What’s wrong with asking your doctor? That’s what I do.

And they aren't looking for an answer so much as for a justification for defying it.

Looking at only those things that confirm a preexisting position. Typical right wing close minded bullshit.

From what we used to refer to in college as a “trunk-of-a-blue-Chevy” source (in terms of “legitimate” “credibility”). In their case, it’d more accurately be a red Chevy.

That would spare them the trouble of opening the trunk (do they know how?)

It's not about research. It's about what feels good to them.

Does it feel good to think there is no pandemic? Yes, so there is no pandemic. All those dead COVID infected people would have died from the flu anyway. Trump is not at fault for killing hundreds of thousands by doing Nothing. Does it feel good thinking you don't have to do anything about the pandemic? Yes

Does it feel good to not need doctors and vaccines? Does it feel good to think you can take care of all your illnesses without relying on a very expensive medical system? Does it feel good not having to get a painful shot and not having 3 days of mild illness? Yes, yes and yes.

Does it feel good snubbing your nose at pharmacutical corporations that are part of the problem with our prohibtedly expense medical system? Yes, so just follow your feelings but pretend it's research. No need to deal with reality. So much simpler to think things are OK. Just think yourself to health.

D: Are you vaccinated?
P: No.
D: why not?
P: blah blah research blah
D: I can no longer be your doctor. Please leave now.
P: Wha?!?!
D: You obviously don’t respect my knowledge and training. Leave now.

but many won’t do that

patients demanding antibiotics for a common cold.

Many docs who know it's wrong and, in the big picture, harmful just give in and write the Rx.

Have never understood that.

any faith-healer, cousin Joe Bob and his alcoholic wife Denise…hell, there’s a plethora of qualified epidemiologists around. If phone books were still a thing, just open a page and throw a dart.

Doctors are rare in my rural area, so we must travel to nearby large cities. Due to a childhood illness, was never vaccinated for any of usual childhood ailments after being tested and having a severe reaction to them. Same occurred with the polio vaccine and two tetanus shot skin tests. Seems my blood clots faster than normal. All I get from doctors is, "Well, you'll have to make up your own mind about it." Another suggested that I check into a hospital to get vaccinated so I can be under observation for a week. Just wish skin tests for the Covid vaccine were available so I could have a better basis for making a decision.

when anti-vaxxers, in the face of *overwhelming* evidence to the contrary, persist in declaring that being inoculated is pointless.

they think the doctor is part of the vast conspiracy to...whatever they think the COVID Conspiracy has as its ultimate goal. You basically believe nothing that doesn't fit your worldview and anything that does. Essentially, everybody but the loon on You Tube is part of the vast somewing conspiracy to make people wear masks and get vaccinated for the enrichment of Pharma and an ever-expanding bunch of other entities who benefit from the government's ability to create fear. Except if "the government" is Donald Trump, and then his fear-mongering is accurate.

Equating all information sources on the internet is like getting some random person to do your heart surgery. Why can't people see that? I guess they pick out the 'facts' that they want to believe are true, for whatever reason. They don't want to think, and they don't want to accept the fact that there are some things they are ignorant about.

She's very pleasant, she has new tools, and you can be awake during the procedure.

in 2020 makes your point. Essentially, America elected a plumber to fly a jet plane.

I'd go with "America elected a spoiled man baby to fly a jet plane"

want that person to try and fly a jet plane I was traveling in as a passenger. Conversely, I would not seek out a commercial pilot to sweat a leaking joint in my crawlspace.

Sure, Trump is a spoiled man baby, but to use another occupational analogy, electing him as POTUS was the eqivalent, in terms of him being able to do the job, of hiring an unskilled laborer to perform brain surgery. That's my point. The guy was grossly unqualified to do the job. And yeah, he was corrupt, criminal, engaged in racketeering, and is a traitor. But he was also quite unqualified for the job.

