jenny mccarthy wants your kid to get measles: autism, vaccines, and stupid idiots

balloons full of peanut butter still ok.

Nut allergies have gotten a lot more common than when we were kids, but it's pretty crazy because for severe reactions PEOPLE REALLY HAVE TO INGEST THE NUTS!

They are crispy fried chicken wings.

But Jenny McCarthy seemed intent upon only pretending to eat the high cholesterol snack as she attended McDonald's Mighty Wing launch party in New York, on Sunday.

Despite the 40-year-old's apparent refusal to ingest the treat, she was clearly having fun teasing herself with the greasy poultry as she dangled it seductively in front of her full lips.

And she seemed to get some pleasure out of frustrating herself with the white meat as she posed for the cameras.

Positioning the wing mere inches from her mouth, Jenny made goo goo eyes while salivating over the forbidden flesh, which was encased in fried dough.

Wearing her light tresses in a smooth pile over her shoulders, the chat show host opted for a simple navy blue dress.

The frock showcased her lean and toned legs as it barely covered her sun-kissed thighs.

Completing her getup was a pair of tan platform wedges as she smiled throughout the fast food centred event.

Nut allergies have gotten a lot more common than when we were kids, but it's pretty crazy because for severe reactions PEOPLE REALLY HAVE TO INGEST THE NUTS!

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Monday, February 2, 2015 5:30 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the idea is that kids are too stupid not to eat stuff when it's at school and they aren't under direct immediate supervision

really glad i grew up in the 1980s

i hope chris christie's head caves in on him btw, fuck that guy

also: rand paul

really glad i grew up in the 1880s

well, today's kids might as well, right?

"i think the idea is that kids are too stupid not to eat stuff when it's at school and they aren't under direct immediate supervision"

And okay for pre-school kids that's fair because 3-4 yo are kinda like OH SHIT IT MIGHT BE EDIBLE and stuff all sorts of crap in their mouth. But anything older than that seriously kid probably needs a near death experience.

lol at Flouride.

believe it or not, this is a really problem in Portland, OR. time and time again we've had measure proposed to allow flouride added to the water supply (we're the only city in the country that doesn't do this) and every time it gets shot down by the public. god knows how many anti-vaxxers walk the streets around here.

I know it's a real problem. I was LOL because obv same people not vaccinating their kids are flouride haters.

yeah, it definitely comes from the same place psychologically.

the logical endpoint of that logic is just avoiding modern medicine altogether, which is.. not a good idea.

Nut allergies have gotten a lot more common than when we were kids, but it's pretty crazy because for severe reactions PEOPLE REALLY HAVE TO INGEST THE NUTS!

In this case it's because it's really easy to confuse certain foods with allergens (cookies, say) with allergen-free foods. To be honest, the trend is to put the kibosh on any home made goods, period, which allows people to better distinguish the threats from the safe stuff. Also, vital to keep in mind that as much of a PIA it often is, there are kids who, if they accidentally or purposely or whatever ingest certain foods, they may die. Flat out. And these numbers are going up. If anything, people who insist on sending, say, peanut butter products to schools are the allergen equivalent of the anti-vaxers.

Kids who are allergic to nuts should be learning not to accidentally eat nuts, right? The whole rest of the world isn't going to stop making foods with nuts.

If I want to make my son a peanut butter sandwich for lunch then I am equivalent to an Jenny M?!?

.
(we're the only city in the country that doesn't do this)

San Diego also is notably anti-fluoride.

Oh wait, they started a few years ago.

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/mar/20/debate-over-fluoride-in-water-resurfaces-in-san-di/#

Rand Paul continues to handle his antivax coverage just great (fallout from WaPo article, linked in this):

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/rand-paul-scolds-cnbc-anchor-201999.html

oh heavens, how did we ever fucking survive letting kids court death by being around kids eating other stuff

MoronWorld

xpost Hey, I get it. I think it's a pain in the ass. But I do have multiple friends whose kids carry epipens, not because the parents are paranoid, but because if exposed to certain things their kids at least swell up, at worst could die. For tree nuts, for peanuts, one for mushrooms (that's easy to avoid at school). It's a totally different world than the one I grew up with, where bee stings were the thing to look out for. For whatever reasons, severe allergies are on the rise and very real, not some figment of overactive helicopter parent imagination. It's really, really easy to avoid sending products containing peanuts to school, even easier than getting your kid a shot. And that's my comparison: saying it's someone else's problem to avoid nuts is not that different from saying let someone else get the stupid vaccine. Of course kids need to learn how to take care of themselves and how to be careful, but avoidable shit happens. Think of not sending nuts as a form of allergen herd immunity. The bonus being at home you can chow down on as much PB as you want.

