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Comment by sofixa | Hacker News Reader

> What we should be doing is trying to raise everyone's critical thinking game

How do you propose we do that, and what do you propose while waiting for the day where that's the case? The proliferation of Q lunatics and anti-vaxxers shows that we're not really there and there are real-world deadly consequences to "letting people decide for themselves". When it comes to public health, most people can't decide for themselves because they lack the medical background needed to understand the science and decide.

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> How do you propose we do that, [...] ?

Stop lying to them.

Good, let's try to convince anti-vaxxers, Q people, Covid-deniers and what not of that, it will surely work!

Of course it won't, because people tend to listen to other people due to a variety of reasons ( personal charisma, luck, circumstances, etc.). We wouldn't have cults and science deniers otherwise.

> Good, let's try to convince anti-vaxxers, Q people, Covid-deniers and what not of that, it will surely work!

You don't seem to understand. Don't tell them on Day 1 that mask are useless, and on Day 2 that mask are mandatory under threat of jail. Tell them on Day 1 that you fucked up and destroyed mask supplies a few years before and that you're not prepared anymore. Though, that will never happen as these people want to get re-elected and do-no-wrong.

If masks are useless on Day 1, they are useless on Day 2. If not, it means that people making these statement are full of shit on potentially ANY subject and thus can not be looked upon to (including vaccination).

Or maybe our knowledge of the situation and the unknown virus was evolving? And the rate of asymptomatic cases, and the fact that they still spread the virus wasn't initially known/certain? Why the binary approach?

> Why the binary approach?

It has nothing to do with a binary approach. The anti-masks arguments were very much a red-herring argument really being all about on anti-hoarding and anti-panic arguments from unprepared institutions (despite hoarding taxpayers dollars for years). A couple of month earlier, just mentioning the damn thing was enough to get you banned from social media. I was even arguing about the difference between test positivity rate and actual cases (including asymptomatic ones) early on, especially wrt. seasonal flu numbers, being treated like a complete fool (and still am).

The amount of layers upon layers upon layers of ass covering about all this has been staggering.

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