I'm not sure this information will sway very many people. I have relatives who are all getting tested for t-cell counts related to mRNA because they are convinced they are the cause of any and all health problems they are facing. It seems like the medical professionals who are administering the tests are at least somewhat responsible for their misapplication.
It's not about swaying individuals. Let people believe their stupid stuff.
It's about swaying investors and regulators. And yeah, we need to make sure we excise our regulators of crazy people, but that's cyclic. And next cycle, we'll get vaccines for a lot more.
Point taken, but it isn't just a matter of individuals, it is a popular movement that has captured a significant part of role of regulators. The research is still valuable, but its lack of influence is not a problem that is safe to dismiss.
Unfortunately, fighting the movement doesn't do anything for anyone. We both agree you need to fix the regulators - that's the thing you can change, and the actions that help there look nothing like arguing with the movement.
I agree that fighting the movement is generally futile, but I think there is a lot still to understand about where it comes from and better ways to respond. I think it is a lot of small factors that work together. It seems like our education system is phoning it in, not so much on the level of teachers but culturally. As someone who has spent a large part of my life in academia, I see problems there too that contribute to mistrust. I think the growing divide in our culture has resulted in fewer conservative voices within that sphere of influence, and they quite understandably feel shut out and uninvested.
Yep, the education system is phoning it in. Competition really does help - everyone seems to hate charter schools, for instance, but they seem to be helping in some areas.
The problem with the recent (Tuesday) Supreme Court overturning of Humphreys Executor^ is that it makes Congressionally-intended independent regulatory agencies (read: FDA) much more behold-to and controllable-by any current President.
Which turns "fixing the regulator to use facts" back into "convincing enough people to elect a President who believes in the scientific method."
If you're already at the point of thinking about national politics, you won't have an impact.
If your goal is to get more people vaccinated, the best thing you can do is going to be local. Funding or volunteering at free vaccination drives. Getting vaccination science into your local school curriculum early. Asking your local health department what they are struggling with.
It's important, if one is able, to also push towards supporting a regulatory process that allows vaccines to be researched, productized, tested, approved, and covered by insurers.
All of which the current US administration is actively trying to attack.
I'm normally on the side of Trump et al. simply being incompetent or stupid, but the anti-vax campaign by RFK Jr. at HHS is 100% targeted and coordinated at decreasing by any means available the public's ability to access vaccines.
It's more akin to religion for those anti-science fuckers. (The ends justify any means)
Each of us as individuals has only a little time each day to spend on things like this. You don't have a path to fixing national politics. You CAN help locally.
Two things can be true: Big Pharma can be evil, and their products are much better vetted for safety and efficacy than random peptides sourced form mystery factories.
and do you really think a significant percentage of forced vaccination detractors are taking mystery peptides? have there been studies, or are you vibing this guess off snarky reddit comments?
Anecdotally I know several people who would fall in the camp of anti vax but openly use peptides.
And intuitively it makes sense we’re talking about groups of people who are skeptical of main stream institutional health recommendations but trust specific personal sources for medical advice.
I’m vibing but it feels like there is a pretty clear intersection of peptides and the fringe science health community no?
Of course there's a huge overlap, but perhaps more significantly is that RFK Jr. who is in charge of the entire regulatory structure is both an anti-scientific anti-vaxxer and wants to tear down the safety and efficacy regulations around peptides at the same time:
Nobody's used state power to mandate peptides and social media censorship to reports of adverse effects.
As many of us said at the time, the mandates weren't worth the destruction of public trust, especially because the vaccine wasn't even sterilizing.
The next time there's a crisis, resist the urge to use the government to achieve outcomes by brute force. It doesn't work and has generational adverse consequences.
> As many of us said at the time, the mandates weren't worth the destruction of public trust
Public trust was not dissolved by the actions of the government, it was dissolved by propagandists cynically using falsehoods and half-truths to gain power. That's it.
People don't distrust science because of anything scientists did, it's all because of the propagandists and the easily tricked and the political grifters.
All of your accusations are, in the very best possible light, half truths, but in reality they are just lies. I think the rational part of society is tired of treating liars with kid gloves. The pandemic was a traumatic experience for all, and extra social graces were extended for a while for those who impose upon kind and polite people with their weird beliefs, but we've moved past that moment.
Having read it, he does cite something for almost every claim. Although almost every source also contradicts his conclusions on some basic, logical, statistical, mathematical, or humane level, if you bother to fact check them. So it’s quite hard to quantify what it means to say it has good citations.
RFK's reliance on terrain theory, disproved continually since some five hundred years ago, does much to assist in citations - it is common to cite bad science as evidence where we need to improve public comprehension.
I don't approve of the downvoting and flagging, if there's anywhere on the internet that conspiracy ideas can be constructively pushed back on it should be here.
That being said you're not making very detailed defences of RFK's book and ideas. Can you be more specific on some ideas or claims from his book that you believe in and how they're supported?
