That will make some brothers happy:
"Vaccine rushed to Boston’s homeless after a death" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff February 20, 2016
Boston health officials are vaccinating hundreds of homeless people against a severe bacterial infection that can kill within hours, after a homeless man died Monday from the disease.
The victim was among three homeless men who recently came down with meningococcemia, which occurs when certain bacteria get into the bloodstream. The fatal case appears to be unrelated to the other two, which occurred in late January and involved a different strain of the bacteria, said Dr. Denise De Las Nueces, medical director of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, a nonprofit agency managing the response.
“It’s not a disease that’s seen frequently in homeless people,” De Las Nueces said. “The recent cluster of three cases has been unusual. That has sparked our response. . . . Our population lives in crowded conditions in the shelters. That puts them at increased risk.”
The vaccination campaign among homeless people and shelter workers is a precaution.
The $mells so $uspiciou$!
Dr. Anita Barry, director of the Infectious Disease Bureau at the Boston Public Health Commission, emphasized there is no threat to the general public. The culprit germs spread through saliva by kissing or sharing utensils, or are carried on a cough or sneeze. To get infected, a person would need to be within 3 to 6 feet of an ill individual for several hours, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
But it's not a threat?
What this is looking like is some experiment using helpless homeless as the test subjects!
Since Tuesday, Boston Health Care for the Homeless has inoculated 600 homeless people, said CEO Barry Bock. The agency plans to continue administering the vaccine, Menactra, over the next several days, focusing on people who frequent the adult shelters.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supplied 3,000 doses of Menactra, Barry said, at no cost to the city.
The illnesses are caused by a bacterium called Neisseria meningitidis, which live harmlessly in many people’s noses and throats. But the germs sometimes invade the lining of the brain and spinal cord, causing meningitis, or get into the bloodstream, causing meningococcemia.
The bloodstream illness, which all three homeless men experienced, is most severe and rapidly fatal if not recognized in time. The bacteria damage the walls of blood vessels, causing bleeding into the organs and skin, resulting in a characteristic flat, dark-purple rash. Other symptoms include fatigue, vomiting, chills, aches, rapid breathing, and diarrhea.
Barry said it is not fully understood why some people “go from carrying this in their nose to having an invasive infection,” but those who have another infection or who smoke cigarettes are at greater risk. Certain strains seem to be more likely to cause invasive disease, she said.
The illness can also spread in military barracks and college dorms. Military recruits and college students are often vaccinated against it. But from time to time, cases crop up on college campuses.
Lyndia Downie, president of Pine Street Inn, said Pine Street was among the shelters that two of the sick men visited. She said antibiotics and vaccines were administered two weeks ago when the first two cases were identified and additional vaccines have been offered this week.
“Of course people were concerned,” she said. “But people responded really quickly and understood the gravity of the situation.” Nearly everyone agreed to get the shot, Downie said....
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Thankfully, flu season is over and the rents will be coming down:
"Boston rent hikes may soon slow" by Tim Logan Globe Staff February 19, 2016
For Boston-area renters groaning under some of the steepest rents in the country, there is a glimmer of good news: Things probably won’t get too much worse.
The rental market in Greater Boston may be topping out over the next few years, according to a forecast this week from online real estate marketplace Ten-X, formerly known as Auction.Com. The company expects rent growth to cool and vacancies to rise through 2019, as a new wave of apartments opens up and population growth remains relatively slow.
Related: Mass. population growth close to national rate, stats say
Massachusetts was the fastest growing state in the Northeast for the fifth consecutive year, and yet they still can't find any workers(???).
“It’s a classic supply-and-demand scenario,” said Rick Sharga, Ten-X spokesman and a longtime observer of the real estate market. “Population growth is running about at the national average. There’s not a huge amount of job creation. That will probably keep things in check.”
Boston-area rents have climbed more than 5 percent in each of the past two years. Those gains should slow to about 3 percent a year between now and 2019, Ten-X predicts, while the share of vacant apartments climbs from 5.5 percent last year to 8.1 percent in 2019.
Of course, that only helps to a point. Ten-X estimates average rents in the area will top $2,260 a month in 2019. In contrast, rents in Raleigh-Durham will grow twice as fast over the next few years, but still end up less than half what they are locally.
The report is the latest sign that Boston’s rental market may be plateauing, especially at the high end.
