Author Archives: Scott Bowles

Heard Immunity

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – JULY 20: Anti-vaccine protesters demonstrate outside 2019 Comic-Con International on July 20, 2019 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)

My mom finally dumped the tax preparer she employed for the past five years, thank god.

I’d pleaded with her since she moved to South Carolina to give the accountant, an old family friend, the ax after Mom said she was still paying taxes in Georgia “because Robin said that’s where my pension was based.”

But I finally won my case this year, when Mom passed along that Robin — and her mother — said they weren’t going to get a COVID vaccine “because it alters your DNA.”

“They should be so lucky,” I scoffed. I then argued why that opinion mattered. “How would you feel if you knew your pilot felt the same way?” I asked. “Do you really want someone in charge of your fate, financial or physical, if they don’t believe in science?”

Then I stumbled upon a jarring two-month study that confirmed my mother’s accountant was hardly unique. Last week, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a detailed report on anti-vaxxer disinformation on social media. The report found that up to 65 percent of “anti-vaccine content” on Facebook and Twitter originated from twelve influencers within the anti-vaxxer movement. 

Entitled The Disinformation Dozen, the CCDH tracked 425 social media accounts supporting anti-vaxxer theories on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The accounts racked up 59.2 million followers in December — an increase of 877,000 more than they had in June.

Moreover, the analysis of 689,000 “anti-vaccine comment” posts found that about 73 percent of the content came from the Disinformation Dozen.

Regardless of your take on vaccines, I recommend reading the report, because its got some damning information, including a detailed indictment of the 12.

Atop the list is Joseph Mercola, “a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines.” Mercola, whose accounts remains active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, has around 3.6 million followers. Among is cure-alls is a “Hydrogen Peroxide Nebulization” therapy to fight coronavirus.

Joseph Mercola

Second on the list is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD), one of five organizations CCDH identifies as an anti-vaxxer group. Emblazoned atop CHD website is a garish promotion of its latest feature, Medical Racism: The New Apartheid.

From CHD website

Given the difficulty of getting communities of color to trust the medical community — particularly vaccinations — is it any wonder why we are still losing 1,000 people daily to the pandemic? The list includes authors, website founders and an alternative medicines physician. It’s a rogue’s gallery of swindlers, charlatans and the factually-challenged.

What’s impressive about the report is that it offers, like the vaccination, a path forward. Namely, de-platforming, which has become an invaluable tool in modulating — and moderating — the national blood pressure. That’s bad news for panic porn outlets like CNN, which has seen a 45% drop in viewership since Trump was knocked off his soapbox. But when’s the last time your stomach churned from the latest lie posted by Agent Orange?

Its recommendations:

  • wham Establish a clear threshold for enforcement action (such as a “two-strikes” rule on accuracy).
  • thereof Display corrective posts to users exposed to disinformation.
  • Add warning screens when users click links to misinformation sites.
  • Institute an Accountability Application Programming Interface (API) to make the AI of social media platforms more effective.
  • Ban private and secret anti-vaccine Facebook groups.

Then of course, there’s the hard way forward: through. When COVID was hurtling past a quarter-million Americans dead on its way beyond a half-million, the right brayed about the need for herd immunity. Some folks, they bloviated, may have to risk death and go back to school or work for the greater good. That was before we had vaccination options.

Now that they’re here, perhaps what we need is heard immunity. A salvo in the “Well, that’s what I hear” defense against the progress of science and emperical evidence. It helped inoculate many of us against the Big Lie, though not entirely. Dominion’s billion-dollar lawsuits against the most egregious misinformers will cull some of that herd.

Which brings us back to Mom’s H&R Blockhead accountant. According to the CCHD study, about 1 in 6 Americans prefer ignorance over information, feelings over fact. That’s means about 17% of this country doesn’t believe in advancement.

That sounds about right.

JD and Me

I know this taste.

I first experienced it in the summer of ‘79, before my freshman year of high school. The summer I turned into a Type 1 diabetic.

Before then, at a Michigan middle school, I would play pickup basketball daily, usually with a huge plug of Bubble Yum bubblegum wedged in my mouth that I’d smack incessantly and obnoxiously as pre-teens do. It was my Popeye spinach; the sugar high fueled me until darkness called the games.

Then I turned diabetic, and sugar was out. I’d still play daily, but something was off. How can it not be when a fixture in your life is suddenly gone forever? It’s an unmistakable, undefinable flavor, the taste of vacancy.

As I got older, I’d realize it’s not an uncommon thing. It happens anytime someone you love suddenly dies. It returned in 1999, when my dear friend Libby Hatch, who had offered one of her kidneys for a transplant I needed, died in a motorcycle crash three weeks after the profound gesture.

And it returned this weekend, when I gave JD away.

