Thank you so much. I lost my father to misinformation and covid. In ICU he wanted to get better and go back to tell the hollers of Eastern Ky. Harlan County schools alone lost so many over 20 maybe 40 it was unreal. The lies they believe because maga and that media circuit has them over coal. So many good families lost everything, we're not offered new solutions or jobs and blame it all on Democrats. A deep hatred started it, but if he was coming around, anyone could. Sadly he never made it out. My mom has Lupus and her and my conservative step father accepted my appointment immediately for the vaccines. My daddy didn't talk to me for a week when they called him for his. He apologized for that too. My pregnant 23 year old told me once they put stuff in the vaccines. She trusts the misinformed people telling her this over me. Her baby will now be at risk. It's so exhausting. Thank you
I had polio in 1955, just before vaccine was available. Production had started with Salk vaccine, but one of the vendors producing it made a production mistake. In the summer of 1955, there were more polio cases among kids in my community center in Boston, than now occur worldwide. And the cheap, low-logistic-need live polio virus vaccine, unlike any used for flu or covid, can, rarely, actually cause polio. Still the odds favor taking the vaccine. And what else could explain the worldwide drop in polio cases?
I do have statistical training, in depth. I'm also a journalist. Misinformation is not the exclusive province of the far right and Russian trolls, or opportunistic snake oil salespeople. Many of my progressive neighbors believe Big Pharma has a cure for cancer but makes too much money "merely" extending patient lives in a chronic condition. Rubbish. As long as so many fools are born or made every minute, we're stuck. There's no vaccine for stupidity, and no cure short of death.
I took a while to get the vaccine and ended up getting the J&J conventional one after researching ingredients in all available vaccines. It turns out that the delivery method in the mRNA vaccines (PEG, which is also common in some other meds) can cause anaphylactic reactions and as I’d had one after taking a prescription cough medicine containing it (ending up in the hospital) so I opted for the one that did not contain that ingredient. My side effects to the first shot was a nasty headache for a week and a chronic one for longer, periodic headaches over the summer, but a much milder case of Covid than those who got Covid after the mRNA shots (I was fatigued but coworkers and my brothers family all got flu like debilitating symptoms which lasted longer than my mild ones.
I also noticed that friends who got sick pre-vaccine sometimes ended up in the ICU for a month and needed intensive rehab after, other friends lost family members to it.
What really got to me was when statisticians crunched the numbers and it was clear than in states with high vaccine uptake the cases of serious illnesses and deaths from or with Covid dropped like a rock while the denier states continued to see increases. They could also see differences between counties: those that went for Biden in 2020 did better than counties that went for Trump.
It’s one thing to approach science with skepticism (especially when the popular press might misunderstand what the science really says) but quite another to deny science entirely just because even researchers can get things wrong. Real science repeats studies to refute or confirm results and it evolves over time.
Brilliant in concision, and unfortunately timely and necessary. An absolute public service to write this essay as an informed journalist without pretense to minute-detail obsession.
Humans, alas, are given to socially-generated and reinforced stupidity, and not just on the fascist side of the town. People need to read more, open themselves up to intellectual humility and criticism, and learn when to shut the fuck up.
Thanks for this round up, particularly like addressing not overloading the hospitals. I'm a sepsis survivor who almost died because of not being treated timely at an overloaded rural hospital for a common emergency in 2016. These are preventable situations on multiple fronts.
And we really can't have enough people publishing the truth about these pseudoscience grifters making big money either directly or indirectly by pushing anti-vax b.s. The b.s. asymetry principle is horrendous because of the money spent to publish that garbage.
Well, I AM a scientist (biology, chemistry) and I can tell you there's something "really going on". And that is a coordinated disinformation campaign designed to fracture American society and make us so suspicious of science and of one another, that we are weakened and ready to abandon democracy for autocracy. THAT is what is really going on. From what I am reading, It would seem that RFK Jr. is part of it, Trump is part of it, Musk is part of it. Too bad that some people, who you would assume to have common sense and critical thinking skills, have fallen for this disinformation.
