[informationally]

The real question is why have we engineered our environment so unhealthy choices are so easy to make. There are systemic issues here that go beyond individual choices. Social media is also part of the equation and we are now seeing the kind of damage it is doing to the epistemic commons. Everyone believes whatever they want to, safely cocooned in their own media echo chambers. The longer this state of affairs persists the worse things will get. Inability to deal with a pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit? Why isn't this information available from trusted media sources? And for that matter, why aren't there any such trusted sources that everyone can agree is acting in their best interests and providing them with worthwhile and pertinent news?

Democracies can not survive without functional news and media sources.

[chrsig]

> It's great that this doctor can share his experience but why is he posting this on Reddit?

Because doctors are people, and they just wanted to get the experience off their chest without any personally identifying information being disclosed?

[hirako2000]

or it's simply a political post in disguise on reddit, like we can find all over forums since the pandemic became so political.

[chrsig]

Given the subreddit, I don't think there's much in the way of disguise happening.

I don't find the post itself to be political at all though. It's the recount of a doctor's recent experience being physically assaulted after refusing to treat an unvaccinated covid patient with ivermectin and vitamin-c, believing that the former may be actively harmful to their health, and the latter simply ineffective.

The post isn't political. It only seems political because the rejection of modern science is along a political line.

[timr]

> It's the recount of a doctor's recent experience being physically assaulted after refusing to treat an unvaccinated covid patient with ivermectin and vitamin-c, believing that the former may be actively harmful to their health, and the latter simply ineffective.

If this doctor believes that ivermectin is "harmful", the doctor was so poorly informed that medical fact was mixing up with something he saw on CNN. The assertion about effective dosage being lethal, in particular, was completely fictional -- I don't believe that it works, but the people advocating for it aren't talking about crazy doses.

Ivermectin is a very safe drug. It is given to millions of people a year to prevent parasitic infections. There is a large RCT underway to see if is an effective therapeutic for Covid-19. We should all hope that it works. This incessant political polarization of science has to stop.

Everything in this reads like a low-quality re-hash of click-bait headlines from the last year, several of which were completely debunked.

[_ofdw]

Just get vaccinated already.

[momdad420]

Except it hasn't been shown yet to be effective against Covid-19 yet. So why would they prescribe it? The irony is you're saying the doctor got it from CNN when antivaxxers have been screaming about ivermectin for months, without any proof it's effective.

>This incessant political polarization of science has to stop.

Lol. In comments to a post about a doctor venting about being assaulted for not giving into conspiracy theorists demands re: treatment, and people say he's making it "political". Anyone can doubt the veracity all they want, there's 1000 more stories just like this.

[timr]

> Except it hasn't been shown yet to be effective against Covid-19 yet. So why would they prescribe it? The irony is you're saying the doctor got it from CNN when antivaxxers have been screaming about ivermectin for months, without any proof it's effective.

Didn't I write that I don't believe it's effective? I'm not sure who you think you're arguing with, here.

The point is, this person made a specific claim -- that the "effective dose" would be so high as to be fatal. That claim is so laughable and baseless in fact that it calls into question the credibility of the entire story. No informed doctor would say such a thing. We simply don't know what the "effective dose" is (if any), but we know what other people are recommending as effective doses, and these are not toxic.

When "doctors" go on QAnon forums on reddit, and post things that sound like re-mixes of CNN headlines while making egregious mistakes of medicine, at the very least it should make you question their objectivity, if not the credibility of the claim.

[crawfordcomeaux]

The reason to prescribe it is to add another test subject to the study. The fact that there isn't a protocol for people to organize a public study of their own bodies suggests a patriarchal approach to medicine science.

People learn faster when they get to choose their own options.

[informationally]

Correct, how do we even know this guy is an actual doctor? Maybe he's some insane person that enjoys collecting internet points.

[chrsig]

You don't. You can either proceed to converse taking that they are on faith (and a consistent comment history over time), or not. You're not going to get satisfying confirmation one way or another.

A conversation centered around the identity of the person is much less interesting than a conversation about the contents of their post.

[mmcgaha]

The mention of Q is what makes me think it is fake. My whole family is conservative; I have a German friend who is way out in right field (I love her but she is coo coo for coco pops), and I work with folks who most would consider fringe right. Not a single one of them have ever mentioned Q in a positive manner. As far as I can tell Q is an internet hoax. Yes I know there are people online who say they follow Q, but I just don't know anyone and I only hear about it on the internet.

[grioghar]

As someone who has lost friends and family to QAnon, I find your statement ignorant and unhelpful. Your anecdotal experience isn’t even remotely reality. I really really wish it was.

Q is fake, but there’s a whole subset of seemingly rational people who are being sucked into the void of this cult.

I mean, look at the subreddit this was posted in.

[t-writescode]

if you read their comment history, you'll see they're a regular on Q stuff, and the subreddit it's on is QanonCasualties, so it's not weird for them to bring up Q at all.

