Variously attributed to Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes:
"When the facts change, I change my mind-- what do you do, Sir?"
This quote pithily summarizes a principle of both the scientific method AND basic common sense-- yet, you'd think Fauci's endlessly baying critics had never heard of this concept before.
We've always had an anti-intellectual component in American society. Helped make Richard Hofstadter's career. Even at the onset of World War II many people complained about rationing, black-out curtains, curfews and other government policies related to winning the war.
But vaccines? I'm old enough to remember when iron lungs were a thing and then the polio vaccine came along and Jonas Salk was a national hero. Did anyone find the vaccine a bad thing? We all had to get certain shots to go to school and no one thought their freedoms were being impinged.
Yes, we, as a country have weaponized dumb and I'm not sure how to combat it. And it's very disturbing.
Nothing inherently wrong with social media - IF it self-policed for blatant misinformation, disinformation, snake oil salesmen, state actor propaganda and the like. Just disseminating this corrosive material and making it accessible world-wide is a major problem but might be survivable. But after the algorithms change this from a passive source where a user selects their own content and makes it instead a highly efficient active driver of division and conflict you end up with a nuclear reaction no society can survive.
In theory it’s not that hard to solve. Outlaw the use of such algorithms and make all media platforms responsible for the content they disseminate. But in reality there are many wealthy and powerful vested interests that would have to be overcome. Probably the only hope is that corporate America finally realize this path leads to ruin and join the fight to stop it. But we will all hate each other by then. And by ‘then’ I mean by now.
My mom remembers being one of the older kids in school asked to help line up the young ones to get their shots. No one questioned it, the parents were notified by a letter sent home, and everyone was vaccinated.
She also remembers my grandmother, who was a nurse, calling home several times a day to check on her and my uncle to make sure they were OK.
Just wanted to post the latest poll about vaccines and Covid from CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/13/polit...tes/index.html
I found these numbers interesting in showing our national divide, both along partisan lines and regarding the vaxed and the unvaxed:More than half of Americans now say they support requiring vaccinations for office workers returning to the workplace (54%), students attending in-person classes (55%) and patrons attending sporting events or concerts (55%), although fewer (41%) support requiring vaccinations for a shopper to enter a grocery store.
Support for these mandates has risen across the board since April, growing 6 percentage points with regard to students, 8 points regarding office workers and event attendees, and 15 points regarding grocery shoppers.
-Jason "in terms of vaccination rates, the poll found the following: Democrats - 88% vaxed, Ind - 68% vaxed, GOP - 60% - vaxed... 35% of Republicans say they will never get vaccinated under any circumstances" Evans
Last edited by JasonEvans; 09-13-2021 at 06:52 AM.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?