New buildings that have opened lately have been offering concessions such as a free month’s rent to woo tenants in a suddenly competitive market for luxury apartments. More developers are focusing their efforts on projects in outer neighborhoods, from East Boston to Quincy, as the high-end downtown market grows crowded.
And some not-yet-built projects that were initially conceived as apartments are shifting to condos, with developers sensing stronger demand from young professionals and empty-nesters selling suburban homes for a move into the city.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority last week approved switching a 76-unit building at National Development’s Ink Block complex in the South End from apartments to condos. And the developers of the Seaport’s so-called “M Block,” which is approved for about 750 housing units over 3.5 acres, will build about two-thirds of those units as condos, said Sue Hawkes, a veteran housing consultant who is working on the project.
It’s a natural shift at this point in a real estate cycle, Hawkes said.
Housing investors who want to cash out relatively quickly are betting they will make more selling condos, which are seeing prices surge right now, than they would selling an apartment building developed at the height of the market. But, she noted, there are lots of other investors with longer time horizons still betting on rent growth in Boston.
They sure flipped on that, huh?
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Related: The Boston Globe is One of the Bros
The arrogant a$$hole got what he wanted!
"San Francisco clears out homeless camp called health hazard" by Janie Har Associated Press March 01, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO — Crews on Tuesday cleared out a San Francisco homeless camp under a busy freeway overpass that had vexed residents and businesses for months before city officials declared it a health hazard last week.
The city has long labored to house its homeless, but a shortage of affordable housing amid a tech-based jobs boom has exacerbated tensions. An estimated 3,500 people sleep on the streets of San Francisco each night.
Then they couldn't have "labored" very hard.
The sweep began well before dawn, with nearly 50 city workers clearing sidewalks and urging campers to move on, said Rachel Gordon, spokeswoman for the city’s Public Works Department.
They woke 'em up?
She said the last tent came down by late morning. Workers then erected barricades on the streets to prevent the homeless from setting up tents again.
At one point, more than 100 tents lined both sides of Division Street, a multilane thoroughfare that divides two rapidly developing neighborhoods, the South of Market and Mission districts.
Sort of a TENT CITY, huh?
The area is popular with the homeless because parts of the street are under a freeway overpass, offering shelter from the rain.
Gordon said the sweep was respectful and peaceful, with most campers moving willingly. Some went to shelters, while others moved their tents to nearby streets not yet declared a public health hazard....
Docile Americans accepting their misery.
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Globe spends some time with one of the homeless in California:
"Dying on the streets: As the homeless age, a health care system leaves them behind" by Bob Tedeschi, February 17, 2016
OAKLAND, Calif. — The elderly man winced as two friends lifted him from his car, and he walked, as if on broken glass, along the curb of a dead end street in an East Oakland neighborhood. It took him several minutes to walk 15 yards, and when he sat again he needed still more time to regain his breath.
His eyes were pressed shut, and as he waited for the pain and breathlessness to pass, his fingertips worked the skin of one knotted, ebony hand. Finally he lifted his head and, with the hint of a smile, said his name was Dwane Allen Foreman. “I’ve got a long story,” he said.
The short version is that Foreman is 68 and homeless, and has HIV, hepatitis C, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and, more recently, lung cancer, and he worries he will die on the street. If he does, he will be one of hundreds in the United States who do so every year, dying in the kind of squalor and emotional and physical suffering that is more commonly the hallmark of war zones and developing nations.
That is what some sections of AmeriKan cities look like, and those hundreds of lives don't seem to matter, be that black or white.
Such cases are becoming more common, researchers said, as the homeless population ages. In the early 1990s, 11 percent of homeless adults were over 50. Now more than half are 50 or older.
That is why we call it AmeriKa.
The homeless often look much older than their years. Their living conditions, addictions, and psychiatric disorders speed them to poor health, frequently with multiple life-threatening illnesses at once.
Their distrust of authority, medical and otherwise, means even well-meaning outreach efforts can fail to spare them from a merciless death.
Foreman, who lives in a 2000 Volvo station wagon he bought for $300, rarely drives because of severe hand and leg spasms, among other ailments.
“We have an enormous number of older people who are basically dying homeless,” said Dr. Margot Kushel, an internist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies health care issues involving the homeless. “It’s almost an absurdity. It makes no sense at all.”
Actually, it does if you are trying to cull a population.
