I thought it would go away weeks ago, but I saw it again tonight. Almost as if it has perfect health care coverage, the Facebook health-care status meme just won’t die. You know, the one reading thus:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day
While this isn’t the time and place to enter into the debate about health care (I’m in favor of reform, by the way, and a pox on those who desire the status quo), it is the time to pass along a proper reading of that meme. Henry Gee (an uber-awesome editor for Nature Magazine) does a great job of breaking down the perniciousness of the statement — he notes that it “keeps popping up on Facebook like an efflorescence of herpes” — so I’ll just send you to his blog. It’ll be better coming from him, you know; he’s British.
Whereas I agree with the first two statements, I find that the third disgusts me for the same reason that I am disgusted by extreme politics – or religious movements – in which people are required to hang up their brains and indeed all powers of reason to follow the herd.
Aw, shucks, Mike.
Well, ’tis true. I mean, “efflorescence of herpes” — that’s just fantastic.