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Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has, I am not sure I agree with your assessment that it is the least scary people. But I agre
by cm2187 5y ago
Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has, I am not sure I agree with your assessment that it is the least scary people. But I agree that the problem here is not that the CDC is buying it so much that this data is available to be bought.
- loceng 5y ago
- user_7832 5y ago> Fauci as the saviour in Stockholme Syndrome... Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider him a saviour? All I see (as a non American) is folks on the right hating him being considered a saviour... but I don't find a single post glorifying him even on left-leaning reddit.
- xapata 5y agoNo, the language of "savior" tends to come from religious extremists.
- loceng 5y agoIt's just the psychological term used as part of explaining Stockholm Syndrome behaviour. It doesn't mean it's conscious behave or a conscious belief.
- dekhn 5y agoI'm a democrat who finds fauci completely uninteresting. He's a skillful bureaucrat with health experience but not an effective communicator. I don't think that listening to him and doing exactly what he suggests is the wisest course of action, but it's certainly not the least wise.
- ryandrake 5y agoThe only people who care about Fauci, or even say his name, are the people who need an effigy to burn and a boogeyman to pin all their fears and conspiracies on. To most Americans, he is a semi-remarkable bureaucrat who had a couple of weeks time on TV and managed to get a tiny bit of name recognition out of it. To the right, he's the central puppet master, solely holding the strings of a shadowy global conspiracy by the Deep State to use 5G and vaccines to mind control the world into the New World Order. Look at their forums, he's somehow become this terrifying Bond Villain to these guys. It used to be Hillary, now it's Fauci. They need an evil mastermind to focus on.
- pstuart 5y agoPro-vax, pro-science here. I respect him for trying to help our society in dealing with infectious disease but do not worship him (that's saved only for David Bowie). My take on anti-vaxxers is that they have a "religious" relationship to their belief system and therefor project their personal assumptions onto others.
- tomcam 5y agoI’m deeply troubled that Bowie worshipped him
- pstuart 5y agoHa. No, that's coming from me. He was a Rock God after all.
- loceng 5y agoAnd you're so certain, perhaps even arrogant even, that you're belief in "science" isn't a "religious" ideological relationship?
- brewdad 5y agoYou're on a message board dedicated to tech and you don't believe in the scientific method? GTFO.
- pstuart 5y agoThanks for having my back. I'd buy you a beer if you were near.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- pstuart 5y agoThe word "belief" gets mangled intentionally in the case above. "Belief" as in "understand" versus "hold to be true regardless or questioning" are very different things. I'm humble enough to know that I don't know everything and can be wrong. And if I'm wrong I'm willing to learn anew. For example, I was raised on the concept that dietary fat was bad (margarine was healthier than butter) and we now know this is not the case. I'm not a trained immunologist like you, so I can only work with the basic knowledge that the immune system "learns" the chemical fingerprint of attackers and that vaccines mimic that to train the immune system. If I'm wrong I'd love to learn what is correct. Can you say the same for yourself? Is the arrogance you sense coming from you?
- TMWNN 5y ago>Not a downvoter (to your comment, I rarely vote) but does anybody pro-mask/pro-vaccine/pro-lockdown actually consider him a saviour? Fauci devotional candles are available for sale (<https://www.bing.com/search?q=fauci+devotional+candle https://www.bing.com/search?q=fauci+devotional+candle>). One might laugh and say that only weirdos might buy them ... But said weirdos include Fauci himself (<https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/twitter-notices-something-strange-faucis-home-bizarre-fauci-candles-spotted-background https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/twitter-notices-something...>).
- pstuart 5y agoI've yet to find any compelling evidence that says that vaccines do not work (in fact quite the contrary). Conversations with anti-vaxxers in my circle are no different than those of deep religious conviction -- they believe it because they believe it and nothing can change their mind. Conversely, I'm more than happy to change my mind if compelling evidence/reasoning presents itself. That's not happened yet. Now its your turn: explain why vaccines do not work and how the immune system cannot be trained by exposure to vaccines.
- loceng 5y agoI'm not going to waste my time with someone who puts begins with such an obvious strawman. If you can spot your strawman in your very last sentence and admit to it then I'll engage with you genuinely and thoughtfully.
