soft and squishy

First, unless there is a medical reason a child should not be vaccinated (such as an allergy to a compound in the vaccine), yes I think every child should be vaccinated!

Mutation of the pathogen can and has occurred, that is not the main reason for the vaccinated becoming sick. 

So WHY do the vaccinated get sick?

An EXCELLENT question with a variety of answers.

Some vaccines wear off with time.  That is why you are supposed to get your tetanus (and pertussis aka whooping cough!) shot every 10 years or so.  Think of it as a shirt, some shirts wear out quickly and have to be replaced over and over.  Then there is that one shirt that you’ve had since like middle school and 14 years later it’s still going strong.

Different vaccine formulation have different effectiveness.  In the mid 1990s the USA switched from using whole cell pertussis vaccine to aceullar pertussis vaccines over concerns about safety. Though the safety improvements are pretty much negligible from what I’ve seen.Those who had the whole cell vaccine are less likely to develop pertussis then those who had the acellular vaccine.

Vaccines are designed to do different things. Some vaccines work so that should the person be infected the disease is milder/survivable (Those with the aceullar pertussis vaccine for example may still get sick but their illness won’t be nearly as bad as if they were unvaccinated) or protect the child long enough to be strong enough to survive it

The Bacille de Calmette et Guérin (BCG) vaccine is a very good example of this. BCG vaccine is given to children to prevent tuberculosis. The BCG vaccine is really ineffective in adults and its effectiveness in children can be a crapshoot. HOWEVER it is very good at preventing miliary TB. And this gives children a chance to survive so that they may fight off the infection. (I’m not going to go into the pathogenesis of TB though it’s really interesting! Umm to me…)

But the BIGGEST reason is

           It’s a numbers game.

What the fuck does that even mean pvivax?

It means you have to take into account

The effectiveness of a vaccine, none of them 100%

How many people around you are vaccinated?  If everyone is vaccinated and you are one of the people where the vaccine didn’t ‘take’ your chances of getting sick are really low.  Contrariwise if a LOT of people aren’t vaccinated then your chances increase.  

An imperfect analogy: think of it as being shot at.  Someone shoots at you once and your bulletproof vest doesn’t work, you have a pretty good chance that the bullet will miss you and you’re good. But if you are shot at over and over and over, pretty soon there is good chance that you’re gonna get hit. 

Now for an example!

Herd immunity (the percentage of people that are vaccinated in order to for the disease to not spread and protect the vulnerable) is 98%.

 The MMR is about 97% effective, right? Let’s begin!

You have a school in Mississippi of 2000.  Mississippi has very strict vaccination laws. Only medical exemptions are allowed.  Therefore of the 2000 students, 1994 are vaccinated, a rate of 99.7%.

All of these students are equally exposed. If you are exposed to measles you have about 90% chance of getting measles.  It is VERY infectious.

Rounded down, since you can’t have a fraction of a person: 5 of the unvaccinated children will get measles.

54 of the vaccinated children will be sick.

OMG VACCINES SUCK THE FUCK SCIENCE!

Wait, wait, wait a moment!

Look at the numbers again!  5 of the 6 unvaccinated children developed measles, that’s a 83%.

54 of 1994 children developed measles, that’s 2.7%

But when you look at that, what do more people see?  The fact that 91% of measles cases were in the vaccinated, not that 1940 children were spared measles while only 1 non vaccinated person was spared infection.

Same scenario in Colorado where the MMR vaccination rate is 81.7%

366 vulnerable children

1634 covered.

All exposed and 329 of unvaccinated children will be sick (90% infection rate) and 45 of the covered children will be sick, again a 2.7% infection rate.  In this case however, only 12% of the sick children were vaccinated.

The more unvaccinated people walking around, the more reservoirs there are for disease and for the disease to linger and expose more people.  If very few people are unvaccinated, the disease dies out quickly, there is nowhere for it to go.  The more people that are unvaccinated, the more places there are for the disease to go, exposing more people to the virus.

      Footnotes: 54 came from. Multiplying 1994 by .97 (the effectiveness of the MMR).  1-(1994*.97)=60. 60*.90(likelihood of getting measles once exposed)=54.

