Rob Schneider’s peak career moments were playing the weirdest guy in an Adam Sandler movie. Sure, he did other stuff, but if you poll the average American, that’s where they’re most likely to recognize the comedian from. Now, he’s crafted a new legacy as a right-wing conspiracy theorist known for weaving together such elaborate threads of anti-intellectual garbage that his excessive posts on X are subjected to regular fact-checking from the public.
Normally, his screeds don’t merit any attention, because it’s a drivel of anti-factual information that’s honestly harmful to perpetuate. But when the public is already catching on to just how egregious his conspiracy theories are — and it happens to be a theory so blatantly wrong it’s kind of funny — then discussing Schneider’s ramblings feels relevant.
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Schneider’s latest bonkers assertion: “There were NO Children’s Hospitals when I was a kid. Because kids weren’t sick.”
For a man who hasn’t been funny in 20 years — and maybe ever — this tweet genuinely made me laugh out loud. I spent my childhood terrified of contracting various illnesses — tuberculosis, polio, scarlet fever — due to the ample literature of yore that details childhood sickness. Little Women clearly never made it across Schneider’s desk.
Immediately, Schneider’s post got fact-checked. A reader note stated, “The claim is false. Children’s hospitals in the U.S. date back to 1855 (e.g., Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 1855; Boston Children’s, 1869). Infant mortality was higher in the 1950s-70s (29.2/1,000 in 1950 vs. 6.1/1,000 in 2010), indicating kids were sick.”
And just for those of you who have been disenfranchised by the U.S. healthcare system and now believe that “vaccines make children sicker,” here are some quick facts for you:
- According to the CDC, “In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States occurred in children less than 5 years of age compared to just 1.4 percent in 1999.”
- The CDC also reports that “infant mortality dropped from approximately 100 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1915 to 29.2 deaths per 1,000 births in 1950 and 7.1 per 1,000 in 1999.”
- “In 1900, pneumonia and influenza, tuberculosis, and enteritis with diarrhea were the three leading causes of death in the United States, and children under 5 accounted for 40 percent of all deaths from these infections,” the CDC reported.
Modern medicine literally saves the lives of children — from vaccines to medications to interventions and the advancement of medical knowledge. Everyone had fun clowning on Schneider’s egregious statement.
“It wasn’t that there were no children’s hospitals,” Republican representative Jack Kimble wrote on X. “They have been around since before the Civil War. It’s that nobody cared about you enough to take you to one.”
Here are a few additional examples of everyone having a laugh at Schneider’s expense:
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