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England's National Health Service is urging parents to get their children vaccinated for the flu ahead of the holiday season to protect grandparents and other vulnerable relatives:
Flu vaccines administered through a nasal spray rather than an injection have been rolled out this autumn for two and three-year-olds, and children in reception class and years one to four in primary school. Children are super-spreaders because of the greater likelihood of them contracting flu at nursery or school, where germs are passed on at a rapid rate. But only 18% of school-age children have had the nasal spray immunisation, according to the latest figures.
Prof Keith Willett, NHS England's medical director for acute care, said: "Flu can be spread more easily by children, especially to vulnerable relatives such as older grandparents, those with heart or lung conditions and pregnant family members. Last year, millions of people missed out on their free vaccination and yet it's one simple, common sense step to help us all stay healthy this winter."
With less than a month until Christmas, the NHS is urging parents to book their children in for the free vaccination to help curb infection over the festive season, when family get-togethers can spread the infection.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror (a tabloid) claims that Russian agents are spreading anti-vaccination propaganda in the UK in an effort to destabilize the country:
Russian cyber units are spreading false information about flu and measles jabs in the UK, experts warn. [Ed's Note: The current flu immunisation is applied via a nasal spray - there are no 'jabs' involved.] Vladimir Putin is believed to want to erode trust in US and European governments. The state-sponsored units are spreading the lies on social media to destabilise Britain, it is claimed. The Kremlin has previously been accused of attempting to influence Brexit and Scottish independence. Now, it is feared it is trying to create distrust over flu jabs and the MMR measles vaccine.
[...] Security services are so concerned over the threat to public health and security that Government departments have been ordered to monitor social media and flag up risky articles. Health chiefs have had emergency meetings over the spread "fake news" over vaccination campaigns. [...] We can reveal public health officials are investigating whether an outbreak of measles last week in Liverpool and Leeds was fuelled by parents not vaccinating children due to "false information read on the internet".
Also at BBC. BBC's collection of newspaper covers.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:39PM (6 children)
As for double incomes, that should *not* be the norm, because without women taking a risk in the event of divorce there is little incentive to resolve relationship problems.
All that does is lead to virtual slavery for women and pushing people to stay in monogamous relationships leads to abuse and unhappiness. Abusive relationships were the norm before double incomes, because women had nowhere to go if they were unhappy.
We'll fix this. If not via the law, we'll fix it with evolution.
We'll fix it by having the state assume responsibility for child-raising, which is basically how it was before we stupidly invented monogamy. Back in the hunter-gatherer days, there was no marriage, and children were raised collectively by the village. We just need to go back to that, except with the modern version which involves governments.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:21PM (5 children)
Village != government. It's not even wrong.
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture. Tribes are well-known for have a huge variety of social systems and values. So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
And emotions aren't a recent invention of modern man. Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:44PM (4 children)
And while we weren't data collecting back in the prehistoric era (by definition), marriage is ancient, wide-spread, and thus, probably predates agriculture.
There's no evidence to support this.
So it is likely that we had tribes back to the beginning of humanity who had monogamy relations (as well as other sorts of relationships) just like we do now.
It's possible, but again there's no evidence to support it.
Pre-contact Hawai'ian culture had no monogamy among non-royals, and that was until relatively recent times.
Things like jealousy and cuckoldry would have been a problem from ancient times. Monogamy is one way to manage that.
Monogamy arose along with agriculture and the concept of land ownership. Jealousy and cuckoldry are only an issue in a culture where men care about their "legacy" or who's going to inherit "their" land. (Notice that, in traditional cultures including American culture until recently, it was only sons who were valued, and daughters were not.) In a communal village, such concepts simply don't exist. People have relations with whomever they please, whenever they want, and any children that result are raised by the community at-large.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:13PM
The fact that marriage is wide-spread in unrelated cultures is the evidence. Tribes in the remote Amazon rainforest have it; unmarried women get gang raped.
Jealousy and cuckoldry are issues wherever women historically needed male support for survival. It's strongly in the DNA of people from cold climates. Modern life may be different, but the imprint of the ancient environment has yet to be purged from our DNA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:59AM (2 children)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse pantheons. And many origin tales of humanity start with a man and a woman.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today, including monogamy.
I disagree. Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations. I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
Well, obviously no one wrote such things down in prehistory. But we have oral tales. For example, I can think of a number of ancient deities who had a single spouse such as the Greek or Norse
No, we don't. Those mythologies you cite come long after the invention of agriculture, and sure as hell don't extend back to hunter-gatherer times.
And once again, there is huge variety in hunter-gathering cultures today
I'm sure there were plenty of cultures that did as you indicate above, but I also am sure there were cultures which did not.
Which proves that monogamy isn't a necessary part of human culture. If it were, they'd all be monogamous, but as you admit, they aren't by a long shot. As I've said before, monogamy only became really universal among human cultures with the invention of the notion of land ownership and agriculture.
Jealously and cuckoldry are clearly ancient emotions which are exhibited in similar fashion among other mammals and aren't particular to monogamous situations.
They're particular to situations where there's a shortage of one of the sexes (usually females). Eliminate that problem (and the sexual frustration that comes with it), along with the notion of parents being completely responsible for raising their offspring, and these emotions (which are simply a by-product of fear) go away. The whole idea of "cuckoldry" after all comes from the notion that a man "owns" a woman, and also from the modern idea that a man is responsible for providing for all the children of "his" women. Eliminate marriage and this idea of owning another person and then "cuckoldry" disappears as an idea, and jealousy has little place: if a guy gets mad that some woman is sleeping with another man, he can just go find another willing partner. It's only in monogamous marriage-oriented societies where this is somehow a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:15PM
OTOH, if marriage was present in some form from at least the human population bottleneck of 75k years ago (Toba eruption), that would easily explain its prevalence now.
Moving on, even when pure monogamous marriage is not the only form of marriage, it often remains the most common sort, perhaps due to economics, lack of availability of mates, or desires of the couple. For example, almost 40% of listed cultures [uci.edu] (data comes from the Ethnographic Atlas [wikipedia.org]) are "occasionally polygamous", that is, have the potential to marry multiple times, but don't on average.
Emotions don't work that way. They're biological and hence, inherited from a time when they were preferentially propagated, perhaps because they were an evolutionary advantage.