a “everybody makes their own choice” basis.
In my experience they do work exactly that way, you take a vaccine and then you are far less likely to get the disease. It’s true that you cannot reach herd imunity or reduce the spread until you get a large enough population. I’m still think it’s a choice thing though.
>A pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollar a week.
Currently, I take 3 different generics popular generics that cost a few bucks a month. I could get it covered under my insurance, but I prefer to just pay cash without insurance to buy in larger quantities direct from Amazon as it works out to be about the same, but I don’t have to manage the inventory. I also take a semiglutide for weight loss, which costs thousands upon thousands a year that insurance brings down to $25 a month. But it wasn’t invented 60 years ago. Someday it will probably be available extremely cheap though.
I think most senior citizens would agree that most common medications that make it on the generic list really don’t cost much in the United States.
This falls into the endless list of "remember you voted for this".
With the ever present caveat that, no, clearly not everyone did, but he got more votes than anyone else.
And it's not like this is a surprise. He campaigned with RFK. Kennedy's views on vaccines are well known. Trumps ability to do "medical" was amply demonstrated in his first term.
This is exactly what he campaigned on, and exactly what voters were presumably hoping for. They looked at the options and said, "yeah, let's have some more of this".
Or maybe "let's not have more of that." In a two-party system, if things are not going well, being the party out of power provides a significant advantage. Combine that with short memories and the irrational hope that a leader might have become more stable, and that's enough for some voters.
> This falls into the endless list of "remember you voted for this".
I think, to be fair, there are only two parties. You can only vote for one "package" of policies. Maybe you are a one-issue voter or maybe you weigh all the different positions of the candidates to find the one who aligns most with you.
I don't think it is accurate to say that all the people who voted for Trump approve of any individual policies -- like this one. So they are allowed to be as upset as anyone else about this stuff.
I'll upvote you for at least laying out a coherent argument.
But you're right. A lot of voters weighed the set of policies and decided that mass deportations, suspension of due process, tarifing imports to raise domestic prices, slashing federal agencies like the EPA and CDC, muzzling free speech at universities and on TV, grifting for personal gain at every opportunity, all of which was explicitly spoken about during the campaign, was ok to get their single-issue promoted.
So yeah, lots of people voted for this. For all I know those same people think it's going just fine.
Which brings us back to, "just remember, you voted for this."
I don't know, man. Did Biden voters vote for high inflation and open borders? Did they vote for 50% tariffs on solar panels? I was a Biden voter and I didn't.
Sorry for absolute tangential rant, but what the fuck is happening to our world. What is there actually to do besides quietly observe the insanity that is happening around? Prepare for things to get worse? Is there any other action that a normal citizen can take to actively make things better, besides the usual „go vote for X every Y years“?
Don't know; have been working through this myself. I'm not proposing ignoring reality; I'm proposing deliberately avoiding propaganda hoses. It's a tough problem.
I know this: Reading the 690th article on Charlie Kirk or whatever other emotion and violence-driven content they are all pumping isn't the way.
I struggle with this because its not just propaganda what the president says or lies about matters and to ignore seems to be at our peril. I agree its a tough problem. Wasn't even thinking about the Charlie Kirk tbh tragedy he was murder, but also shame his funeral was weaponized for political gain. I think it reaffirms that this idea though all propaganda even if ignore becomes a constituent member of the fabric of reality because it has an effect. Every time an Anti-vax idea is espoused by the president is another chip at some future childs life. If they actually revoke the ability to vaccinate its not just the children and grandchild of the people cheering Trump who will suffer its just children in general.
Honestly, log off the internet and touch grass. Things have always been like this, and most things that happen are inconsequential to your average person.
Like, who cares if he says Tylenol is bad for pregnant women? Just do whatever you want to do anyways.
The point of the article addresses this. A directive on Tylenol like this then gives pretext to dramatically reduce vaccine access, which affects everyone.
Blaming Tylenol is actually a surprisingly harmless and almost a relief. Remember it used to be vaccines until a few days ago. Antivax sentiment is not inconsequential to the average person. Gun rights are not inconsequential to the average person. Women rights are not inconsequential to the average person.
I get that some progressive arguments seem to be only relevant to particular audiences - "why should I care about trans rights if I'm not trans?" - but reality is these are a small portion of the actual discussions which take a disproportionate amount of atention from issues that do affect everyone.
How many WTF moments do we need from our president before he loses support from 90% of Americans? Do people just not care? Or do they really believe the lies and crazy justifications? Or maybe they think it's worth the tradeoff?
I worry for our future. As it stands, it is looking to be very, very bleak.
> Do you think most people actually hear his speeches directly or know these things? I'm sure when it's chopped up in the right sound bites it's fine.
Exactly this. We no longer have a grand total of 3 TV channels; it's a conscious choice to tune to fox news and consume that rage-bate-as-a-distraction.
As long as it's profitable to offer up "bespoke" views of the world to individuals, there's next to no hope of those individuals being able to galvanize under a common and shared set of facts and that's a per-requistie for any sort of mass protest/change.
I mostly know Trump through news sites like AP and Reuters. I heard one of his speeches after a flight accident early in his term though and he was blaming retards and amputee midgets for the collisions.
He was blaming it on DEI, and listed some of the groups he claimed were hired via DEI programs for air traffic control.
Most mainstream news covered him blaming DEI and and most mentioned specifically people with disabilities. Many didn't go into the laundry list of specific disabilities Trump mentioned.
I think the problem is that too many people do not know or care or respect how institutional knowledge works. And how to build it, and why so many of the things we take for granted is the result of subject matter experts iterating on real world problems for decades.
No one is defending the NIH or Fauci or the math department at UCLA in a way that makes sense to a majority of Americans... Why these are even under attack in the first place is beyond me.
Because of Goldwater thing people don’t discuss it, but really there should be a legislation for mandatory mental evaluation for people in positions of power.
Bus drivers and airline pilots get mental evaluations, and they are only responsible for two hundred people at a time. Yet person responsible for whole country can have any mental illness.
> Because of Goldwater thing people don’t discuss it, but really there should be a legislation for mandatory mental evaluation for people in positions of power.
No, the reason people don’t discuss this is that the next question is “so you have a mandatory evaluateion, what are the consequences, and who selects the evaluator?” And you very quickly realize that any proposal is either:
(a) adding nothing substantive that isn't already covered by existing provisions allowing for removing people for incapacity, or
(b) creating a new and unaccountable seat of power, or
(c) designing a replacement (which may be an improvement!) for the processes discussed in (a) to which the evaluation mandate is a jumping off point that turns out to be superfluous.
