This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So there have been a lot of people suddenly collapsing or dying recently. Or have there? My Twitter feed certainly seems to think so. Off the top of my head we have Adam Rich, a rising MMA fighter named Victoria Lee, an Old Dominion basketball player, an NFL player, and tons of normal people as well. This does seem... odd? I can't remember a lot of people just suddenly collapsing and dying in the past although I remember Hank Gathers from 1990 as a rare exception.
Now, I'm willing to accept that it's possible that sudden deaths of healthy people may be normal-ish thing. Possibly this is just signal-boosted noise. As a heuristic, no one I know personally has collapsed so it's presumably not incredibly widespread. We also have the possibility that Covid itself, not vaccines, is causing these deaths.
The problem is that, as a layperson, it is nearly impossible for me to obtain unbiased information about this phenomenon. I encourage you to search Google for "vaccine death". The results are a muck of "fact checks", opinion pieces, and out-of-date articles talking about how many lives the vaccine saved.
On the other hand, on Twitter, (where free speech is truly allowed now), #vaccinedeath is allowed to trend. However, the results for that hashtag tend to be a lot of anecdotes of sudden collapses mixed in with spurious assertions about vaccine safety.
What's a normal person to do in this information environment? For myself, I will not be receiving future Covid vaccine doses. They have an unknown risk against a low risk from Covid itself. However, I have little confidence in this assessment. And I have no faith that I will be able to reach a confident assessment. When counter-narrative information is suppressed by the media and by the scientific apparatus, how can we trust anything they say? But it doesn't mean the counter-narrative is correct either. It just means there is no way to be confident without a free exchange of ideas.
A few months ago, my mother-in-law (mid-70s, and not the most reliable source), suffered a mild heart attack hours after receiving both her Covid booster and a flu shot. She said the ER nurse asked her if she had been boosted recently and followed with "We see this all the time." Coincidentally, my dad (late 70s, fully boosted) also suffered a mild heart attack around this time last year while in the hospital for a colonoscopy, and the doctors told him it was probably stress-related.
I do look skeptically at the anti-vaxxers who act like no one ever had heart or health issues prior to the Covid vaccine, but there does seem to be a lot more noticing going on, and no trust that anyone in power would admit if any of that noticing was of something real.
I think the smoking gun is that so many of these people are young athletes. Musicians and actors dying in suspicious circumstances is Tuesday; athletes have historically not done that because if they weren't in peak physical health they wouldn't be notable athletes, they'd be wannabes. That to me requires explaining.
Could Performance Enhancing Drugs be a contributor? My first mean thought when hearing about an athlete's sudden heart problems is the possibility that drugs were a factor.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Several of my friends and family believe in all kinds of paranormal stuff, including ghosts and dreams that predict the future. They have stories of things that they claimed happened to them that, if true, would confirm their beliefs. These are otherwise intelligent people who I would believe if I didn't know that what they were telling me was impossible. So, I would give almost no credence to a nurse who claims to have noticed a pattern in when people have heart attacks.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36436002/
I am spamming this and I apologize to anyone who's mad about this. We can find evidence of special heart damage from the mRNA vaccine from autopsies. We have the FDA announcing a possible association with PE and Pfizer. This nurse could simply think "I've seen a slide of someone's damaged heart after vaccination, maybe it's connected." and all of a sudden you accuse them of a crime of logic.
Note both the fact there is a rare risk AND the nurse can be commiting a crime of logic can both be true. We already know that nurses and doctors are (like most people) generally terrible at statistics and interpreting things they notice as statistically significant events.
If there is an issue it would need to be analysed at a population level in a statistically significant way.
Otherwise we also have to give equal credence to nurses who posted stories about so many healthy young people dying of covid after not getting vaccinated and the like.
Fair. But during a period of intense censorship, a diffuse cloth of similar anecdotes and experiences actually ended up with some evidence and studies to confirm. Take the myocarditis risk, as well as possible sudden death from myocarditis, being proved experimentally. (check my post history if you interested in link)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link