Isn’t medical science amazing?
Every morning I take a little white pill that allows me get annoyed by almost anything at all, big or small, throughout the day, without having a heart attack or a stroke.
I can watch Prime Minister Justin Trudeau put our country’s sanity at risk by providing his political rivals with wedge issues, and I can listen to Andrew Scheer’s plans to hammer the wedges in so he can take us back to – and beyond – Harperism. And my heart skips nary a beat.
Even Donald Trump’s attempts to destroy the world’s economy, perch us on the edge of a nuclear abyss, and blithely march humanity into climatic catastrophe can’t push my blood pressure outside of my safety margin, thanks to that tiny pill.
That pill also protects my vascular system from inanely redundant phrases that threaten to destroy the English language – and to explode my brain – phrases like “one-year anniversary” which is like saying “one-year year after”, or “free gift” which usually means that you’re actually paying for it, or “chai tea” which translates to “tea tea”, or… I could go on, but my brain would explode.
And then there’s the measles.
There are kids coming down with the measles in Greater Vancouver, a modern, progressive city with two world-class universities, centres of learning and understanding.
There are medical facilities here that rival the best in the world, and we have a nearly free healthcare system that offers the best of medicine.
And still our children are threatened by a devastating disease that vaccinations practically banished from our side of the world decades ago.
My tiny little white pill keeps my blood pressure at a survivable level in the face of aggravating proof that, despite our esteemed institutions of learning and medicine, we are surrounded by fools.
Unvaccinated children – and all their friends and acquaintances – are put at risk often by parents who claim to be “educated” (clearly not synonymous with “intelligent”), and many of whom are themselves protected by the vaccinations they deny their children.
I’m thankful my parents weren’t among the Educated Ignorant. The vaccine for measles was developed a few years after the disease almost killed me, but they did ensure that we got any vaccines that were available: diphtheria, polio, small pox, and such.
Throughout the world, measles still kills more than 100,000 children each year, and debilitates at least as many more. Some of those numbers are now reappearing in the Western Hemisphere.
Someone needs to invent a tiny little white pill that keeps stupidity at a survivable level.
