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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1671 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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People are becoming vaccine hesitant because the medical system flushed its credibility down the toilet over a cold from China.

Yes and it's idiotic.

  1. COVID was actually very bad and I'm not going to be able to convince you because you were locked inside along with everyone else when it was bad. No, no, I'm not going to be able to convince anyone still complaining about COVID at this point so let's move on.

  2. Medicine is obviously politically compromised when it comes to culture war topics.

  3. The correct response to 2 is to have a high degree of suspicion when you see recommendations about trans people or whatever not ignore general and uncontroversial medical advice.

A reasonable middle ground is to do things like actual independent high quality research (like a lit review on pubmed) or ask someone who is not politically compromised (me! me!).

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything. That's woke thinking and I expect better of us.

COVID was actually very bad

In which regard? I strongly suspect I agree with you here; this statement is too ambiguous without clarification to be able to truly tell.

  1. Medicine is obviously politically compromised when it comes to culture war topics.

Agreed.

The correct response to 2 is to [...] not ignore general and uncontroversial medical advice.

Agreed. Now define uncontroversial.

A reasonable middle ground is to do things like actual independent high quality research

If only it was legal to do so.

ask someone who is not politically compromised (me! me!).

P(politically compromised | states is not politically compromised) > P(politically compromised | does not state is not politically compromised)

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything.

It does mean I trust everything they say less, yes.

The solution to "our experts can't be trusted when the topic is political" is not to always ignore experts, that's going to result in more incorrect decision than listening to experts even when they are wrong.

  1. I was not locked inside during Covid, I did not obey the lockdown orders, the majority of my neighbors did not obey the lockdown orders, I did not wear a mask and this behavior was common in my immediate surrounds. I still don’t believe Covid was that bad.

  2. Correct, medicine is politically compromised. Too bad the branch covidians turned vaccines into culture war fodder.

  3. Let’s be real, the normies can’t tell vaccines aren’t the same thing as gender affirming care or ‘abortion bans are literally killing people’. Because, you know, it’s not just one topic. It’s multiple topics, and evidence of public health lies in the past is everywhere- sodium intakes, for example. Not all of them are controversial issues. Hell, COVID’s not controversial anymore and doctors and public health establishment types are still repeating their lies from during the pandemic.

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So you probably didn't see all the people who died, maybe because they weren't in your social group, maybe you lived away from inner city squalor for instance. It was bad, it really was.

2

COVID vaccine into culture war. I don't know a single republican, anti-woke, fuck the establishment doctor who has anything negative to say about non-COVID vaccines at all. These people do exist and one of the biggest eventually recanted but nobody takes them seriously.

It's like trying to get Toyota's banned because a BMW ran over your dog. Nothing about them is similar.

3

Medical research certainly has its problems but their is an immense world of difference in consideration between things like "get your fucking MMR shot" "here's a complicated discussion about the value of the Rotavirus vaccine" and "here's a retrospective study of complication rates using an N of 600,000.

As a sidebar their weren't a lot of lies during the pandemic, their was a lot of bad messaging. Things like "the fatality rate will go down overtime as the virus burns through the available tinder and mutates to be less deadly" were stated loudly and often but people didn't listen.

Stuff like the initial mask messaging was a lie and I was annoyed by it but it was well meaning.

Unforced errors sure but most of it wasn't lies and a lot of things are still true (yes it is dangerous), were found to be true (no Ivermectin didn't actually work the research that said it did had big flaws), or involve ongoing complicated debates (lab leak).

Fauci, along with the US Surgeon General, lied about the efficacy of masks to manage supply. Fauci also deliberately moved the goalposts on population percentage targets for herd immunity. Those weren't "bad messaging", they were deliberate falsehoods pushed out onto the public.

The initial don't wear masks this was absolutely a lie and with very good reason - lots of healthcare providers ended up dying due to lack of PPE.

But it was a lie.

The masks work bit is not a lie it's just complicated and still has a ton of debate today. That's picking and choosing which evidence base to use in public policy messaging.

Moving the goalposts on herd immunity is a political and not medical question and not really a lie no matter how well or ill advised it was.

No shit politicians lie (and Fauci is a doctor), but don't mix that up with the medical side of things.

The masks were sold out everywhere around me by early February, not sure what supply he was trying to save.

If you need to save it for healthcare providers say you need to save it for healthcare providers.

TBH, I think the more likely scenario, is he, like most of the contemporary research, believed that masks were not that effective against COVID and COVID like illnesses.

There is no such thing as a safe vaccine, which is why the manufacturers are shielded from liability.

That same shield from liability means that they do not have the incentives to produce useful vaccines, but rather are incentivized to lobby for increasing numbers of vaccines for any and everything. These incentives explain the expanded schedule quite nicely.

Just because someone was wrong one time or on one category of things doesn't mean you stop listening to them for everything. That's woke thinking and I expect better of us.

It's not woke, it's common sense.

Just because someone was wrong one time

There's being wrong, and then there's being wrong with intent.

Just being wrong isn't generally cause for concern. Being wrong with intent, on the other hand, will naturally prompt back-checking of work and a "deny by default" posture until they re-earn that trust... if that's even possible. They did a lot of damage.

On the other hand, though, "number go down because a bunch of insane outgroupers had their way" is the only lever I have to pull for them to be forced to face any consequences whatsoever, so it's in my political interest that skepticism be maximized even though it would strictly speaking be better (and a local maximum of health outcome) for most people (who are themselves much dumber than the medical establishment) to blindly trust said medical establishment.

I'm not asking people to blindly trust the medical establishment I'm asking people to actually research the thing they want to do.

You can find papers with actuarial analysis, side effect rates and presentations, justification for the schedule and so on.

So do it.

With respect to COVID the whole thing was stupidly complicated and while I don't support the rights restrictions except in very narrow cases a great deal of it was correct and just poorly implemented/messaged.

Their is also a huge problem with outright conspiracy theories that got a lot of mileage because trust was so low but that doesn't make those things not effectively insane conspiracy theories, it just hampers people getting them cleared up.

You can find papers with actuarial analysis

Agreed. Pop quiz: substance X causes you to drop dead in 20 years with no side effects before then. It has been 10 years since substance X has been introduced. What does actuarial analysis show on the effect of substance X?

Sure, that is a potential limitation for the COVID vaccinate at this time, other vaccines have mostly been around long enough to feel good about this, it is worth noting that while what you are suggesting is a hypothetical risk their isn't a good explanation for how that would biologically happen however.

Sometimes we do miss on things where there is initially no good biological explanation but it is extremely rare.

I'm trying to not get deep into the weeds of defending the COVID response though because it's far from the matter at hand however.

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