Only the best and the brightest from Donald’s administration.
You’d think a position like the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the entire nation would require some sort of medical or sociology training, but nope! Not in this timeline.
Well, the current one doesn’t either:, Secretary Bacerra is a lawyer, the same as Robert F Kennedy Jr. The Secretary’s job is to basically collect and summarize reports from their respective agencies for the President.
You know, occasionally I’m led to believe that we live in the 21st century, but then I read a quote like that and I’m reminded, nope, definitely Middle Ages still. I better go hunt some witches now.
They’re called trans people now.
I was vaccinated as a child. Does that mean I’m dead now? Cause I could be convinced either way.
No, but autism is worse for these motherfuckers than death.
He was vaccinated too. Maybe we’re all dead, that would actually explain a few things.
I had higher hopes for death.
It’s like a trolley problem. If you do nothing, an RFK shaped train will speed down the tracks and kill untold innocents (and some maga assholes). If you pull the lever to try to stop it, you’ll almost certainly die, and it’s possible another train will be placed on the tracks later anyway.
So I don’t know what to do. I pray to saint luigi.
Ideally, as many people who try to kill that many people are stopped.
RFK specifically can’t be allowed to fuck with vaccines. That isn’t, like, an industry shifting around. It’s worse than life and death, it’s brutal, chronic illness–preventable horrendous individual suffering on a mass scale.
Yeah we thought guardrails were in place with covid but here we are
Actually my suspicion is that this is a big pharma push to withdraw approval for older vaccines that have gone generic so that they can charge more for newer alternatives.
All drugs, including vaccines, have a generic name which refers to the chemical itself (such as ibuprofen or diphenhydramine) and usually at least one if not multiple brand names (ibuprofen -> Motrin or Advil, diphenhydramine -> Benadryl). When drugs go generic they can be sold under multiple or no brand names, which means they can be produced by anyone which increases competition and drives down prices. To get a new brand of drug that a pharma company can have exclusive rights to, they have to add something to the formulation (which is how you get things like advil quick release gel caps; it’s still ibuprofen but they added a capsule that releases the medication faster).
My suspicion is that there’s one or more pharma companies out there that have some new formulation of the polio and other vaccines that have some relatively unimportant change like a different manufacturing process or a different preservative. It could even just be a solo or different combination vaccine than usual (a polio vax is usually part of a combo vax with tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis). They want the existing vaccines taken off the market to force people to pay more for the “newer vaccine” that “doesn’t cause autism.”
This seems like a huge gamble if you’re a pharma in the vaccine space. Existing vaccines have great economies of scale and are very reliable revenue when uptake is high and consistent. Introducing skepticism that reduces the number of people getting vaccines (since RFK lacks any nuance) is a great way to shoot yourself in the foot. The new patent vaccine would need to maintain high uptake to recoup the R&D costs.
You’re also screwing a large group of billionaires to benefit a much smaller group of billionaires. Possible, but likely to make enemies.
That actually finally makes sense. I think you’ve solved the mystery.
That fits typical Republican corruption scams
Yeah I hate it when people call republicans ignorant. I HOPE this is ignorance because the alternative is WAY worse.
I don’t know if I believe Bush was that good at acting. There are high Machiavellian types, Platonic sophism and misinformation, but I don’t think any are quite sure who are the leaders and who are the convenient idiots, but opportunism abounds. They fail to adopt game theory after the most prosperous methodology has been established and proven.
Wow, fighting conspiracy theories with conspiracy theories?
a) it’s effective and b) I think it’s important with conspiracy theorizing that instead of simply asking yourself whether or not you think it’s likely that someone is lying to you, you need to ask yourself what their motivation would be and how much effort would be required to achieve that result, THEN decide how likely it is that you are being lied to. I think the primary failing of a lot of conspiracy theorists is not that they think they’re being lied to in general, but that they neglect to do those important first steps towards creating the hypothesis. Unfortunately the actual testing is going to mostly be watching and waiting.
Reconstructed text from a screenshot of a reddit comment by u/Haliax:
4th year med student reporting in.
Had a rotation with a pediatrician where we ended up in the classic encounter with an anti-vaccination parent. This lady was a conspiracy theory magnet. She casually mentioned everything from 9/11 to chemtrails. Of course she loved the idea of the vaccine conspiracy as well, opting to not protect her one year old to stick it to big pharma.
I relayed all of this to my attending after my exam (I would see the patient first, gather history and do my exam to present to my attending physician). He got this sort of lazy smirk on his face that screamed “watch this”.
We go back into the exam room and we cover all of the important bits of a well-child encounter. Growth charts, behavioral milestones, nutrition, sleep…
And then we get to vaccines. She lists approximately 15 reasons why vaccines are more dangerous than the disease they protect against (lol) in addition to the various evils of the pharmaceutical industry.
My attending listens quietly until she’s done with her soapbox (about one eternity later), and then interjects with: “Have you considered the possibility that anti-vaccine propaganda could be an attempt by the Russians or the Chinese to weaken the health of the United States population?”
In a moment of catastrophic cognitive dissonance, I swear I heard a strange popping noise as her brain misfired. It actually broke her. The allure of the increasingly ridiculous conspiracy theory was just too strong.
She ended up agreeing to a modified vaccine schedule. I was flabbergasted. My attending just grinned at me in response. To this day I’m not sure the medical ethics of the situation are totally palatable, but goddamn the result was amazing.
EDIT: Thanks for the internet points, remember folks, it’s all for the kids.
God. Damn. I’m all but certain I read that post.
I think it normalizes conspiratorial thinking. Better to teach proper critical thinking.
The best option is that which is possible.
How? A correct answer saves the world.
Edit: The most frustrating thing about this entire thread is that I wanted to have a conversation about implementing actual on the ground solutions to countering conspiracy theories and the response was to shut down the conversation.
In an attempt to answer my own question, maybe the solution to getting people to escape conspiracy theories is to avoid personal attacks (you’re Machiavelli) and other rhetorical devices and actually have a conversation divorced from ego about a topic.
If only there was a community for that?
How is conspiratorial thinking helping the world right now?
That’s a non answer. I never said conspiratorial thinking was helping the world. (However, in the example given it appears that it may have.)
What I asked was how do we implement your solution. It’s all well and good to point out problems. But if that problem is unavoidable it becomes the cost of doing business. I take your non answer to mean you don’t have one. That’s fine. I don’t either. In the example given a good result was achieved via a less than ideal way.
While we wait for the way to implement your solution I am willing to accept getting innocent children vaccinated by any means possible.
Honestly, the situation we find ourselves in is because we applied your “solution” for decades while ignoring the long-term consequences of that kind of appeasement of illogical thinking.
In the example given a good result was achieved via a less than ideal way.
Machiavelli would be proud.
I would be a vaccine skeptic if i could find anything about curing viruses skeptical. Fortunately or unfortunately im not stupid.
You can be a skeptic and still come to the conclusion “vaccines work with no major problems, and should be mandated widely”.
I can also not be a skeptic and do research anyway. I have a fair amount of confidence in scientists but not governments. Nor governments understandings of science. Nor the common persons understanding. Im skeptical on all those fronts. But science. Not so much.
Yup, I’m a vaccine skeptic and get every pretty much every one that’s offered, because it turns out they’re totally worth it. But I do my research anyway because I’m not blindly injecting anything.
Who goes hiking with an unvaccinated infant? His babble is almost as incoherent as Trump’s.