Also, you realize that to effect anything with any consequences for the Presidency and some other offices, legislation doesn’t work, you need a Constitutional Amendment.
I think the democrats squandered opportunities post 2021. To regain people’s trust they need to:
1. Have actual democratic primaries and get rid of their super delegates.
2. Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
3. Protect American industry and labor. This doesn’t just mean propping up unions - it means making an actual effort to bring industry back to the US.
The rest is just theatre. So this autism declaration, or trans baiting is just the sideshow. IMHO - the those are the three main things for me to start considering the democrats again.
> Have actual democratic primaries and get rid of their super delegates.
Superdelegates exist but have no vote in the first round unless their votes collectively can have no impact on the outcome; this reform was adopted for 2020 and beyond by the DNC in 2018.
The other points are just arguments that Democrats need to adopt MAGA positions on currently salient, highly-divisive issues for which preferences are highly correlates with other MAGA policy preferences, which would remove the reasons many Democratic voters support the party without (because of the correlation of preferences) making the party more palatable to most people who currently disagree with the Democrats on those issues.
I'm not an American, I don't live in the US and I generally keep away from politically charged topics on Hackernews, but I feel I must add to your comment a bit.
I would aggree with you that this "is just theatre" and as long as whoever is in charge is looking into the important stuff on economics and public policy, we could ignore the theatrics. I don't think this guy is doing a good job on the "important" stuff, but that's beyond me and I don't really have a say on tariffs, immigration or whatever else on someone else's country.
However, the "theatre" he does hurts real people in the real world. Trans people get killed or refused care, kids get shot in schools and even his own allies get hurt in the heat of the political theatre he creates. I must say I'm actually kind of glad he switched aim from vaccines to Tylenol: the whole antivax thing was extremely dangerous to the population as a whole, while blaming Tylenol will maybe hurt some pharma sales that's all. I wish he went with this discourse from the start, instead of spreading fear over vaccination during the times the World needed vaccines the most.
With that said, my whole point is that, unfortunatelly, political discourse has power, even if it's just theatrics. I wish you folks had more than two options in the US so you wouldn't need to choose his hateful and harmful discourse over the opposition, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have and it's not going to be good.
In politics - facts are immaterial but emotions and simplicity count.
I don’t agree with the administration on abortion and trans policies. There is a lot more to trans than just trans men in women’s sport and bathrooms.
Immigration enforcement should have better due process and it should be welcomed by both Democrat and republicans. There is no reason for democratic law makers to claim not to comply with federal law.
Either way - the points I put out is something I hear often in the US. Most people get shutdown in public for even appearing to agree with the current admin on policy even if they don’t agree with the implementation theatrics. It’s a bit of a shit show here when it comes to having an honest conversation.
Harris made several grandstanding stunts at the border and talked about her record on crime and immigration enforcement, and backed off on trans questions where she could (saying she would leave it to the states)
This basically had no impact because the political ads just said she was going to open the border and use your taxes to pay for transing your kids anyway. The Dems can't reasonably change how they're viewed in the media environment and if they do manage to take out a moderate position on something they'll just be seen as the slightly less effective option - once everyone agrees the border needs to be tougher, why not vote for the party that's louder on immigration anyway?
> it means making an actual effort to bring industry back to the US.
Germany has a huge manufacturing surplus, and yet its share of employment in industry has been declining for at least 40 years now.[1] "Industry" cannot be "brought back" [2] because what it once was no longer exists. Productivity in manufacturing has gone up through the roof, and manufacturing simply doesn't need many jobs now. Jobs are needed in professions like nursing and education.
> Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
That borders on stupidity at the level of climate-change denial or anti-vax. First, people are "streaming illegally across the border" because American citizens want them to help the economy. And if Americans change their minds and are willing to live with fewer immigrants in a weaker economy, at any specific point in time, the rights that need to be advocated are those that are in danger. At this point, however, it seems that the Trump administration is threatening the rights of both immigrants and citizens, which is why you see Democrats sounding the alarm on both.
While the manufacturing jobs of old cannot be brought back because they no longer exist - they've been eliminated by automation - there could be non-economic arguments for bringing back more manufacturing (e.g. a national security argument). The Biden administration did actually do that; the Trump administration is actively harming manufacturing with its exceptionally incompetent and stupid tariff policy (a very different tariff policy could hypothetically help manufacturing, but economists will tell you that subsidies - along the lines of what the Biden administration implemented - would be more effective and cause less economic harm).
The bottom line is that, on the economy, as in health, what most characterizes the Trump administration is an almost unbelievable level of stupidity and incompetence, and it will achieve none of the positive economic goals it purported to pursue (and is likely to achieve the opposite). This means that the only intended change this administration is bringing about is the Orban-style consolidation of power and authoritarianism, and a reduction in education and research.
If you want to look at things from a purely cynical point of view, that parties seek to "manufacture" voters, with the current dominant polarization axis, Democrats' clear interest is to have more educated and/or informed Americans, while Republicans' clear interest is to have fewer.
> Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
Yes, indeed, if the democrats were only more performatively cruel to illegal immigrants then I am sure they would win more elections. Why even tack that comment at the end? Do you really think democrats are supporting illegal immigrants at the expense of Americans?
Not to mention that the current immigration policies ("policies" almost feels too generous) are polling poorly overall:
> In Silver Bulletin’s polling average, the president is now behind by 4.2 percentage points on his handling of immigration-related topics, where he was once above water by seven percentage points at the beginning of his term. It’s clear why: the images of chaotic and sometimes violent ICE raids across the country have spurred outrage; in a Washington Post/Ipsos poll this week, the raids were the strongest issue motivating disapproval of the president, with 20 percent of voters who said they disapproved of Trump’s overall performance citing “immigration” issues as “the worst thing Trump has done” so far in office.
Although some people were always going to cheer on the cruelty they were promised:
> The reason for the more staggered decline (compared to other issues) was also prominent in the Post’s polling: 55 percent of respondents who said they approved of Trump’s overall job performance cited immigration as the “best thing Trump has done” since taking office. The seemingly disjointed result can be explained thusly: while Trump is gradually seeing his support base shrink on immigration-related issues, those Americans who remain in this camp are strongly supportive of the crackdowns.