Oh, and guess what. Despite the fact that those compounds have never been shown to harm people, vaccine manufacturers have removed those compounds due to public pressure. Great, right? Except wrong. Those harmless compounds acted as a preservative agent, so now they have to use different preservatives that are more expensive or less effective which is making it much more difficult and expensive for people without easy access to a medical facility to get for their children.

Also regarding toxins, the harm of any toxin comes from a combination of amount and time. With a very high amount you don’t need a lot of time. For lower amounts you need a long exposure for it to build up because your body has an organ specifically designed to filter toxins out of your body. It’s called your liver. Think of it like drinking, because that’s exactly what’s happening with toxins building up in your body. You drink one beer over several hours it won’t have much effect. You drink steadily for several hours you will get drunk. You slam ten shots in ten minutes you will probably get alcohol poisoning. The point of this explanation is that there is nothing in vaccines in any sufficient quantity to harm you (and anything in sufficient quantity can harm you). I’m not even kidding when I say you eat more toxins and heavy metals in a piece of tuna than you would get in an entire series of vaccinations.

What does that mean? If it’s being found be be in vaccines, as in being discovered, then either:

a) no one knew what was in them and it’s suddenly! being discovered

Or

b) the people making them knew what was in them - for whatever reason, intentionally including toxins in their preparations - and someone else is now discovering the inclusion

(Set aside for a moment that the “toxins” and even the toxins are in amounts so small they can’t harm you unless you have an allergy, as other reblogs have stated above.)

This concept and its phrasing pair well with those of the side effects we supposedly don’t even know about.

What’s this? It’s conspiracy theory rhetoric.

We can assume the people who make the vaccines probably know what’s in them. That means that (according to the asker) they are aware there are toxins in the formulas and have chosen not to disclose - or even chosen to hide - this information from the good people of the public, you and me.

And why would that be? Generally the justification ranges between “it’s cheaper and easier for Big Pharma to use these as filler and wring more money out of us this way” to “the government wants to inject extra genetic material and perform mutation experiments on us all” (yeah, I have actually seen that one). It’s always an us-vs-them: the little people, the dedicated parents protecting their children and the ignorant masses, vs. some nebulous, malicious entity wreaking havoc on all of us via mass deception and dangerously formulated vaccines.

There is a valid critique of capitalism and the profit margin focus so dear to pharmaceutical companies and corporations in general, including the emphasis of the neurobiological model and medication as first-line treatment for disorders like depression - medication can be excellent and perfectly appropriate, and neurobiological factors absolutely play a role in these disorders, but by and large they are caused or their organic forms made worse by the pressures, alienation, and looming doomsday future of our late-stage capitalist, fossil-fuel dependant societies.

This isn’t the critique antivaxxers are levying. Their version of conspiracy and the everyman vs the shadow man is narrow-viewed and shortsighted, couched in endlessly parroted alarmist phrasing that communicates the narrative even when it’s not made explicit. It’s based on pseudoscience, bad science, and anti-science; it ends with dead and disabled children and dead and disabled adults, the ones who could not recieve vaccinations and relied on herd immunity, and the ones who could not recieve vaccinations because they relied on their parents to provide them necessary medical care and the parents failed.

Vaccinate your kids.

due to this event, it’s more important than ever to support water protectors and pipeline activsts. here is the official website for the unis’tot’en camp so you can educate yourself on the issue. also please donate if you can.

TL;DR- A post all about writing image descriptions on Tumblr.

Introduction Text

So, I’ve been looking around for a master post on how to make image descriptions, and have had no luck. So, I’ve decided to put everything I -have- learned in one place.

Why are image descriptions important?

To start off, image descriptions are important because they make Tumblr more accessible. People who use screen readers need them because they can’t see, or it’s hard to see, images, gifs, videos, etc. Image descriptions are also important for people with slow internet speeds, or people who are on mobile Tumblr. They are needed on Tumblr because the way this site is coded doesn’t allow for the normal way that screen readers read descriptions. (I won’t go into that because it’s confusing and technical.)

What are image descriptions and how do you make them?

Image descriptions are plain text (Generally, text you can copy and paste) descriptions of images, gifs, videos, and other media. On Tumblr, there are several kinds of image descriptions. 

