We Really Are Fucking Idiots

By Carl

 

Item: Anxiety Over Radiation Drives a Sales Surge for a Drug Against Thyroid Cancer

 

Really? It's come down to this?

 

Americans are rushing to grab medicine against a threat that, if it even exists, is so miniscule as to be laughable?

 

Think about it: Chernobyl occured some 25 years ago and spread radiation as far south as Spain. No noticeable uptick in radiation disease was ever reported. Cancer rates remained reasonably stable.

 

That radiation cloud was immediately over densely populated areas.

 

Any Japanese radiation cloud that gets released would have to cross an entire ocean. An entire storm-laden, wind-driven, rainy-season ocean.

 

Yes, radiation would likely hit the States, certainly the far West like Alaska and Hawaii but in a nation where motorcycle helmet laws are debated, where guns are dispensed almost as easily as candy, where the First Lady is regularly raked over the coals for having the temerity to suggest that heart attacks in teenagers are a dangerous epidemic in the making, we're panicked over a few rems of radiation?

 

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)