this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Do you remember how Trump chose not to address COVID for political gains when it looked like it was hitting primarily democratic cities? I've seen some calculations that half a million more Americans died from COVID because of his reaction to it. That's treason on a level nobody has reached
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/01/03/trump-to-be-sentenced-jan-10-as-judge-upholds-hush-money-conviction/?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)00804-3/fulltext
I read another recently but can't find it. Any search with the words Trump and COVID is a tricky proposition.
That is part of it, but there is also a long-running thread of medical denialism in society. People want to believe their home remedies, homeopathic cures, chiropractic adjustments, or bleach enemas can cure things just as well or better than certified doctors can. To be fair to them, it has only been about 130 years since doctors learned they should wash their hands before surgery. The average person isn't educated enough to understand how safe, effective, and trustworthy vaccines are.
The other part of it is explained by the lottery. Millions and millions of people play the lottery regularly even though the odds of them winning are about the same as getting struck by lightning while getting bitten by a shark. The average person is shit at understanding odds. They think that they will be lucky enough to beat the odds.
That applies for avoiding Covid. They don't understand that being harmed by the vaccine is far fat less likely than being harmed by the disease. They think they can beat the odds by not getting the disease and still avoid Covid. Some won, but most lost.
I'm a former scientist in the environmental field and we deal with similar denialism for similar reasons. As science and technology get more complex, the average person simply doesn't have the background to understand the problem, let alone possible solutions. A certain amount of trust in authority is necessary unfortunately.
I get your point but there is a middle ground. You can apply critical thought to the selection of authorities you can trust. You wouldn't trust an auto mechanic to tell you if your mole was cancerous even though you do trust them with your transmission, right? We need to teach people to recognize areas of expertise a person might have and reject opinions outside that area.
Sure, but the explanation might be something like the conch spring isn't meshing with the radial flange of the Jefferson gear. That might not make sense to you while still being the correct answer. At some point you have to admit that you don't know enough to make an educated judgement and you just have to trust the expert.
I work with elderly people mostly so the absolute terror was probably magnified for me. Regardless of their politics, they knew they were the most vulnerable and it scared the shit out of them.
One of the groups that doesn't get talked about often in regards to COVID is the reaction of the gay community, especially the older ones who lived through the worst days of the AIDS epidemic. They took it VERY seriously.