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Notes -
Why do contrarians have to answer for every tinfoil conspiracy? Where are the generalized successes of the expert class in discussing controversial issues?
Per the OP:
Not really. Crazy conspiracy guys were at the start saying:
COVID is fake
COVID is just a flu
COVID is killing tens of millions in China
COVID is dangerous only to Asians, White people are immune
COVID is going to kill us all, hide in a bunker!
and many more.
Official position was changing overnight by 180 degrees, while there were too many mutually contradictory "unofficial" positions to count.
Better question than "who was right in early 2020?" is "what the official authorities knew at the time and how they made their decisions?"
https://twitter.com/MichaelPSenger/status/1607425359229890560
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Yes, plenty of verifiable facts were and are dismissed as crazy conspiracy theories. Why does that mean people who were talking about them have to answer for theories about graphene or whatever?
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If the contrarians have, indeed, went with the line "vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy", of course they don't have to answer for tinfoil conspiracies.
However, there are also people who did, say, claim that the vaccine is going to kill or sterilize something like a quarter or a half of the vaccinated population in a very short order, few months to an year, and who are now doing victory laps when it is revealed that, indeed, vaccine is not as efficient in combatting disease or particularly preventing its spread as was claimed particularly during the most fervent phase of vaccine advocacy, even though that's quite a different claim from the most lurid vaccine genocide visions.
Birthrates are down, cardiac incidents are up.
If you expect random High-school graduate citizens taking a side in a political debate to quantitatively accurate instead of merely directionally correct, then you're holding them to a higher standard that the government, media, and the academic-medical-industrial complex have held themselves for the past 3 years.
Again, "birthrates are down and cardiac incidents are up" - both something that could have multiple different explanations, such as COVID itself, lockdown aftereffects and other social developments than Covid - is qualitively different from the most lurid predictions of mass death and sterility, and even if one would manage to ascertain a partal correlation with vaccines, something I haven't actually even seen anyone conclusively show from the data, that would be far from something allowing the lurid-prediction-makers to start declaring they were correct all along.
Generally the random high-school-graduate citizens also generally don't develop these views by themselves but by trusting media figures, politicians and academic-medical-industrial figures - sure, these would be instances of the contrarian type, but still generally claiming credibility on the basis of their credentials etc.
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Can you name any motters who are doing that? Because I thought our dissidents stayed pretty firmly within the bounds of rationality, although admittedly I got burned out on covid talk pretty quick.
There's been a few mottizeans that I recall claiming there would be unspecified declines in fertility due to the vaccine(including myself).
I don't recall anyone claiming "the vaccine will sterilize half the vaccinated population".
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I wasn't talking about Motters here, more referring to my observation of some local Covid dissident types.
Motters! @Fruck how could you?? Our proper name is Mottizens thank you very much.
Ohhh you would be a good little mottizen wouldn't you? Not I! Fuck your pretty little cottage with the pretty little white picket fence and pretty little petunias in front of it. And your pretty little mailbox and the pretty little dog sitting off to the side prettily chewing on a pretty little possum carcass, and all the other trappings of your pretty little life. I am forming a resistance to the tyranny of friendliness imposed by zorba and his lackeys - sitting up in their ivory tower, clucking and stroking their beards, chuckling conspiratorially as they grow fat off the fruits of our labour. I say enough! I say we take back the night! And the first step is to stop being good little mottizens, paying your taxes and judging posts for Rationalatosk (who minds the tree of knowledge). Instead be a motter, be hard and tough and mumble a bit, and still help Rationalatosk but be snippy about it, and we will smash the state and send its minions running for the hills! Motters for life!
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Ah I thought you said the first comment too, and I was going to say I don't think we need to worry about that 5g shit or sterilising half the population when we're encouraging free thinking on the motte. It does kind of feel like covid skeptic motters never get a victory lap, but I know that's mostly observation bias.
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Both dissidents and experts contain multitudes. Some dissidents overstated, beyond what the evidence shows, the dangers of vaccines, but experts were also guilty of exagerating the harns of the virus itself. That the sane dissidents are by the mainstream media tarred with the same brush as the 5G qanon believers, but all experts aren't consider discredited by some of them, falsely, claiming that Covid was the fourth or fifth leading cause of death in all pediatric age groups, is the hypocrisy.
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And now the existence of those nuts is going to be picked at by embarassed officials and censors to pretend that all of the criticism of their incompetent bungling was at the level of Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend's balls.
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