Why Shoot the Doctors?

On Friday 8th August, a gunman opened fire on the offices of the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, but it barely seemed to make a ripple in the news. The British media seemed to ignore it. Why disregard this horrendous attack?

Bullets hit the buildings and shattered windows, causing CDC employees to hide fortheir safety as over 500 rounds were fired at their workplace. In this hail of gunfire only one person died, that is still one person too many. David Rose, 33, was a police officer, who graduated from the police academy in March, later died in hospital from his wounds.

All so unsurprisingly, this was the work of a lone gunman. He was Patrick Joseph White, 30, who had tried to get into the CDC’s headquarters but was turned away. He then went to the building across the road, from where he opened fire on the CDC Headquarters. He was found dead there.

This sorry story is all too sad but all too familiar from America, the lone gunman, with some sort of grudge, takes his guns and decides to seek “revenge” on an organization, his ex-employer or even just complete strangers. But why did this man choose the CDC?

The CDC is America’s national public health organization. They monitor infectious diseases in the country, especially new and emerging ones, track outbreaks of infectious diseases, including managing vaccination programs. They are not a secretive or shadow agency, they are a public health organization, who are very open about what they do. The question is still, why attack them?

The shooter believed he had been harmed by the Covid vaccination, causing him to be depressed and suicidal, none of which are recognised side effects. There have been so many conspiracy theories about the Covid vaccination flying around the internet and social media, many of them are so outlandish as to be almost laughable. But was this shooting just a logical progression of these conspiracy theories? Previously, the FBI warned that prominent conspiracy theories, including the right-wing QAnon hoaxes, are fuelling domestic extremists to carry out acts of terror. Is this the first anti-vax conspiracy to fuel an act of terror?

Robert Kennedy Jr, American Secretary of Health, said he was "deeply saddened" by the attack. "We know how shaken our public health colleagues feel today. No-one should face violence while working to protect thehealth of others," he said. But is he innocent of all blame? He has been fanning the fires of anti-vax conspiracy theories for years.

He has previously said vaccinations cause autism, which is just untrue. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has examined extensive research and studies,over many years, and found no link between the MMR vaccination and autism.

Kennedy has also cast baseless doubts on the effectiveness of vaccinations, especially the Covid vaccinations, and misrepresented their side-effects. He has been accused of spreading misinformation about vaccines.

He has been a long time denier of vaccinations’ effectiveness. Over twenty years ago, he jumped onto the conspiracy theory about thimerosal in vaccines. Thiomersalis an organomercurial derivative of ethylmercury, meaning it is a substance made from another substance that is a mercury salt. But saying it is dangerous because its a derivative from a mercury salt is like saying table salt is dangerous because it’s a sodium salt. Plus, all the “evidence” used to claim thimerosal was “dangerous” was obtained from studies into mercurypoisoning in food. But Kennedy doesn’t seem to let facts get in his way when he jumps onto another anti-vax conspiracy.

Kennedy is now in charge of America’s health policies.

At the beginning of August, Kennedy’s health department halted $500m in mRNA vaccine research, ending 22 federal contracts. Most vaccines contain a weakened or dead bacteria or virus but mRNA vaccines contain small pieces ofmRNA, usually a small piece of a protein found on the virus’s outer surface,this triggers the body’s normal immune response, which recognises that the protein is foreign and produces antibodies against it. mRNA vaccines are generally safer because they use the body’s immune system to fight pathogens, the mRNA Covid vaccines were very effective (between 94% and 95% effective), though no safety concerns were identified from them, and researchers believe this technology will have many further uses and benefits.

Peter Hotez, a pediatrician who directs the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, said about mRNA vaccines, “for a pandemic situation with anew and previously unknown pathogen, or for cancer vaccines and immunotherapeuticit [mRNA technology] has distinct advantages.” Dr Jerome Adams, who served as the US surgeon general during Donald Trump’s first presidency, said the mRNA vaccines technology helped end the Covid-19 pandemic and saved more than 2million lives “by the most conservative estimates”. But Kennedy said, while justifying his ending of mRNA research funding, “(They) fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu”. This is untrue because there is no evidence to back this claim.