And it should be clear, most restrictions are related to the classrooms themselves, not the lunchroom. If you have an allergy, you get your own table at lunch. But my understanding is that more and more schools are going totally nut-free, because in the case of (say) our school, with 640 kids grades K-5, moving from class to class all day, interacting with each other, sharing food and sneaking snacks, it gets harder and harder to keep track of everyone.

, but it's pretty crazy because for severe reactions PEOPLE REALLY HAVE TO INGEST THE NUTS

Not always true--I have a severe nut allergy (when I saw an allergist a few years ago I was kind of proud to be told I had the biggest reaction to peanuts they'd ever seen), and if someone eats peanut butter near me the smell makes my throat start to close up. it wouldn't kill me, but it would bring on asthma, nausea, heart palpitations, etc. I am a delicate little flower, obviously.

It's weird seeing the world turn all protect-kids-from-nuts, though--when I was a kid (born 1976) I had trouble even convincing people my allergy was a real thing, since nobody had ever heard of it. trendsetter!

Yeah it was after my time as a kid too, but by 1980, I was seeing friends' kids with big reactions to *something*---and then the parents would take them to the doctor, and come back with lists, charts, even: strawberries, nuts, dairy products...

To clarify re: the peanut butter/nut allergy - rarely but not never it happens that a child's allergy is so severe that they can have a reaction to touching the nut/nut butter. Even more rarely reactions have occurred when there is an area where the nut butter *was* - it was cleaned up - but a child touched that area and had an anaphylactic reaction. So sometimes yes, it is protecting that one child in a class. The schools where I sub as a nurse don't ban the foods (as far as I can tell) but the child's individual classroom may not allow particular foods for that year. There are Epi-Pens available in the classroom and the nurse's office (including ones for general use as well as for individual children's allergies).

I subbed a couple of weeks ago and a very allergic girl came in and she had gotten milk spilled on her - that was one of her allergies. We carefully washed it off and I monitored her skin (looked ok) and asked if her tongue was swelling or if she felt itchy or if she felt like she couldn't breathe, etc. She said no... and then I made her sit there for a couple more minutes. She got bored and excused herself to her classroom (probably thinking, "omg what is WITH that lady") but since I was given to understand her food allergies could be life-threatening, I felt obligated to be a nag.

Did anyone else see Larry Wilmore's show taking on the vaccine controversy last week?

I wanted to reach in and strangle the anti-vaxx lady he had on. "You never want to harm your child." Duh, of course you don't. But you also do the risk/benefit calculation, right? (I guess not but AAAARGH).

And that's my comparison: saying it's someone else's problem to avoid nuts is not that different from saying let someone else get the stupid vaccine.

Peanut allergies are someone else's problem! It's a problem presumably they will have to live with their entire life. They should start. Everyone should get the stupid vaccine because it only works really well if everyone gets it.

Peanut allergies are someone else's problem! It's a problem presumably they will have to live with their entire life.

Sure, just like folks who are immunocompromised, or children, or the elderly. But I still get and give vaccines, mostly not for me but for them. My friends with nut issues, I don't bring peanut butter cookies to their house. My friends with family getting cancer treatments, I let them know when my kids have some bug and keep them away. It's being considerate and compassionate. Fuck an anti-vax person, because they are usually or at least often being selfish. But people with real, diagnosed conditions? I'm happy to forego the PBJ.

Read this heartbreaking story: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article2578293.html#/tabPane=tabs-b0710947-1-1

Shorter version:

On Friday night, during a group gathering, she went into the lodge for a treat. The lights had been dimmed and three varieties of Rice Krispies treats prepared by the camp cook were brought out for the group, said Brothers, who was there with her own family.

"After every campfire, they provide snacks, cookies and ice cream," Brothers said, and Friday night Natalie tasted a treat topped with icing.

She spit it out right away, Brothers said, and went to find her mother to tell her she had tasted something with peanuts.

Her parents, Sacramento urologist Dr. Louis Giorgi and his wife, Joanne, responded immediately. Natalie's mother tasted the treat and also detected peanuts. The girl was given a dose of Benadryl to offset an allergic reaction, Brothers said.

They monitored Natalie, who at first seemed fine, still smiling and enjoying herself, Brothers said. Twenty minutes later, she vomited and began to have trouble breathing.

Natalie's father administered an injection with an EpiPen, a device used to deliver epinephrine that is commonly carried by individuals with serious allergies.

Frequently, an EpiPen can ward off a severe allergic reaction, but the injection had no impact. Brothers said Natalie's father ended up using three EpiPens over the course of several minutes before she stopped breathing.

