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Comment by a_bonobo | Hacker News Reader

I think Covid (and all the anti-vax grift around it) was the last straw, exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system.

It reminds me of this recent quote from Cory Doctorow:

>We’ve had massive institutional failures that make people not believe anything. We focus a lot on the technical mechanics of why people don’t believe anything. Ten years ago, my pain specialist wanted me to go on opioids. I did my own research and determined that big Pharma was conspiring to kill people like me and I was right. The fact that I have the same epistemological basis for my healthcare decision-making as anti-vaxxers is undertheorized in rooms like this one. We leave people in an epistemological void.

Source: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-d...

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The for profit health system has a ton of problems and should be abandoned but it’s not the reason why people lost their minds over Covid. Germany has a better health system (for normal earners. The US system is great for wealthy people) but still has a ton of anti vaxxers and Covid deniers.

In Germany, anyone who didn’t agree with forcing people to get vaccinated and with lockdowns was considered a Covid denier. But in the end, once mask mandates were lifted and basically no one wears a mask any more, you see that a loud and aggressive minority was the one imposing the rules on everyone.

In Spain there is universal healthcare which is not perfect but works relative ok (although has been eroded over time) and most antivaxxers(and anti mask and anti everything) could be found within the right spectrum, basically as no sayers to everything the current government (social democrats) would recommend and propose.

I feel Germany is a slightly different beast as a large part of the anti-vax crowd in Germany seems to recruit itself from left-ish/Green corner of politics, the people who've been anti-Monsanto for decades. It's not a far jump from there to anti-vax (it's all big US companies etc.)

How's that different from the US? Nominally left-leaning yoga moms are a huge part of the antivax moxement. It's the same thing - a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to think critical, a naive belief that "nature good, human-made bad" without any nuance, and the willingness to deify their prophets of "natural healing".

Nominally left-leaning yoga moms should stick to yoga. The same goes for nominally right-leaning yoga moms. And yoga dads. Unless they feel like ditching every other 'human made' component from their lives as well for consistency.

Essential oils for broken legs.

Many people point out that hospitals tend to have tough luck with anything except broken bones.

Preventative medicine, nutrition, etc have an impressive record for everything else. Essential oils may be a rather small part of this.

> Many people point out that hospitals tend to have tough luck with anything except broken bones.

Many people talk dumb nonsense. Doesn't mean you should pay attention. Next time you have kidney trouble, appendicitis, an infected gal bladder, a blood clot in your aorta, a leaky heart valve or an infected tooth you'll be talking to a yoga mom then?

Indeed, many people induce unnecessary stress upon themselves spewing vitriol. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading... I spoke in general on purpose, to avoid getting into the weeds on statistics like this. Of course we are aware of modern medical techniques. But the general divide between holistic and allopathic medicine is well known. Perhaps a deep breath is in order.

> Nominally left-leaning yoga moms are a huge part of the antivax moxement. It's the same thing - a lack of understanding, an unwillingness to think critical, a naive belief that "nature good, human-made bad" without any nuance, and the willingness to deify their prophets of "natural healing".

Nice straw man you've got there. It would be a shame if this scientific bibliography were to shatter your worldview: https://gist.github.com/stefantalpalaru/b630413da6889c79f795...

Correct reasoning

We're over-indexing on institutional failures and failing to consider non-institutional failure rates.

Institutions fail, and when they do, it's a huge disaster. Absent institutions, the general public also fails, and when they do, it's a huge disaster.

Now, compare the failure rates.

When individuals fail, we seem to think, either "well, they'll get smarter for the next time" or "well, I'm smart, so that won't happen to me" (the famous last words of every mark that walked the earth), yet when institutions fail, the prevailing wisdom seems to be, "institutions always fail"... this despite institutions effectively being composed of individuals, but with systemic checks and balances in place that attempt to mitigate for the failings of both individuals and institutions.

There's a long line of con men, fraudsters, quacks, etc. (let alone strategic/systemic adversaries) cheering in the bleachers, hoping that the public will decide that institutions cannot help and that "doing your own research" is the path to success.

exploiting fears that were constructed by a cutthroat for-profit health system

...have we so soon forgotten the risks and consequences of viral mutation? 2020 and part of 2021 was the world trying to prevent COVID from mutating and following the same trajectory as the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak.

Similarly, here's a medical health expert talking about how he's a junkfoodaholic:

https://twitter.com/PierreKory/status/1607144563558187009

What does this man's self control have to do with whether it's beneficial to take vaccines for your health or the health of those around you?

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