Kennedy’s vaccine denial is now manifesting in government policy, cutting funding for mRNA research because it “fails”. This sends out a wider message to other vaccine deniers that they are right too. It can also empower people like the CDC shooter, reinforcing their extreme views. Nothing happens in a vacuum, in any society.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the CDC workers’ union, said the violent shooting didn’t happen in a vacuum but “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured”. They said vaccine misinformation had put scientists at risk.

But why did the British media ignore this shooting?

Many British right wing newspapers and media outlets have supported anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, reporting them as almost facts and drawing links that aren’t supported by the evidence. They gleefully jumped onto Andrew Wakefield’s discredited and fraudulent study that tried to discredit the MMR vaccine, but were slow to report on the deception behind it when it was exposed. Even the BBC, supposedly the last bastion of “balanced” reporting, still refers to vaccinations as “jabs”, a derogative term first used by the anti-vaccination movement. Is it any wonder they ignored this shooting?

And what did Donal Trump do in response to this shooting?

He has sent the National Guard into Washington DC to “police” it’s streets becausehe claims there’s a crime wave sweeping the city, even though data from the police department showed that homicides dropped by 32% between 2023 and 2024, reaching their lowest level since 2019. It shows were his priorities are, and they aren’t with stopping dangerous conspiracy theories.

Drew

 

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Threads: The Film That Frightened Me at 18 and Still Scares Me Now

 

It was a terrifying television film but I couldn’t stop watching. A bomb had exploded followed by a mushroom cloud rising above the city. That was shocking but the aftermath was terrifying, how quickly everything disintegrated and fell apart, and how no one came to rescue the survivors, they were just left alone in this burned world. I watched it all on my own.

It was Sunday evening, 23^rd September 1984, and I was eighteen. I was sat watching my portable television in my bedroom. It was my most beloved possession because I could watch whatever television programs I wanted to without my father’s criticism or censorship. That evening neither of my parents would have wanted to watch or approve of the television film on BBC 2. But I wanted to watch it. I enjoyed the television films and plays on BBC 2, they were different and interesting, on subjects I knew so little about, but they were also such good television dramas.

I’d heard about Threads, it had been on the cover of that week’s Radio Times, it was about a nuclear attack on Britain. This was the height of the Cold War, many people were talking about nuclear war, and right-wing politicians were speaking loudly about a “survivable nuclear exchange.”

Threads scared me that night, it exposed the lie of the survivable nuclear war, in such a terrifying way, and it left lasting images in my memory. Images that I would draw upon whenever someone else would talk about a survivable nuclear war, that great lie. I was afraid of nuclear weapons before watching Threads, how could one weapon kill so many people, but after watching it, I was terrified of them.

But that was forty years ago and I was a very impressionable eighteen-year-old. Had Threads been so bad? Was it so terrifying? Did it still stand up now?

To mark the fortieth anniversary of its original broadcast, the BBC repeated it on 9th October 2024, on BBC Four and can still be viewed on BBC iPlayer.

I watched it again, the following Tuesday morning, via BBC iPlayer, as I did our weekly ironing. I’m forty years older now and not easily shocked. As a former healthcare professional, I know what radiation can do to the human body. This is a forty-year-old film, made on a shoestring budget (£400,000 at the time), so how scary could the special effects be?

Forty years later, Threads shocked and then terrified me, all over again, but also for different reasons.

Threads starts out as a kitchen-sink drama, it was written by Barry Hines. It follows a young Sheffield couple, Jimmy and Ruth, as they prepare for their wedding, she’s pregnant, and his working class family will meet her middle class one. Ruth has morning sickness, Jimmy argues with his workmates, and they go to the pub together in the evening. In the background, there are heightened international tensions between the West and Russia which are reaching boiling point, but this is only shown as newspaper and television headlines, hardly effecting the main characters.

