Science: We’ve eradicated many diseases through vaccines!
Republicans: Hold my beer!
Unfortunately, this particular brand of dumb has found a home on both sides of the isle. Part of the reason it’s been so successful at proliferating and creating problems with reemerging diseases.
Never forget that when asked about vaccines in 2016, Jill Stein gave a tepid answer and did not unequivocally confirm they are safe nor that they don’t cause autism.
Going back maybe a decade or so I remember most anti-vaxers I encountered being real crunchy-granola, hippie liberal types, often the types who would go on about natural remedies, crystals, etc. There was the odd conservative looney in the bunch, but they were more of a fringe minority.
I haven’t personally encountered many of them liberal types lately, it definitely seems like there’s been a pretty significant shift. I’m absolutely certain they’re still out there, but at least in my area in the sorts of groups I’m tuned into, they’ve become a minority.
Annecdotally, I used to have a pretty good track record for being able to sway people’s opinions on vaccines. I have a enough things going for me on both sides of the aisle that liberals and conservatives will both usually give me the benefit of the doubt and a bit of a reputation among people who know me for being fairly knowledgeable about a lot of things. Since the pandemic, that’s not really the case, everyone’s opinion is pretty much set in stone at this point. I have had a couple people I know thank me for straightening them out before COVID hit though so it’s nice to know my lessons stuck and who knows, maybe even saved a life or two.
I recall that time, too. Hippies jumped onboard with naturalism and spiritualism too far while conservatives only embraced these as a means to oppose big bad government conspiracies.
Overall those leftists have come around, fortunately.
When it comes to the pandemic, the propaganda being spread online was just insurmountable. My wife and I both work in a hospital and she has had to literally cart the corpses of covid’s victims to the morgue and then you get these supposed nurses who are probably L&D online thinking they have a grasp of what’s going on…
We’ve lost our grounding. Without it, there’s no orientation to truth and falsehood. Until we restore the notion of consensus of expertise, we are screwed on a variety of fronts.
I missed it when it was hippies. Worked with one and she saw my pack of smokes
People still smoke?
Yes, and people still vaccine their children.
I am going to lie and say that she didn’t look like I kicked her puppy and I didn’t enjoy that.
People are just in general too fucking stupid to keep two ideas in their head.
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Vaccines WORK and are a fucking miracle of modern science
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Pharmaceutical companies are fucking for profit and can be evil like any other mega corp
Both can be true. The liberal hippies saw point 2 and jumped onto point point 1 as equally valid.
Life is complicated, with competing interests everywhere and you have to be able think critically to navigate it. But, science literacy is so poor you have hippies trying to cure cancer with bathsalts and Republicans trying to cure covid by shoving bleach up their ass.
I have had many pharm clients over the years. They are incompetent and waste money, they have a level of quality control that shouldn’t be possible for humans to achieve and some of the smartest people I have ever met working there.
Both are true
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