[drevil-v2]

In defence of the "less bright people" or deplorables as others have called them - they are deeply suspicious of Science(tm) used as a cudgel.

They intuit that some parasitic entity or entities has latched on to Science and is co-opting it for it's own gain to achieve it's own purposes which run counter to the interests of the people.

The heavy handed Covid response and censorship is a prime example of that.

The whole system has been corrupted and therefore it is not possible to have a de-facto assumption of good faith of the actors.

[dynamite-ready]

I think this comment comes across as slightly ignorant.

Many examples exist where a misguided belief in scientific 'facts' (usually a ropey hypothesis, with seemingly 'damning' evidence), or a straight up abuse of the scientific method, causes direct harm.

Suspicion is often based on facts or experience.

People have been infected with diseases without their knowledge.

People have been forced to undergo surgical procedures on the basis of spurious claims.

People have been burnt alive in buildings judged to be safe.

And look at Boeing.

No one has a problem with science itself per se. Everyone accepts the scientific method to be one of our greatest cultural achievements.

But whether one is "less bright", or super smart, we all know we as humans, are prone to mistakes, and are just as prone to bend the truth, to cover up those mistakes.

There's nothing plebeian about this form of suspicion. In fact, the scientific method relies on it (peer review).

[maigret]

> No one has a problem with science itself per se. Everyone accepts the scientific method to be one of our greatest cultural achievements

This is just wrong and naive. You can be happy if a majority of people agree to this.

[dynamite-ready]

As written, possibly. Taken literally, it's full of holes.

But if you're not a pedant, I essentially mean that most parents will vaccinate their children, many passengers will book flights, and a majority of the citizens in a population do respect their officials (etcetera).

And I think if you were to dig deeper than this, and test that hypothesis with... well... a scientific experiment of some kind, the result would probably support it.

But a good number of people will naturally question the outcome!

[lupire]

You're not wrong, but people who oppose "science as a cudgel" tend to support "religion as a cudgel", and don't see a difference between science and religion, except that one is the Yellow team and one is the Purple team, and they have a preferred color.

[jonhohle]

When the public is told to “trust the science”, it is no longer science and is now religion.

[chasd00]

This happened all day long during Covid. The answer was never “we don’t know yet” which was at least honest but instead it was always “just trust us”. Exactly like i use to hear from preachers growing up.

[lanstin]

The difference between public health and basic research. To stop an epidemic in flight one has to go with ones best guess and that saves lives so they do it.

[moduspol]

We weren't told it was the best guess to save lives. We were told it was the science, and this science was very fast to adapt to alarmist narratives while being incredibly slow (sometimes taking years) to adapt to reality.

And that's before you take into account things like BLM rallies being encouraged during COVID while less politically correct gatherings were banned or decried as "super spreader events." [1]

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea...

[lanstin]

Public health also studies the most effective communication strategies for sharing public health info even in the face of uncertainty. I bet they will be more explicit about uncertainty next time based on the last time, but that is why they didn't say it. The field started out with a person breaking the handle to an invented ell, not even using communications but taking physical actions to stop the spread.

As far as the speed of revisions, my memory is the initial advice to wash your hands so much faded within months, as well as the wash your groceries advice. It took the US some time to notice how effective masks were in Japan, and push for masking. And now good air filtration for public spaces is gaining momentum, even as the deaths from COVID declined.

And you aren't a bit alarmed anytime a novel virus hits an immunologically naïf population, well you should be.

[ungreased0675]

I’d just like to add that the epidemic wasn’t stopped at all. Everyone still caught COVID.

Were outcomes worse than they otherwise would have been? That’s an impossible question to answer. Are there serious studies on the impact of public health interventions?

[lanstin]

I saw one study of relative death rates that concluded if all US has followed California standards, about 800,000 fewer people would have died. And remember "flatten the curve"? The goal isn't to stop everyone getting the virus but to slow it down enough that the health care capacity is sufficient. A quick google finds this study and a few more recommended: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31709-2 even the way the virus isn't killing as many vulnerable people as we get it the Nth time after M vaccinations is a success if the lower the curve strategy.

[dukeofdoom]

Even if you still be the fiction of the vaccine saving lives. It was the life of an obese 80 year old with 3 other comorbidities ... for a few months.

The lockdowns resulted in inflation, and caused a lot more poverty and deaths worldwide since. And retarded the normal development of many children.

And we still don't know what kind of long term damage the vaccine caused. My friend that trusted the science, and took every booster, only stopped when she got myocarditis.

[dukeofdoom]

It's like paid clergy of old, except we now call them scientists. Sometimes they reveal truths. Most of the time, and most of them are kind of useless. It's self serving bullshit, served by ever growing bureaucracy.

[lazide]

‘Heavy handed Covid response’ - lulz. What other emerging pandemic has been so lightly handled?

We used to forcibly quarantine people in their homes at gunpoint for measles. Smallpox? Even crazier.

Hell, we didn’t even shut down international travel until well after it was plainly obvious it had spread well past the point it would matter.

[LtWorf]

I attended the opening talk of a local science festival.

The speaker was a psychology researcher from UK who flew here for that, and the talk was about conspiracy theories. When they introduced her they stated that she wouldn't accept any questions from the audience.

This was received with boos and shouts that it was not real science.

She then proceeded to bundle all the conspiracy theories together. Going from "the government is doing something bad" to "earth is flat".

After that talk I can really believe that the bullshit conspiracy theories are made up and spread artificially so that anyone that comes up with any conspiracy theory can be shushed as a crazy person.

