Poll: Had RF an Influence on Your Stance on COVID?

[Heyo]

How much has RF influenced you in your decision making?

 

[Debater Slayer]

I accept the consensus of relevant medical organizations and experts, which is that masks and vaccines are essential in combating COVID.

I don't rely on forum or social media posts for medical or other expert information, so RF has had no effect on my stance. I look up what the scientific and expert views are instead.

 

[Brickjectivity]

No. Years ago I did learn something here which may have contributed, but it was long before Covid 19 appeared. Back then people were talking about the preservative used in vaccines. It was a molecule that contained an atom of mercury. I remember seeing some alarming claims online about vaccines containing mercury, so I became aware of anti vaccine culture then. Who'd want mercury shot into their veins, right? It was not mercury though. It was a molecule called Themerasol, and that molecule was peed out quickly after the vaccine. It was not at all a shot of mercury as the anti vaccine culture suggested.

 

[JustGeorge]

I was on the fence.

Hearing other's stories after being vaccinated helped assure me I'd be fine if I took it.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Nope. I do my own research and make up my own mind about things.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

How much has RF influenced you in your decision making?

I'm just unvaccinated with strong opinions about provax attitudes and mandates.

I don't see being unvaccinated as a choice different than any other med or vaccine I'm not taking for one reason or another.

RF doesn't influence my healthcare decisions.

 

[Kooky]

It has certainly opened my eyes to the many, many bogus conspiracy theories on the topic.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I don't see being unvaccinated as a choice different than any other med or vaccine I'm not taking for one reason or another.

Here's the difference, as I see it:

Your choice on other meds directly affects only you. Your body, your choice.

Your choice on COVID-19 vaccination potentially affects those around you. In other words, I respect "your body, your choice." I see not being vaccinated as not affording others that same level of respect. Your choice to not vaccinate not only puts you at risk, but places others at risk as well.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Here's the difference, as I see it:

Your choice on other meds directly affects only you. Your body, your choice.

Your choice on COVID-19 vaccination potentially affects those around you. In other words, I respect "your body, your choice." I see not being vaccinated as not affording others that same level of respect. Your choice to not vaccinate not only puts you at risk, but places others at risk as well.

I don't believe I am at such a high risk and concern run out for the vaccine. I don't have that asymptomatic fear unless the risk was large enough to warrant it.

So, the only way people can be endanger from Any unvaccinated person is if that person caught COVID. It's not based on choice but whether you have the virus or not-vaccinated or not.

Both of us level of risk is different that in your situation you may warrant the vaccine where someone else in the complete opposite may not. Again. It just depends on a. level of risk and b. if you have COVID.

The level of risk also depends on how much the other person feels threatened.

Regardless how many times you repeat it, though, I'm just not concerned about my health (thereby others) that I think I'm walking around all of the sudden asymptomatic. Whether you understand level of risk and probability or not, I don't know but it is what it is.

 

[Niblo]

 

[Augustus]

I accept the consensus of relevant medical organizations and experts, which is that masks and vaccines are essential in combating COVID.

Out of interest, did you accept the consensus of relevant medical organisations and experts when they told people not to wear masks (and when they initially told people not to worry about covid or limit international travel etc.)?

I'm vaccinated and think masks work, but also thought they were insane when they initially argued against masks.

Obviously, however, a mask helps prevent spread and the 'no mask' brigade are, at best, criminally negligent.

And this is not 'hindsight is 2020', check date of above post and date of this:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has changed its advice on face masks, saying they should be worn in public where social distancing is not possible to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

The global body said new information showed they could provide "a barrier for potentially infectious droplets".

Some countries already recommend or mandate face coverings in public.

The WHO had previously argued there was not enough evidence to say that healthy people should wear masks.

Coronavirus: WHO advises to wear masks in public areas

When people say 'science updates with new information' as a catch all excuse for bad 'scientific' advice, it can be a cover for the kind of naive empiricism that may have caused such bad advice.

 

[metis]

Curtain #1.

 

[Debater Slayer]

Out of interest, did you accept the consensus of relevant medical organisations and experts when they told people not to wear masks (and when they initially told people not to worry about covid or limit international travel etc.)?

I'm vaccinated and think masks work, but also thought they were insane when they initially argued against masks.



And this is not 'hindsight is 2020', check date of above post and date of this:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has changed its advice on face masks, saying they should be worn in public where social distancing is not possible to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

The global body said new information showed they could provide "a barrier for potentially infectious droplets".

Some countries already recommend or mandate face coverings in public.

The WHO had previously argued there was not enough evidence to say that healthy people should wear masks.

Coronavirus: WHO advises to wear masks in public areas

When people say 'science updates with new information' as a catch all excuse for bad 'scientific' advice, it can be a cover for the kind of naive empiricism that may have caused such bad advice.