- robonerd 5y ago> along with the Milgram experiment that people should lookup Don't bother, the experiment was so unethical it cannot be replicated properly. Furthermore, the way it was presented to the public was deceptive; only some of the results were widely reported and some of those suppressed results draw into question the popular narrative of the experiments outcomes. For instance, it is popularly claimed in undergrad psych classes that the Milgram experiments showed people comply with authority. But what is meant by authority is left unqualified. In the popularly described versions of the experiments, the authority ('the experimenter') presented themselves as a scientist and used appeals to the value of science to persuade the test subjects ('the teachers'.) What they never deigned to teach me in my undergrad psych class is the compliance rates fell when the presentation of the authority was changed, and also fell when the experiments were performed away from the context of Yale University in New Haven. This suggests that people don't blindly comply with authority; personal value systems play a role in determining how likely somebody is to comply with a particular sort of authority. This seems wholly unsensational to me; somebody who values science is more likely to comply with a scientist. Somebody who likes cops is more likely to comply with cops. And nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann enthusiastically complied with nazi authorities because Eichmann was a nazi (contrary to his claim of merely following any authority blindly.)
- sofixa 5y agoAs an aside, i recommend the book "Ordinary Men". It tells the story of middle aged reserve policemen that weren't indoctrinated Nazis ( and a non insignificant part of them were communist-sympathising dock workers pre-war) and their trail of atrocities in Poland. It makes a decent case that there's more to it than "was just a Nazi", even if really isn't "just followed authority blindly".
- evilduck 5y agoComplaining about negative karma, downvotes, or dislikes is pretty much the best way to receive more of it. Going on the attack against your imagined perception of your downvoters and then the platform itself and all of its users is also pretty justifiably worth downvoting.
- loceng 5y ago
- throwaway82652 5y agoIf there is another forum I would hope similar comments are also downvoted or deleted there because it's completely unrelated to the discussion, and you're also taking the opportunity to take cheap political shots at easy targets. Don't do that. Dr. Fauci doesn't even work for the CDC. You're better than this, you don't have to set up these rhetorical traps to have a discussion.
- loceng 5y ago
- iaw 5y ago> Given the virtually unlimited executive powers the CDC believes it has Care to elaborate? CDC has historically been an extremely powerful organization devoted to the safety of the US public.
- sidewndr46 5y agoThe event that is being referred to is probably when the CDC decided it had the authority to suspend evictions in the entire United States. It did not, as was decided by the Supreme Court.
- cm2187 5y agoThe same happened with mask mandates.
- sidewndr46 5y agoIf you are referring to Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden, I don't think that was the Supreme Court. It was a federal court. I have no idea if anyone has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case.
- bluSCALE4 5y agoI believe that's in regards to Fauci saying the mandate reversals by the Supreme Court are unfortunate and should be left to them to decide.
- brewdad 5y agoSo our government worked exactly as designed. Where is the problem?
- Karunamon 5y agoI don't think an admonition to stop months after the damage is done is sufficient protection or remedy for government overstepping their powers, and I don't think you do either.
- colinmhayes 5y agoThey don't even have the power to study gun violence.
- chaps 5y agoWhat does this have to do with anything?
- Geonode 5y agoThe CDC declared gun violence a public health crisis and started butting into the issue with their "We are science" attitude.
- Wohlf 5y agoProbably because gun violence isn't a disease, and there's already several agencies under the DoJ for that.
- smt88 5y agoThe DoJ is not a research institution, and the CDC doesn't only study disease. They study all threats to public health, including smoking, heat waves, and bicycle accidents.
- sidewndr46 5y agoHonestly, this is one of the biggest issues I have with a government bureaucracy like the CDC. The government couldn't be bothered to study AIDS when it emerged in the US and actively denied its existence. But smoking? Do we really need to study it? It isn't even a disease. The states signed the Master Settlement Agreement. I feel like that should be the last time the government ever brings it up or spends another dollar worrying about it. The corporations were given blanket immunity in exchange for a paycheck. Any further expenditure of government on the subject is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
- smt88 5y ago
- standardUser 5y agoThe CDC gave its pronouncements and state and local governments acted as they saw fit. They were a glorified informational pamphlet. They exercised virtually no real power whatsoever - that was mostly governors and mayors. I'm constantly bewildered when people try to paint a toothless bureaucracy as some sort of Orwellian ministry.
- niij 5y agoThat _should_ be their role, but unfortunately they overstepped. The CDC implemented an eviction moratorium for around a year (September 4, 2020 through August 26, 2021). That had very real, negative impact on landlords during that time. I doubt those effected would call it toothless. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19654/temporary-halt-in-residential-evictions-to-prevent-the-further-spread-of-covid-19 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/04/2020-19...
- standardUser 5y agoThere were not zero policies enacted by the CDC.
- niij 5y agoI don't understand this response. Could you elaborate?
- standardUser 5y agoWhat I mean is that one example doesn't contradict the fact that the CDC had limited direct power during the pandemic, and that various other federal agencies and, even more so, state and local governments were the ones implementing and enforcing most of the restrictions we experienced during the pandemic. I may have exaggerated how minimal the role of the CDC was in my initial comment, but only because I keep seeing this narrative that the CDC was somehow controlling the country. That is spectacularly far from the reality.
- timcavel 5y ago