Germ-theory skeptic RFK Jr. goes swimming in sewage-tainted water
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/germ-theory-skeptic-rfk-jr-goes-swimming-in-sewage-tainted-water/Open linkView original on lemmy.world740
Comments159https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/germ-theory-skeptic-rfk-jr-goes-swimming-in-sewage-tainted-water/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Welcome to America era 2025!
Its sure to historical, one way or the other....
Did you have a stroke while typing that?
It will historical, just you wait
I forget a two letter word and you think I have a stroke?
I have typos like that all the time. So it's fine.
They missed 'be'
Its sure to be historical...
America era 2025 can have that effect.
Prions have the opportunity to do the funniest thing
Heroin will turned his brains to mush after parasites turned it into swiss cheese
Did the brain worm leave anything for the prions to replicate in or for the poor brain-eating amoeba?
I get sometimes going “I’ll roll the dice”
What the fuck was the logic on this one though?!
He's replenishing his parasite load
It's called osmosis, shit with shit.
I wonder how many people around the world are laughing at USA right now.
We all are!
Can confirm at least one
And what is making him so bright fucking red?
Testosterone supplements?
Sunburn, maybe. Perhaps he's a "sunscreen skeptic," too.
Stop calling everyone a "skeptic" and call them what they are: deniers. Anti-science, fact resistant deniers. Calling people germ-theory skeptics, or climate skeptics, or vaccine skeptics, and so on and so on, makes it sound like there's an honest scientific debate going on
Exactly. Skepticism is about casting doubt on beliefs and dogmas, not outright rejecting facts. When it comes to germs and vaccines there's scientific consensus on those matters. They're as close to facts as you can get. But rejecting those you're not a skeptic, you're a denier. There's no scientific debate on those topics, only a political debate on whether to reject science or not.
I never refuted that?
This comment is peak Lemmy 🤌
(I mean this in the best possible way)
I'm sorry but "Germ-theory sceptic" is damaging enough considering the last one should have died in the 1800's.
I honest to God can't believe how such fucking morons managed to get power. RFK jr. Would have been seen as a bigger crackpot than Alex Jones if he wasn't RFK's son.
He'll be calling himself a 'gravity-theory sceptic' next and flinging himself off a building. It's the only next logical step.
'idiots' is my preferred term. I'm in favor of calling stupid people out again. Too long has stupidity been condoned and even championed 'He tells it like it is'.
They are morons and need to be called that unabashedly.
FTFY!
Oh, I thought they'd misspelt septic...
But first of all GERMS ARE NOT A THEORY
germ theory is a scientific theory
Germs and how they spread disease is a raw fact. Nerd. Jk ut no you don't have to use the word theory for it
"Germ-theory skeptic"
For real just call him a reality skeptic and be done with it.
I would plead for someone to show this man a microscope but I fear the conclusions he might draw.
If he gets some insane new parasite from this what are the odds it kills the one driving his brain now and takes over with a more normal personality?
Its like season 5 of Dexter when they start just re-spinning the same more and more absurd plot lines.
Can't tell if Dexter or Dexter's lab...
I'm sure the fish oil will fix it
The first brain worm already died.
Of starvation.
Or they form a coalition to control various body parts.
I'm team bacteria on this one. C'mon little guys - do your thing!
I think Goauld can control their metabolism sufficiently to be immune
Usually the people in charge of regimes like this are often sadistic hypocrites and absolutely know that what they spout is bullshit. RFK jr. here on the other hand, is apparently actually a fucking idiot.
Wouldn't it be an absolute riot of a "leopards ate my face" situation if he ends up croaking because of this?
To clarify: I don't wish any harm on his grandchildren, but this man's level of willful ignorance and sheer recklessness makes it hard for me to sympathize with any negative outcome he may suffer personally.
It would.
You can't control who your parents and grandparents are. Don't wish harm to children.
Nobody is out for his kin, but RFK jr deserves to join his uncle and father.
Sorry for those children.
They are probably fine
Him however...
How can the onion ever hope to compete with reality
the onion can not keep up with this, because fiction has to be believable, unlike reality ;-)
I think their hidden agenda is actually to bankrupt The Onion.
...maybe this problem will solve itself?
Worm or sickness? Who will be faster! MAKE YOUR BETS NOW!
