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That's a glaring red flag that they're overly conventional thinkers. Independent-minded people were generally either proponents of the lab leak theory all along

That's a glaring red flag that they're overly conventional thinkers. Independent-minded people were generally either proponents of the lab leak theory all along or were not going to ridicule it as "obviously ridiculous". Likewise, I'd be suspicious of somebody who very strongly argued in favor of "masks don't work" in March 2020 when that was the official position of the US CDC. People whose opinions I'd consider worth listening to are the ones who don't automatically change their position whenever their tribe's party line changes.

jjeaff 3y ago
The CDC never had any official position that masks don't work. In March of 2020, the CDC official position was that people not working in healthcare or caring for the at-risk do not need to wear masks. in the same announcement they said "Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers" in other words, masks work, but we need to save them for where they will do the most good. however, the Trump admin's messaging was an unholy pile of hot burning garbage, so one could be forgiven for thinking the official recommendations were that masks don't work.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ghufran_syed 3y ago
  I guess strictly speaking is was the official position of the US government, but not the CDC: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
- pyuser583 3y ago
  It wasn’t just, or even primarily, the Trump administration. It was hordes of social media personalities trying to sound Very Smart and establishing themselves as authorities during a time of crisis.
patrick451 3y ago
It had been the official position of the CDC for decades that masks are not effective for stopping a respiratory virus. They did an about face with covid for unknown reasons.
- abenga 3y ago
  Do you have a link to official publications saying this?
shalmanese 3y ago
I would argue the complete opposite. One of Michael Hobbes' persistant cri de couers is that the media is overwhelmingly only capable of covering the meta-conversation around the reactions to various claims and seem totally incapable and incurious about digging into the meat of the claims themselves, despite it being methodologically trivial to do so. One of their most recent episodes was on the Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal where they systematically dug into every one of the 54 cases of plagiarism and demonstrated just how much of it was bad faith right wing bullshit that didn't stand up to even the slightest intellectual scrutiny. But the larger point they were making was not about the right, for which they expected intellectual dishonesty, but the complicity of the left & mainstream media in only ever talking about the scandal in terms of who is saying what about it and why and not on the meat of the facts on the ground. They took the exact same approach to the lab leak episode where they said let's ignore all of the media meta-narrative and look at just the plain facts on the ground and they found that, like most things, it was a sandcastle built of air that collapsed when you even looked at it funny.

jjeaff 3y ago

The CDC never had any official position that masks don't work. In March of 2020, the CDC official position was that people not working in healthcare or caring for the at-risk do not need to wear masks. in the same announcement they said "Facemasks may be in short supply and they should be saved for caregivers" in other words, masks work, but we need to save them for where they will do the most good. however, the Trump admin's messaging was an unholy pile of hot burning garbage, so one could be forgiven for thinking the official recommendations were that masks don't work.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ghufran_syed 3y ago
I guess strictly speaking is was the official position of the US government, but not the CDC: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cdc-mask-guidance-during-covid-19-pandemic https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-07-27/timeline-cd...
pyuser583 3y ago
It wasn’t just, or even primarily, the Trump administration. It was hordes of social media personalities trying to sound Very Smart and establishing themselves as authorities during a time of crisis.

patrick451 3y ago

It had been the official position of the CDC for decades that masks are not effective for stopping a respiratory virus. They did an about face with covid for unknown reasons.

abenga 3y ago
Do you have a link to official publications saying this?

shalmanese 3y ago

I would argue the complete opposite. One of Michael Hobbes' persistant cri de couers is that the media is overwhelmingly only capable of covering the meta-conversation around the reactions to various claims and seem totally incapable and incurious about digging into the meat of the claims themselves, despite it being methodologically trivial to do so. One of their most recent episodes was on the Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal where they systematically dug into every one of the 54 cases of plagiarism and demonstrated just how much of it was bad faith right wing bullshit that didn't stand up to even the slightest intellectual scrutiny. But the larger point they were making was not about the right, for which they expected intellectual dishonesty, but the complicity of the left & mainstream media in only ever talking about the scandal in terms of who is saying what about it and why and not on the meat of the facts on the ground. They took the exact same approach to the lab leak episode where they said let's ignore all of the media meta-narrative and look at just the plain facts on the ground and they found that, like most things, it was a sandcastle built of air that collapsed when you even looked at it funny.