Yes. They are. The very fact that you had such a flood of people coming across the border from 2021-2024, were given asylum and funding to remain in the US means democrats are supporting them at the expense of citizens.
How much of an unprecedented "flood" the post-covid rise in border encounters (and subsequent bump in expulsions) actually was is debatable, and it was Republicans who blocked a bill to fund expanded border security.
More importantly, the claim that immigration (illegal or otherwise) is at the expense of citizens is at the very least highly debatable, and not what most economists think. E.g. here's Paul Krugman:
> Until the 1990s many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with limited formal education were substituting for native-born workers. As a consequence, we thought that immigrants would put downward pressure on the wages of less educated native-born workers. Most of us changed our minds in the face of evidence that immigrants were taking very different jobs from native-born workers with similar education. This meant that they were complements, not substitutes, even for low-education native-born workers, and probably raised their wages. For example, more immigrants to pick fruits and vegetables translates into lower food prices and higher real wages for native-born workers.
That is not to say that Americans must accept illegal immigration or even legal immigration, but the claim that it's at their expense is far from established.
It actually did. It was stopped by Trump by adding remain in Mexico restrictions during Covid.
The Democrats just needed to find a way to extend that instead of lifting it.
Granted the Obama years and years before were an issue as well. But Obama was a lot more efficient at deportation. Tom Homan was obama’s top person for removal.
The country isn't like a life boat stranded at sea where we have to ration our resources and rescuing another survivor is choice to run out of supplies faster. This way of thinking needs to die.
Immigration - legal and illegal - high skill and low skill - are net positives to the economy and even our social safety-net programs. American citizens come out way on top in this whole deal by far.
And if you think giving immigrants a few bucks to get started is expensive, it's a pittance next to the costs of mass detention and deportation. They increased ICE's budget by 15x and it's now the most well funded law enforcement agency in the world.
It's true that border crossings surged in the Biden years. The apprehension rate however, was the same as Trump's. The vast majority of illegal border crossings end up in ejection or deportation. Over the whole 4 year term I think we have something around 2.5 million people who were actually released into the country while their cases go through the immigration courts.
And there's some research out there that suggests the immigration surge helped stave off a post-covid recession and softened inflation relative to the rest of the world
Now under Trump, we're projected to have the yearly first decline in population in ages.
The problem with legal immigration is misuse rather than unfunded liabilities. My point is simply - put it to a vote that the US will accept a certain limited number of people who walk across the border every year and the states will be required to fund them. Codify it into law if that’s what needs to happen. Or maybe we just need better labor reform for transitory foreign labor like the Arabian gulf nations. Make it a law so that citizens are aware of impacts - socially and financially.
The US admits 1million legal immigrants every year. This is in addition to people on a valid work visa and folks who are illegally here.
I guess it shows that the society we thought existed, actually didn't exist.
We thought we live in a world of science, reason and kindness. Sure, not everyone is a scientist, or understands it all, but somehow we have recast the mediaeval human into someone who instinctively believes in experiments and peer reviewed papers, not pagan rites and magic.
But I think this must have actually disappeared a long time ago and we just didn't notice. There was no one combining charisma, credibility and the willingness to build support out of setting science on fire.
I'm not even really picking on the US here, I think the rest of the West is not much better.
I'm not a doomer though. I'm sure we can turn it around, or rather that we will bounce back, sooner or later. I just hope it will be a conscious effort rather than a reaction to being utterly burned, like the changes that came from the two world wars.
It’s a statement from the manufacturer about how the product should be used. It should definitely be considered.
A competent medical professional I’m sure will make their own judgement call which may be that it’s not okay to use while pregnant. We should leave that up to the medical professionals, but I’m glad the recent press conference helps raise awareness for medical professionals to consider.
The democrats need to change and run a compelling alternative, and I see no evidence that will happen any time soon.
The democrats and the left have, among other issues:
- refused to run legitimate primaries, instead propping up Hillary when she was unpopular, Biden when he was senile, and Kamala when she was also unpopular and a clearly bad candidate
- wasted a lot of goodwill advocating for policies that are unpopular with the center of the country, including trans in woman sports, the border, and crime
- ignored, minimized or outright spoke down to half the country (the “deplorables”)
- spent decades advocating globalization and ignoring the economic effects on half the country
What compelling democratic candidate is there to run in 2028? What is the compelling Democratic vision? The only fresh new charismatic faces I see are AOC and Mamdani; and while I think they are impressive politicians, those types of policies will not win over the center of the country and would lose in any national elections.
Compared to past standards, Trump and Biden were arguably both too old to run in 2020 and had obvious signs of age-related cognitive decline. But they were regular old, not senile. Biden clearly got much worse throughout his presidency, declining to a level that was obviously too far, even for the left. Trump is not there yet, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets there during his presidency.
“Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.”
Personally, I think they should focus on running candidates that have the best chance of winning. Politics is a competition!
Trump is *far* less coherent than Biden ever was. This has pretty much always been the case. However, he is energetic and confident when he spews his word salad speeches, which I guess the polity reacts positively to.
Yes, and they hate him so much that they've been doing that to spite him not just in America but all over the Western world, and started decades before Trump even went into politics! Universities and hospitals in France, UK, and Korea have been falsifying data for decades just to stick it to Trump. Look how deep this thing goes!
<THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.>
I'll never forget the look on Dr. Deborah Birx's face after this was said.
He only said we should look into injecting disinfectants to cure Covid, not to actually do it. The full quote is a bit incoherent it’s hard to say what he was actually thinking - the one thing we can probably all agree on is it would do a tremendous number on your lungs if you injected disinfectant into them:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
Whether you're defending THE PRESIDENT or not, I can't tell. But what sane person in that powerful position, when the whole nation is troubled about what's really factual, hint/say something this incredibly stupid?
Is being incoherent a defense against being incredibly stupid? It’s just the most relevant part from the linked article. I think his own words speak for themselves.
Snopes sets a weird standard of "he didn't say that Americans should go inject bleach."
Regardless, saying that injecting bleach might work and should be studied is an incredibly stupid thing to say.
Snopes is only saying that he didn't say a very specific stupid thing. He still said a (very slightly) different stupid thing. It's not much of a defense.
Yeah, Snopes is really missing the point here. When people point to this idiotic drivel that he spoke in a press conference, their point is not that "oh my god, he told everyone to inject bleach, this is going to cause mass injury and is terrifyingly dangerous".