Like most con men, RFK is using people's ignorance of what odds mean. If the chance of getting sick from swimming in that water is only say one percent, he knows the odds are extremely good that he won't individually get sick, and then he will palm this off as "evidence" that it's all a big fuss over nothing. The park service might know maybe 100,000 people will swim in that water this season, so they'll probably save about a thousand from getting sick by closing the place. Even if somebody who does get sick manages to get the attention of a news outlet, they can be scoffed at as an anomaly. "How do you even know the water was responsible? Where else have you been? You're just looking for attention!"
This is how dumbasses are going to kill us all. “I grew up drinking milk straight from the cow and never got sick! Big government just wants to prevent you from unlocking the magic of drinking pus!”
They won't kill us all, just the ones dumb enough to believe reverting to the pre-science era to reinforce political beliefs is a good idea.
The water is now less clean for having him in it
Hope natural selection does its thing.
To him: yes. To his grandkids: no. They don't deserve to get sick and possibly die just because their grandpa is an idiot.
He probably doesn't believe in evolution
go go power Darwin!
With modern medicine, we have switched to survival of the richest.
Funny enough not even Steve Jobs level money can save you if you prefer alternative treatments over modern medicine. Of course despite your stupidity you end up stealing a liver that actually someone else deserves more because you are stinking rich but even that does not prevent the inevitable.
Money won't do shit for you if you're too delusional to believe in modern medicine lol
Stuff like this isn't a problem, until it is.
What was in that sewage? Anybody with typhoid? Diphtheria? Probably not because vaccination and treatment is still over herd immunity levels. Then, of course, there were the kids who used to get vaccinated for Polio naturally by exposure to untreated sewage, and us rich countries having terrible cases of polio survival in older people because we didn't bathe in toilet outflows.
Thing is, it's a numbers game. The first hundred people might not get sick, immediately, but if you form two lines, one bathing in the sewage pool and the other bathing in a treated sanitary pool, run 100 people a day through each one and track them for two weeks, you'll see the differences. That's why we have scientific publications, so we can read about these kinds of past experiments and don't have to repeat them.
*used to have
Yes, but... have you considered that no one who listens to this dispshit cares about all that? That's the issue at hand. Everyone with common sense knows this is an idiotic publicity stunt.
Just like DeSantis & Co. getting their COVID jabs on camera, sitting around for 5 minutes and then saying "see: I'm fine, it's not harmful."
Bashing low flow shower heads, engine stop-start at red-lights, and everything they hear anyone bitching about - this is the party of "give the people what they want!"
What I want to know is: besides John McAfee, who wants to bathe in poo?
During similar conditions in the past it has had around 100x the EPA standard of bacterial colonies.
And he's hypocritical enough that I bet he started an antibiotic cocktail before he went there.
I hope he gets sick and suffers
Maybe we can convince him to drink some of it
Can someone arrest him for child endangerment?
Lol you can't arrest a rich person, that's not how this works
Our best chance is that he gets one of these diseases that is effectively treatable with a vaccine.
Thing is, even with that, he'd just take the vaccine and proceed to lie about it for profit. His father must be turning over in his grave.
Vaccines are for prevention, they don't work as treatment.
Yeah, that's true.
But I think we both know that if he caught something he'd still get it treated privately and lie about it publicly, lest his grift be endangered, but I'd love it if he got polio and had to try and keep it quiet.
Some vaccines actually can work as an effective treatment!
This is easy to fix.
Shame the article doesn't say how much the municipality is being fined every day they continue to leak raw sewage into the watershed.
There are these linings that are deployed into old pipes, which would be otherwise costly to replace.
I wonder if there's a legitimate reason this technique couldn't be used here.
It is possible those only work for smaller diameter pipes.
Costly, sure. But easy. There's no design or engineering challenge here.
We just need to assess fines greater than the cost of replacement, and it'll happen.
The only pipelines we should be putting in the ground are for clean water and sanitation. Lots of jobs to be had. Can't find the funding? Take it from the military. Easy.
Wow this is next level stupid, i really thought it was the onion. I'd say i'm even shocked at this demonstration of stupidity, but the fact his grand children are led into this is beyond sad.
What else can you expect from a guy that starved a brain worm to death.
The fact that people have any thought that this guy is smart or a good person makes me hate humanity.
Seems like they should fix that sewage leak.
Sorry, but cleaning up sewage is woke and dei.