"Even Isaac Newton, said to be the discoverer of gravity, knew there were problems with the theory. He claims to have invented the idea early in his life, but he knew that no mathematician of his day would approve his theory, so he invented a whole new branch of mathematics, called fluxions, just to "prove" his theory. This became calculus, a deeply flawed branch having to do with so-called "infinitesimals" which have never been observed.

Then when Einstein invented a new theory of gravity, he, too, used an obscure bit of mathematics called tensors. It seems that every time there is a theory of gravity, it is mixed up with fringe mathematics. Newton, by the way, was far from a secular scientist, and the bulk of his writings is actually on theology and Christianity. His dabbling in gravity, alchemy, and calculus was a mere sideline, perhaps an aberration best left forgotten in describing his career and faith in a Creator."

https://ncse.ngo/gravity-its-only-theory

I knew in 4th grade that math was full of crap, but nobody would believe me!

common sense is not common
Fake news is anything you don't want to hear.
-Airplane

not a bug that the Internet crazy is uneducated or barely educated and not connected to any previously heard of group or institution. Those educated people from established institutions are all part of the plan. Part of the attraction, I believe, of all this nonsense is that these conspiracy believers think they are in touch with a wealth of correct knowledge that is being suppressed by the established powers that be. Which makes them special, and of course, smarter than the Harvard Grad PhD MD who is doing the government's bidding by telling people to get vaccinated.

That's the attraction of Ivermectin, I believe. It's on (or used to be) the shelf at Tractor Supply, not sold from behind the counter by Pharma (oops, well just ignore that label) with the endorsement of 25 Ivy-educated elites. We don't need no education!!!

dig into multiple sources. At this point, libraries offer free access to a staggering amount of online data, and certainly the federal data sources such as the Census, BEA and BLS have some good credibility.

As to whether or not to get a vaccine, I've never really been dumb enough to go down that rabbit hole. I just get the shot and subsequently DON'T get the disease.

I trust the recommendations of Johns Hopkins.

I trust the recommendations of my state and local departments of health.

I trust my doctors.

and economic trends for a living, so was replying using that as a scope. Obviously, the BLS or Census wouldn't help you decide on the validity of the vaccine or not, but they are quite useful for demographics, economic and labor stats.

abstract and footnotes?

or you're a moron. Those are the only two conclusions to someone whose 'research' has convinced them to not vaccinate.

My brother's version of "research" is whatever Fox News tells him. Sigh.

… few questions and watch their eyes glaze over

- what peer-reviewed journals articles did you read
- what was your null hypothesis
- what was your N
- what was your p
- do you know what confirmation bias is

in schools and universities teaching the skills. I am one- my SIXTH graders say on a regular basis, "this is a credible source because..."

Why do you think the RW nuts are after our jobs in the schools? Do you really believe it's because we let kids check out the latest copy of "Captain Underpants?"

Books- freely selected reading materials- are only a small part of why the RW despises us. Imagine a Trumper's kid coming home and saying, "Mrs. Thtwudbeme showed us how to choose unbiased factual news, and I don't want to watch Fox anymore."

If we go much further to the right- I expect I'll be out of a job sooner rather than later--- the handwriting is on the wall.

Immigrant 8th grader asked if a site was credible. I said ‘Well, it’s Harvard so it’s probably ok’.

He replied, ‘What’s Harvard?’

Easier to teach them how to discern the differences between urls.......com .net, .edu etc. They get that fast!

they need problem solvers who have a 'can-do' attitude and can think critically.

Problem is, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot have a workforce that can apply critical thought to business operations while at the same time failing to do so with issues that affect them and their families.

We are at the end-stage of the peculiar 'profit over people' shareholder primacy system of corporate governance that is currently victimizing us all.

People are beginning to ask the hard questions of elected officials, like: why in the heck is our healthcare system monetized? Why is big pharma profit-driven? Why do we have private for-profit prisons? Why do we squander so much money on war when we could use it to pay for healthcare, including dental care, subsidized childcare, affordable debt-free college and so on?