I think most who point to this statement, they see it as evidence of how pitifully stupid this man is.
So for most people who like to talk about this statement, it's still true -- it's like a 3rd grader is spitballing on how to solve a pandemic.
"Tylenol, or acetaminophen, can cause liver damage if taken in excessive amounts, particularly over 4,000 mg in a 24-hour period. It is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, often due to accidental overdoses from multiple medications containing acetaminophen."
Doesn't sound super safe for kids who have small livers given the typical dose is 500mg to be honest.
The typical child's dose of Acetaminophen is 160mg (recommended dosage for 2-3 year olds over 24 lbs). It usually comes with a syringe that can measure out less (160mg is per 5ml), per your doctor's recommendation.
And it's flagged. It is far to easy for organized fringe groups to control the narrative here by just killing anything they don't like.
If users didn't flag opinion pieces on hot divisive topics, HN's front page would consist of nothing but opinion pieces about hot divisive topics. As that would be an entirely different site, user flags are vital to preserving HN for its intended mandate. As I put it years ago, we need those white blood cells.
If you want to call that an "organized fringe group trying to control the narrative", I suppose it's really just a different way of wording the same thing.´
Please keep in mind that making something a divisive topic is a specific and intentional strategy for suppressing speech.
By my count, a very effective strategy.
When I look at /new and /active, where flagged topics are present, I definitely don't see them "consist of nothing but opinion pieces and hot divisive topics."
I didn't know this was a thing thank you so much
I submitted this because I thought the article made insightful points about how an announcement like this can pave the way for downstream policy changes. I’m not trying to start a debate about the announcement itself.
there is nothing wrong with what you posted
Tylenol Is paracetamol, apparently if you were perplexed like me.
AKA Acetaminophen, depending on the country.
I spent some time in Germany last year and I couldn't believe that the chemical name is somehow different between Europe and the US.
There are essentially 4 layers of naming:
First you've got names that describe the structure in some detail, like the International Chemical Identifier (InChI) & SMILES. For paracetamol, the InChI is `InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10)`.
One level up is the IUPAC name, a systematic name for a compound which is less descriptive than the InChI but still generally allows determining the structure of that compound. For paracetamol, that's N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide.
Next up you've got generic names for drugs. Different countries have different systems for naming generics, but they're usually designed to give some hint as to the sort of drug it is. E.g. drugs with generic names ending in "-vir" are antivirals. Most names are standardized in the International Nonproprietary Name system¹ but some drugs (particularly older ones) have different generic names in different countries.
Last up you've got the brand names. These will often vary quite a lot & tell you nothing about the drug.
The INN wikipedia article¹ actually uses paracetamol/acetaminophen as the example for comparing various national naming standards.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_nonproprietary_n...
I believe paracetamol and Tylenol are brand names.
Not really, paracetamol is international name of chemical compound.
No, N-(4-hydroxyphenyl)acetamide is the IUPAC name. Paracetamol & acetaminophen are "generic" names for it when used as a drug. Tylenol, Panadol, and quite a few other brand names are used worldwide¹.
The International Chemical Identifier is InChI=1S/C8H9NO2/c1-6(10)9-7-2-4-8(11)5-3-7/h2-5,11H,1H3,(H,9,10).
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paracetamol_brand_name...
"We don't recommend using any of our products while pregnant" -- Tylenol
Mar 7, 2017
https://x.com/tylenol/status/839196906702127106
> Medical experts urge caution over use of acetaminophen-based painkillers during pregnancy > Ingredient found in hundreds of pain-relief drugs, including Tylenol, may impact fetal development
Sep 23, 2021
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/acetaminophen-pregnancy-risks...
Is there any serious medication without this warning? I was under the impression they all have it, as they can't 100% rule out any kind of sideeffect, even if it wouldn't be harmful.
Acetaminophen likely prevents embryogenesis by limiting cell division
No good studies but better safe than sorry that's why there's a label
Why is this flagged
It shouldn't be.
In the interest of playing Devil's Advocate - even though it's a fine article, I don't think it's promoted particularly good discussion. Partisan politics in general means that people just dig in their heels angrily rather than have good discussion, and the Trump administration - at risk of falling into my own trap here - is far enough away from conventional wisdom on many issues, including this one, in such a way that their decisions and discussions around them sort of inevitably become partisan.
im nobody, i cant speak for whoever/everyone who flagged it. i try to stay out of foreign politics, but ill reply trying to share my understanding. Probably going to regret trying to help.
I'd say the article is extremely opininated and biased against primarily trump and rfk. the article is very far from neutrally reporting facts. extremely hyperbolic and alarmist; immediately visible in the title itself. emotionally charged and advocating for political action.
Its full of personal attacks, trump is unhinged insane, incompetent, dangerous, and irrational?
The article seems to be entirely rhetorical. There's no audience for it. The only people who will find use if it are those who dont need any convincing.
I submitted the article. I agree that much of the language and style is one-sided and partisan. If I could tone that down, I would. I submitted it because the outlined logical consequences stood out to me that I hadn’t encountered elsewhere—- the announcement itself, regardless of its underlying merits, opens the path to reduce vaccine access for all.
Another commenter here missed that point, thinking that people should just ignore what Trump says. The point is that what Trump says can be used to influence downstream policy in ways that might appear unexpected, but are certainly intentional.
>I submitted the article. I agree that much of the language and style is one-sided and intentional. If I could tone that down, I would.
It certainly crosses a line that makes the article rhetorical at best. It can never convince anyone of anything.
There's so much vitriol that even if there's facts in there to discern, I cant see it through the hyperbole and polarization.
>I submitted it because the outlined logical consequences stood out to me that I hadn’t encountered elsewhere—- the announcement itself, regardless of its underlying merits, opens the path to reduce vaccine access for all.
I dont see any of that there. Maybe it is, but they lose the chance to make these points.
Scientific reference needs to remain objective and seek to maximize the audience.
The section “Breaking up is hard to do” covers this without inflammatory rhetoric. By first declaring Tylenol to cause autism, it can be ruled out as a recommendation for reducing fever. With no alternatives to reducing fever, vaccines can now be not recommended, and therefore not covered by insurance, if there’s any chance of fever complications. The announcement is not really about autism, but providing a justification to portray the fever risk as unavoidable.