The first describes a picture without words. This kind of description goes in brackets [ ] and tells about what is in a picture or gif. Image descriptions should start with the words “Image Description,” to indicate what it is, especially for those using screen readers. Image descriptions need to be the first comment to a picture. If you are adding a description to a picture that already has comments, just use the return key to add a few more spaces. Image descriptions must be first, or else people using screen readers will have to be read meaningless dialogue first without knowing what the comments refer to.

For example:

This is a picture of me. An image description for this picture might go something like:

[Image Description: A picture of a person sitting on a brown couch. The image is cut off at their chest. They are looking straight at the camera, and are smiling slightly. Their hair is brown and asymmetrical and falls to the right side of their face. They are wearing glasses and a white tank top with a ruffled edge. Behind them is the back of the couch. On top of the couch is a long, light brown pillow with dark brown jagged patterns on it. Behind the couch is a white wall and the edge of a windowsill.]

How descriptive you are will depend on how much time (And spoons) you have. 

Notice that I could have included more detail, such as my eye color, my freckles, or the color of my skin. (A note about skin color and image descriptions, you either need to use it all the time, or in posts where race is the main subject.)

In general, I like to bold text in brackets. This is because it helps it stand out to people who aren’t using screen readers. Organizing your image description so that people who -can- see it, can read it, is another part of accessibility.

The second kind of image description involves both text, and pictures. This can occur in several different ways. The main ones are simple pictures or gifs with a few words on them (This includes pictures with subtitles, and ones that have words in the background), comics, and infographics. The way you caption each of these is slightly different.

For pictures and gifs with words, you would start out with a normal image description that would also include a “with text that reads…” somewhere in it.

For example:

source

[Image Description: A black and white gif of Emily Osment in the film Cyberbully. She is standing on the right side of the screen. She, and the person on the left side of the screen, are facing each other. Her hair is either short, or pulled back into a ponytail, and appears blonde.She is wearing a short sleeve shirt with flowers down the front. Her left bra strap is showing and she has a bag over her right shoulder. Her words are subtitled at the bottom of the image, saying, “You should know that your words actually hurt.”]

I also have the tendency to italicize quotes to make them stand out from the rest of the image description.

As you can see here, the image description comes first with what is being said at the end. This is almost always true for captioned pictures. Regarding gifs, especially longer ones, what is being said would be put between the description of the actions shown in the gif.

For example:

source

[Image Description: A slightly blurry gif of comedian Bo Burnham making a visual pun. He is wearing a short sleeve gray shirt with a light gray object on it. He is sitting on a green couch. Behind him is a white wallpaper with green birds on it. Captioned under him in yellow says “My puns aren’t just bad…” He pulls up a white piece of paper that says ‘My puns’ on it. He rips the paper, smiling through the tear as he says “They’re tear-able”]

So that’s how captioning works when a gif is longer. But how do you write a description when two people are talking?

Like so:

source

[Image Description: Two people as simple light gray silhouettes on a light blue and tan wavy background. One person is reaching out toward the other and is captioned saying “Let me help you!” and the other replies “Thank you.”]

The more complicated the picture, the more you have to combine these elements. But, usually, pictures and gifs don’t contain more than a few lines, which helps to keep image descriptions small.

So that’s how you do single images and gifs. But what about comics, which have lots of words with their pictures, or infographs which are word heavy pictures with lots of smaller charts, diagrams and other images?

For comics, especially longer ones with lots of background and dialogue will probably be structured exactly like image descriptions for other pictures with dialogue, but with one thing added in. New paragraphs. This will help space out who is saying what, and what is in each panel so that people reading the description can understand it better.

For example:

source

[Image Description: A black and white three panel comic. There is a robot with one, black eyes stands to the right of a man wearing a tee shirt, pants, and a hat. Behind them is a white background with part of it shaded gray using pixels. The robot introduces the man,

Robot, pointing to Chad: “This is my roommate Chad”

Chad, waving: “Hi there.”

Robot, making a thumbs up: “He’s a cartoonist and the best buddy a robot lie me could ask for.”

Chad smiles and holds his hands on his hips.

Chad, frowning and looking down at the Robot: “By the way, your part of the rent is due.”

Robot, looking annoyed: “He’s also slightly annoying.”]

For more complicated comics, or at least ones that change their view, perspective, etc, the new setting also should be described.