The roots of the issue are well understood, and they are basic. Homeless people typically have no connection to the medical system other than emergency rooms. Hospitals can manage these patients’ symptoms, but often lack the resources to discharge them anywhere other than the street.
Without shelter, these patients cannot take advantage of hospice care.
Foreman is actually better off than many homeless people. He has a friendly relationship with a nurse who tries to arrange visits, sometimes successfully.
And Foreman has a car that he has called home for the past several months.
On a recent night, Foreman slept on the passenger’s side. He wore two short-sleeve shirts, a stained brown sweatshirt, and a gray canvas skipper jacket, the hood pulled over a White Sox cap. His clothes may have fit him at his normal weight of nearly 170 pounds. Now he weighs under 100.
The night before, temperatures had dropped into the 40s. Foreman said he had wanted his sneakers for warmth, but his feet were swollen with fluid, too swollen for shoes.
Now, at midday and bathed in sunlight, the car was warm and the windows open to the sound of chickens clucking, pit bulls barking, and an eight-lane thoroughfare.
Foreman’s car is neatly kept. Inside it smells of air freshener, stale cigarettes, and sweat. In the rear, plastic bags peek from beneath a tossed sleeping bag. Somewhere back there are his HIV medications, his breathing treatments, maybe some pain pills. He hasn’t taken the HIV drugs for several weeks, nor has he received his methadone treatments. He eats very little.
In the back pocket of the passenger seat is a bottle of bleach for his needles. He shoots heroin “now and then,” he said.
His addiction started in 1970, when a former Army sergeant named Tanker sat him on a bed and helped set a needle in Foreman’s right arm. His previous addiction, alcohol, had started not long after his father appeared at his wedding in Los Angeles. Dwane was 17, and it was the first time he’d met his father.
Related: Where to Find Smack in Bo$ton
I'll be getting to the gateway drink below.
His parents reconciled, briefly, with Foreman, his new wife, and their infant daughter taking a room in the house. About a month after the wedding, his mother stopped buying alcohol for his father, and the yelling started. One day not long afterward, Foreman was sitting next to his mother at home when his father pulled out a .22 caliber revolver, pointed it at her chest, and fired. She died instantly.
Foreman’s wife soon moved out and went to live with her family. She took the baby, and Foreman was suddenly alone.
“I stuck around three or four weeks, but then I couldn’t hang,” he said. “That’s when I moved to Monterey.”
Foreman added four more children — one daughter in Monterey and three sons in Oakland — and made three stops at state prisons for credit card fraud, he said. In between, he earned certification as a marine mechanic and worked in a San Francisco shipyard until it shut down.
When the state took his three boys into protective custody 15 years ago — a few years after he contracted HIV through an infected needle — he decided to go clean. They are now 22, 20, and 18.
“Never have any of them used drugs, never been in jail,” he said. “They said, ‘Dad, when I’m older, I’m not gonna get into that.’”
He lived in a two-bedroom apartment until 2013, he said, but the rent jumped to $1,140 monthly; he receives $500 in monthly state assistance and does not work. Family members either did not want him staying with them or they lived in drug-heavy environments that he sought to avoid, he said, so he opted for shelters and the streets.
He said he lost his spot at a local shelter but was vague about the reasons why.
“It’s been a very bad struggle,” he said while sitting by the curb. “I can’t remember a time when I could say that I enjoyed any part of what I’m doing.”
In mid-2015, he said, he started losing weight; that November he was admitted to a hospital with pneumonia. A chest scan revealed lung cancer, and he received radiation treatment and was told to return last month for follow-up exams. He missed the appointment.
“My body is shutting down on me,” he said. “I’m just trying to get a roof over my head so I don’t have to die out here on these streets. I’m very worried about that. Being on the streets and somebody finding me dead.”
Two nights later, sitting in the passenger seat of his car, Foreman was more specific. “Thinking about dying in this car, which I probably will, I just don’t want to be in pain,” he said. “It’s very possible it could happen pretty soon. And I know it.”
Few options for those in need
Patients who are at the end stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer sometimes experience severe pain. They might also gasp uncontrollably up to 40 or more times per minute, leaving them breathless and panicked. (The typical adult takes 12 to 20 breaths per minute.)
Palliative care and hospice specialists can control those symptoms with morphine and anti-anxiety medications. For the homeless, however, there is often no place to administer these treatments.
Oakland is typical of most cities in this regard, said Dr. Robert Ratner, director of housing services for Alameda County Health Care Services, a public agency. Most city homeless shelters discharge residents during the daytime, and publicly funded respite centers, which are for people with special needs who are recovering from outpatient surgery, generally cannot provide intensive around-the-clock care.
Permanent housing facilities for the homeless have long waiting lists.
Homeless people with life-threatening conditions sometimes make their way to emergency rooms, but not always. Many “can bear suffering to an extent we can’t imagine,” said Dr. Rachel Solotaroff, chief medical director of Central City Concern, an anti-poverty agency in Portland, Ore.
There are scattered options for homeless people who are nearing death.
Small nonprofit organizations, like Welcome Home of Chattanooga and Joseph’s House, in Washington, D.C., have transformed private homes into shelters where visiting nurses and doctors can provide hospice care to residents.
Homeless advocates and health care professionals point to one large-scale initiative, the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, as a model for serving this population at life’s end.
There, on the top floors of the former city morgue, are 104 beds offering temporary respite care for homeless patients with acute medical needs, many of whom have previously been treated on the street by the organization’s staff. Dying patients receive hospice care in private rooms, in stark contrast to homeless people in other cities.
Where is Obummercare when you really need it?
“Most of these folks are alone, facing all the things that would freak us out,” said Dr. James J. O’Connell, cofounder and executive director of the center. “As you get to know the people doing that, it becomes almost impossible not to figure out a way to help them, because it’s an incredibly lonely death.”
But Boston’s model is unique. Several years after its inception in 1985, and with heavy lobbying from the state’s hospital association, Massachusetts agreed to use its Medicaid funds for the respite facility as a “special project,” O’Connell said.
It is a singular exception to rules governing Medicaid reimbursement for respite care, and other cities seeking to mesh homeless-outreach services with inpatient facilities for end-of-life care have not found other means to replicate the system.
“I’m guessing everybody will do this once the funding comes,” O’Connell said. “It’s not a lack of will or creativity, it’s just a lack, I think, of recognizing the problem.”
A simple wish
Dwane Foreman’s cousin and sons occasionally drop by the neighborhood to check on him; acquaintances who are also homeless sometimes drive Foreman’s car for him in exchange for a night in the driver’s seat. They know him as Pops or Uncle Wayne, and they help him out of his car when he can’t lift himself.
Foreman said he doesn’t want to go to the hospital only to be discharged onto the streets, as has happened repeatedly in the past. What he wants, he said, is a place where he can sleep better and prepare meals so he can nurse himself back to health.
“I would like to just live a little longer, that’s all. That’s about the best I can say. Enjoy whatever life has left for me. Spend time with my children and stuff and my family. That’s about it,” he said. “Try to get myself in better health, mainly. If I had the means, I would work on that.”
Update: Early this month, a friend found Foreman unresponsive in his car, and called emergency services. He was brought to an Oakland hospital and, as of Monday, was in the intensive care unit.
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Now about that drink:
"Sam Adams sales take a rare hit amid tough competition" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff February 19, 2016
The competition is starting to catch up to Jim Koch.
For years, Koch preached the craft beer gospel: The more brewers, the merrier. Exposing consumers to a widening array of choices would broaden the market, rather than hurt his company, the Boston Beer Co. chairman said. And that theory seemed to play out, as sales of Samuel Adams beers climbed and the company remained a titan among craft brewers.
That line of thinking may now be changing over at Boston Beer’s headquarters on the South Boston waterfront after Thursday’s relatively sober earnings report. Net revenue fell by 1 percent, to $215 million, in the final quarter of 2015 from a year ago, a modest decline but an unusual one.
It would have been worse, without price increases: The volume of beverages shipped fell 3 percent to 958,000 barrels.
Revenue was still up 6 percent for the full year. But the question for investors is whether a worrisome trend for Boston Beer is emerging, particularly as company executives say they are seeing similar modest volume declines in the first few weeks of the new year.
In contrast, total craft beer volume in the United States increased by more than 13 percent last year, according to trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights, and new breweries opened at a pace of roughly two a day.
“We believe that we’ve lost share, as new craft brewers enter the market and more existing craft brewers are expanding their regional distribution,” Koch told analysts in a conference call Thursday.
