[themaninthedark]

Don't gaslight.

It was very possible at the beginning of COVID that it was an airborne virus. However the CDC proclaimed that there was no evidence, therefore no one should wear masks.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/cdc-reverses-agai...

>In March 2020, as the pandemic began, Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president of the United States, explained in a 60 Minutes interview that he felt community use of masks was unnecessary. A few months later, he argued that his statements were not meant to imply that he felt the data to justify the use of cloth masks was insufficient. Rather, he said, had he endorsed mask wearing (of any kind), mass panic would ensue and lead to a surgical and N95 mask shortage among health care workers, who needed the masks more.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-...

There was also the messaging that the vaccine did not cause myocarditis.

>This obvious error was compounded weeks later during a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The committee met to discuss what we knew and did not know about heart inflammation, or myocarditis, that had been linked to mRNA vaccination, and most notable in young men who received the vaccine.

I agree that the current administration is bad but I can't call it worse because the prior administration worked to illegally censor it's critics.

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115561/documents/...

The administrative agencies response to the pandemic was very telling, there were multiple large conversations here with lots of comments about how we were being lied to.

[lovich]

Cool, so they admitted to falsehoods or updating. This admin does not.

The anti vaxxers and people not trusting this admin are not equivalent

[themaninthedark]

You're initial comment was:

>> FDA says... >This admin has lied repeatedly. Why would any of us believe a statement solely because the admin said it? Do we need to give them the benefit of the doubt despite how many times they lie?

The fact of the matter is that both sets of officials lied.

Fauci only admitted to lying when he was brought in front of congress and there was a chance they were going to prosecute him if he lied to them.

We will see what this admin does if they ever get brought up to task.

Fauci thought his intentions were noble.

RFK Jr. believes the same I am sure.

Doesn't make either of them right, understanding why the other side is/was upset is the first step to fixing the problem.

If you can't see the equivalence between saying don't trust the government because it's lying and don't trust the government because it's lying there is nothing that will convince you.

[lovich]

And you said

> This is the same argument that the anti-vaxers had about the COVID vaccine.

It’s not the same argument because one group is a true believer who will never admit fault. The other isnt. There is no equivalence to people who believe in anti vaxx ideology and people who don’t believe in RFK jr.

[themaninthedark]

Yes it is because the argument is that you can't trust the government because they lied.

>Comments on YouTube videos during the COVID-19 pandemic clustered similarly around "concerns about side-effects, effectiveness, and lack of trust in corporations and government".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-vaccine_activism

I don't share the same believes as anti-vaxers but I do believe that their cause was bolster by the government deliberately lying.

In the very early days of COVID, there were numerous studies that backed up the government position that COVID was not spread via airborne route.

>Airborne transmission, either by droplets (route 3) or by aerosol (route 4), contributes less than 1% of the total viruses needed to cause an infection....This finding is consistent with studies that sampled the air where symptomatic COVID-19 patients reside and found that all collected samples were negative for SARS-CoV-2

But earlier it even states:

>Due to the fact that most of these estimates were made in countries that lead a public health policy of immediate isolation of cases upon symptoms’ onset, these estimates represent the effect of pre-symptomatic carrier transmission. In fact, pre-symptomatic transmission was recently referred to as the Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control, as symptom-based detection of infection is less effective in comparison to the control of the SARS epidemic in 2003

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.12.20099085v...

So we know that pre-symptomatic transmission is the primary driver but claim it's not airborne because we sampled air of symptomatic patients.

This was the quality of the "Science" that we were supposed to believe.

When you have the scientific establishment publishing what amounts to bullshit to back up the lies of government how can you trust it in the future?

Andrew Wakefield study is discredited, I am not aware of any others but there may be.

I doubt that I am going to change your mind that the argument you presented is the same as anti-vaxers. But my advice remains the same, become a domain expert or be close friends with one you can trust.

I have several family member in the medical field, when the push for adolescent vaccine began some of them quietly cautioned me about the risks that were being downplayed. I read through the studies and made my own decision. Just as I made my own decision about wearing a mask when the government was telling me it increased my risk of infection.