Oh, gotcha! I'll just throw my chamber pot out the window then.👍
that means tearing up the park, I suspect that MOST people are happy enough just looking at the stream.
Maybe. I'm not familiar with the location. Typically sewage follows roads so it seems possible to minimize the damage. There's also a way of re-lining pipes without removing them.
Not saying RFK JR ain't a nasty bitch, but it'd also be nice if we didn't leach sewage into streams.
He also drinks methylene blue as a treatment for bacterial infections
Also some places have gardia too
Can they just pour a bunch of bleach in?
How else will he get his parasites
I'm rooting for chlorea here tbh.
Unfortunately, the proper treatment for cholera is to essentially just keep drinking clean water. To my understanding, cholera was only ever really a problem before we knew about germs/bacteria and we didn't have any infrastructure and our only drinking water was tainted with... more cholera.
So this guy, even if he gets cholera, wouldn't have to do much, lean on our existing pretty good water treatment facilities, and would claim he did it because he's so strong Because he's now a Trill or something.
I mean Cholera is kind of not the issue here. This creek has habitually tested high for e coli. An e coli infection makes cholera seem tame. You treat cholera it's got a mortality rate of less than 1%... E coli infection has a mortality rate around 17% slightly less than one in five people who get hit die from renal failure. Those odds go up significantly for kids...
This idiot brought his grandkids to splash in this e coli laced stream. I am without words.
The parents trust this man. The poor kids.
Though, knowing all things, they're all vaccinated and use modern medicine well.
Probably not vaccinated for e coli. There's very few options and most only work very short term. This smacks of reckless child endangerment.
Read the article. He's not going to get cholerae he's going to get e coli. Hopefully he will eschew antibiotics and just fucking die and save us the trouble of his existence.
I love that we're literally going back in time. They thought we'd have flying cars and end world hunger, but instead we have to watch our politicians swim in shit water.
Edit: HE TOOK HIS GRANDCHILDREN!?
I think I know how a lot of people are thinking right about now. lol
Encourage this behavior?
Cooking your chicken is gay and will give your children drag queens or something.
He's just a straight up secret nurgle cultists, that was showing his devotion and flouting it
That if anything's gonna kill these motherfuckers, it's most likely to be hubris that finally does it?
I've said all along that these people will ultimately be done in by their own virtuosic incompetence.
Managing an operation as complex and huge as the US Government by traitors, incompetents, narcissists, Nazis, drunks, addicts, weirdos, propagandists, and criminals is not sustainable. They will eventually burn their own house down, and we should surround the fire, and when one of them tries to escape, we should catch them, and toss them right back in.
That little girl looks like she's even sick of grandpa's shit. Hair is bone dry in every photo and the only one of her actually in contact with the water, she's kicking it in his face. She honestly looks visibly upset when he's dangling her brother over it.
Wouldn't be surprised if it was supposed to be "hike day with grandpa!" with no mention of a swim and then it turns out reporters are there as there's a political stunt happening. Wouldn't be surprised if mom/dad are off camera telling them not to get their face wet.
Hopefully C Diff will catch a RFK Jr.
If ever someone truly deserved a Herman Cain award, it's this man right here!
What a shitty grandpa.
RFK Jr entered into a tontine with himself. He's the only member.
That man deserves dysentery
Let him swim in the Seine!!!
Go Darwin! 🎉
Steve-O can't compete with this man
Steve was admittedly stuffed to the gills with booze and every drug available, and still is somehow more reasonable than this clown
Heroin might do alot more damage than what steve took.
SteveO now would never allow his relatives to follow his bullshit actions.
SteveO in the 2000s though...
Steve-O would absolutely swim in a river of shit. He, however, would not allow children to follow him.
ROFL What is this worm driven host doing?! Doesn't the worm know that E. Coli infections can be deadly for the elderly? (Yes, I am being super facetious because reading about a Germ Theory Skeptic in the modern age has effectively broken my brain. The evidence that proves microorganisms like bacteria, parasites, and viruses are real is truly a massive amount. That's a lot of knowledge that this dumb, incompetent human being is simply ignoring). Ugh, this wasn't on my bingo card for this month. A small part of me hopes that E. Coli proves to him that germ theory isn't something that can be dismissed, and he dies from his foolishness.
It is crazy that the director of health services doesn't believe in germ theory. I don't care what your political beliefs are but the health secretary should have some medical background.
