41–50 of 132 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.
Did people from outside the US travel here to see the world cup?
While both sides of the political spectrum have crazies in them that are skeptical of vaccines let it be known that this latest insanity is being promulgated by red states and red politicians who are showing themselves to be just the biggest science denying idiots the world has ever seen
This time series suggests, however, that Marin has handed the torch to its MAGA neighbors. https://vax.edsource.org/school?schoolCode=6988448&schoolNam...
According this administration forever chemicals are good but vaccines for deadly diseases are bad.
Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…
So “free rider” antivaxxers would find themselves at lower risk in that society because herd immunity would protect them.
My understanding (limited as it is) is that OPV was sold as a “we’re all in this together” thing while simultaneously there were far fewer sources of information and so governments were on a different scale of information distribution than individuals.
But trust in those who speak for science isn’t automatic. Most people could look out and see that claims from these institutions were calibrated to create outcomes and not strictly speak the truth. I sympathize with the institutions because many of the people present inherit a memory of a time when these institutions controlled information spread in a more systemic way.
As an example, it’s pretty well-established (from first person views) that the HHS and their governed orgs claimed that masks don’t work expressly in order to ensure that masks were available for healthcare providers. One could imagine they came from a tradition which praises allowing Coventry to be bombed for the greater good of hiding that we’d broken the German code.
But “we lied to you for the greater good” lands poorly these days because information spreads easier and from multiple sources.
Take the case of COVID-19. Some jurisdictions interpreted restrictions to disallow people from hanging out in groups in public. In Dolores Park (I think, but in some park in SF), we had these little circles you were supposed to stay in. Meanwhile, scientists signed letters endorsing large scale protests.
Stories like this abound. A scientist who wants to stop a dam finds an endangered species that would be destroyed and blocks the dam. Years later it is found to be not a distinct species but genetically identical to another species that is not at threat.
In the past, information control permitted suppression of these things or reframing of them in a different way - the people of Coventry were heroes, even if they were volunteered as sacrifice unknowingly. Today, I think that wouldn’t work so well.
Today, people see scientists as individuals as well. If you believe in disparate impact being the standard of discrimination, it is now worthwhile to ask whether the guys who vote a certain way would vote to sacrifice you for their people.
Anyway, as an aside, GCHQ says today that the Coventry story as told is a myth. Pretty interesting read: https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/the-bombing-of-coventry-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this They are, all the time, doing outreach. It's just as Isaac Asimov said: Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' The o…
I disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth ha…
Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements. Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for…
Once you start pausing on anything related to anti-vax or anti-science, you'll start seeing more and more people talking about alternative views.
And soon those alternative views are all you see, and those alternative views start feeling like mainstream views. And then you become confused when you're at a dinner party and no one agrees with your stance on vaccines.
I don't think it's any more complicated than that.
And it doesn't help that anti-vax views are spread with the support of bogus science. Anti-vaxxers don't view themselves as anti-science.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah For now, Utahns can travel freely to US states where World Cup games are played.
Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.
I know exactly one person out of my friends that is going to one World Cup game, and he’s well known as the guy who likes soccer.
My wife has enjoyed the TikToks of Europeans coming to Kansas City and reacting to stuff that’s totally normal to us, like the Bass Pro Shop and Tornado Shelter signs.
While both sides of the political spectrum have crazies in them that are skeptical of vaccines let it be known that this latest insanity is being promulgated by red states and red politicians who are showing themselves to be just the biggest science denying idiots the world has ever seen
I'm old enough to have lived with Y2K. It's not really talked about much nowadays and I suspect a good number of people don't even know about it but leading up to 2000, everybody knew about it. By 1998 it was something you'd see on the news. Anyway, a ton of work went into eliminating Y2K issues and when 2000 happened, everything kinda kept on working.
Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax. I actually wonder if this was a significant contribution to the distrust in authority that contributed to the rise of anti-vaxxers. To be fair, that did start before 2000. The disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield blew up in the late 1990s over the UK's triple jab and his effort to sell an alternative, which failed.
Polio (effedtively eliminated in most countries), smallpox, measles, Guinea worm (due for elimination in the coming years), etc didn't disappear on their own. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 due to the widespread adoption of the HPV vaccine [3].
Sometimes it's hard not to feel like we live on the dumbest timeline.
[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html
[2]: https://www.kff.org/other-health/measles-elimination-status-...
[3]: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp...