4 ms·

It is extraordinary how public health officials in the US were able to just add Fluoride to water and iodine to salt. If that were being proposed today, people

It is extraordinary how public health officials in the US were able to just add Fluoride to water and iodine to salt. If that were being proposed today, people would throw such a huge fit. We can't even build bike lanes on roads today without having meetings about it for a decade

mbg721 5y ago
They were added at a time when deadly diseases were a ubiquitous fact of life--imagine having ten kids and expecting four of them to die. Now that that isn't something people have to think about, we are rightly suspicious of the motivations of health bureaucrats.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Well this is the thing I find baffling about the most intense of the COVID vaccine and lockdown skeptics who go on about "new world order" type conspiracies. We are coming out of one of the most lenient -- in terms of public health administration -- periods in the modern era. The mental health system up until the 70s, 80s, was frequently used to just "commit" people (even unruly "hysteric" housewives) without regard to liberty at all. Vaccination campaigns were done on a huge scale, and rationing was a part of life for many people in the west not just during the war but in post-war periods as well. [Some] people may have lost sight of what it truly means to live in an (even mild) emergency and what kinds of decisions we need to make as a collective to solve certain problems.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    If you're going to look at it that way, then we have a mostly-white middle-class who is experiencing for the very first time the government wielded against it as a weapon. (They are less than thrilled.) But I don't think that's exactly what's going on; I think it's a clumsy attempt at a rehash of Lyndon Johnson-Great Society-style governance. And it's obviously not working, so there's a rush to find the most plausible people to blame.
kleton 5y ago
About every 25 years, the residents of Portland vote against fluoridation of the municipal water.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  Do they vote for it in the intervening 24 years, or is that just how often it comes up?

mbg721 5y ago

They were added at a time when deadly diseases were a ubiquitous fact of life--imagine having ten kids and expecting four of them to die. Now that that isn't something people have to think about, we are rightly suspicious of the motivations of health bureaucrats.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Well this is the thing I find baffling about the most intense of the COVID vaccine and lockdown skeptics who go on about "new world order" type conspiracies. We are coming out of one of the most lenient -- in terms of public health administration -- periods in the modern era. The mental health system up until the 70s, 80s, was frequently used to just "commit" people (even unruly "hysteric" housewives) without regard to liberty at all. Vaccination campaigns were done on a huge scale, and rationing was a part of life for many people in the west not just during the war but in post-war periods as well. [Some] people may have lost sight of what it truly means to live in an (even mild) emergency and what kinds of decisions we need to make as a collective to solve certain problems.
- mbg721 5y ago
  If you're going to look at it that way, then we have a mostly-white middle-class who is experiencing for the very first time the government wielded against it as a weapon. (They are less than thrilled.) But I don't think that's exactly what's going on; I think it's a clumsy attempt at a rehash of Lyndon Johnson-Great Society-style governance. And it's obviously not working, so there's a rush to find the most plausible people to blame.

kleton 5y ago

About every 25 years, the residents of Portland vote against fluoridation of the municipal water.

InitialLastName 5y ago
Do they vote for it in the intervening 24 years, or is that just how often it comes up?