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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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I find it odd you imply people who think ivermectin was an effective early treatment for covid are too ridiculous to entertain their thoughts on entirely different subjects despite those exact people broadly agreeing with everything you wrote w/re the Covid hysteria here, but don't treat the clowns who were deeply wrong when it actually mattered even close to the same way.

Even if we concede your opinion about ivermectin, how are people who were right about Covid Hysteria on the 90% of other subjects at the time when it mattered and many of whom suffered for their beliefs being right too early even equal let alone worse than the clowns who were wrong (at best) when it mattered and caused enormous damage ?

Yes, a lot of people supported my idea that lockdowns are wrong and that vaccine mandates are wrong etc.

But if those people start repeating stories that are not based on facts, without any critical thinking, for example, that covid vaccines are poison, will shorten your life, cause turbo cancers (take your pick), I will not agree with them. Some even go as far as declaring this about all vaccines, good or bad.

In fact, the viewpoint that vaccines mandates are bad are almost universally interpreted as viewpoint that vaccines are bad. I don't know how to deal with that. People are not perceptive to details. But details are very important here.

No. Very few people in the medical field and certainly in the medical field with any power supported the idea that lockdowns are wrong/ineffective and vaccine mandates are wrong. Anyone who disagreed with this manufactured consensus were banned off social media during a time when that was the only place any dialogue was happening at all.

They spent years, when it actually mattered, repeating embarrassingly bad and flawed stories and studies to support all manner of nonsense and attack people who were correct the entire time. They spent years demanding censorship and attacking the licenses of doctors and lawyers who were saying the correct thing the entire time and defending people from the mandates.

Why do you give the people who were wrong and who caused enormous damage a pass, but write off the dissidents who were right the entire time and agree with you on most of your comments with respect to the Covid Hysteria? Perhaps this is mostly a language issue.

Medical profession is a wide term. Most doctors are not scientists, not even engineers, they are more auto mechanics who fix your car. If the manufacturer provides false information, they cannot independently check this. Think about diesel exhaust scandal where biggest Germany companies were involved.

The part that would be responsible for lockdowns is called public health. That is a small part of all medical field. And most of them actually knew that lockdowns and masks were ineffective. Somehow they were ostracized due the initial panic and had suck up to the politicians or be fired just as happened with Jay Bhattacharya.

The medical profession doesn't get to skate by because they were, at the best, silent and enforced "public health" dictates, and were also silent as their professional associations were ruining the lives of the doctors who weren't silent.

And most of them actually knew that lockdowns and masks were ineffective.

I have a fair amount of experience with the medical profession, I have multiple doctors in my family and at least in the United States this statement is total and complete nonsense.

And even if one accepted this was true, it would make these sorts of people contemptible cowards as society and their patients were being seriously harmed, they knew it was all nonsense, and they remained silent. This is worse.

You ignored that doctors are more like auto mechanics and not scientists. Scientists in public health are very few in numbers.

I actually took a course in public health at uni before pandemic but it is not typical for most students. Maybe 5% of medical students take this course, probably even less and maybe only 0.1% actually work in this field.

you don't get to have it both ways; you cannot simultaneously claim doctors only listen to scientists but also doctors knew some of the stuff the scientists were saying was bullshit without also condemning the doctors

perhaps the language issue is too much to overcome

Almost everybody panicked at the start of pandemic. I don't blame people for that because we all are humans, prone to fear and panic.

Doctors are humans too, I don't blame them if they thought that lockdowns were justified and vaccine mandates good.

I blame politicians though. They are the ones to be brave in face of adversity. They should have listened to experts. For example, Boris Johnson initially was against lockdowns. But at some point he rejected advice of public health experts and started to listen some quacks. I understand that for lay people it is hard to understand where scientific paradigm is and who is exactly the expert about public health. And yet, good governments should be more scientifically sophisticated.

Doctors had no so say about lockdowns or vaccine mandates. Their views about these things don't really matter. It is just that people think them to be experts in everything related to health.

Doctors are humans too, I don't blame them if they thought that lockdowns were justified and vaccine mandates good.

Humans are responsible for their actions. Doctors cooperated with the silencing of those who tried to oppose lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and they helped those directly responsible for the pandemic cover their tracks. As a class, they directly cooperated with and enthusiastically supported the violations of human rights. We needed them to stand up and speak the truth. They categorically failed to do so, and that failure lasted years.

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