Thank you so much. I lost my father to misinformation and covid. In ICU he wanted to get better and go back to tell the hollers of Eastern Ky. Harlan County schools alone lost so many over 20 maybe 40 it was unreal. The lies they believe because maga and that media circuit has them over coal. So many good families lost everything, we're not offered new solutions or jobs and blame it all on Democrats. A deep hatred started it, but if he was coming around, anyone could. Sadly he never made it out. My mom has Lupus and her and my conservative step father accepted my appointment immediately for the vaccines. My daddy didn't talk to me for a week when they called him for his. He apologized for that too. My pregnant 23 year old told me once they put stuff in the vaccines. She trusts the misinformed people telling her this over me. Her baby will now be at risk. It's so exhausting. Thank you
I had polio in 1955, just before vaccine was available. Production had started with Salk vaccine, but one of the vendors producing it made a production mistake. In the summer of 1955, there were more polio cases among kids in my community center in Boston, than now occur worldwide. And the cheap, low-logistic-need live polio virus vaccine, unlike any used for flu or covid, can, rarely, actually cause polio. Still the odds favor taking the vaccine. And what else could explain the worldwide drop in polio cases?
I do have statistical training, in depth. I'm also a journalist. Misinformation is not the exclusive province of the far right and Russian trolls, or opportunistic snake oil salespeople. Many of my progressive neighbors believe Big Pharma has a cure for cancer but makes too much money "merely" extending patient lives in a chronic condition. Rubbish. As long as so many fools are born or made every minute, we're stuck. There's no vaccine for stupidity, and no cure short of death.
I took a while to get the vaccine and ended up getting the J&J conventional one after researching ingredients in all available vaccines. It turns out that the delivery method in the mRNA vaccines (PEG, which is also common in some other meds) can cause anaphylactic reactions and as I’d had one after taking a prescription cough medicine containing it (ending up in the hospital) so I opted for the one that did not contain that ingredient. My side effects to the first shot was a nasty headache for a week and a chronic one for longer, periodic headaches over the summer, but a much milder case of Covid than those who got Covid after the mRNA shots (I was fatigued but coworkers and my brothers family all got flu like debilitating symptoms which lasted longer than my mild ones.
I also noticed that friends who got sick pre-vaccine sometimes ended up in the ICU for a month and needed intensive rehab after, other friends lost family members to it.
What really got to me was when statisticians crunched the numbers and it was clear than in states with high vaccine uptake the cases of serious illnesses and deaths from or with Covid dropped like a rock while the denier states continued to see increases. They could also see differences between counties: those that went for Biden in 2020 did better than counties that went for Trump.
It’s one thing to approach science with skepticism (especially when the popular press might misunderstand what the science really says) but quite another to deny science entirely just because even researchers can get things wrong. Real science repeats studies to refute or confirm results and it evolves over time.
But then some deny that evolution exists…
Brilliant in concision, and unfortunately timely and necessary. An absolute public service to write this essay as an informed journalist without pretense to minute-detail obsession.
Humans, alas, are given to socially-generated and reinforced stupidity, and not just on the fascist side of the town. People need to read more, open themselves up to intellectual humility and criticism, and learn when to shut the fuck up.
Thanks for this round up, particularly like addressing not overloading the hospitals. I'm a sepsis survivor who almost died because of not being treated timely at an overloaded rural hospital for a common emergency in 2016. These are preventable situations on multiple fronts.
And we really can't have enough people publishing the truth about these pseudoscience grifters making big money either directly or indirectly by pushing anti-vax b.s. The b.s. asymetry principle is horrendous because of the money spent to publish that garbage.
Well, I AM a scientist (biology, chemistry) and I can tell you there's something "really going on". And that is a coordinated disinformation campaign designed to fracture American society and make us so suspicious of science and of one another, that we are weakened and ready to abandon democracy for autocracy. THAT is what is really going on. From what I am reading, It would seem that RFK Jr. is part of it, Trump is part of it, Musk is part of it. Too bad that some people, who you would assume to have common sense and critical thinking skills, have fallen for this disinformation.