Suddenly, the British government declares a national emergency, closing motorways, emptying hospitals and placing the army out on the streets. Then, mid-morning, a nuclear bomb hits Sheffield. An EMP pulse disables all electronics, including cars, a shockwave destroys buildings in a wide radius, which is followed by a firestorm which sets almost everything on fire. This kills thousands of people in Sheffield, killing most of the film’s characters. The only one left alive is a pregnant Ruth, who wonders, shell-shocked, through the ruins of the city. But no one comes to her rescue. The hospitals are overrun and falling to pieces, leaving Ruth to eventually give birth, alone in a barn, to a baby daughter, Jane.

A year later and the world is living under a Nuclear Winter, which has blocked out the sunlight, killing any attempt to plant crops and causing freezing temperatures all year round. This causes millions more people to die and the only currency now is food. If survivors can’t work, mostly tending to the land, then they starve. Britain is under harsh military rule, looters and other transgressors are shot on sight. In this world, Ruth and her baby daughter struggle to survive.

Ten years later, the Nuclear Winter has lifted but Britain is now a feudal society, with a population of four million, the same as during the medieval period. Ruth looks like an elderly woman, her hair white and her body broken by fatigue, not like a woman in her mid-thirties. She and Jane work on a farm, growing crops by hand. But Ruth dies in her sleep, leaving Jane alone. Jane scavenges and loots to stay alive but becomes pregnant when a boy, who acted as her friend, rapes her. Eventually, in a makeshift hospital with an elderly nurse, Jane gives birth but her baby is grossly deformed because of the radiation.

The film ends with Jane’s horrified expression, seeing her baby for the first time.

Threads strength is its storytelling, it takes known facts and presents them through the lives of its characters and what happens to them. It also takes its time to tell its story, at the beginning. The nuclear bomb doesn’t hit Sheffield until a quarter of the way into the film. This gives us the chance to become involved in the lives of Ruth and Jimmy, and their respective families. We know and care about these people. But this film isn’t about a plucky group of survivors.

The nuclear bomb and its aftermath kills nearly all of the characters, leaving only Ruth alive and its through her eyes we are shown most of the effects of the war.

This film is about how quickly a nuclear war doesn’t just destroy buildings and kills millions of people, but it destroys our very society, leaving behind a world that is nearly impossible to live in. Here, the nuclear bomb sweeps away all of the city’s infrastructure. There are no fire engines left to fight the fires, no relief workers to come and help the survivors, food and medical supplies run out and survivors have to cope on their own with their injuries and the radiation sickness.

Marshall law is soon imposed and never lifted. Here there is no fight for freedom, only a fight for survival. But this film, unlike other apocalyptic films, doesn’t end a week or so after the disaster, as the survivors start to rebuild their world. This film looks at the future that a nuclear war would give us. The nuclear winter that kills nearly as many as the war. But most shocking was its depiction of how our society would never recover from the war, devolving into a near feudal state. The most shocking part is its portrait of the first generation after the bomb, without a society to support and develop them, their speech has devolved to monosyllabic words. They don’t speak in sentences; they just shout their needs using one or two words.

Tonally, Threads adopts a very documentary approach, muted colours, a narrator informs the viewers of different events unfolding, only adding to its authenticity. The narration is voiced by Paul Vaughan, who narrated many documentaries at the time, and the newsreaders are played by Lesley Judd and Colin Ward-Lewis, already known as television presenters and announcers. This also adds to the authenticity.

What can Threads offer an audience now?

The special effects here are not up to modern standards but they used sparingly and Threads small budget made for much more imaginative direction. A lot of shots are close on the actors, showing the emotional effect of the drama. Threads strength is its emotional drama, showing the toll this war takes on the people here. It provides some horrifying images, that stick in the mind long after watching it. The woman wetting herself at the sight of the mushroom cloud. The burnt bodies in the rubble of the city. The food store being guarded by men in uniform, as starving survivors are held behind an iron fence. One of these guards is dressed in a traffic warden’s uniform, the most benign of jobs, his face covered and carrying a machine gun (the extra playing that part was a traffic warden in real life). The most shocking images came from the section ten years after the war, the images of a society almost completely destroyed.

Threads is still a disturbing film, but what its most disturbing is not its portrayal of the physical damage a nuclear war would cause, but how a nuclear war will destroy our society and we may never recover from it.

Watch Threads here on BBC iPlayer.

 

Drew