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Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

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Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#61

Post by fluoridation »

jmyeet wrote: post #49

The CDC has a measles tracker that includes the number of annual cases since 1985 [1]. Measles was officially "eliminated" in the US in 2000. Technically it still has that status but outbreaks like this caused by low vaccination rates are threatening it [2], which is what the article is referring to. I'm old enough to have lived with Y2K. It's not really talked about much nowadays and I suspect a good number of peopl…

>Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax.

You're committing a fallacy of equivocation. "Y2K" has two distinct meanings:

1. A software bug related to date handling that could cause incorrect behavior that was unpredictable in the specifics but bounded in the kind and extent of damage it could cause.

2. A software bug that could cause the collapse of society.

You might or might not remember this, but prior to the turn of the millennium there were plenty of people regularly talking about Y2K using the latter meaning. When people say that Y2K was a hoax, they're saying that the second meaning was not something that was ever within the realm of possibility, not that Y2K would not have caused any problems whatsoever.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#62

Post by coryrc »

jdw64 wrote: post #31
coryrc wrote: post #24

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…

The Scopes trial? What was "corporate" about evolution?

The Salem witch trials.

McCarthyism

And "Universities" are the mouthpieces of corporations? The people keep electing politicians who are anti-worker-protection laws. They're purposely choosing corporation-owner-friendly legislators. This is not the fault of universities.

Of course it's a complicated issue, but it's not my University friends doing public outreach for kids that's to blame for not doing enough. It's the authoritarian public school system, it's that we allow people to be shitty parents and pass on generational trauma/poverty, it's that the foundational mythos is you can do everything yourself (even though 99.999% of people don't live somewhere nor have the skills to be self-sufficient) because the government and rich owners like keeping people divided.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#63

Post by jancsika »

arjie wrote: post #6

Quite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected. I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my p…

> Quite interesting to see.

No, the article is a shitshow.

Ben Dowse is an MD, not a pediatric nurse.

The family ended up accepting the antibody treatment before leaving the hospital. The Daily Mail article bizarrely implies that they never accepted the treatment.

Both journalistic mistakes are clear from reading the beginning of the Wired article linked in the error-laden Daily Mail article.

Did you notice these errors?

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#64

Post by lanstin »

pstuart wrote: post #21

Pro tip for my fellow graybeards: get a measles booster if you were born before 1976! Even then, it might not hurt if you are in an area where the risk is high. Disclaimer: I am an internet rando -- talk to your doctor.

I asked for that and they gave me an antibody titre, and I still have enough to be safe from measles.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#65

Post by coryrc »

fluoridation wrote: post #45
jdw64 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nah, I don't agree. I don't see how the US is special in this regard, yet anti-vaxers, flat earthers, fundies, conspiracy nutjobs, sovereign citizens, and every other flavor of anti-intellectual crank are a distinctly US phenomenon.

And what's worse, like an infectious person, we're sending out that corruption into other countries. We're actively funding and sending people to stoke homophobia in Africa, our idiots are indoctrinating others online to work against their own interests.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#66

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #58
inigyou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never saw it through this lens before but you might be right.

There's a fantastic web series that explains the whole dynamic: the alt-right playbook. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...

It’s reductive to frame this as an alt-right only phenomenon. As long as we’re subject to modern ad-fueled social media, this is the basis for all non-retail politics.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#67

Post by directevolve »

jdw64 wrote: post #14

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…

Since 1974, when science increasingly underwrote policy, it’s become entwined with politics through the EPA, climate change, treatment of gender and sexuality, public health, mandatory teaching of evolution, and “critical race theory.”

Conservatives don’t have as much of a problem with science when it avoids “impact science” and sticks to topics that don’t conflict with church teachings or business interests.

But trust in science has never been universal. Trust in institutions and experts had to be built painstakingly over generations. The Social Transformation of American Medicine is a great account of this process for American doctors.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#68

Post by JumpCrisscross »

cineticdaffodil wrote: post #53

[flagged]

> time, to accept the retardation, as a permanent fixture. Every 3 generations

Why? Previous generations didn’t have to accept this. This is entirely a product of ad-fueled social media.

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#69

Post by jdw64 »

doctorhandshake wrote: post #57
jdw64 wrote: post #14

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…

My personal theory is that many responsible for teaching science in the K-12 grades are not doing a great job of communicating that science is a process for finding truth. Definitely not laying this at teachers’ feet - standardized testing and curricula, overcrowded classrooms, underfunded schools etc all contribute I’m sure, but I get the impression from talking to even well educated people that they were taught sci…

I deeply agree with your statement.

In fact, I think science teaches a specific methodology and a specific mental model for viewing the world. However, the scientific method is a shareable verification procedure, whereas scientists' mental models are fragmented depending on individuals or schools of thought.

So I think modern science is a collection of elaborately designed mental models for interpreting phenomena.

Those mental models differ from person to person, and when you read the writings of various scientists or prominent figures, you realize that even for the same theory, their interpretations are slightly different. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent.

I am an uneducated person, so it's hard for me to speak carelessly, but as you said, we often tend to overlook the fact that when we talk about something being 'scientific,' it's spoken of as if there is a single correct answer. And as that standardized version gets talked about as if it were the 'truth,' the essence gets diluted. I think you have a point there.

Thanks for giving me a perspective I hadn't considered. So being a 'Doctor' really does make you different

Re: Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

#70

Post by beowulfey »

jdw64 wrote: post #14

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…

There is active propaganda against scientists and institutions; and scientists are decent but not excellent communicators. They lost the communication war and now the general public is very distrusting of science.
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