Investors have apparently braced for this shift already. Boston Beer’s stock fell nearly 2 percent Friday to $181 a share, but the company’s shares are down more than 40 percent from a year ago. That compares with a nearly 10 percent decline during the past year in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
Most of Boston Beer’s growth over the years has come from in-house innovation, and not through acquisition. One key example is Angry Orchard: The brand had been Boston Beer’s golden child, essentially creating a new market for hard cider overnight. But now the interest in cider is slowing, so Koch and chief executive Martin Roper can’t easily rely on Angry Orchard for growth.
Koch pointed to other recent launches that should help Boston Beer get back on that upward path — the Sam Adams Nitro Project beers and the Rebel Grapefruit IPA. The team is also hopeful about the still relatively new Coney Island hard root beer brand, introduced last July under Boston Beer’s Alchemy & Science flag.
And Roper tried to reassure analysts call that the company will figure out how better to cater to Sam’s customers. “Our efforts remain unabated to understand the drinker, causes for our brand’s strength or weakness, and to develop programs ... to make sure that we are fairly competing.”
Boston Beer is by no means alone. Eric Shepard, executive editor at Beer Marketer’s Insights, says three of the top five craft brewers in the nation saw declines in beer shipments last year. (The other two are New Belgium Brewing and Craft Brew Alliance.)
“The competition is tightening up,” Shepard says. “It particularly took a toll on some of the larger players last year but also some of the regional players as well. ... Larger players are going to be more vulnerable, and brewers that have been around longer are going to be more vulnerable.”
Shepard says Boston Beer has weathered slowdowns before. But there’s a difference this time: the consumer is more fickle, the competitors more numerous.
Koch always had a sense this day might come.
It’s one reason he recruited Magic Hat cofounder Alan Newman in 2011 to launch Alchemy & Science, a division devoted to experimentation, either through acquiring small beer businesses or concocting new brands such as the Traveler shandies.
Analysts raised some questions at the time. But with the pressure on to develop new ideas that will captivate consumers’ interest, the investor community doesn’t seem worried about Alchemy & Science now.
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It's almost time for last call and I'm all tapped out:
"A rare glimpse into a beer distributor’s ‘pay-to-play’ tactics" by Dan Adams Globe Staff March 04, 2016
The owner of the Massachusetts company recently hit with a multimillion dollar fine for paying illegal kickbacks to Boston bars also runs a beer distributor in Brooklyn that gave gifts to New York area bars and retailers to control which beers were available to consumers, according to recently unsealed court documents.
The giveaways, approved by managers, included free beer, high-end draught equipment, maintenance services, signs, televisions, and even donations to charities in retailers’ names, according to the testimony. Sheehan officials insist the practice has been discontinued.
While the New York testimony dates to 2011, it offers a rare firsthand account of “pay-to-play” tactics used to gain business, but many alcohol industry executives contend pay to play is rampant in the US beer market, an unseen system that determines which beers are available to consumers....
Really wouldn't matter to me. I don't drink beer.
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Also see: Beer distributor to pay $2.6 million fine in pay-to-play case
Rather than go out to the bar why not get the delivered?
"‘I need a beer,’ wandering 3-year-old girl tells police" by Peter Holley Washington Post March 04, 2016
When police in Lubbock, Texas, were called to investigate a report of a 3-year-old girl wandering alone in an apartment complex, they weren’t sure what they might find.
The girl was ‘‘extremely dirty,’’ according to police, with red bumps from bedbug bites covering her skin. A neighbor who sometimes babysits the girl told Fox affiliate KJTV that the filth was a result of the girl playing outside.
If officers had any doubts that the child needed help, those were erased a short time later, when the girl repeatedly told them ‘‘I’m hungry’’ and dropped a shocking one-liner:
‘‘I need a beer,’’ she told officers, according to a police report cited by KJTV.
‘‘This was a clear neglect on the mother’s part,’’ Lubbock Police Lt. Ray Mendoza told the station. ‘‘More than anything, it was the conditions the child was living under and the fact that the mom was completely oblivious to where the child had been or where it was at the time.’’
The child’s mother, Shauna Bennett, was discovered sleeping by police after they knocked on her door, which was ajar, called the 42-year-old woman’s name and eventually entered the apartment, according to the police report cited by KJTV.
Police in what they described the inside of Bennett’s home as an extremely dirty apartment, with cockroaches on the walls and mold-covered dishes in the sink.