It killed me, giving her up. But I found myself falling daily while walking her. Since the transplant, I’ve suffered severe orthostasis, an abnormal drop in blood pressure that occurs when you stand that can lead to fainting. And while I never lost consciousness, I would “white out” as my vision faded and dizziness swelled. I’d collapse in the dog park, on a sidewalk, in my kitchen. Just wrestling a dog vest on JD — who is not yet five months but already 50 pounds of muscle and joy — left me gasping.

People would come up to me at the dog park, where I routinely had to sit in dirt while I waited for the cobwebs to clear, offering to help me on my feet.

Last week, on the day I fell twice, I called the dog walker, Lauren, and conceded the once-unthinkable: I didn’t have the health for a dog that healthy. I choked down sobs and told her, I don’t think I can do this.

Lauren, who manages dozens of dogs with a team of animal lovers, told me she and her boyfriend would be willing to adopt JD. They already had two dogs, and JD would get daily walks with the “woof pack” at the park. I could still see her five days a week. More importantly, JD would get the company and exercise she craved. And deserved.

Finally, I agreed. Lauren brought Jack over, and they all played in my backyard. As they laughed and sprinted through the yard — something I rarely can do — I began to lose it. I felt like shit. My sniffles punctuated JD’s playful growls and yips.

They sensed it, of course, and assured me: If I wanted her back, or if she somehow wasn’t a good fit for them, they’d return her in a heartbeat. “I know it’s hard,” Lauren said. “I can’t imagine giving up one of my babies.”

I could. This fucking body has repossessed much.

As they walked to the front door, JD in happy tow, they repeated their promise: Make the call, and she’s back here. I couldn’t muster a response, just a teary wave as they closed the door behind them.

The next day, I awoke to an empty house, which I guess was fitting; I was empty, too. I dragged to the tub and immersed in defeat. I thought I’d beaten this goddamned disease with the transplant. But you never defeat it. You’re always shadow boxing; it’s just a different shade.

But suddenly, a ding. Reprieve!

It was Lauren, texting to say that Friday night was a disaster. Her dogs apparently were offended at the very existence of JD (particularly the older dog), and made everyone’s existence a living hell. She would need to return JD, she said, but would continue to help me find a “forever home” for my girl.

The news jolted me out of the water like I’d dropped a toaster in it.

It wasn’t me. I may be broken, but I’m not a bad parent.

Lauren was similarly devastated; she’d come to love JD, too. But deep down, I was overjoyed. Knowing that a young, healthy couple found her energy a challenge meant that maybe I wasn’t so broken.

And now, she is back home with me. And I feel a renewed strength, a resurgent health, an enlightened sense of sight.

I may still have to find JD a home. Some one day, I may still have to concede to that jagged vacance. No matter its form, diabetes is a relentless mobster, constantly collecting on the vig.

But not today.

Today, I am a good dad. Today, I can offer her a good life.

We don’t always get to choose whether to alight the No on our Vacancy sign.

But when we can, it’s as sweet as bubblegum.

O Auteur, Where Art Thou?

From our Midwest Bureau Chief Dan Brochstein:

So I’m laying here thinking about seeing the movie “Nobody.” William wants to see it, so I’ll wait for him to return to his mother’s before I see it. But it has me thinking…are we reaching a zenith of movie stories? Could be reach at time in the not so distant future where original stories will be extremely scarce?

I think of the 1990s, a time in my generation when the best movies were made, and I’ll defend that stance with a long list of great films representing original thinking.

  • Pulp Fiction
  • American Beauty
  • The Usual Suspects
  • Reservoir Dogs
  • Heat
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • Fight Club
  • Barton Fink
  • The Matrix
  • Boogie Nights
  • Fargo

Then I see where we are now. Comic book movies…more than I can count. Comedy that is carried by sole chops of a single actor’s shtick, instead of a funny script with a good story.  Space films that live or die on the strength of the CGI.

I can count good movies from the last 20 years on two hands, and I know that’s purely subjective. I get jazzed for movies now that I wouldn’t have paid to see 25 years ago, because I’m constantly having to lower my bar.

What happens when the comic book sagas are all told stories? When the current generation of bombastic comedians have run their course? What about when Scorsese, Howard, the Coen Brothers, Tarantino, Soderberg, Levinson, Bong, Phillips and Lee stop making films? There may be rising stars out there, but I’m unaware of them.

So I return to Nobody. I want to see it because of Bob Odenkirk. But the story has been told and retold so many times before that I don’t care about it. Unassuming man has secret deadly talent from a past/double life. I immediately think of Liam Nesson in Taken, Bruce Willis in Red, Arnold in True Lies, Gene Hackman in Target.

Could it be that in 30 years movies will be just recasting old stories, with a smattering of original stories? Is this what people thought in the early 1970s?

Just my $0.02.