Why do we get nickel and dimed every day? Why are more and more of the costs of healthcare, dental care, college and childcare being passed on to consumers while our public treasury is being systematically looted by billionaire parasites?

among others.

Do you ever wonder why the people who ask these questions are labeled as being far left, fringe left, or even radical? Socialists?

Corporate owned media has done a masterful job of creating this labeling for people who reasonably want their tax dollars to be spent on programs that materially benefit them and their families. Silly people! Everyone knows corporate profits and tax cuts for billionaires are FAR more important that stupid stuff like universal healthcare!

C'mon. Let's not listen to these radical socialists!

for big business and state government, I am 150% certain that the LAST thing either of them want is critical thinkers. And they do have some despite themselves. They've just managed to train their people very well that thinking critically is not a valued skill, and one that could result in employment problems.

I think a lot of them are so afraid of COVID they want to wish it away and engage in the mind-over-matter folk belief behind toxic positivism: if you are sick it's because you believe you are sick. They often complain about "fear mongering" as though that's the real injury, like scientists and other sane people are attacking them with a made-up problem that can nonetheless make them physically sick if they concede to it. This is the perspective of the overaged child, the infantilization at the root of most of your problems.

CDC, respected doctors, double blind studies that are peer reviewed. I grew up with 6 tv channels and an antenna. It was hard as heck to get good info. The people that are anti-vaxx are just intentionally stupid and put politics before logic.
Here is a good example.
I spent an hour learning about a new balance devise to measure a kilogram.
Fascinating. That’s the stuff that wasn’t in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
The Kibble Balance.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a27703249/kibble-balance-measuring-system/

Consider this old internet meme...

"I see people wearing winter coats and hats. What a bunch of sheep! LOL! I did my own research and found out that only 1500 people die from hypothermia in the US per year. That's only 0.0005% of the population. They live in fear of something that 99.9995% of people won't die from. It gets better, a lot of the people who died from hypothermia were wearing coats and hats, and they still died! Coats don't work!"

To which I add... And further research shows that those hypothermia deaths in North America mostly occurred north of the Mason Dixon line... It is a Yankee Problem; Southerners are Immune! Roll Tide!

Fox News' #2 headline today was how science now proves the Adam and Eve story happening around 6,000 yrs ago is compatible with evolution

That way you won't clog up an ICU with your dying ass.

Conclusions about hospitals. When my son was about two and a half, his great grandparents both died in the hospital of old age. He did not want to go to the hospital because that's where you went to die. It was logical to him.

But he was about two and a half,

You can find "information" to fit any point of view you wish to take.

And that's the problem, really. Unless you can or will verify the information you find online, you can be easily confused. And most people have no idea how to verify information. That's why there were medical experts telling people what was correct. They were ignored by many, who preferred "information" that confirmed their biases or fears.

And that's what the overwhelming majority of it is worth.

Even here on DU, just a few years ago, we saw a number of "researchers" whose "research" had brought them to the conclusion that vaccines cause autism, despite literally zero evidence that this is the case. And those true-believers were every bit as passionate as the current cult of antivaxers.

I don't think she even knew what right wing was, but all of her relatives were right wingers and she went along with everything they said. I showed her how to get on the internet and get an email address.

Well, all of her relatives would pass around ridiculous right wing info and she would send it to me. Things like "Obama's going to destroy Social Security". I showed her Snopes. Well, she thought it must be a biased site. The more outrageous it was the more she defended it. Finally I got tired of arguing with her and asked her to stop emailing me this crap.

We didn't talk much after that. Her authoritative source was her relatives. And she wasn't going to stop going along with them, as that would result in a lot of friction.

I am not in touch with her any more, but I imagine she's an anti-vaxxer. And with her health issues, that's really dangerous.

I have family members who consider a thing "proven" if they get supporting emails or links from two different friends, especially if those links contradict the "official" position on the subject.

