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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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joined 2022 November 15 02:36:44 UTC
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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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					joined 2022 November 15 02:36:44 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Poopgate is just the natural result of the claims that Trump wears suit jackets with large tails so he can hide evidence of soiling himself. The story was, and is, that he's not just Evil, he's also dementia-riddled and hence losing control of his bowels.




Did you watch the video? Someone was having a bad time. I don't have Trump's soiled diapers to rub in your face, but even if I did, you wouldn't believe me then. /shrug




Though I do note how you wove in that last sentence about Trump's mental faculties: are you claiming the Poopgate et al. videos are true, or is it simply a case of "who cares if they're true, so long as the stick beats the dog?"




Again, the video itself is 'true' insofar as it exists and isn't doctored by AI to my knowledge. The point of the last line is that Trump could deteriorate fairly quickly in the next few years similarly to Biden. I'm not sure why you'd leap to insinuating that the point is to undermine the public's confidence in Trump, why my point is that the ground truth could be mental decline.




Looking at your linked map, for instance, there's an odd clustering on the Connecticut/New York state border. And the areas with low immunisation include New York state, whereas West Virginia has high immunisation coverage. Minnesota, that impeccably Blue state, also has low coverage. So "voted for Trump" does not seem to be correlation, much less cause.




Looking at the state level is misguided. Every red state has blue urban centers, and every blue state has red rural counties. More granularly:




The Northeast, Midwest, Northwest, and Pacific coast had high MMR vaccine uptake, and clusters of high coverage were concentrated in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. Low coverage was seen in West Texas, southern New Mexico, northern Arizona, parts of Mississippi, and the rural Southeast.






At the state level, county-aggregated estimates ranged from 61.6% in New Mexico to 79.1% in Massachusetts (median, 71.3%). County-level estimates showed even wider variation, with a median uptake of 71.4% (range, 35.8% to 86.8%). Counties with the lowest uptake were mainly in Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, with the highest coverage in parts of Indiana, New York, and Oregon.






So, uh, let's blame those Ukrainian Mennonite Mormon Trump voters?




I grant that they aren't garden-variety Trump voters, but do you think Mennonites vote for Harris?


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What counts as "corrupt" is open to a lot of discussion, but I don't think the institutions have always been this incompetent. Just look at NASA.




HIV was discovered in the early 1980s, a few years after AIDS was recognized as a disease. The first drug was AZT 4 years later (6-7 years after the pandemic started), and that was a stroke of luck in that they repurposed an oncology drug that just happened to have activity against HIV. The first protease inhibitor (something designed specifically to target an HIV protein) was mid 90s, or ~15 years later.


Contrast that to COVID-19, where we had a bajillion genome sequences within months of the virus spreading, RNA-Seq datasets from infected patient lungs which led to a number of therapeutic trials (unfortunately didn't pan out, but still good shots on goal). We had paxlovid (a COVID-19 specific protease inhibitor) within a year. We had mRNA vaccines in a similar timeframe, which were more effective than anything we'd seen prior and outperformed anything the Chinese could do - how many other American institutions can say the same? That's about a 10x compression in timelines for identifying, characterizing and developing drugs to an emerging virus.


All of this, pearls before swine. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? of man hours by people like me all so some retard on twitter can go viral (no pun intended) for writing some hysterical slop about how the mRNA vaccines are going to cause mass infertility/blood clots/insta-death (how did all those predictions pan out?). The public has no idea how much effort is expended on things you would never think of - pharmacology, every manufacturing/storage/distribution step, toxicology and safety, in vitro and preclinical models. The public is ignorant of how far we've come, and the oceans of sweat and tears and grinding in the lab that have built this edifice to improve their lives.


Half the country saying the FDA moved too quickly, mRNA vaccines are dangerous, blah blah blah. Other half saying they have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands. Half the country saying lockdowns are ineffective (as if China didn't exist), the other half that the government doesn't care about their safety and people are dying. Maybe in addition to the internet, the other thing that's changed is everyone with a twitter account feels entitled to weigh in on every issue.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can you sit down and read an RCT and determine if it has fraudulent data?




Not if they just make up or fudge the numbers. In my field I can catch most of the bullshit that isn't outright lying. If it's far enough outside my wheelhouse, almost certainly not.




Thus people have to fall back on cruder heuristics such as "do I trust this institution." Keeping that trust is part of the institution. And, well, if an institution explodes its institutional trust it's pretty fair to assign at least some of the blame for the resulting fire to the institution for deceiving people.




When half the country is panicking and wants lockdowns, and half the country is enraged and fedposting about civil liberties, how exactly is an institution supposed to maintain credibility with the entire population? If Fauci had noped out day one and been replaced by a COVID mega-dove, you still would have burned credibility with half the country. We'd just be having this conversation with inverse valence.


I maintain that:


    

  1. The lockdowns were popular in the beginning.
    2. 

  2. Institutions have historically always been this level of corrupt/incompetent, and all that changed was the internet.
    3. 

  3. It's nevertheless still optimal on the societal and individual level to largely trust the institutions.
    4. 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Overall I would say July-August is when the oh-shit moment comes and it becomes obvious they could lose the eastern half of the country.




Alright, we'll see if I remember to check back in this summer.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You're an actual expert on this stuff.