For example:

source

[Image Description:  A person sitting in front of a desk for an interview. They have short brown hair and are wearing a tie. The person behind the desk is wearing glasses and is holding a paper. The person behind the desk, presumably a manager, asks the other person, an applicant for a job position a question.

Manager, holding onto the edge of their glasses in one hand, and a paper with the other: “Mr.Idangam, please describe yourself at the present moment.”

The next panel zooms in on the applicant’s face.

Applicant, smiling with eyes closed: “I am a man who is describing himself at the present moment.”

The panel under that focuses on the manager’s face.

Manager, taking their glasses off: “Welcome aboard!”

The door of the office is show open. Above the door is a sign that reads ‘Grelling & Nelson Incorporated.’ The applicant and the manager are shaking hands across the desk.]

The easiest way to put in a change of setting is to describe it immediately before the dialogue in that scene.

When it comes to infographs, which are mostly text but in an image, you can briefly describe what the infographic is about, and any images near the top or it. Do not use the image description to put down the text in the infographic. Infographs are text heavy, and they need more spaces and specialization then just the image description. You can use bullet points, bolding, and italics to make the text more organized. Then, if there are any other images in the text, they can be described in small image descriptions.

For example:

source

[Image Description: An infograph about what happens in an internet minute. There is a clock in the upper left corner with boxes coming out of it. Each box has the name of a website, and each is tagged with a fact about the website.]

In a minute on the internet here’s what happens:

639,800 Gigabites of global IP data are transferred

135 botnet infections occur

6 new Wikipedia articles are published

20 new victims of identity theft occur

204 million emails are sent

1,300 new mobile users come online

47,000 apps are downloaded

$83,000 in sales are collected

61,141 hours of music are played

100+ new Linkedin accounts are created

20 million photos are viewed on Flickr

3,000 photos are uploaded to Flickr

320+ new Twitter accounts are created

100,000 new tweets are sent

277,000 people log into Facebook

6 million Facebook profiles are viewed

2 + million searches are made on Google

30 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube

1.3 million videos are viewed on Youtube

And future growth is staggering:

Today the number of networked devices are equal to the population [A picture of a black stick figure standing on the planet with the symbol for wireless coming out of their head. The symbol is five curved, yellow lines.]

By 2015, the number of networked devices will be double the population. [The previous picture now has two wireless symbols coming out of their head, and a 2X over them.]

In 2015, it would take you five years [A red arrow with the word ‘IP’ on it is shown linking up this information to the next] to view all video crossing IP networks each second.

So that’s what an infographic might look like with an image description.

When it comes to videos, you would probably approach it similarly to an infographic or a longer gif. It would be similar to a longer gif in that there would be a brief description first, and the the dialogue would be under that, with the scenes and actions also described. However, the dialogue of the video would not be in the image description. Instead, it would be outside of it, like the information in an infographic. 

Like so:

[Video description: A video of a cat that visits the person who is taping the video. The cat’s name is VeeSee, or Visitor cat. The cat is gray and and brown, with the brown striped slightly on their body. The cat’s tail is long and their eyes appear green. In the video the person taping follows the cat into the kitchen.] 

Video Taper: “Mreow, mreow”

[VeeSee meows back and then turns around from the camera and begins to walk into the kitchen. The video taper follows VeeSee as they brush up against a chair in the kitchen and walk to a door leading out of the house.]

Video Taper: “Mreow.”

[VeeSee meows as they rub against a cabinet.]

Video Taper: “Mreow. VeeSee, tss tss. Visitor cat, pff pff.”

[VeeSee looks back at the camera and meows.]

Video Taper: “Mreow.”

[VeeSee meows in response and walks towards the camera. The video taper meows at VeeSee as they walk to a waterbowl]

Video Taper: “Mreow…Mreow…Mreow.” 

[VeeSee meows back and sniffs the water bowl.]

Video Taper: “Mreow… D’aww, it looks like he’s preoccupied.”

[VeeSee drinks some water.]

When it comes to audio posts, if you can usually find lyrics or transcripts online. If you can’t, but you’ve got the spoons, you can always write your own.

A few helpful hints:

Sometimes transcripts will be available for popular videos or newscasts

Check the source for information that will be helpful in writing an image description.

