Australia's most debunked woman, and occasional president of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is at it again. Here's a little tweet she fired off this morning:
I wonder, readers, if you can guess what I'm going to say next?
Yes, that's right. Predictably, the article to which Meryl Dorey links says nothing of the sort. In fact, it says:
Barely two weeks after World Health Organisation (WHO) declared India as a polio-free nation, an 18-month-old female child was admitted to a state-run hospital in Kolkata with suspected polio on Monday.
The child, Sumi, a resident of Indrabala village near Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district, was admitted with symptoms of paralysis with disability in movement and fever.
The child’s stool samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune and School of Tropical Medicine in Kolkata for confirmatory tests. The reports are expected next week.
That's pretty clear, right? Unconfirmed. Polio-like symptoms. Don't know what it is. Tests are being run.
Now, those of us who've been with Stop the AVN since near the beginning will remember Meryl's own demands and assertions over a certain pertussis diagnosis about three years ago - Meryl was certainly not going to accept a diagnosis without firm scientific evidence then, and made several public statements to the effect. What's different here? Well, of course, the glove is on the other hand. When the conclusion is anti-vaccine, Meryl accepts it at face value. When the conclusion is otherwise, she demands an impossible level of proof.
More priceless is the first comment on the Hindustan Times Story.
I'll just re-iterate that for copypasters and googlebots:
Another foolish story by HT... Dont Panic... this was case of Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP)... there are 40 such case in 2012 already reported in 24 Parganas (S) only. The child is completely ok now.. It was a case of transient flaccidity. stool is being collected (like any other AFP case). Dont Panic...
there will be at least 1 AFP case/1lakh under15 population/year even after polio eradication (cause-traumatic neuritis, GB, Transverse myelitis, other viral neuritis etc)
That couldn't have been scripted better, but one last thing. Note the timestamp on Dorey's tweet. Note the time of this post. Note the "13 hours ago" on the story comment.
The comment was on the page when Dorey tweeted her nonsense interpretation. Not only did she fail to read the story properly, she failed to look at the comments (of which there are only 3) AT ALL.
This woman doesn't deserve an internet connection, never mind a public platform to comment on vaccine issues.
This is not polio. This is not provocation polio. This is a farce.
She's utterly incompetent, and she demonstrates it herself on a regular and somewhat hilarious basis. Thanks Meryl.
posted @ Wednesday, March 14, 2012 11:37 AM