He's not there because of his qualifications, but his allegiance to tRump. Same with all of his picks. It's all calculated so when they pull the noose tight no one will be able to stop 'em!
Parasitized insects often manipulate it's host to jump in the water so the parasite can release its eggs
Indeed, often at the cost of a host's life!
He isn't even a miasma theory guy. He believes in terrain theory. The theory that disease only happens due to the body being malnutrished in some way or had a defect first. That germs and diseases are just opportunists more than anything else.
None of this is true. He had rhe audacity to claim that the two girls in Texas who died from measles were malnourished and that is the main reason why measles happened and killed them. No amount of evidence presented by doctors to him that they were well nourished and were quite healthy before measles hit them was going to persuade him.
If there's any upside to this man being an idiot by 14th century standards it's that he's more likely to get deathly ill.
One day is no big deal. If he really wants to make his point, he should do it every day for a month.
(Leave the grandkids at home, though.)
I can be a big deal if it gets in your nose and other areas
Yeah. I’m just trying to make his PR stunt sound insignificant because he definitely reads Lemmy and will care about my post lol
O... Ok! The situation in taking care of itself.
In my state if you swim in any body of water it's almost always tainted somehow, maybe not with sewage but perhaps some other toxic pollutant. The only exception I can think of is the man-made reservoirs used for drinking water that people swim...
and pee in.
Jesus Christ what happened to water just being normal, dirty, outside water? How did we fuck it up this badly?
Because that's environmentalist extremism. You have to be reasonable and allow the rich to rob everyone at least a little. /s
Iowa. Right?
Close, Indiana.
even in a natural body of water, they have parasites in them, like amoebas, gardia, parasitic eggs,,,etc. because animals die and shit in the water too. and parasites love using aquatic hosts like snails and crustaceans, and amphibians.
Fucker probably found the least contaminated part for this stunt.
So brain worms are back on the menu?
he needs to replenish his intestinal e-coli with pathogenic e-coli probiotics.
Ok so what is the most obvious, unhide-able , agonizing, and debilitating disease he can get from this?
Because I hope he gets 330 million cases of it.
Necrotizing fasciitis
Man I would feel so good getting to laugh at that.
It would be a guilt free belly kinda laugh that actually makes me feel better.
Knowing how much pain he was feeling and how miserable he is would literally make my stress level go down.
Is he sewage-skeptic too?
He's the septic skeptic.
I wonder why he says we should fortify our immune system if he doesn't think germs cause diseases? Like, what is the immune system doing making cells that can eat bacteria?
How is he still alive?
Heroin kills everything.
Don't worry, he put a spiritual spin on it (probably) so it's ok, it's actually cleansing you see!
THIS IS NOT ROCK CREEK FFS
Everyone including major media sources is parroting what RFK Jr. said in his instagram account as if it's gospel. Go to google maps. Look at Rock Creek. Look how big it is. This is not Rock Creek.
You do know that rivers and creeks can go on for miles right? And that they will widen and narrow at various points?
Don't get me wrong, it's entirely possible that this fuck weed is saying one thing and doing another just to "prove his point" about germ theory being wrong. But it's inconclusive that what you posted negates the possibility that he was playing in sewage water.
I get where you're coming from, but in the interest of keeping my comment simple I left out that he claimed to be hiking in Dumbarton Oaks Park, which is not far (and downstream) from the picture I posted such that it wouldn't be plausible that it would be that narrow.
But I'll also point out the level of incredulity my comment is getting on a social media site, vs. RFK Jr.'s, which should strike anyone familiar with Rock Creek as almost certainly wrong. Yet everyone in the whole news media is either willfully ignoring this or just too lazy to look into it. And honestly it pisses me off because this lack of giving a fuck about basic facts from reporters who we falsely imagine as being employed in reporting facts shows how much we're in a post-truth society and why we got a con artist as our president.
RFK Jr doesn't have a "thought process."
this guys gonna get the fucking Darwin award if he keeps doing this 🤦
He's got kids and grandkids.
Darwin award doesn't apply here.
He gets the Herman Caine award.
Good. Hope he catches at least one instance of every shit disease floating in there.
Hopefully a pair of ingrown arms.
I wonder if he started with the conspiracy theories after swimming in this stream for the first time
Copying and pasting everything Chat GPT output was a choice. Perhaps not the cleverest one but it's still a choice.