[rebuilder]

We can’t know, but a cursory glance at the user’s post history shows that this isn’t some fly-by troll. They’ve been pretty consistent for a long time.

[informationally]

It's possible to send anonymous tips to reporters. It's not hard. All he's doing with this story is farming fake internet points on Reddit. Getting something off his chest is not changing the systemic causes that made the situation he's currently in. If anything, he's actually exasperating the issue by having chosen to take this to Reddit instead of some trusted media outlet.

[chrsig]

They're not obligated to do any of that, you know. And it's ok that they're not.

They didn't frame the post as something that should be bringing about any change. It's literally just a person sharing their story to get a sympathetic ear. Because sometimes humans need that to keep going.

[tsol]

This story has be reported many times, the Atlantic has a story about medical professionals leaving the profession recently

[Jcowell]

Why would they want to take it to a media outlet where it has an even greater chance of getting out ? Reddits fits a niche blog like culture that allows the out-letting of emotions. Stuff like this are exactly why blogs even exist in the first place.

[Bud]

Actually, we already know he's doing more than "farming fake internet points", don't we? Because the story has now been posted here.

Exacerbating, btw.

[jacquesc]

I've read this same story over and over in the trusted media outlets. Here's one of many: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-08-17/vaccinated-...

[rektide]

I have a different feel that society simply does not condition people to involve themselves in the world. Society has become a teeter-totter of concern, a cycle of advancing to not having to care to suffering the ruin of having forgott4en what was so hard earned. I can only paraphrase the top quote, for I don't remember it nor who said it, but here's some related concerns,

> 'Society's advancement is measured by that which it may take for granted' I forgot! Help! (until it cant/that fails)

> "Every gain made by individuals or societies is almost instantly taken for granted. The luminous ceiling toward which we raise our longing eyes becomes, when we have climbed to the next floor, a stretch of disregarded linoleum beneath our feet." -Aldous Huxley

> "The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats it's most vulnerable members." -Mahatma Ghandi

But this sometimes requires not just aiding them, treating them well, but re-socializing them, re-educating them, informing them, breaking them out of their ignorance & failings.

To simply say that we must

> [re-]"engineer our environments so unhealthy choices are [not] so easy to make"

feels a folly to me. We must socialize. We must foster an aware, awake, able society. Striving to simply prevent all faults is not how we achieve success; it results in a vision of domineering & the absolute & fixedness: it bespeaks a belief that there is one true path for society & that we need only set it out & all will walk this course. It's singular utopian, a singular destiny, not a polytopia, not letting us many people discover & hunt for our own ends. Imo society must remain a dialectic, a conversation, a hunt. We must encourage growth & awareness & hunts for meaning, without insisting on a systematic & singular top choice.

I don't think social media is a part of this question:

> "Everyone believes whatever they want to,"

is a false Boogeyman, a false god, a Fear Uncertainty & Doubt (FUD), meant to scare us. We have to allow plurality, we have to allow polytopianism, we have to allow many systems, many beliefs. But we can still in aggregate steer towards informed, towards good beliefs, towards healthy ends. Trying to demonize the availability of voices & options- "safetly cocooned in their own social media echo chambers"- just misses the real point: that society doesn't have a progressive vision at large, that basically no one has a real bead on a healthy, progressive, gainful society. Everything is beset by conflict, and we are trying to make choices with very biased, limited, local regards. And there are very few clear paths, very few regardable winners.

For sure, much of what presented in the world is faulty & awful. But this too feels like a part of evolution. Simply wishing for authoritarianism, for everyone to make the right choices, for everyone to accept good dogma in the place of bad dogma: it's a disaster. And I don't think "Everyone believes whatever they want to", I think they have complex experiences which shape what they are most susceptible to, and I think most of us lack good positive role models & experiences to shape us properly forward. The world does not reward the just & righteous, it doesn't promote the healthy: it showcases greed & taking & exploitation, it showcases narcisim & delusion. It shows us an all too recent history of medical abuse & experimentation of our minorities. These aren't social media problems, these are the actual world: the actual evidence of the actual world is unclear, is deeply shadowy, is ghastly.

"The longer this state of affairs persists the worse things will get". Such appeal to authority & Fear. Such terror!!! "Inability to deal with a pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg" it itself a promise of horror & terror, it insists on & demands we obey or conform, & demands that anything else we do, any other permissiveness we permit only Immenatizes the Eschaton. To me, this high capitol fear uncertainty & doubt is the chief Immenatizing of the Eschaton there is. I don't like what people pick. I think people are incredibly stupid & full of shit. But I don't see that conformity & authority are the reagents here, I don't see that a more structured society that informs what decisions we must make will help. I believe society from the top needs to demonstrate better health, needs to make better choices easier to pick, needs to make better icons & references we can respect, that will inform what choices we freely make. Right now society simply lacks meaning. That social media is out there making it complicated is merely incidental, a scape goat, a convenient anti-authority to blame this all upon, but authority itself is shit, useless, cowards, good for nothing, and no one respects it, rightfully. Make a social contract worth believing in, society.