Autism, paracetamol, vaccines are celebrity and loaded medical words that they want to relate while there is no scientific correlation between them. These people are at least dangerous and cause deeply bad and guilt feelings to innumerous families.
I think it’s more about allowing people the freedom to make their own medical decisions.
I got the covid vaccine and setup appointments for everyone in my family to get the vaccine and I think not getting the vaccine is crazy, but that doesn’t mean I support the government forcing every person to get the vaccine. However, I think it’s a bit frustrating that by not approving the vaccines for Covid it is a lot harder for people to get these vaccines.
Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier is a legitimate criticism of our system and that we do need a more holistic view on healthcare.
> I think it’s more about allowing people the freedom to make their own medical decisions.
I'm not familiar with how things work in the USA, but this statement from the article seems to say the reverse:
> When Kennedy signs this, the MMRV will not be covered by many insurers and it will be unavailable to most people in practice.
I'm guessing that means currently most people are free to make their own choice on whether to get the vaccine independent of any financial considerations. If is speculations are on target they will have to pay for the vaccine, so the decision has more constraints - and so is correspondingly less free.
About 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children will get Measles, of those about 1 in 1,000 will suffer sever complications like brain damage or death. I guess if you are poor, your pretty likely to means you accept the 0.1% risk.
I agree! You make a good point about how regulatory power can shape consequences in either direction.
Vaccines don't work on a "everybody makes their own choice" basis. It's a basic medical science fact that you need a large enough population to take them to make a difference, and for the people who legitimately cannot take a vaccine, it is in society's interest to help them stay safe and healthy by vaccinating most people.
>Also, I think the idea that we have all this healthcare it’s super expensive yet people aren’t really getting healthier
Americans don't "have all this healthcare". Americans avoid going to the doctors because they cannot afford it. Other countries pay dramatically less for healthcare and get better results.
Even just prescriptions in the US is absurd. People aren't taking medicine they need because a pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollars a week.
>Vaccines don’t work on a “everybody makes their own choice” basis.
In my experience they do work exactly that way, you take a vaccine and then you are far less likely to get the disease. It’s true that you cannot reach herd imunity or reduce the spread until you get a large enough population. I’m still think it’s a choice thing though.
>A pill or injection that was invented 60 years ago and costs less than a penny a dose is sold for hundreds of dollar a week.
Currently, I take 3 different generics popular generics that cost a few bucks a month. I could get it covered under my insurance, but I prefer to just pay cash without insurance to buy in larger quantities direct from Amazon as it works out to be about the same, but I don’t have to manage the inventory. I also take a semiglutide for weight loss, which costs thousands upon thousands a year that insurance brings down to $25 a month. But it wasn’t invented 60 years ago. Someday it will probably be available extremely cheap though.
I think most senior citizens would agree that most common medications that make it on the generic list really don’t cost much in the United States.
This falls into the endless list of "remember you voted for this". With the ever present caveat that, no, clearly not everyone did, but he got more votes than anyone else.
And it's not like this is a surprise. He campaigned with RFK. Kennedy's views on vaccines are well known. Trumps ability to do "medical" was amply demonstrated in his first term.
This is exactly what he campaigned on, and exactly what voters were presumably hoping for. They looked at the options and said, "yeah, let's have some more of this".
Or maybe "let's not have more of that." In a two-party system, if things are not going well, being the party out of power provides a significant advantage. Combine that with short memories and the irrational hope that a leader might have become more stable, and that's enough for some voters.
> This falls into the endless list of "remember you voted for this".
I think, to be fair, there are only two parties. You can only vote for one "package" of policies. Maybe you are a one-issue voter or maybe you weigh all the different positions of the candidates to find the one who aligns most with you.
I don't think it is accurate to say that all the people who voted for Trump approve of any individual policies -- like this one. So they are allowed to be as upset as anyone else about this stuff.
I'll upvote you for at least laying out a coherent argument.
But you're right. A lot of voters weighed the set of policies and decided that mass deportations, suspension of due process, tarifing imports to raise domestic prices, slashing federal agencies like the EPA and CDC, muzzling free speech at universities and on TV, grifting for personal gain at every opportunity, all of which was explicitly spoken about during the campaign, was ok to get their single-issue promoted.
So yeah, lots of people voted for this. For all I know those same people think it's going just fine.
Which brings us back to, "just remember, you voted for this."
I don't know, man. Did Biden voters vote for high inflation and open borders? Did they vote for 50% tariffs on solar panels? I was a Biden voter and I didn't.
Sorry for absolute tangential rant, but what the fuck is happening to our world. What is there actually to do besides quietly observe the insanity that is happening around? Prepare for things to get worse? Is there any other action that a normal citizen can take to actively make things better, besides the usual „go vote for X every Y years“?
>> Is there any other action
Move to the other country, like one in the EU. There are some issues but not like this Tylenol madness.
Stop consuming news and social media.
How do you hold the world accountable if we just ignore reality? No how about we hold the world accountable
How is holding the world accountable going with everyone consuming the news and social media firehose for the last decade?
Don't know; have been working through this myself. I'm not proposing ignoring reality; I'm proposing deliberately avoiding propaganda hoses. It's a tough problem.
I know this: Reading the 690th article on Charlie Kirk or whatever other emotion and violence-driven content they are all pumping isn't the way.
I struggle with this because its not just propaganda what the president says or lies about matters and to ignore seems to be at our peril. I agree its a tough problem. Wasn't even thinking about the Charlie Kirk tbh tragedy he was murder, but also shame his funeral was weaponized for political gain. I think it reaffirms that this idea though all propaganda even if ignore becomes a constituent member of the fabric of reality because it has an effect. Every time an Anti-vax idea is espoused by the president is another chip at some future childs life. If they actually revoke the ability to vaccinate its not just the children and grandchild of the people cheering Trump who will suffer its just children in general.
Honestly, log off the internet and touch grass. Things have always been like this, and most things that happen are inconsequential to your average person.
Like, who cares if he says Tylenol is bad for pregnant women? Just do whatever you want to do anyways.
The point of the article addresses this. A directive on Tylenol like this then gives pretext to dramatically reduce vaccine access, which affects everyone.
Not really.
Blaming Tylenol is actually a surprisingly harmless and almost a relief. Remember it used to be vaccines until a few days ago. Antivax sentiment is not inconsequential to the average person. Gun rights are not inconsequential to the average person. Women rights are not inconsequential to the average person.
