Obviously the situation is bad.
The antivaxx bomb exploded and a significant chunk of the population has been hit by it. Now governments are trying to counteract that. (Twitter too.) Both usually have crude methods only.
The antivaxx bomb exploded and a significant chunk of the population has been hit by it. Now governments are trying to counteract that. (Twitter too.) Both usually have crude methods only.
Masks work. That was not the question. How much they help is the question of science. The cost-benefit decision is the question of policy. How to communicate the changing policy should have been the PR question.
The US and international agencies that set policies are not as science-driven as they should be. ( https://www.slowboring.com/p/our-public-health-agencies-shou... )
Framing this as "lies" is counter-productive. Policy converging with science is mostly a good thing, but first that needs high quality science (= high quality data, asking the right questions, etc). The current US communication zeitgeist using "science" as a shorthand for "policy based on cost-benefit evaluation of such and such scientific reports by this and this community of experts and stakeholders" is a big problem, but it's a symptom of other bigger US social phenomena.
Atleast in slovenia we had 4 vaccines (Astrazeneca, jannsen, moderna and pfeizer), and all four were marked as safe and effective for everyone. Then astrazaneca caused issues in neigbouring countries and then J&J killed a wife of our diplomat first (and a lot of blame was thrown around), and then a 20yo girl died, and we banned J&J, then the scandinavian countries stopped usage of moderna for younger people, and we've gone from four "safe and effective" vaccines to just pfeizer. If you're a vaccine skeptic, or even if not, but just a bit afraid to get vaccinated, and three out of the four vaccines that were "just yesterday" safe and effective, are now "not safe and effective" anymore, you don't think "the fourth one surely is safe and effective!", but stay unvaccinated and wait it out. I got vaccinated with J&J, because it was the most 'simple' choice back then, but soon after i needed a booster from pfeizer, because J&J isn't good enough... so all of the risks, basically none of the benefits.
Add to this stories like this one (about the refugees), where countries are mandating locals to take the vaccine, but not refugees, and people get more and more skeptical.
no, 'masks work' is an extremely poor and politically-loaded statement (and as such, not a 'fact'). that phrase is meant to be thought-terminating, projecting false certainty, and curtly implies they work everywhere, all the time. instead, it should be something like 'masks are able to filter viable virus particles under the right conditions'.
that kind of distortionary perspective has been used to mandate wearing masks in public spaces, where they almost always do exactly no good at all (no additional benefit beyond normal human behavior and interaction), and neglects to mandate that we wear them around friends and family (social situations) where masks might potentially filter some live (viable) virus from warm exhalation and/or from close and prolonged inhalation by the uninfected.
as such, that usage/mandate is not for public health at all. it's political, for the individual, the reporter and the politician, to signal in-grouping and to apply counterproductive social pressure passive-aggressively (again, not to reduce spread, but to signal brainless obeisance).
But some people didn't liked science and choose instead to go to bath masses, religious massive holidays and parties just to make a political point. Some people even put deliberately the live of other in risk, teared off their masks and spit in their faces.
As expected, they paid a big bill for their own 100% genuine stupidity. Those that don't died look now desperately for a decorous way out to save face and will blame other for it: "You explained it only 5 million times, so I though that it was a joke. Is your fault to not repeat it 5.000.001 times..."
It also follows that the advice and main rules given to avoid the pandemic aren't actually effective, and somewhat ironically, it would bode well to use scientific principles to re-evaluate the evidence and adjust their posture.
They claimed that the effects would be much less severe, and would save lives. And in millions of cases [1] they delivered exactly what was promised. Finland had 1000 people killed. Sweden with 70% vaccinated had 15.000 deaths, so all points that vaccines really work.
[1] There are a few debatable cases, and I don't have any problem to discuss it, but the fact is that any treatment carry a small risk of being harmful for a particular genetic. People accept to take this risks all the time because the possible benefits worth it. Nobody says "we must stop treating cancer because chemotherapy has killed one in a 100 million people before".