Arden authoritarianism is far worse than the too many choices of the very very young ur-connected world we have recently arrived at. We do need to surface & democratize better choice-making, create better supporting info-networks & options of choice. But recognize first that the 4th age information society is very young, and that simply wishing to stuff it back in the bottle/box, blaming it, & being upset we don't do better is not going to help. And recognize that there are so many 1st 2nd & 3rd age society problems still dogging us, still making things enormously difficult, and recognize that those need remedy & addressal to before society can ever really right itself & find progress. Fearing pop-culture society, it's superficial glam, is a misdeed: what is really weak is society itself, is the unhelpful, unprogressive, un-gainful world that has failed to create better circumstances. I don't blame the people. I don't think we must outmanuever people, to make unhealthy choices impossible/harder. To me, it's less about trying to fight against the baleful/evil, and more about creating the construtive/positive. Social media will spread the good too, will snuff out the darkness, if we have it, if there's the sunlight to spread.

[irq]

A lot of what you wrote here resonates with me. But all of it takes a lot of time to pull off. With COVID, we don’t have that much time.

[BLKNSLVR]

> The real question is why have we engineered our environment so unhealthy choices are so easy to make.

The combination of freedom, capitalism, and greed. This is why I can't be entirely sure that China's approach isn't potentially longer term sustainable, as much as I disagree with it - it might actually be a better way to deal with the stubborn-ness of stupidity that's so inherent to humanity (to be fair, all these traits must have served us well when Pringles and Pop Tarts weren't cheap and easily available).

Cigarettes. How did they become a thing? What, ever, was their redeeming feature? At least Pringles and Pop Tarts taste nice.

Social media is just a more-efficient distillation of what traditional media has profited from since it began. It's not new human-hacking, it's just an efficiency bump that's actually more facilitated by the internet and pocket-portable devices with access to it.

[nradov]

While cigarettes are overall quite harmful, the nicotine they contain does have certain cognitive benefits.

https://peterattiamd.com/ama23/

[WalterBright]

> The combination of freedom, capitalism, and greed.

Really? Last I heard, life expectancy in the USSR was quite a bit worse.

> Cigarettes. How did they become a thing?

Nicotine. Not hard at all to understand. Personally, I've always liked the smell of cigarettes. I never smoked, because I knew I'd really like it. Cigars, though, make me want to puke.

> deal with the stubborn-ness of stupidity that's so inherent to humanity

Most evil in the world is not perpetrated by evil people, but by good people believing they know what's best for everyone else, and forcing it on them.

[BLKNSLVR]

Life expectancy wasn't the topic, the topic was "engineered our environment so unhealthy choices are so easy to make." and I stand by my answer. No specific judgement either, just cause and effect.

> believing they know what's best for everyone else, and forcing it on them.

Agree, to an extent. Forcing things on people is required of a functioning society. Government and laws and whatnot.

I genuinely don't know where the lines should be drawn on the entire spectrum. Law of unintended consequences and all that.

[WalterBright]

> Forcing things on people is required of a functioning society.

The government's proper role is to prevent people from using force on each other. It is not forcing things that the government imagines are good for people on them.

For example, I believed for decades the advice from the government that margarine was better for me than eggs. That turned out to be backwards.

[BLKNSLVR]

> The government's proper role is to prevent people from using force on each other. It is not forcing things that the government imagines are good for people on them.

I don't think you can necessarily separate those two things from one another so simply, except in the most extreme of examples.

> For example, I believed for decades the advice from the government that margarine was better for me than eggs. That turned out to be backwards.

I'm just going to assume you chose a bad example here. There's no force at play, you're free to choose your thing, you can even have both at the same time. Freedom!

[WalterBright]

1. there are always gray areas, that doesn't invalidate the principle

2. not a bad example - what if the government forced me to use margarine instead, secure it its rectitude? That's the point.

[Turing_Machine]

> Nicotine. Not hard at all to understand.

Also monoamine oxidase inhibitors, a class of compounds that are effective against depression, panic disorder, and social phobia.

Some think that the absence of the MAO inhibitors are why nicotine replacement therapies (gum, patches) aren't really all that great at getting people to stop smoking.

[adrianN]

Was life expectancy in eastern block states worse if you correct for wealth? They had pretty good doctors as far as I know.

[WalterBright]

> Was life expectancy in eastern block states worse if you correct for wealth?

I don't know. But I do know that people were much worse off economically in the USSR than in the US. This impacts longevity.

> They had pretty good doctors as far as I know.

I recall reading in a thread on Chernobyl where people who lived there at the time of the disaster were commenting. One comment stood out - root canals were free, but there was no anesthetic available. Having had a root canal myself, I can't imagine sitting in that chair for several hours getting drilled without anesthetic.