Acronyms

I have a terrible problem.

I no longer understand English.

On occasion, I look at comments posted after articles or blog posts, and I'm finding a lot of them really hard to follow. Some acronyms I know, like LOL. Even ROTFLMAO. Some I can figure out, like WTF and IMO or AFAIK. But others - and I don't know what they stand for so I can't repeat them - leave me lost. Bewildered. Confused.

I assume there's a site somewhere that lists them all. I suppose I should look for it. But, although I am not old, my memory she is like Swiss cheese, and I fear most of them will land in a hole.

The blog posts I can follow best are usually by subject matter experts (SMEs, which sounds very Peter Pan to me - SMEE! The crocodile! Smee!) who are attempting to correct a blatently false assertion. For example, that vaccines cause more harm than they prevent. Or that the earth is 6,000 to 10,000 years old. Or that intelligent design is a science.

I'm glad my kids are vaccinated. For me, it was an easy choice. The odds of my children being damaged by a vaccine are about 1 in a 1000 - and I mean damaged in a longer term way than a sore arm and 2 days of excess phlegm. The odds of them catching and being damaged by an illness that they are being vaccinated against are about 1 in 100, and that assumes most kids get vaccinated and there is herd immunity. If vaccination rates fall, then those odds rise.

Do people not know that mumps used to be the leading cause of male infertility? Or that rubella causes horrific birth defects if a pregnant woman has it? Or that measles was a common cause of brain damage? Ditto whooping cough? Polio is just an awful disease. My grandmother had a deformed foot caused by polio. It embarrassed her, but happily wasn't debilitating. And she had a great sense of humour. Can you vaccinate against the humourless? I don't think it's caused by a virus, so I guess not.

While I'm ranting on the topic of vaccine stupidity, how hard is it to understand that influenza and a cold are NOT the same? And that a dead flu virus can't cause a rhinovirus infection?

It's hard to assess the volumes of information washing over us daily. That's why we have experts - they are taught how to assess information quality, and are paid to keep their expertise up to date and apply it. I'd rather listen to a doctor on the merits and risks of vaccination than a homeopath.

I read a comment on homepathy that made me giggle. For those of you who don't know, homeopathy goes on the premise that a solution that's diluted to the point that you can't detect any trace of the original substance still has a memory of that substance. But all water has been in contact with excrement. Does that mean we drink memories of poop?