Rules can't be effective if everybody do all that must do, but a bunch of morons playing cowbells came and spit you in the face (or into your hamburger) just for fun. Don't blame the people that made the rules for that. Is not their failure
I will absolutely blame the people who use ineffective or dishonest methods to constrict my life without my consent, that is the price they pay to be in positions of power.
People's experiences of vaccines like MMR lead them to assume otherwise.
CDC did not formally change the definition of vaccine until Sept 2021.
Opioids killed most of my childhood friend group. Left many others passed out every day in their parents basement now into their 30s with no propects.
All the pretentious late night comedian jokes and Twitter clapbacks in the world won't be able to turn that around, you need some empathy to reach people where they are.
https://circleofmamas.com/health-news/compilation-of-covid-v...
That is a quite improper expression to describe a situation which also covers the inquiry "What is going on here, I am seeing absurdities, lunacy [esp. with regards to said «counteraction»] and I am witnessing facts that simply do not match narratives".
People giving too much weight to the actions of Twitter (as a company) seems to be a serious problem. Twitter (as the company and its users as a whole) does not control whether the vaccine is good/bad.
The formula used to be simple. I want to travel to this or that foreign country I need this or that vaccine. Kids at age this and that get this and that vaccine.
Simple Bayesianism puts a limit on the chance that there's a large but extremely competent group conspiring to hide unfathomably huge problems with vaccines. The chance was never 0, which was fueling the slow burn of the antivaxx movement.
But now with this pandemic those voices suddenly reached a much larger audience, and those who have certain biases are much more susceptible to this, and hence the bomb explosion. (In particular people whose mind sufficiently discounts the very real risk of getting sick compared to the astronomically slim risk of getting an 5G chip in their arm.)
Yes, old unvaccinated people get fucked by covid, but 95% of the current measues in place only affect the young, because most old people don't go do bars after 10pm, don't go to clubs, don't even go to work anymore, etc.
And the mandates? If you're a 75yo pensioner, basically nothing has changed for you... curfew (back then) didn't affect you, because you're asleep, closed bars after 10pm the same, you don't go to shopping centers and restaurants, and normal grocery stores and pharmacies don't require testing or vaccinations... so you're basically living your life as normal.
And the <35yo crowd? Imagine a 6yo kid, first grade, can't read or write was put behind a pc running zoom for 5-6h per day. Students couldnt go out, meet, get drunk, have sex.... Want to go to school? mandatory testing. Want to use a bus to go to school? The in-school testing is not good enough for a bus, you need a different test for that, to get the right certificate. Shoppping centers, clothes stores, everything needs testing, vaccine or (sometimes even) intentionally getting sick with covid. Gyms the same. Nightclubs closed totally. Chritmas markets without food and drinks (even though you can get food and drinks in restaurants and bars on the same street).
So we're basically keeping parts of the country/economy partially closed (or even fully), to force young people to get vaccinated (because they're mostly the only ones affected by the mandates), and grandma doesn't care, because it doesn't affect her. The vaccination propaganda has quietly shifted from "protects you from infection and spread" to "protects you from hospitalization", but the mandates still affect mostly the ones where the chances of hospitalization are minimal.
Just requiring vaccinations to withdraw your pension (even if we left everything open and let everyone else be free) would save more lives than all the mandates targeting the young and ignoring the old.
It's pretty much evident that real free speech can only exist in a society where basic needs are unconditionally guaranteed, and so on. ("I disagree, but I'd defend your right to say it." is great, as long as there is literally exactly zero probability that it might backfire on you. Because the moment there's a non-zero probability there's a non-zero chilling effect.)
There are, of course, various workarounds for these problems caused by a too oppressive/powerful majority, but the way to implement them start with letting go of the simple, but wrong idea that there free speech is simple and it can be simply free. (And similarly it'd be good to kill other useless idols like the "national security" one, that is routinely used to suppress speech. And then the "think of the children" one, which is again used to oppress, and so on.)
So it's sort of useful because we see how vaccine denial/skepticism/hesitancy (and vaccine optimism/acceptance/overpraise) become a matter of identity between the culture war camps.