MR WRONG: Mayday!
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 79
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: Clocking in at the Disease Factory
TODAY IS MAY 1, which is May Day, and it is also May 1, which is Commie-Pinko Socialist The Workers Control the Means of Production Day, and I can get behind both! May Day! Those are my Politics, yeah, I support the pole, the Maypole? It’s an Ancient Holiday, right? Seems legit! Also there is fire on May Day, so that’s why I put a picture of some people doing fires and stuff up top, and I support the fire and the labor of May Day. Technically, also, I support errbody having the day off on May 1, Labor-wise, and I am sitting here typing my column on May 1, but I have never claimed typing the Mr Wrong column was Productive Labor, har!
I worked my whole life. I don't apologize for taking care of business, and now I see all these big shots telling people they should go back to the coal mines and dig, and go to the factories and make sure their children follow them in succession, at the widget factory or whatever, where we are going to make somebody rich, again. I’m no Economist, but this tariff crap doesn’t make sense to me. There are people in China making all kinds of tiny junk for us that we buy on the Internet or at Party City or whatever, and we’re gonna fight that? Fuck college, man, I can’t wait to get a job at the rubber chicken factory where my family works! Hey, do they get May 1 off at the rubberchickenfabrik?
Anyway, lots of historical stuff has happened on May 1, and the event I am focused on today, May 1, is this one:
1956 – The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.
That was a really big deal, before they had a vaccine, they hadda close public areas, swimming pools and stuff, trying to stop the spread of the terrible polio disease. I know a couple of older Americans who were affected by polio, friends of my mom, they had a hard time just walking, it was a scientific miracle that there’s a fuckin’ shot that basically eradicated polio from the face of the planet. The whole fucking Planet got in on making sure people got vaccinated. I remember getting a vaccination in school, it was the oral one, I didn’t get the shot in the arm that left a lotta kids with a scar, but the alternative made it worth the scar!
Somehow, in this Economy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still has facts about polio:
There is no cure for polio (or poliomyelitis), but it can be prevented with safe and effective vaccination.
CDC recommends that children get 4 doses of polio vaccine to protect them against severe polio disease, including paralysis.
Most adults in the United States were vaccinated as children and are therefore likely to be protected from getting polio.
But here’s the CDC now on measles, a disease pretty much wiped out by vaccination, and which is all over the place right now.
Measles outbreaks are occurring globally, particularly in Asia, which means that there is an increased likelihood of cases among unvaccinated travelers returning to the U.S., which we saw in the February 19 case of an Orange County, California resident returning from Asia. Vaccination remains the best defense against measles infection. Measles does not have a specific antiviral treatment. Supportive care, including vitamin A administration under the direction of a physician, may be appropriate.
HHS Secretary Kennedy has spoken directly to Governor Abbott, Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services Dr. Jennifer A. Shuford, and other public health officials to express HHS' willingness to support local efforts in dealing with the outbreak.
First they want you to associate MEASLES with fucking ASIA, and then they bury the VACCINATION part, and wind up with the crackpot vitamin A crapola? This is what we’re dealing with in this Economy!
Here’s Wikipedia on measles:
Prior to the introduction of vaccines, more than 2 million deaths and 30 million cases were estimated to occur annually around the world. In 1954, John Enders and Thomas C. Peebles isolated the measles virus from a 13-year-old boy from the United States, David Edmonston. Enders was one of the researchers experienced with propagating poliovirus, paving the way for the Salk vaccine, and used similar techniques to grow the Edmonston strain in human kidney tissue, then amniotic membrane tissue culture, and finally chick embryo culture. This created a virus capable of replicating and generating immunity, but not of causing disease, a process called attenuation. While at Merck, Maurice Hilleman used the Edmonston B strain to develop the first successful measles vaccine, which became widely available in the United States in 1963 An improved measles vaccine became available in 1968. The measles vaccine was combined with the mumps vaccine and rubella vaccine, which are similar live vaccines given at the same ages, to create the MMR vaccine. It was licensed for use in the USA in 1971. The MMR vaccine was combined with the varicella vaccine to create the MMRV vaccine, which was licensed in 2005.
Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is a major public health problem in low- and middle-income countries, affecting 190 million children under five years of age and leading to many adverse health consequences, including death. Vitamin A deficiency is rare in the United States. A meta-analysis of clinical trials conducted in countries where VAD is prevalent concluded that when children were supplemented with vitamin A, there was a 50% reduction in incidence of contracting measles. By way of comparison, vaccination with two doses of the measles vaccine in childhood provides 97-99% protection at preventing measles. Vitamin A supplementation is not thought to reduce the risk of death from measles. Children given high doses of vitamin A from supplements or cod liver oil can accumulate to toxic levels and this can lead to hypervitaminosis A and liver damage.
In the 2025 Southwest United States measles outbreak, centered in West Texas, some families continued to refuse vaccines and instead opted for giving vitamin A supplements or vitamins A- and D-containing cod liver oil to their children after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., promoted vitamin A as prevention and treatment. Multiple children hospitalized for measles at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock also showed signs of liver damage, a symptom of vitamin A toxicity.
Jesus H. Christ on a rubber chicken! Nineteen fifty-four! We have had a vaccine for measles for like 60 years! And now this kook who runs the CDC says “vitamin A administration?!?!” I would tell you to write and phone your Congressional Representative, but at this point let’s just get out on the streets and yell at all these fucking monsters. Mayday! Mayday!
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
SIDE PIECES DEP'T.
Joe called-in to The Andy Richter Call-In Show, and then he wrote about it in Flaming Hydra.
Joe MacLeod
I like to think I am an okay writer, but I am absolutely not a good story-teller using my mouth. I can’t even tell jokes very well. I wanted to call-in, though, because it seemed like fun, kind of a game, and while I don’t think I’m good at crafting a story out loud with words, I think I am a pretty good talker, does that make any sense? Maybe like a delusional parrot, I have a facility for making word-shaped noises?
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, April 30, 2025
★★★★ Breakfast time was stifling, but the humidity ebbed swiftly, leaving dry and dazzling air. People were out in numbers and bare legs were out on the people. The tinted windows and fan air inside an Uber felt like intolerable confinement with the brightness going by outside. The tulip beds on Park Avenue were in wholly different states: a pert array of bare blown-out stems, a floating surface of pale glowing petals, a set of pink blooms rapidly proceeding to the one state from the other. On the far side of a long teatime, the air had the crispness of clean cotton twill. The late blue sky and bright treetops lingered on and on and on past that, as the sound of cutlery and conversation carried up from a back patio.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
CLICK ON THIS box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
ADVICE DEP'T.
HEY! DO YOU like advice columns? They don't happen unless you send in some letters! Surely you have something you want to justify to yourself, or to the world at large. Now is the perfect time to share it with everyone else through The Sophist, the columnist who is not here to correct you, but to tell you why you’re right. Direct your questions to The Sophist, at indignity@indignity.net, and get the answers you want.
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Practical Cookery; A Compilation of Principles of Cookery and Recipes and The Etiquette and Service of the Table, by the Department of Food Economics and Nutrition, Kansas State Agricultural College, published in 1921, and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
NASTURTIUM SANDWICHES
Butter thin slices of bread. Lay a crisp, tender nasturtium leaf on one slice, spread with thick, cooked salad dressing. Cover with nasturtium leaf, and press another slice of bread over it. A nasturtium leaf is an appetizing addition to many varieties of sandwiches.
WATERCRESS SANDWICHES
Marinate watercress with French dressing. Place between thin, buttered slices of bread.
RAW BEEF SANDWICHES
Scrape beef as for beef balls. Season with salt. Spread between thin slices of bread.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