Suddenly, this man standing on the outskirts of our conversational circle piped up with “actually, I think men are more discriminated against than women these days.”

 All conversation died.

I turned to look at him and he had this smug, insufferable grin on his face, relishing this moment, expecting us to waste our time and energy refuting this ridiculous thing he had just said.

The Devil’s Advocate was among us.

And, in my mind, I saw the next 15+ minutes playing out. The parade of facts and statistics in a vain attempt to defend ourselves, our gender, and to prove that misogyny is real. The glib, snide denials from some shithead who is getting off on our pain and frustration. The Gish Gallop of bullshit that would take a whole evening to properly dismantle. It was depressing and overwhelming. I hated it. I had to kill it before it began.

So I looked him dead in the eye and I said “OK,“ shrugged, and just walked away. 

Nothing I have ever said to another human being has ever been so crushing. As I walked away, I watched the smug grin vanish and confusion and anxiety set in. The rest of the group turned their backs to him and carried on as if he had never spoken - as if he was invisible. He was still staring at me when I walked over to another friend and told her what he had said. I pointed him out for her and made direct eye contact with him while we both laughed.

or this:

Looks good.

This:

is also perfectly acceptable.

However this:

is the stuff of nightmares.

This however looks cool and enhanced, I think way fewer people would look at this with pity

Twitter

Can we please stop acting like this is something Trump suddenly brought upon us??

The Camps started well before Trump.

Obama still holds the record for most deportations as President. Hillary Clinton the record for most Deportations as Secretary of State.

When she was in the Senate, Clinton supported the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a bill to build more walls on the border.

Obama used the very same “good immigrant/bad immigrant” dichotomy bullshit while promoting DACA. His rhetoric was almost identical to Trump’s in wanting to “get rid of the criminals” but keep “the good people.” “Felons not families”

Bill Clinton running for reelection in 1996: We must not tolerate illegal immigration. Since 1992, we have increased our Border Patrol by over 35%; deployed underground sensors, infrared night scopes and encrypted radios; built miles of new fences; and installed massive amounts of new lighting. We have moved forcefully to protect American jobs by calling on Congress to enact increased civil and criminal sanctions against employers who hire illegal workers. Since 1993, we have removed 30,000 illegal workers from jobs across the country.

Some come from large-scale industrial mines owned by companies with poor environmental records and a history of labor violations. These mines don’t exist for the purpose of excavating crystals; usually, they’re gold or copper or cobalt mines. But alongside the gold, miners often find seams of jewelry-grade crystals as they excavate huge swaths of land: profitablemining “byproducts.”

…For example, this large blue chrysocolla—a “supportive goddess energy stone”—is from the Tyrone Copper Mine, and this $48 pyrite stone to “promote positive thinking” is from the Chino Copper Mine. These are the two largest copper mines in New Mexico, and according to the environmental group Earthworks, they “will generate an estimated 2 billion gallons of acid and metals contaminated seepage every year, requiring water treatment in perpetuity.” The mines have also caused “severe surface and groundwater contamination, and the State of New Mexico and U.S. Department of Justice have filed natural resource damage claims against the company for damages to water and wildlife resources.”

Some come from large-scale industrial mines owned by companies with poor environmental records and a history of labor violations. These mines don’t exist for the purpose of excavating crystals; usually, they’re gold or copper or cobalt mines. But alongside the gold, miners often find seams of jewelry-grade crystals as they excavate huge swaths of land: profitablemining “byproducts.”

…For example, this large blue chrysocolla—a “supportive goddess energy stone”—is from the Tyrone Copper Mine, and this $48 pyrite stone to “promote positive thinking” is from the Chino Copper Mine. These are the two largest copper mines in New Mexico, and according to the environmental group Earthworks, they “will generate an estimated 2 billion gallons of acid and metals contaminated seepage every year, requiring water treatment in perpetuity.” The mines have also caused “severe surface and groundwater contamination, and the State of New Mexico and U.S. Department of Justice have filed natural resource damage claims against the company for damages to water and wildlife resources.”

George Wall, a doorman at the University Medical Center’s Outpatient Building with 7 pound, 39 inch Bean he grew in his garden - 1963

Ann Arbor News photo

Source; Ann Arbor District Library