Rush Limbaugh's latest hilarity is that he refuses - flat out REFUSES, like a little toddler refuses to eat his broccoli - to get a flu shot.  Why?  In protest of the media hysteria regarding the swine flu epidemic.

Once again, Rush Limbaugh's problem isn't with scientists.  It is with science reporting.  The state of science reporting is terrible in this country, I think we can all agree on that.  Swine flu did not reach epidemic proportions last year, but it looks like it will this year.  However, it has not reached the increased lethality that people were originally afraid would happen.  

It is, however, still every bit as lethal as every other influenza virus.  Which is to say, fairly lethal.  Every year about 200,000 Americans are hospitalized due to complications from the flu, and about 36,000 people die.  Those who just get the flu and suffer from it are one thing - your own personal suffering is your own business, frankly.  

(Rush also protests the method of sneezing and coughing into the crook of your arm.  I'm not sure why.  He seems to think it's a brainwashing plot by Obama or maybe ACORN or maybe both.  All I know is that he calls it "ridiculous" without expanding on that further.  I guess it is a matter of personal liberty, wave the American flag, to sneeze your disgusting germs all over everything and everyone.)

But having the flu means that you are also incubating and perpetuating the flu.  When you get the flu, you could be passing it on to someone who is elderly or very young or pregnant, and that person could die.  Surely Rush Limbaugh, with all his talk of "what America means" and "real American values" is civic minded enough to see the benefit of getting a flu shot?

No.  Instead he is refusing to take one because people say he should.  As if that isn't the most idiotic thing in the world.

"So you people are going to listen to me and say, "I'm not going to take the swine flu vaccine," and you're going to get sick and it's all my fault.  That's exactly how it works"

He's being sarcastic, by the way.  Despite the fact that yes, that is exactly what will happen.

Next up in his confrontation with the MSNBC medical reporter (he refers to the network as "PMSNBC" by the way, because they are a bunch of cranky ladies, like with PMS, get it?  And Rush wonders why he is not popular with the ladies), Rush drags in a Fox News "medical expert" who jowls and champs about how the H1N1 flu vaccine has an additive, thimerosol, which "has been linked to autism."

The problem is that thimerosol has only been "linked to autism" by the anti-vax crowd.  The people who refuse to vaccinate their kids for measles, whose kids subsequently die of measles.  There is no - not one - not the least little bit - not one scrap of scientific fact behind these claims.  Many people have funded many scientific studies, and many people have been skunked.  Of course that doesn't keep Fox News from reporting it as if it were truth.  

Frankly, if I were on the antivax side, I would have to think twice about the fact that Rush Limbaugh was taking my side.