4 ms·

I'm not sure it's anti-democratic and can think of a few examples: * Skepticism over mass vaccination (as opposed to at-risk groups only). Shut up, anti-vaxer,

I'm not sure it's anti-democratic and can think of a few examples: * Skepticism over mass vaccination (as opposed to at-risk groups only). Shut up, anti-vaxer, you're anti-democratic. Backed by Big Pharma. * Skepticism over climate change policy (asking middle class to reduce expectations, rather than cranking down on planned obsolescence and offshore production). Shut up, climate denier, you're anti-democratic. Backed by the companies doing offshoring and using climate as selling point. * Skepticism over affirmative action (as in discriminating people based on skin color in Academia, rather than making it easier for ALL parents to teach things to their kids). Shut up, you racist. Backed by the billion-dollar DEI industry billing enormous rates to public institutions. I can give many more examples where valid skepticism is immediately conflated with the nearest crazy idea nobody actually cares about (like the actual KKK), and is shut down on that basis by those who have a vested interest in not being scrutinized.

pavlov 3y ago
> "Skepticism over mass vaccination" All successful vaccination is mass vaccination. That's the whole point. Would we be rid of polio if we'd only vaccinated the 5% of population who were most at risk?
- matrix_overload 3y ago
  Hello, numbers. Every infection has an R0 rate (average number of people infected by a single infected person). If it's greater than 1, the infection spreads exponentially. If it's lower than 1, it peters out. Vaccinating X% of people pushes R0 lower by X * N, where N depends on mutation rate, how good is the vaccine at preventing the spread (vs. reducing symptoms), etc. R0 is also affected by seasonality, immunity from earlier infections, etc. Polio doesn't mutate as fast, the vaccine lasts long time, and prevents both symptoms and the spread. R0 drops below 1, polio defeated. COVID mutates much faster, has one of the highest R0 rates among known diseases, vaccine lasts a limited time, considerably reduces mortality rate (which isn't much of a concern for fit healthy adults under 50), and somewhat reduces the spread. It pushes the R0 number somewhat down, but not below 1. What actually ended the pandemic was the Omicron variant that mysteriously grew much faster in the upper respiratory tract, and got your body to start fighting it before it did anything to the lungs. It still has enough R0, but the symptoms are so mild, it became mostly indistinguishable from common cold, so people stopped caring. Had we vaccinated the at-risk groups, and given strong incentives for others to lose weight and start exercising, we could have arrived at the same, or lower death toll with much less taxpayer money going towards the Big Pharma.
- cempaka 3y ago
  Always helps to have vaccines that actually work to prevent transmission too.
- Vecr 3y ago
  There clearly are risk factors for paralytic Polio disease but it's likely to be in the very complex interaction between the person's genome and the environment, causing variability in certain types of immune responses. Even now it's not very clear how you would go about testing for them in advance. In the 1950s the "risk group" for a specific serotype of Polio virus is that you were statistically less likely to already have been infected with that serotype. They found out the Salk vaccine was almost entirely ineffective against transmissions pretty quick as well.

pavlov 3y ago

> "Skepticism over mass vaccination" All successful vaccination is mass vaccination. That's the whole point. Would we be rid of polio if we'd only vaccinated the 5% of population who were most at risk?

matrix_overload 3y ago
Hello, numbers. Every infection has an R0 rate (average number of people infected by a single infected person). If it's greater than 1, the infection spreads exponentially. If it's lower than 1, it peters out. Vaccinating X% of people pushes R0 lower by X * N, where N depends on mutation rate, how good is the vaccine at preventing the spread (vs. reducing symptoms), etc. R0 is also affected by seasonality, immunity from earlier infections, etc. Polio doesn't mutate as fast, the vaccine lasts long time, and prevents both symptoms and the spread. R0 drops below 1, polio defeated. COVID mutates much faster, has one of the highest R0 rates among known diseases, vaccine lasts a limited time, considerably reduces mortality rate (which isn't much of a concern for fit healthy adults under 50), and somewhat reduces the spread. It pushes the R0 number somewhat down, but not below 1. What actually ended the pandemic was the Omicron variant that mysteriously grew much faster in the upper respiratory tract, and got your body to start fighting it before it did anything to the lungs. It still has enough R0, but the symptoms are so mild, it became mostly indistinguishable from common cold, so people stopped caring. Had we vaccinated the at-risk groups, and given strong incentives for others to lose weight and start exercising, we could have arrived at the same, or lower death toll with much less taxpayer money going towards the Big Pharma.
cempaka 3y ago
Always helps to have vaccines that actually work to prevent transmission too.
Vecr 3y ago
There clearly are risk factors for paralytic Polio disease but it's likely to be in the very complex interaction between the person's genome and the environment, causing variability in certain types of immune responses. Even now it's not very clear how you would go about testing for them in advance. In the 1950s the "risk group" for a specific serotype of Polio virus is that you were statistically less likely to already have been infected with that serotype. They found out the Salk vaccine was almost entirely ineffective against transmissions pretty quick as well.