5 ms·

“Why don’t people trust the government with vaccines???” Meanwhile. The government.

by aaomidi 2y ago

aaomidi 2y ago
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
- popcalc 2y ago
  I like to think this influenced the counter-culture movement of the 60's.
  - krapp 2y ago
    One of the weird quirks of American history seems to be that 60's subculture was more or less accidentally created by the CIA via MKUltra introducing LSD to the populace and funding modern art movements as anti-communist propaganda.
kube-system 2y ago
-- Sent via DARPA Internet Protocol The US government does so many damn things that it can be used as an example of just about anything.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  The internet was going to happen with or without US government involvement. The US government just made it faster. Also, comparing testing radiation vs testing fast communications is not a valid equivalency.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    I don't disagree, because that's entirely not the point I was making. I'm saying that the law of truly large numbers applies here. The US government has done exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things because it does a ridiculous number of things. It simply does more than any other organization; it has been the world's largest organization for some time.
    - odyssey7 2y ago
      This sounds like Donald Trump. We do lots of things! Some say the best things! Are some of them bad? Well, when you do a lot of things, some of them don’t turn out so good. If you don’t draw the line at mass murder then I don’t know where you draw it.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  Red herring. Abusing your citizens is bad. If the government wants to be trusted it should make itself trustworthy.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Agreed. Now what is the measure by which that is judged? Of course, if we are to say that only the governments with a spotless record are trustworthy, then the only trustworthy governments are fictional ones. That might be a bit unreasonable of an expectation for an organization made up of fallible humans, though, so many reason that some non-zero number of mistakes are inevitably bound to happen, even within bounds of trustworthiness. At the end of the day, trust is a personal judgement call. But it's my opinion that if you have an impossible standard of trust, you may just have an unreasonable opinion.
    - odyssey7 2y ago
      This isn’t an engineering problem where you can just hit some metric. Trust gets earned informally on person-by-person terms over a long period of time. People in St. Louis died / were killed at the direction of the US Army. Frankly, if they decide they don’t trust vaccines that government officials recommend, I can’t tell them their distrust is invalid. They’d be right. For decades, administration after administration has lied to them about what the government did to sabotage their health. The course of action in this specific case that would build rapport would be to plainly tell the public the truth. It’s not rocket science where you have to invent a metric. Keeping the secret allows the government to avoid oversight. So that it can do the same sort of thing again? Because it is doing the same sort of thing right now?
      - kube-system 2y ago
        Yes, as I said, trust is a personal judgement call. However, I doubt anyone who distrusts the damn COVID vaccine because of the story in the OP is not going to be convinced by anything. There's such a ridiculously weak association between those activities that the person is simply ignorant of how the world works. Their personal beliefs may be sincere, but they are not a person worth convincing of anything because they draw their conclusions through superficial means.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
It's hilarious that this gets voted down. The whole thread is "government bad, not to be trusted". Someone replies, "government bad, not to be trusted?". Immediate downvotes. History didn't suddenly stop yesterday, kids.
- fundad 2y ago
  We trust scientists working at private companies to develop vaccines and we trust the private US healthcare providers to administer them and we get to live long.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    There is a deep regulatory involvement in developing vaccines and there is a long supply chain from manufacturing a dose to delivering it into the body of a patient. The regulators exist because we can’t trust the private companies. Who regulates the regulators? The whole thing depends on the integrity of our institutions. If those institutions fail to uphold their trustworthiness, then we won’t be able to trust the process.
fundad 2y ago
How long do you want vaccine development to take?

“Why don’t people trust the government with vaccines???” Meanwhile. The government.

aaomidi 2y ago

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

popcalc 2y ago
I like to think this influenced the counter-culture movement of the 60's.
- krapp 2y ago
  One of the weird quirks of American history seems to be that 60's subculture was more or less accidentally created by the CIA via MKUltra introducing LSD to the populace and funding modern art movements as anti-communist propaganda.

kube-system 2y ago

-- Sent via DARPA Internet Protocol The US government does so many damn things that it can be used as an example of just about anything.

aaomidi 2y ago
The internet was going to happen with or without US government involvement. The US government just made it faster. Also, comparing testing radiation vs testing fast communications is not a valid equivalency.
- kube-system 2y ago
  I don't disagree, because that's entirely not the point I was making. I'm saying that the law of truly large numbers applies here. The US government has done exceptionally good things and exceptionally bad things because it does a ridiculous number of things. It simply does more than any other organization; it has been the world's largest organization for some time.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    This sounds like Donald Trump. We do lots of things! Some say the best things! Are some of them bad? Well, when you do a lot of things, some of them don’t turn out so good. If you don’t draw the line at mass murder then I don’t know where you draw it.
odyssey7 2y ago
Red herring. Abusing your citizens is bad. If the government wants to be trusted it should make itself trustworthy.
- kube-system 2y ago
  Agreed. Now what is the measure by which that is judged? Of course, if we are to say that only the governments with a spotless record are trustworthy, then the only trustworthy governments are fictional ones. That might be a bit unreasonable of an expectation for an organization made up of fallible humans, though, so many reason that some non-zero number of mistakes are inevitably bound to happen, even within bounds of trustworthiness. At the end of the day, trust is a personal judgement call. But it's my opinion that if you have an impossible standard of trust, you may just have an unreasonable opinion.
  - odyssey7 2y ago
    This isn’t an engineering problem where you can just hit some metric. Trust gets earned informally on person-by-person terms over a long period of time. People in St. Louis died / were killed at the direction of the US Army. Frankly, if they decide they don’t trust vaccines that government officials recommend, I can’t tell them their distrust is invalid. They’d be right. For decades, administration after administration has lied to them about what the government did to sabotage their health. The course of action in this specific case that would build rapport would be to plainly tell the public the truth. It’s not rocket science where you have to invent a metric. Keeping the secret allows the government to avoid oversight. So that it can do the same sort of thing again? Because it is doing the same sort of thing right now?
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Yes, as I said, trust is a personal judgement call. However, I doubt anyone who distrusts the damn COVID vaccine because of the story in the OP is not going to be convinced by anything. There's such a ridiculously weak association between those activities that the person is simply ignorant of how the world works. Their personal beliefs may be sincere, but they are not a person worth convincing of anything because they draw their conclusions through superficial means.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

It's hilarious that this gets voted down. The whole thread is "government bad, not to be trusted". Someone replies, "government bad, not to be trusted?". Immediate downvotes. History didn't suddenly stop yesterday, kids.

fundad 2y ago
We trust scientists working at private companies to develop vaccines and we trust the private US healthcare providers to administer them and we get to live long.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  There is a deep regulatory involvement in developing vaccines and there is a long supply chain from manufacturing a dose to delivering it into the body of a patient. The regulators exist because we can’t trust the private companies. Who regulates the regulators? The whole thing depends on the integrity of our institutions. If those institutions fail to uphold their trustworthiness, then we won’t be able to trust the process.

fundad 2y ago

How long do you want vaccine development to take?