The bitter lessons of COVID were that my colleagues and I aren't epidemiologists, our actual specialty is worthless for making predictions in the real world and internet autists with sufficient time and motivation are at least as knowledgeable about the literature. At this point, a literate caveman with GPT terminal debating me about the literature would be like watching stockfish demolish a grade school chess class.




But the common rebuttal I've seen from right-wingers is that Canada is seeing a proportionally worse increase with no RFK. The "other" factor they point to that both nations have in common over the relevant time frame is mass immigration from nations with much lower overall vaccination rates.




I was actually unaware of the outbreak in Canada. Seems like I was wrong and @The_Nybbler was right, it's the mennonite communities in Canada/Texas and apparently 'Slavic' (Ukrainian? Russian? Apparently services are held in both) immigrants in South Carolina. Not really your garden variety Trump supporters. Mea culpa.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If we had a vaccine that reliably stopped influenza (instead of the bullshit yearly one people try taking which misses 75% of the time)




Supposedly it reduces symptoms more than prevents you from getting sick in the first place, but I haven't dug into the clinical literature.


As for the rest - I was joking. I am pro MMR.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sorry, I was actively looking at the thread I had in mind and just forgot to link it. It's this one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I was personally very saddened to learn that the FDA is going to begin cracking down on compounding pharmacies offering products which mimic branded pharmaceutical products.




I haven't taken the time to properly verify, but I have heard that the compounded forms of the oral GLP-1s are worthless. GLP-1 peptides are too large to cross the gut and just get degraded, you need an additional mix of chemicals to essentially irritate the gut and let some of the peptides through. Even then, the bioavailability is trash.


The injected forms may suffer from QA issues, I wouldn't know.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In 1964 there were 458,000 measles cases, and 421 deaths, over a smaller population, no lockdowns.




How barbaric. Our ancestors were truly uncivilized.




There has been a small general drop in vaccination, but it's not clear if it has had a significant effect.




It's...not? I mean, I guess I don't have healthcare records for every measles patient, but are you genuinely going to make the argument that a nearly 100x increase in measles cases, centered around political strongholds for the vaccine-skeptical party and away from population centers, is due to some other factor?  What would that be?




The general drop you can blame on government overreaction to COVID.




No, I think I'll blame the people who choose to not get vaccinated instead. Unless you'd like to make the argument that vaccine-skeptics lack the mental capacity to be assigned agency?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A number of stories I vaguely follow have largely been ignored by this space. To start discussion:


Ukraine


Back in November, there was discussion about the imminent fall of Pokrovsk, encirclement of Ukrainian troops and collapse of the frontline:




Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you', it looks like the American press is preparing the public for a closing act of the majestic capeshit arc that started with the Maidan massacre. Ukrainians are generally eager to negotiate, nobody believes in winning anymore




It seems like the capeshit arc rages on, and yet another prediction of Ukrainian (or Russian, for that matter) collapse goes in the dustbin. Deepstatemap shows the UA holding onto a corner of Pokrovsk, the ISW map doesn't seem to have moved significantly, there haven't been any MSM news articles on Pokrovsk since December (?!), Russian economic collapse seems yet to materialize. Does anyone have more insight?


Measles makes a comeback in the US - who wants some lockdowns?


2025 recorded ~2500 measles cases in the US, and 733 recorded so far in 2026. This is the highest number of cases since about 1990, and for the 90s/2000s we saw low double-digit numbers of cases. A handful of children have died. Solely based on the numbers, I think you'd expect a case or two of encephalitis but I'm unsure. The biggest outbreaks are in Spartanburg county, South Carolina (Trump - 66% of the vote),  Gaines county, Texas (Trump won 91% of the vote) and Mohave county, Arizona (Trump won 77% of the vote). As far as I can tell, there are no real cities in any of these counties. We're seeing a remarkable inversion where historically infectious disease outbreaks would start in the cities and people would flee to the suburbs/countryside. Maybe my next startup idea should be a chain of sanatoriums (sanatoria?) in NYC or SF.


Trans identification decreasing?


Several months late to the party, but in October a study came out suggesting the number of trans students applying to Brown had roughly halved, yoy. I suppose it's early to be declaring victory given that the data/methodology don't seem particularly rock-solid, but I'm definitely chalking it as evidence supporting my claim that there is a hardcore group of genuinely trans people, while the significant increases were rebellious teens and some better way to rebel will crop up to replace it. At the least, it's evidence that the doomers and blackpillers claiming lines go up are wrong.


Anecdotally, I've heard gen Z college students get off on being offensive. In 15-20 years Millenials will be even more deeply uncool and taking the place of boomers, while the alphas and betas rebel and move leftwards to areas we can't even imagine (but get ready for AI girlfriends. They'll be called AI-Attracted Individuals, and I'm planting a flag in the AIAI acronym right now).


Poopgate


In the most momentous news since Biden fell off a bike, leftist social media has been circulating a Forbes video claiming to show Trump soiling himself at the 0:34 mark (you'll have to find it on youtube yourself, sorry - and turn up your audio). We've now been blessed with Yahoo News' headline 'No credible evidence Trump pooped himself during executive order signing', which is interesting given the video that millions of people have watched.


It will be interesting watching Trump's mental faculties evolve over the next three years. Biden was notably sharper in 2020 than in his disastrous 2024 debate performance. Presumably Trump won't tolerate handlers the same way Biden did, so it seems like a situation that could rapidly dissolve into a ahem shitshow.