And once they've decided that they know The Truth, literally nothing will change their minds.

the official position is key, if not the entire point.

I wondered how they were able to dress themselves.

Of course I was "closed-minded," too.

I wonder why? Maybe I'll just turn some water into wine and puzzle it over.

Ok kidding aside, and much love to all our christian membership. I've found medical decisions to be the most personal decisions, at a level even beyond political and religious ones. If you've ever made basic health suggestions to someone you know just what I'm talking about. Doctors frequently express frustration with patients not making extremely basic lifestyle changes as recommended (hence why they always fall back to pill prescriptions and surgery). People want others to change, but not to perform any change themselves.

So yes, that's why mandates have to be on the table. There simply isn't a way to convince people of some things. We trust the science which is demonstrably factual; they are enraptured in fantastical group-think (or mass formation psychosis if you're playing buzzword of the week). We have a Democracy and law enforcement for just these sorts of public health "conundrums". We either use those resources or the pandemic will slowly kill us all.

Our sisters in the five eyes have shown us the way (Australia, Canada, NZ, GB). We have only to follow.

Everyone has one. And, assholes usually have more than one!

Opinions are not facts.

Scientists will tell you that the plural of anecdote is not hard data. The story you heard from drunk Uncle Bob about having a bad reaction to the vaccine is an “anecdote”. A bad reaction to one person could be a rash, or a fever. A bad reaction to a scientist is anaphylaxis (swelling of the throat and airway, resulting in inability to breathe), or Stephens-Johnson Syndrome.

So sick of these people.🤦‍♂️

are just plain lies.

With a Masters in Microbiology it got silly when the MAGA air conditioning repair guy lectured me about vaccines. Just gets so old when people try to pass on opinions as education.

You can have an opinion on your favorite color, you can not have an opinion that your toaster is a bowl of grapes. Facts are facts.

at politics and religion. Even though there is a lot to know about both, they are partly about values.

But you only get to be an expert in science or medicine through years of rigorous training. Most people have no idea. The particulars of science or medicine can be debated among the experts, who already have a deep foundation of knowledge. But when you have a lay person chiming in, thinking their opinion is just as valid, its kind of absurd.

If they had a heart attack or got their legs crushed in a car crash, they would give themselves completely over to the medical experts with no questions asked.

But in terms of this virus? Joe Rogan over their doctor of 30 years hands down. Amazing how they pick and choose when the medical experts are experts.

This is from Aaron Rodgers, who thinks his expertise in football qualifies him to question science. I doubt he's even had a science class since high school.

Of course science can be questioned, by performing detailed research studies. Geez, you learn this in high school science class, how to run an experiment without bias.

Rogers is welcome to conduct his own research and publish the details of his methodology and findings for review by other scientists.

with a working knowledge of the benefit system, I can second this. The stories I have heard about the wonderfulness of government giveaways and all the money/services someone's deadbeat brother got . I used to keep my mouth shut, but I got so sick of it I started to try to be informative. To absolutely no avail. Even easily Googlable numbers were never believed.

Didn’t hear the end- that was too much for me.

even something like Pubmed can be cherrypicked if you don't know what you are looking at. One paper that shows bad results and 30 that shows good means you probably ignore the bad result. You really need to look at meta-analysis, consensus statements, and guidelines from professional societies and national governments in almost all cases. If there is conflict in those -- for instance the US currently recommends 5 days of isolation, France 7, and the UK 10, then figure out what's going on.

It seems like we've failed at that.

How else would they con future adults into voting for them?

All things are not equal and important. DT should have been slammed by the Dems/GOP the business community, Americans and every world leader for his horrible actions on COVID. Not since Reagan and HIV has an American President been so derelict in their leadership as DT was with “it’s a hoax”, it will miracle away, disinfectants….bull💩…but he wasn’t which left a small sliver of legitimacy to what he was saying that was able to be amplified. We gave the village idiot the head seat at the table and now here we are in year 2 of a pandemic that’s had the opportunity to mutate twice now and surge with well over 830,000+ dead Americans alone. Over 5 million worldwide in ~2yrs.