That story is heartbreaking also has squat to do with what gets packed in my kid's school lunch.

? Had the camp been nut free, she'd be alive. I don't get the resistance honestly. It's only peanut butter.

Replace "packed in my kid's school lunch" with "injected into my kid's arm."

These two things are only comparable in your mind. These shots are not just for "other people's kids".

Also reading that story I am mostly struck by the randomness of all of it. It's not a terribly good argument for banning nuts, but def one for taking extreme care (which it sounds like she did until unfortunately basically that night :().

I guess I don't feel so strongly about nuts that I would want to potentially endanger, not even to the point of death but even to the point of illness, another child. Or another adult. I was on a non-profit board with someone who had a pretty significant nut allergy and I just didn't put nuts in anything that I brought to potlucks. It's just... peanut butter is not that important to me.

As for a kid needing to learn not to eat things that have nuts in them, kids are great but they're kind of dumb. They are kids. They forget things. Even without death or hospitalization, the terror of having your throat close up and being unable to breathe is a pretty harsh penalty for choosing wrong during a learning period.

I'm also 100% behind the "no homemade treats" trend, but that's for personal reasons - who has time to bake a bunch of bullshit for a kid's class? I barely have time to cook dinner.

Ultimately for me it comes down to: if I can avoid being responsible for subjecting another human to trauma, illness, or in extreme cases death, by taking the easy step of omitting a substance from my kid's lunch, I see absolutely no reason in the world not to.

Well I would say liking nuts/nut butters and finding the whole thing overblown is the main reason not to.

Huh.

I'm trying to think of a food I feel strongly enough about that I would balk at a request not to eat it around another person who could have an allergic reaction to it and I seriously can't. Cheese? Tacos? Fruit slices candy? Scrapple? I think I could forego any of them for whatever limited period of time I was around the person with the allergy.

But hey, if you love nuts and nut butters that much, I'd hate to deny you that pleasure.

We're not talking about kids eating PBJs while using kids with allergies as tables. We're talking about banning something everywhere in a school because of an incredibly slim chance that it is going to make it into a probably at most one or two kids' mouths.

I know what we're talking about. The slight risk of harm to a person vs. your personal love of nuts and nut butters. I see that as a completely avoidable risk that has very little cost to me or my kid. You don't. Just maybe put a Mr. Yuck sticker on your kid's lunch bag as a head's up.

We're talking about the difference between school being a safe place for kids with nut allergies -- many of them too young to fully understand the risk their allergies pose or to take sufficient steps to protect themselves against them -- and not. That's also the difference between their parents being comfortable allowing their kids to go to the school, and not.

The school is saying that nuts (peanuts are legumes but whatever) are a threat to the safety of their students. That's an accurate assessment. Even if the threat is rare, the cost of eliminating that threat is a minor inconvenience, so there's no good reason to take the risk.

School fires are rare, the chance of any single child being harmed in a fire is "incredibly slim". You OK with a school not taking fire safety precautions, or practicing fire drills?

Peanut butter is an extremely cheap source of daily protein provided to kids by parents who may be on very limited food budgets, and stores longer than lunchmeats or than comparably inexpensive sources that need to be refrigerated.

That story is heartbreaking also has squat to do with what gets packed in my kid's school lunch.

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Tuesday, February 3, 2015 2:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this reminded me of when joe the plumber said, ‘your dead kids don’t trump my constitutional rights.’

Lol Joe the Plumber and Jenny McCarthy.

I love how say that school bans on nuts are overkill is being equated to FUCK SAFETY altogether. You people are precious.

There hasn't been an increase in nut allergies necessarily, but there has been a dramatic increase in diagnosis of nut allergies. Who wants to be pediatrician who doesn't err on the side of caution with those stakes?

it's not your risk to take, is how i see it. people who get asked to do stuff for others' safety then decide they know better are totally on a par with anti-vaxxers. at least with anti-vaxxers their fear is of something serious, not that they'll have to bring a different type of sandwich.

it also might not be there to stop it going in a kid's mouth but on a shared surface. whoch i imagine is a fairly high probability.

Yes because of the vast physical dangers of touching tables.

Statistics on food allergies basically indicate that this is all much ado about nothing. Chances of kids getting injured playing dodgeball are higher than them getting hospitalized due to a food allergy, but I suppose you ignoramuses would argue that recess should be banned though since physical activity is preventable after all.

I really want to see the anti-vaxxer/911 truther/chemtrail believer/prepper/fluoride negator/gamergater/libertarian/Alex Jones listener Venn diagram.

Yes because of the vast physical dangers of touching tables.

this is why people such as yourself should not be trying to analyse the risks based on your superior knowledge.