According to police, when officers awakened Bennett, the mother had no idea where her child was.
Was she drunk?
Keith Graves, the neighbor who said he often babysits the toddler, told the station that he felt like police overreacted to the grime.
‘‘It could have been cleaned a little bit better, but Shauna was doing the best that she could under the circumstances that she was in,’’ Graves said. ‘‘They know that I babysit. They could have just brought the child to me, and I would have held on to [her] until Shauna either woke up, or I would have went down to Shauna’s apartment and knocked on the door until she woke up.’’
Police disagreed.
‘‘I had probable cause to believe that [the little girl] had not been fed, washed, or provided with any type of general medical care or treatment for an unsafe amount of time,’’ an officer wrote in an affidavit cited by CBS affiliate KOSA.
Authorities have charged Bennett with abandoning and endangering a child. She was being held in the Lubbock County Detention Center on a $15,000 bond.
The owner of the Corte Vista Apartments told KJTV that, only two weeks before, Bennett’s 3-year-old had been found wandering the complex.
He noted that he’s also asked Bennett to keep clean up her apartment.
The girl was placed with Children’s Protective Services, according to KOSA.
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Time for a night out with the boys:
"Closing the college gap, 100 male students at a time; A statewide initiative kicks off in Framingham to give high school boys a boost" by Jennifer Fenn Lefferts and Bailey Putnam Globe Correspondents February 26, 2016
FRAMINGHAM — Brotherhood is a common theme on college campuses, where fraternities, clubs, and athletic teams promote togetherness and lifelong bonds among members.
Along with drunken elitism.
But on Friday morning at Framingham State University, brotherhood was not represented by 20-year-olds wearing Greek letters. It was embodied by 100 eager high school students joining together for 100 Males to College, a new state initiative designed to provide academic support, mentoring, and guidance to help young men get into college and earn a degree.
The state Department of Higher Education launched the program to help close achievement and opportunity gaps for low-income and minority males and boost the state’s shrinking workforce.
Population is growing, though, and we supposed to be better than nation as whole.
What a bunch of agenda-pushing f**king liars!!!!!!!
“At a time when Massachusetts employers face critical shortages of college graduates, it is both an economic imperative and a matter of social justice that we help more young men achieve the dream of a higher education and the chance to pursue a career of their choice,’’ said Carlos Santiago, the state’s commissioner of higher education.
Yeah, the real unemployment rate is 37.1 percent, but don't let that spoil the narrative.
“It’s a population that needs this kind of support and the Commonwealth can’t afford to leave these students behind,’’ Santiago said. “If Massachusetts is to remain competitive economically, it really has to make an effort to bring new populations into the mainstream of education and ensure their success.”
The Department of Higher Education recently awarded a $100,000 grant to help fund the Framingham initiative. The students are divided into groups of 10, led by a “success coach” who will meet with them every other week for lessons around identity, career planning, and paying for college. They will also participate in activities based on their individual needs, such as tutoring or test preparation.
This summer, students will take part in college tours and job shadowing, and the program will continue next school year.
After hearing from speakers Friday, the 100 students invited to Framingham State broke up into groups to participate in activities and speak together with their mentors. Throughout it all, the theme of brotherhood held strong....
The Globe is one of 'em, too!
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"A well-meaning warning on pregnancy assailed as demeaning" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff February 29, 2016
A federal agency earlier this month issued a warning for women of child-bearing age: Avoid alcohol if you’re sexually active and not using birth control, because you might be pregnant and alcohol can harm a fetus.
First Zika, now this!
The intention was to give women information about choices that affect health.
But the recommendation from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unleashed a barrage of ridicule and fury, as bloggers and commentators denounced it as sexist, patronizing, and alarmist. Even “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” took a few moments to lampoon a graphic that accompanied the advisory — a likely first for a CDC alert.
The backlash surprised a leader of the campaign, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the health agency’s principal deputy director. In a recent interview, Schuchat said she was worried the brouhaha had distracted from an important message.
The uproar illustrates the challenges of encouraging healthy behavior without seeming judgmental, especially when the advice touches on women’s freedom to make choices in pregnancy and childbirth....
Maybe it is just the reaction to the endless condescension from this lying government?
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Related: Superbugs cause 1 in 7 infections caught in hospitals, CDC says
Did they check their math?
Well, I'll be vanishing for the rest of the evening since it is time for supper!
