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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 Wednesday November 29 2017, @03:56PM (7 children)
We have 7,000,000,000 people on planet. Soon 10,000,000,000.
No, current projections show (IIRC) the global population leveling off around 8-9 billion, and probably falling after that.
There's a couple of problems here:
1) it's easy for the population to fall drastically, if everyone turns middle-class and starts having only 1.2 kids. Within a couple of generations, your population is cut in half or worse.
2) our economic systems and social services are not set up to handle population reduction *at all*. You need more productive younger people to support the not-as-productive older people. (And killing off the older people to remove them as a burden won't work, because then the younger people won't bother being productive any more since they can't even look forward to retiring.)
3) a bigger population results in more innovation; we've only enjoyed the technological pace we have because of a very large population.
4) the planet can handle a LOT more humans than it has now, the problem is that it can't handle billions more living a middle-class American lifestyle with a McMansion in the exurbs and 3 gasoline-powered cars. Build more cities like Manhattan or Tokyo with everyone taking public transit and living in small condos, and figure out how to grow meat artificially, and grow food in vertical buildings with robots, and the planet can comfortably support 3-4x the current population, probably more. Build giant rotating artificial habitats in space and we can support many billions more.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:00PM (6 children)
Cut back on the services, and you've fixed that problem.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:36PM (5 children)
Then you either have what I already mentioned in the parentheses, or you have a shitty dog-eat-dog society that only sociopathic libertarians (like about half of all tech workers) really want to live in.
One thing that'd help is eliminating aging medically, so that there's no more retirement and no more ageism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:27AM (4 children)
Well, do you want to solve the problem or do you just want to whine impotently about it? Reminds me of the patient complaining to their doctor "It hurts when I do this." The doctor's reply? "Then don't do that."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @04:02PM (3 children)
Other, less-dysfunctional societies seem to get by just fine with plenty of services, and enjoy a higher quality of life than Americans do as a result.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:32PM (2 children)
You get what you pay for. Americans are paying to increase the price of various services (particularly education and health care) not paying for higher quality services. While I applaud your interest in higher quality services, that's not the point of US government services for the most part and hence, becomes yet another reason to cut back on those services.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 30 2017, @05:37PM (1 child)
Americans pay more per-capita for education and healthcare than other industrialized nations, and get much poorer-quality services for their money. (Their healthcare money isn't coming so much from tax dollars though, it's coming directly out of their bank accounts or paychecks.) Having higher-quality services for the same tax money we pay is certainly possible, though perhaps not in America just because we're too dysfunctional as a society.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 30 2017, @06:17PM