As for this bull💩 “I did my own research” when I hear that I used to point out millions if not billions of doses of the vax have been given. There’s been no great die off, no 3rd arms growing out of people backs, no Zombie apocalypse… COVID on the other hand has killed millions and most of the deaths now are unvaccinated. I stopped doing this. Now I just walk away immediately.

So what happens when real research (NIH, Lancet, NEJM) does not agree with health policy? Just an example

I was booted just before omicron from Daily Kos for posting peer-reviewed research from the NIH and NEJM that disagreed with Fauci and the safety of being around others who are vacc'd... basically because I wanted to make sure my elderly parents understood that being vaccinated themselves, they should still wear a mask and social distance even with others who are vacc'd. Was a hard case to make to those who think they are immune, even before omicron.

"How dare you challenge Fauci. He knows more than you ever would. You must be a Trumper. You have no place here." Umm, no, Fauci may use science as a basis, but policy includes science, business, politics, economy, population tendencies, and strategies to incentivize the masses to do what is needed.

If we follow REAL research, it's far more consistent over the long haul than running on a policy based on a hypothesis that has yet to prove itself out. As pointed out in many other posts here, most of the US can't even read a research paper, and relies on political party first, headlines, FB, and tweets for their "science".

what happens in the scientific community is that when a group of scientists and/or medical professionals is presented with the identical set of data, they will rarely come to the same identical conclusions as to what that data "means".

And unfortunately those "disagreements" are playing out in real-time, in public (in the media) rather than solely during scientific collaboration/committee meetings in the obscurity of those communications channels. And this is of course causing the expected havoc of "mixed messages" experienced by the lay observers.

than what I am talking about.

I'm sorry you got booted from DKOS for posting that. I am a great fan of Fauci, but obviously other physicians and scientists have a place in the discussion. The knowledge of Covid is growing and evolving, and it depends on the input of all those highly qualified members people.

But there are a lot of people who seem to start out by distrusting the medical and scientific community on the issue of covid vaccination. They may be perfectly fine with everything else medicine has to offer, but decide to get their covid info from a media personality. And they figure Joe Rogan is right up there with Dr. Fauci, which is ridiculous.

I keep trying to make to my bio major sister - public health is not just studies and data. That's the starting point.

I would ask what grade they got in their Statistical Analysis course.

Judgment on vaccination involves many fields of expertise... virology, immunology, epidemiology, medicine, statistics, public heath... Very few are experts in all of these.

N/T

😸

These people are welcome to do their own research, just like the FDA did. Double blind studies, strict criteria, etc.

The problem is they are equating a Facebook search with actual research.

She's an asshole and a psychopath who should not be listened to by anyone. And her rhetoric is getting people killed by the thousands.

What are people supposed to think after 40 years of the "news" equating the likes of hydroxychloroquine and bleach enemas to life saving MRNA technology.

All opinions went from being welcomed to now deemed undisputed facts on equivalent par.

There is no intellectual rigor whatsoever in these cursory internet searches of looking for and finding what confirms their preexisting biases.

I had the first vaccine last February.
Ive come down with an irregular heart beat 2 days afterward that lasts to this day, I have not had another one. Within two weeks time of getting his vaccines my son has developed blood clots each time .
I'm not saying I don't recommend it , I'm just saying that our family may have some issues with something in the vaccine itself some kind of allergic reaction that frankly has left us all reluctant to get any other vaccines unfortunately apparently we're not the lucky ones.

I hope that you nd your family can stay safe without it.

or like Desantis and his wife with Cancer.

If you think those people are spreading lies about the vaccine why go there got treatment for anything ?

It's becsuse of how things are politicized and these people form their identity by being seen as tough resistors .

These people are comparing themselves to jews under Nazis but at the same time many will often bring up some anti jewish conspiracy in regards to these things.

I mean, they know everything already, don't they?

