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

numerous century-old municipal sewer lines that run under the park. These lines have cracked over time and leak sewage

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.

Let him swim in the Seine!!!

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.

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.

Go Darwin! 🎉

"Germ-theory skeptic"

I'm team bacteria on this one. C'mon little guys - do your thing!

Hope natural selection does its thing.

Wtf did i just read? The US health secretary swimming in shit water???????

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.

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?

the creek's bacterial counts—particularly E. coli counts—were dangerously high all the time.

Sorry for those children.

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.

If ever someone truly deserved a Herman Cain award, it's this man right here!

The germaphobia in me is trying to figure out this thought process... 🤔🧐

The water is now less clean for having him in it

Can someone arrest him for child endangerment?

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.

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.