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b) the tribe that reacts to any criticism of public health experts with hostility and threats of violence, pushes an anti-intellectual agenda, pushes pseudo-treatments that are at best not known to work or at worst a health hazard, and tries to fill in the gap between their beliefs and reality with conspiracy theories?
Yep, fits like a glove and with that shows it is unwise to try to frame one of the sides of a polarised discussion. If you truly want to engage in a debate on such subjects the first thing to do is to leave your bias at the door, otherwise you'll only add fuel to the fire.
Whether Ivermectin works or not is something which can be found out through the scientific (with a small 's') process, is it not up to 'The Science' to decide this upfront. If it does work this would be a good thing given the relative safety and low price of the preparation. If it does not work, well, that's too bad, hopefully something else will be found which does work while having the same advantages - safety and low price - as Ivermectin has.
The thing with playing syntactic games like this is that your altered sentence. . . isn't actually true. The two sides in relation to COVID research and official guidelines actually do behave differently.
the reality is that there are many perspectives on many issues, and by bucketing things the way you have, you are re-enforcing bad mental models.
I feel you're being disingenuous.
I mean, where exactly do you see any "vindication" regarding the real threat of covid19 when in 2020 it was already the third leading cause of death in the US and it already overtook the 1918 flu as the deadliest pandemic[¹] ?
This assertion is even more ridiculous given that those criticising the initial covid19 response tried to downplay it as nothing more than a harmless mild flu, and now we're seeing in the US alone over 700 thousand deaths.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/covid-19-...
But to expand this analogy, if you're in a plane in conditions nobody has seen before, where the pilots are desperately trying to save as many people as they can before they run out of fuel - do you want the pilot who is open to the reality of the situation and constantly learning new things, or the pilot who confidently follows the nearest checklist without asking if it even works?
I really don't know what you were trying to say. The article you linked was about how those who have previously recovered from COVID-19 have a stronger immune response after being vaccinated than those who have never been infected.
We have barely started to understand long term implications of covid infection, mRNA / classic vaccines or various treatments. For example, we are almost a year after mass vaccination campaigns started. We still don't know if/how many boosters are required for optimal vaccine performance. Nobody can cite 5-year effectiveness number for mRNA vaccines, which are by far the most popular vaccines in the West. This should raise red flags to any critically thinking person.
By necessity, we are operating in "faith" mode. And that's ok. Often times faith is a good enough action guide.
I fail to see the point of your remark, as it reads like a non-sequitur. I mean, the discussion was about the difference between those who listen to public health experts and the anti-intellectual covid denialists/anti-masks/anti-vaxers. Where do epistomological arguments lend any credence to anti-intellectual militants that try to counter science and public health safeguards with conspiracy theories?