I get that some progressive arguments seem to be only relevant to particular audiences - "why should I care about trans rights if I'm not trans?" - but reality is these are a small portion of the actual discussions which take a disproportionate amount of atention from issues that do affect everyone.
How many WTF moments do we need from our president before he loses support from 90% of Americans? Do people just not care? Or do they really believe the lies and crazy justifications? Or maybe they think it's worth the tradeoff?
I worry for our future. As it stands, it is looking to be very, very bleak.
Do you think most people actually hear his speeches directly or know these things? I'm sure when it's chopped up in the right sound bites it's fine.
> Do you think most people actually hear his speeches directly or know these things? I'm sure when it's chopped up in the right sound bites it's fine.
Exactly this. We no longer have a grand total of 3 TV channels; it's a conscious choice to tune to fox news and consume that rage-bate-as-a-distraction.
As long as it's profitable to offer up "bespoke" views of the world to individuals, there's next to no hope of those individuals being able to galvanize under a common and shared set of facts and that's a per-requistie for any sort of mass protest/change.
I mostly know Trump through news sites like AP and Reuters. I heard one of his speeches after a flight accident early in his term though and he was blaming retards and amputee midgets for the collisions.
Didn't see any mention of that in the news.
He was blaming it on DEI, and listed some of the groups he claimed were hired via DEI programs for air traffic control.
Most mainstream news covered him blaming DEI and and most mentioned specifically people with disabilities. Many didn't go into the laundry list of specific disabilities Trump mentioned.
The sanewashing is pretty bad. The headline probably reduced it to "Trump speaks out on aviation safety".
I think the problem is that too many people do not know or care or respect how institutional knowledge works. And how to build it, and why so many of the things we take for granted is the result of subject matter experts iterating on real world problems for decades.
No one is defending the NIH or Fauci or the math department at UCLA in a way that makes sense to a majority of Americans... Why these are even under attack in the first place is beyond me.
Because of Goldwater thing people don’t discuss it, but really there should be a legislation for mandatory mental evaluation for people in positions of power.
Bus drivers and airline pilots get mental evaluations, and they are only responsible for two hundred people at a time. Yet person responsible for whole country can have any mental illness.
> Because of Goldwater thing people don’t discuss it, but really there should be a legislation for mandatory mental evaluation for people in positions of power.
No, the reason people don’t discuss this is that the next question is “so you have a mandatory evaluateion, what are the consequences, and who selects the evaluator?” And you very quickly realize that any proposal is either:
(a) adding nothing substantive that isn't already covered by existing provisions allowing for removing people for incapacity, or
(b) creating a new and unaccountable seat of power, or
(c) designing a replacement (which may be an improvement!) for the processes discussed in (a) to which the evaluation mandate is a jumping off point that turns out to be superfluous.
Also, you realize that to effect anything with any consequences for the Presidency and some other offices, legislation doesn’t work, you need a Constitutional Amendment.
I think the democrats squandered opportunities post 2021. To regain people’s trust they need to:
1. Have actual democratic primaries and get rid of their super delegates.
2. Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
3. Protect American industry and labor. This doesn’t just mean propping up unions - it means making an actual effort to bring industry back to the US.
The rest is just theatre. So this autism declaration, or trans baiting is just the sideshow. IMHO - the those are the three main things for me to start considering the democrats again.
> Have actual democratic primaries and get rid of their super delegates.
Superdelegates exist but have no vote in the first round unless their votes collectively can have no impact on the outcome; this reform was adopted for 2020 and beyond by the DNC in 2018.
The other points are just arguments that Democrats need to adopt MAGA positions on currently salient, highly-divisive issues for which preferences are highly correlates with other MAGA policy preferences, which would remove the reasons many Democratic voters support the party without (because of the correlation of preferences) making the party more palatable to most people who currently disagree with the Democrats on those issues.
I'm not an American, I don't live in the US and I generally keep away from politically charged topics on Hackernews, but I feel I must add to your comment a bit.
I would aggree with you that this "is just theatre" and as long as whoever is in charge is looking into the important stuff on economics and public policy, we could ignore the theatrics. I don't think this guy is doing a good job on the "important" stuff, but that's beyond me and I don't really have a say on tariffs, immigration or whatever else on someone else's country.
However, the "theatre" he does hurts real people in the real world. Trans people get killed or refused care, kids get shot in schools and even his own allies get hurt in the heat of the political theatre he creates. I must say I'm actually kind of glad he switched aim from vaccines to Tylenol: the whole antivax thing was extremely dangerous to the population as a whole, while blaming Tylenol will maybe hurt some pharma sales that's all. I wish he went with this discourse from the start, instead of spreading fear over vaccination during the times the World needed vaccines the most.
With that said, my whole point is that, unfortunatelly, political discourse has power, even if it's just theatrics. I wish you folks had more than two options in the US so you wouldn't need to choose his hateful and harmful discourse over the opposition, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have and it's not going to be good.
In politics - facts are immaterial but emotions and simplicity count.
I don’t agree with the administration on abortion and trans policies. There is a lot more to trans than just trans men in women’s sport and bathrooms.
Immigration enforcement should have better due process and it should be welcomed by both Democrat and republicans. There is no reason for democratic law makers to claim not to comply with federal law.
Either way - the points I put out is something I hear often in the US. Most people get shutdown in public for even appearing to agree with the current admin on policy even if they don’t agree with the implementation theatrics. It’s a bit of a shit show here when it comes to having an honest conversation.
Harris made several grandstanding stunts at the border and talked about her record on crime and immigration enforcement, and backed off on trans questions where she could (saying she would leave it to the states)
This basically had no impact because the political ads just said she was going to open the border and use your taxes to pay for transing your kids anyway. The Dems can't reasonably change how they're viewed in the media environment and if they do manage to take out a moderate position on something they'll just be seen as the slightly less effective option - once everyone agrees the border needs to be tougher, why not vote for the party that's louder on immigration anyway?
> it means making an actual effort to bring industry back to the US.
Germany has a huge manufacturing surplus, and yet its share of employment in industry has been declining for at least 40 years now.[1] "Industry" cannot be "brought back" [2] because what it once was no longer exists. Productivity in manufacturing has gone up through the roof, and manufacturing simply doesn't need many jobs now. Jobs are needed in professions like nursing and education.
> Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
That borders on stupidity at the level of climate-change denial or anti-vax. First, people are "streaming illegally across the border" because American citizens want them to help the economy. And if Americans change their minds and are willing to live with fewer immigrants in a weaker economy, at any specific point in time, the rights that need to be advocated are those that are in danger. At this point, however, it seems that the Trump administration is threatening the rights of both immigrants and citizens, which is why you see Democrats sounding the alarm on both.
[1]: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.IND.EMPL.ZS?location...
[2]: https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2025/closing-t...
P.S.
While the manufacturing jobs of old cannot be brought back because they no longer exist - they've been eliminated by automation - there could be non-economic arguments for bringing back more manufacturing (e.g. a national security argument). The Biden administration did actually do that; the Trump administration is actively harming manufacturing with its exceptionally incompetent and stupid tariff policy (a very different tariff policy could hypothetically help manufacturing, but economists will tell you that subsidies - along the lines of what the Biden administration implemented - would be more effective and cause less economic harm).
The bottom line is that, on the economy, as in health, what most characterizes the Trump administration is an almost unbelievable level of stupidity and incompetence, and it will achieve none of the positive economic goals it purported to pursue (and is likely to achieve the opposite). This means that the only intended change this administration is bringing about is the Orban-style consolidation of power and authoritarianism, and a reduction in education and research.
If you want to look at things from a purely cynical point of view, that parties seek to "manufacture" voters, with the current dominant polarization axis, Democrats' clear interest is to have more educated and/or informed Americans, while Republicans' clear interest is to have fewer.
> Advocate for the rights of American citizens and not of those streaming illegally across the borders.
Yes, indeed, if the democrats were only more performatively cruel to illegal immigrants then I am sure they would win more elections. Why even tack that comment at the end? Do you really think democrats are supporting illegal immigrants at the expense of Americans?
Not to mention that the current immigration policies ("policies" almost feels too generous) are polling poorly overall:
> In Silver Bulletin’s polling average, the president is now behind by 4.2 percentage points on his handling of immigration-related topics, where he was once above water by seven percentage points at the beginning of his term. It’s clear why: the images of chaotic and sometimes violent ICE raids across the country have spurred outrage; in a Washington Post/Ipsos poll this week, the raids were the strongest issue motivating disapproval of the president, with 20 percent of voters who said they disapproved of Trump’s overall performance citing “immigration” issues as “the worst thing Trump has done” so far in office.
Although some people were always going to cheer on the cruelty they were promised:
> The reason for the more staggered decline (compared to other issues) was also prominent in the Post’s polling: 55 percent of respondents who said they approved of Trump’s overall job performance cited immigration as the “best thing Trump has done” since taking office. The seemingly disjointed result can be explained thusly: while Trump is gradually seeing his support base shrink on immigration-related issues, those Americans who remain in this camp are strongly supportive of the crackdowns.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
Yes. They are. The very fact that you had such a flood of people coming across the border from 2021-2024, were given asylum and funding to remain in the US means democrats are supporting them at the expense of citizens.
How much of an unprecedented "flood" the post-covid rise in border encounters (and subsequent bump in expulsions) actually was is debatable, and it was Republicans who blocked a bill to fund expanded border security.
More importantly, the claim that immigration (illegal or otherwise) is at the expense of citizens is at the very least highly debatable, and not what most economists think. E.g. here's Paul Krugman:
> Until the 1990s many economists, myself included, believed that immigrants with limited formal education were substituting for native-born workers. As a consequence, we thought that immigrants would put downward pressure on the wages of less educated native-born workers. Most of us changed our minds in the face of evidence that immigrants were taking very different jobs from native-born workers with similar education. This meant that they were complements, not substitutes, even for low-education native-born workers, and probably raised their wages. For example, more immigrants to pick fruits and vegetables translates into lower food prices and higher real wages for native-born workers.
That is not to say that Americans must accept illegal immigration or even legal immigration, but the claim that it's at their expense is far from established.
True, but to be fair the stream didn't start in 2021.
It actually did. It was stopped by Trump by adding remain in Mexico restrictions during Covid.
The Democrats just needed to find a way to extend that instead of lifting it.
Granted the Obama years and years before were an issue as well. But Obama was a lot more efficient at deportation. Tom Homan was obama’s top person for removal.
The country isn't like a life boat stranded at sea where we have to ration our resources and rescuing another survivor is choice to run out of supplies faster. This way of thinking needs to die.
Immigration - legal and illegal - high skill and low skill - are net positives to the economy and even our social safety-net programs. American citizens come out way on top in this whole deal by far.
And if you think giving immigrants a few bucks to get started is expensive, it's a pittance next to the costs of mass detention and deportation. They increased ICE's budget by 15x and it's now the most well funded law enforcement agency in the world.
It's true that border crossings surged in the Biden years. The apprehension rate however, was the same as Trump's. The vast majority of illegal border crossings end up in ejection or deportation. Over the whole 4 year term I think we have something around 2.5 million people who were actually released into the country while their cases go through the immigration courts.
And there's some research out there that suggests the immigration surge helped stave off a post-covid recession and softened inflation relative to the rest of the world
Now under Trump, we're projected to have the yearly first decline in population in ages.
The problem with legal immigration is misuse rather than unfunded liabilities. My point is simply - put it to a vote that the US will accept a certain limited number of people who walk across the border every year and the states will be required to fund them. Codify it into law if that’s what needs to happen. Or maybe we just need better labor reform for transitory foreign labor like the Arabian gulf nations. Make it a law so that citizens are aware of impacts - socially and financially.
The US admits 1million legal immigrants every year. This is in addition to people on a valid work visa and folks who are illegally here.
It's worse than "they don't care." It's that they do care, and think he's doing a bang up job.
I guess it shows that the society we thought existed, actually didn't exist.
We thought we live in a world of science, reason and kindness. Sure, not everyone is a scientist, or understands it all, but somehow we have recast the mediaeval human into someone who instinctively believes in experiments and peer reviewed papers, not pagan rites and magic.
But I think this must have actually disappeared a long time ago and we just didn't notice. There was no one combining charisma, credibility and the willingness to build support out of setting science on fire.
I'm not even really picking on the US here, I think the rest of the West is not much better.
I'm not a doomer though. I'm sure we can turn it around, or rather that we will bounce back, sooner or later. I just hope it will be a conscious effort rather than a reaction to being utterly burned, like the changes that came from the two world wars.