How vaccines are made and how they work is clearly established. Were, decades, centuries ago.

But this is the bit that convinced me, way back 60 years ago in high school:

Edward Jenner, smallpox vaccine, 1764:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

The mechanism that worked using deliberate infection by non-lethal cowpox as protection against lethal smallpox is now well established.
In one word: antibodies.

What do they teach in American schools? Not that obviously, and definitely not how to decide whether an internet source is legit or pure BS.
Get your act together, educators!

But if I DIDN'T want the vaccination, I could find lots of reasons why on the internet.
But the decision not to get vaccinated came first, live - or die - on YOUR decision.

the RESEARCH has already been done....their job is to EDUCATE THEMSELVES using CREDIBLE SOURCES

after the worker sought a vaccine exemption.

The MAGAT worker replied, "I belong to a death cult!"

That sums it up. I think the cartoon was in the Week, print edition, though I can't find it on their website.

I tell them I don’t have time, since I figure it would take a minimum of 20 years to get through Med School, then specialize in epidemiology and read thousands of peer-reviewed articles so I could reach an informed decision - and even then I wouldn’t really trust my opinion over the experts at the NIH and CDC.

I started out by saying I hadn't spent much time looking into it so I wasn't an authority, which he offered to help with as he spent "3 to four hours a day doing research". And he laid out a number of points which I looked up and fact-checked later. As it turned out every single one of the many things he told me (such as that there were no "excess deaths: in the US in 2020, and that no one had ever seen the virus) was a fabrication or an outright lie.

And it didn't take long to go through debunk them all. Of course I looked them up after the conversation, and there wasn't any point in going back and telling him that his "sources" were doing little but filling him up with shit. He's still a guy I get along with at work, but not one I'd rely on for anything meaningful. I'd say that was another blow against my faith in humanity, but that died long ago.

I have heard it all, from it changes your DNA to it will kill you.

Everything kills you and so does Covid. It's call statistics!

If you want to ensure not to go bankrupt and not to be bedridden with a tube down your throat, possibly never see anyone again, get the vaccine...

they forge fake vaccine cards in red states that don't use official systems. Good luck with that. Jesus loves you. COVID is the rapture.

I taught research papers...& all that stuff.....

Getting the truth is often difficult. Even about simple things. like ..Vaccines, Pure Water, Poverty, Homelessness, etc.
It seems so simple but is not simple.

I like to take walks in all kinds of weather.. Usually a mile...

I had a very tough time when it was -13 below and the wind chill was -50 below. (not the brightest move, but ..yes,
totally insulated and covered everywhere, many times over..)

Either! How ever I learned Science and how far medicine has come in my lifetime.

I spent a week in a coma at the age of 15. The Doctor fully expected me to die. But he gave me 2 shots of penicillin, a drug that was used by the Military during WW2.

Here I am many moons later. I respect Science, listen to my Doctors. I have 2 shots and the booster!

Speaking as a practising primary care physician in Ireland.

Let's hope the internet and our drift away from solid, old-fashioned core education does not allow humanity to devolve and lose our instinctive, innocent curiosity of things and desire to learn about everything.

Our instinct to play and experiment to learn throughout our lives is instinctive in both humans and animals and it requires constant face-to-face exposure to other humans and Mother Nature, not face-to-screen with a cell phone, tablet or computer.

What we're losing is our innate craving to learn, our ability to think and create independently and rationally as well as our sense of the need for human community.

My father's biggest problem with me as a child was my borrowing his tools to disassemble everything in our house just to see how they were made and to understand how stuff works. I'm not seeing that level of curiosity in our youth much these days.

About all I get these days for my old-fashioned thinking, curiosity and thoroughness is resentment. Even as an engineer (retired), I fear the direction the internet and consumerism is taking us.

KY rant done.....

Thanks for posting this important topic, Milestogo.......

It always has, but now it’s more socially acceptable to flaunt one’s ignorance than ever before.