But… in reality conspiracies do exist. One can make a theory and then test if it's true (or get killed/imprisoned by the government while trying).

[ChainOfFools]

This actually may be true although somewhat indirectly with respect to at least one well-known conspiracy belief.

If I recall correctly, the Flat Earth Society was originally concieved as a prank intended to lampoon actual conspiratorial groups (I.e. Nasa faked the moon landing, JFK was a mob hit etc)

But through some combination of timing, convimcing execution, and media interest coincidentally developing in the same direction resulted in the supreme irony of an unserious sham cult spawning an unironic counterpart community which rapidly outgrew and ultimately succeeded it.

[hyperdimension]

That's the same shape as the OBEY clothing line, incidentally.

[ClumsyPilot]

I always struggled with ‘cospiracy theory’ being used as an attack.

Yes, that’s exactly what they are, upfront, allegations of a conspiracy. And some of them are correct,

[momoschili]

How are "heavy handed covid response and censorship" a prime example of that?

[LtWorf]

It's not that it was heavy handed. But it was completely nonsensical.

For example here restaurants were open, but they had to close at 19. So instead of spreading the clientele over more hours, they were always 100% full.

Also, they CUT ⅔ of public transport rides, so they were incredibly overcrowded. People with real jobs that can't be done from home still had to go to work. BUT they put stickers on the floor telling people to keep distance. Also hired people to be at crowded stops to spray hand sanitizers on who wanted it, and tell people to keep distance (while seeing them having to push their way in).

In general all the restrictions were about the "having fun" stuff, but not about the "go to work" stuff. Even companies had no obligation to let people who could work from home stay at home. Some companies kept having their offices full.

Oh and let's not forget the recommendations of staying home if you so much as sneezed. But you wouldn't get paid. How did they expect people to pay their rent?

I could go on for hours with this. The bullshit measures that were marketed as "what the scientists are telling us to do" did a lot of harm to the trust that the general population puts into science.

[dotnet00]

A decent chunk of the pandemic response was politicians power tripping in the name of The Science and later having to roll things back, either because of public backlash (eg hotlines to encourage snitching on their neighbors), because it was actually illegal (requiring all large businesses to have their employees vaccinated or tested weekly), or because of politics (initially telling the public that masks were ineffective, then tripling down on mask mandates, Harris saying the vaccine could not be trusted based on Trump talking about its efficacy).

There was also dumb stuff like social media suppressing mention of covid, even to this day youtubers use euphemisms to refer to that period.

To me it seems perfectly understandable how people who aren't actually involved in science might mix up The Science and actual science after all the political nastiness of those years, especially when we add on top all of the awful pop science reporting from the past decades.

[tim333]

Preventing people from working if they didn't get a covid vaccine was a bit heavy handed.

And saying it was likely made in a lab in China is kind of censored to this day. I think partly because the science community doesn't want to take flack for doing risky stuff and killing millions.

[worik]

> Preventing people from working if they didn't get a covid vaccine was a bit heavy handed.

Nobody did that. They prevented you from working with me

Nobody here or there was forced to get a vaccine. But if you refused it was right to shun you

Freedom is about more than the individual. We as a group should be free from the consequences of individual actions

[rdtsc]

Wrong they did that to me. Not a small company either. Yeah you can play games with “we won’t fire you, we’ll just stop paying you and won’t allow you to work”.

It’s like they watched Office Space and thought they’d “Milton” everyone.

> Freedom is about more than the individual.

The individual is what it starts with.

[Meekro]

The Biden administration had OSHA make rules to force employers to make their employees get the vax. The Supreme Court stopped them.

[chasd00]

My employer of 750k people made it very clear, upload proof of vaccination or be fired. That’s a fact.

[nostrademons]

That was GP's point. Being fired != being prevented from working. You are still free to get a job at a different employer that has different policies.

[rdtsc]

Exactly. That kind of Machiavellian games is what they played. See, we’re not firing you. We just won’t pay you.

[booleandilemma]

You're splitting hairs. If people didn't get vaccinated during covid they became social pariahs. People were literally calling for their deaths.

[tim333]

My point as a Brit was it seemed a bit heavy handed in the US. In the UK we didn't really have that and still got most people vaccinated.

It would have made more sense if the vaccines actually stopped catching it and transmission but they don't really, they mostly just seem to reduce the harm when you catch it. In terms of not spreading it to others you are better isolating than relying on the vaccines - I've had that as a practical issue with my late 80s mum who I visit. Although I've had 4 jabs I've still had it caught it twice since, and have avoided giving it to her by testing if I feel ill and staying away. Which is kind of to say some of the politicians views on it were heavy handed and a bit iffy scientifically.

[LtWorf]

Workers are free to work or free to starve.

-- Karl Marx

[viridian]

This is misinformation. My employer mandated it for all employees, and my entire IT organization 100% WFH, coming in wasn't even an option.

[momoschili]

From a philosophical perspective, I don't see how the vaccine mandates for public jobs is appreciably different than vaccine requirements for public school that already exist.

As far as the China lab goes, there were plenty of scientific papers that studied the China leak theory, though I personally don't know what they found.

[aziaziazi]

The difference between the vaccines you're talking about lies in their development time: The one in school have been (tested) around for decades before getting mandatory.

[ProjectArcturis]

The COVID vaccines have now been around for 4 years now, and there is no evidence they are appreciably more dangerous than those other vaccines that took longer to develop.

[Qwertious]

>They intuit

They don't need to intuit it; they're outright told not to trust the science, by the parasites who are criticised by other scientists. Like the asbestos industry.