As long as he makes the woke people and brown people suffer, he can do no wrong.
[dead]
What are your thoughts on Tylenol themselves warning against the use of Tylenol while pregnant?
https://x.com/tylenol/status/839196906702127106
An obscure tweet is not medical advice.
In the official product information sheets, they state that you should consult with a medical professional before using it during pregnancy.
A competent medical professional will tell you that it's OK to use in most cases.
It’s a statement from the manufacturer about how the product should be used. It should definitely be considered.
A competent medical professional I’m sure will make their own judgement call which may be that it’s not okay to use while pregnant. We should leave that up to the medical professionals, but I’m glad the recent press conference helps raise awareness for medical professionals to consider.
Not recommending is Cover Your Ass phrasing. It's not a recommendation against. Listen to your doctor.
Trump’s success is largely a reaction.
The democrats need to change and run a compelling alternative, and I see no evidence that will happen any time soon.
The democrats and the left have, among other issues:
- refused to run legitimate primaries, instead propping up Hillary when she was unpopular, Biden when he was senile, and Kamala when she was also unpopular and a clearly bad candidate
- wasted a lot of goodwill advocating for policies that are unpopular with the center of the country, including trans in woman sports, the border, and crime
- ignored, minimized or outright spoke down to half the country (the “deplorables”)
- spent decades advocating globalization and ignoring the economic effects on half the country
What compelling democratic candidate is there to run in 2028? What is the compelling Democratic vision? The only fresh new charismatic faces I see are AOC and Mamdani; and while I think they are impressive politicians, those types of policies will not win over the center of the country and would lose in any national elections.
If senility was a dealbreaker, Trump would not have won. The things that come out of his mouth are literally insane.
And I don’t know what the center of the country looks like, either. If the center favored careful, conservative policies, Trump would not have won.
Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.
Compared to past standards, Trump and Biden were arguably both too old to run in 2020 and had obvious signs of age-related cognitive decline. But they were regular old, not senile. Biden clearly got much worse throughout his presidency, declining to a level that was obviously too far, even for the left. Trump is not there yet, although I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets there during his presidency.
“Politics no longer make sense to me. I say Democrats should just run the candidate with the most charisma and fuck everything else.”
Personally, I think they should focus on running candidates that have the best chance of winning. Politics is a competition!
Trump is *far* less coherent than Biden ever was. This has pretty much always been the case. However, he is energetic and confident when he spews his word salad speeches, which I guess the polity reacts positively to.
[flagged]
Yes, and they hate him so much that they've been doing that to spite him not just in America but all over the Western world, and started decades before Trump even went into politics! Universities and hospitals in France, UK, and Korea have been falsifying data for decades just to stick it to Trump. Look how deep this thing goes!
I'm not sure I'm willing to take medical advice from him.
I didn’t think President Donald Trump could possibly beat the infamous “inject bleach” press conference from 2020 for unhinged insanity
You know a claim about Trump is insanely wrong when Snopes debunks it.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-inject-bleach-covid-...
<THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.>
I'll never forget the look on Dr. Deborah Birx's face after this was said.
He only said we should look into injecting disinfectants to cure Covid, not to actually do it. The full quote is a bit incoherent it’s hard to say what he was actually thinking - the one thing we can probably all agree on is it would do a tremendous number on your lungs if you injected disinfectant into them:
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you're totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that too. It sounds interesting.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We'll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.
Whether you're defending THE PRESIDENT or not, I can't tell. But what sane person in that powerful position, when the whole nation is troubled about what's really factual, hint/say something this incredibly stupid?
Is being incoherent a defense against being incredibly stupid? It’s just the most relevant part from the linked article. I think his own words speak for themselves.
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Snopes concluded: Mostly false.
IMHO, mostly false isn’t insanely wrong.
That Snopes rated the claim at all, much less rated it mostly false, is what makes leading an advocacy piece with it insanely wrong.
Snopes sets a weird standard of "he didn't say that Americans should go inject bleach."
Regardless, saying that injecting bleach might work and should be studied is an incredibly stupid thing to say.
Snopes is only saying that he didn't say a very specific stupid thing. He still said a (very slightly) different stupid thing. It's not much of a defense.
Yeah, Snopes is really missing the point here. When people point to this idiotic drivel that he spoke in a press conference, their point is not that "oh my god, he told everyone to inject bleach, this is going to cause mass injury and is terrifyingly dangerous".
I think most who point to this statement, they see it as evidence of how pitifully stupid this man is.
So for most people who like to talk about this statement, it's still true -- it's like a 3rd grader is spitballing on how to solve a pandemic.
"Tylenol, or acetaminophen, can cause liver damage if taken in excessive amounts, particularly over 4,000 mg in a 24-hour period. It is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, often due to accidental overdoses from multiple medications containing acetaminophen."
Doesn't sound super safe for kids who have small livers given the typical dose is 500mg to be honest.
Lets stay within reality here: https://www.tylenol.com/safety-dosing/dosage-for-children-in...
That's why dosing is by weight and for children is a liquid, so the dose can be adjusted easily.
A children's dose of Tylenol is 160mg. The regular strength is is 325mg. The extra strength is 500mg.
https://www.stlouischildrens.org/health-resources/dosage-tab...
A typical 500mg adult dosage tablet isn't recommended til the child is > 72lbs.
They make smaller tablets. Smaller tablets can also be cut up. And there's liquid preparations that can be tuned to whatever level is needed.
The safe dose size for kids is well-known and well-studied.
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> How many Americans know about those limits though? Imagine regular rural folks
Does "rural" equate to "stupid" and "illiterate" in your mind? It's on the packaging, among other sources of information they have access to.
It is literally printed on every bottle. "Regular rural folks" are not idiots.
It's sold as a different product with different dosage.
What percentage of regular rural folks can read the label on the bottle?!? Just how dumb do you think these folks are?
No one knows those off-hand. That's why they print it on the bottle. That's why we have regulations that require dosages to be printed on the bottles.
This is how every medicine works.
It’s on the bottles
The typical child's dose of Acetaminophen is 160mg (recommended dosage for 2-3 year olds over 24 lbs). It usually comes with a syringe that can measure out less (160mg is per 5ml), per your doctor's recommendation.
> given the typical dose is 500mg to be honest
The dosage in children’s Tylenol is much smaller than that—you don’t get a dosage near that size until kids are around 11.
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