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Comment by cloutchaser | Hacker News Reader

> Shutting out the bad faith actors is necessary to ensure science and public policy informed by it can continue to be effective and useful

Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you?

No.

So I'm not sure how your argument holds up.

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Ultimately, yes. It’s impossible to keep this sort of thing up indefinitely, and over the decades the evidence became overwhelming enough that it was impossible to ignore. Researchers who were co-opted were shunned, losing career opportunities, and universities stopped accepting funding from tobacco companies.

Will you change your stance on our response to Covid when the evidence of its harms (and lack of positive effects) become so large as to be unavoidable? Because it will.

History will not look fondly upon those who pushed these highly destructive mandates. It will be seen as one of the greatest public health fuckups of all time.

We did the other side of the coin in that we mandated their speech in putting a warning label on their product[1]. We didn't let them claim whatever they wanted and stopped them from claiming the health benefits of cigarettes like in this ad[2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_packaging_warning_mess... [2]http://stuppid.com/wp-content/uploads/smoking-ad-004.jpg

> Did we shut down people saying smoking is good for you?

Yes, 53 years ago.

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1089/public-hea...

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