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I think that your conception of "we" in "hey, we were wrong" is perhaps too monolithic and simplistic. "show pundits, media figures" are mere conduits, they "g
by SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
I think that your conception of "we" in "hey, we were wrong" is perhaps too monolithic and simplistic. "show pundits, media figures" are mere conduits, they "get the message out" but they are never subject matter experts, you should not assume that they originate any message, have an authoritative truth or do any scientific study at all.
- ern 4y agoA lot of doctors jumped on the anti-mask bandwagon. It wasn’t just pundits and media figures.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoWhat kinds of doctors, that you interacted with: Your GP? Those seen on TV who work in media roles? None of those are the researchers.
- ern 4y agoYou are starting to run into No True Scotsman fallacy territory at this point. Everyone from the Surgeon General of the United States to random GPs on Twitter were vilifying masks.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoThere are a lot of Scotsmen in Scotland, and in my experience they are diverse: I have met socialists and internationalist Europhiles there, and also ethnonationalist racists. Point is, monolithic assertions about "we" or "they" aren't ever completely true. I'm not in the USA, I got onto masks quite early. But I think that we still lag badly in anti-covid ventilation systems, while still over-emphasising hand-washing. Some of the best people on the topic (of our evolving understanding of COVID, not of Scotsmen) have in fact been relative outsiders (i.e. neither medical researchers nor crazed conspiracists). I'm thinking particularly of Zeynep Tufekci on Airborne transmission, e.g. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent-we-talking-more-about-airborne-transmission/614737/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/why-arent... https://sils.unc.edu/news/2021/tufekci-lancet https://sils.unc.edu/news/2021/tufekci-lancet