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Ridgerunner

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Jim Jordan, the Republican congressman from Ohio, was treated to some free history lessons on Twitter after he wrongly suggested on Tuesday that the Founding Fathers would have objected to measures like stay at home orders that are intended to limit the spread of COVID-19.
“60 million Americans are subject to a stay at home order or curfew.11 million are right here in Ohio. What would the Founders say?” Jordan tweeted on Tuesday morning.
Shortly after, historians very quickly pointed out that this isn’t a hypothetical, there actually is an answer to Jordan’s question: The way George Washington and other founding fathers responded to a smallpox epidemic that happened during the American Revolution.

“In July of 1776 the entire … city of Boston was closed so they could safely inoculate for smallpox. It lasted months and no one could leave once it began. They did it again in 1778,” Andrew Wehrman, a history professor at Central Michigan University, tweeted. “The Founders would be proud that the government was protecting its citizens from disease.”
“There was a massive smallpox epidemic during the American Revolution. George Washington quarantined the infected, refused to let people from hot spots travel to his army, and even sent a thousand soldiers to Boston to prevent the spread there,” Kevin Kruse, a historian at Princeton University, tweeted in response to Jordan’s tweet.
Indeed, during the American Revolution, smallpox began spreading within the Continental Army and amongst civilians in Boston. To help prevent further spread, Washington isolated those suspected of being infected and prevented anyone from Boston from entering the military zone, according to National Geographic. Washington later had soldiers undergo variolation — a precursor to vaccination in which a dose of the live virus was inserted into a patient’s arm — to increase immunity against smallpox.

At the end of 1777, according to National Geographic, around 40,000 soldiers had been inoculated and infection rates dropped from about 20 percent to 1 percent.
Joanne Freeman, a historian at Yale University specializing in American history, noted that the Founding Fathers would “say a range of things” but would “agree on the existence of something called the ‘common good.'”
“‘The Founders’ would understand — profoundly — the risk inherent in epidemics. [They] didn’t fully understand the cause or cure of curses like cholera and yellow fever, but they understood the need for group action of some kind to fight it,” Freeman wrote in response to Jordan’s tweet.
 

digitS'

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Some people ..

. read history,

instead of just inventing stories?

Steve
hoping that the Louisiana congressman wasn't one who discouraged people from following cautions
 

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Smithsonian archivists recently completed 2 decades of work, digitizing the papers of 23 American presidents, from George Washington to Coolidge. Even notes by a 13 year old Washington were included :).

Smithsonian

digitS'
 

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here is an interesting article on origin science trying to figure out where it came from and attempts to control the science being done to figure this out.


someone asked me if i were surprised by the attempts to smooth things over or to cover it up and i said of course not. they have a very different society and a much more controlled population. still i think the science will come out eventually and we will know more no matter if they cooperate or not. as one comment was made about bats flying across borders...

i still need to read through it all again when i'm more awake though.

i'm sure the WHO team will have some interesting experiences too in their trip.
 

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Wow!

Disfunctional family, much? Stanley Johnson, the current United Kingdom Prime Minister's father, is responding to Brexit by applying for French citizenship.


Steve
 

Marie2020

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Wow!

Disfunctional family, much? Stanley Johnson, the current United Kingdom Prime Minister's father, is responding to Brexit by applying for French citizenship.


Steve
We won't see their rear ends for dust once our country has been sold off and completely ruined.

Our PM has written that his father was not very good to his wife. I would leave if my son publicly embarrassed me after years of supporting him too get him where he is today
 
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I'm not sure why an extinct species of elephants was mentioned right off. Several species of the horse have become extinct and are closer cousins of the rhino, living or dead.

Steve

because Wooley Mammoths are what most people think about when thinking of the ice-age and large creatures that existed back then? at least that is my guess.

i was interested to read that it was perserved so they will be able to get DNA easily from it and other samples, but it is not mature and the sex isn't known yet, but if there are stem cells they can likely figure out how to get either egg or sperm cells eventually. i'd be happy to have such beasts come back if there was a place for them to live. perhaps on Antartica? i don't even know what they eat, but i'd assume mostly vegetables.
 

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Book him.gif
 

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