Photo via @richardgrenell/Instagram
February 21, 2022, 12:20 pm
Conservative political operative and man appointed to be Acting Director of National Intelligence by former President Donald Trump in 2020 may have unwittingly pointed out how unintelligent the anti-mandate crowd is with a single Instagram post about public pools and diarrhea. Former Intelligence Director Richard Grenell (he lasted all of three months in that position) apparently has a problem with pools citing health codes to ask that people who have recently had the runs stay out of the water, which is required to be as free of diarrhea as possible.
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Fresh of feeling validated by the widespread ending of COVID mandates in the U.S. even as warnings of a more dangerous version of the omicron variant ramp up as the global North refuses to release vaccine patents, conservatives are apparently coming after any and all public health mandates.
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“California politicians have to stop making laws and mandates. The entire culture of California instructs people on everything,” Grenell wrote on Saturday.
“This is the entrance sign to a community pool.”
There’s nothing quite like going so far to the political right that you become the “pro-diarrhea in the pool” party.
The sign warns that people who have suffered “active diarrhea” in the past 14 days are not allowed in the water, though they are welcome to lounge by the side of the pool and drink plenty of water to re-hydrate after their ordeal. This is a previously widely accepted part of the larger California health code, as well as health codes in every state in the nation, designed to protect communities from massive diarrhea outbreaks and dangerous related pathogens in entire neighborhoods.
Although we don’t like to think about it, diarrhea is a massive contributor to child hospitalizations and can be very dangerous for young kids if not taken seriously. It’s currently the second leading cause of death for children under the age of five worldwide.
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Unfortunately, twisty right-wing logic around the COVID mandates, from the vaccine to simple mask usage in public spaces, has convinced too many people in the U.S. that any government public health mandate must be pure evil, therefore we need to let diarrhea back in the pool.
In case you forgot, Grenell was the guy who “declassified” the names of the Obama administration officials who unmasked Michael Flynn, revealing his role in the Trump administration’s alleged attempts to conspire with Russia to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. A subsequent investigation into this unmasking by the U.S. Justice Department found no evidence of substantial wrongdoing, but this did not stop the threats against these Obama officials by Trump supporters.
Grenell continues advising the Republican party in various aspects and was recently named a senior fellow at the Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy. Apparently, that strategy involves pushing for community pools to become a minefield of possible diarrhea water and getting mocked all over the internet for it.
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*First Published: February 21, 2022, 12:20 pm
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