No, I've worn masks ever since the pandemic reached my country, which was in early 2020, even when the WHO said it was unnecessary. This was for multiple reasons:

- The WHO, while obviously a global medical authority, aren't the only medical authority there is, and around the time they issued their statements about the lack of necessity of masks, more than one Asian country had already started to flatten their COVID curves relative to Western countries while still encouraging masking as a precautionary measure. These included Vietnam and South Korea, which had some of the lowest infection rates in the world at the time:

Vietnam Imposes Hefty Fines for Going Maskless

Coronavirus and South Korea: How lives changed to beat the virus

That, too, was empirical evidence that masks worked. I saw no reason to disregard this just because one medical organization said masks were unnecessary: after all, the countries that required masks and reduced their infection rates back then also based their decisions on the consensus of their medical organizations and experts, not on the opinions of laypeople or medically unqualified politicians.

- Multiple Asian countries have previously dealt with outbreaks of infectious diseases (such as SARS, which is very similar to COVID), and, as I said above, their encouragement of masking wasn't arbitrary or based on lack of previous experience and knowledge about controlling the outbreak of a contagious disease. As such, their position on masking seemed to me one to strongly take into consideration and not simply dismiss just because the WHO's position at the time disagreed.

- With the above in mind, I decided that if masks were really unnecessary, there would be no harm in wearing them anyway. On the other hand, if they were useful (as the WHO later confirmed they were) and I stopped wearing them, the results could potentially be extremely damaging. The tradeoff between the minor inconvenience from wearing a mask and reducing the possibility of contracting a potentially fatal or severe disease—or passing it to someone else in the process—seemed like a no-brainer to me, so I kept wearing my mask.

That said, I don't see what "naive empiricism" has to do with this: empirical evidence is indeed a fundamental part of the scientific method, but that doesn't mean the people who are supposed to carry out scientific investigation don't make human mistakes. Furthermore, it was empirical evidence from more than one country that led me to believe I shouldn't stop wearing masks despite the WHO's statement.

There's a difference between respecting expert consensus and unquestioning, blind following, although that distinction is sometimes understandably very fine and tricky to make out. It's true that scientists change their stances based on new evidence and data, and we've seen this very clearly during the pandemic. However, that doesn't mean they're immune to making mistakes or that scientists can't ever give poor advice.

I don't believe that science is infallible or that scientific consensus is always certain to be correct, but I do think that peer-reviewed scientific consensus is generally our best tool for answering questions related to subjects such as epidemiology, biology, and other empirical fields of knowledge.

 

[Augustus]

No, I've worn masks ever since the pandemic reached my country, which was in early 2020, even when the WHO said it was unnecessary. This was for multiple reasons:

Not only unnecessary, they actively told people not to wear them.

But I agree, there was plenty of evidence that suggested we should assume they work until proven otherwise.

That said, I don't see what "naive empiricism" has to do with this: empirical evidence is indeed a fundamental part of the scientific method, but that doesn't mean the people who are supposed to carry out scientific investigation don't make human mistakes. Furthermore, it was empirical evidence from more than one country that led me to believe I shouldn't stop wearing masks despite the WHO's statement.

Naive empiricism ≠ empiricism (lets call the latter sceptical empiricism)

As you mentioned, there was plenty of evidence that suggested masks would offer some benefit. What there wasn't was a specific peer-reviewed study that showed masks being beneficial in this exact situation.

As such many 'experts' resorted to saying 'no evidence masks work' because they are naive empiricists needing exactly the right information before acting.

In some situations it will always be too late before naive empiricists get the precise, peer-reviewed studies they seem to think are the only kind of evidence that matters.

Also there were likely to be asymmetric payoffs depending in which way you were wrong.

Telling people not to use masks and being wrong, is almost certainly worse than telling people to wear masks and being wrong.

It's often not about the probability of being right, but the costs of being wrong that matter.

however, that doesn't mean they're immune to making mistakes or that scientists can't ever give poor advice.

I don't believe that science is infallible or that scientific consensus is always certain to be correct, but I do think that peer-reviewed scientific consensus is generally our best tool for answering questions related to subjects such as epidemiology, biology, and other empirical fields of knowledge.

It's not about making simple mistakes, but a significant flaw in the way many scientists think about evidence. It's almost like the only evidence that counts is a a narrow peer-reviewed study, and if we don't have that then there is no evidence.

Masks was one example, but the following is quite stunning in its ignorance:

EPO, a supposedly performance-enhancing drug infamously used by cyclist Lance Armstrong before he was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, does not actually work, according to a new scientific study...

The scientists behind the trial, which is published in the Lancet, say athletes are “naive” about the benefits of illicit substances such as EPO, but that myths about their effectiveness go unchallenged in the murky world of doping.

“It’s just tragic to lose your career for something that doesn’t work, to lose seven yellow jerseys for a drug that has no effect,” said Jules Heuberger, who led the research at the Centre for Human Drug Research in The Netherlands.

'Performance-enhancing' drug that cost Lance Armstrong his seven Tour de France titles doesn't work, study concludes

It's quite ironic that he described the athletes as naive while making such an idiotic claim that flies in the face of mountains of evidence.

It's very strange that a drug that 'has no effect' was taken so widely by athletes who closely monitor their own performance (and understand their limits very well) and believed that it had a massive effect.

It would be even stranger that after this drug that had no effect appeared, world record tumbled, and the when anti-doping bodies created a test for EPO performance levels declined again.

But this wasn't peer-reviewed lab evidence, so apparently it doesn't exist for some 'experts'.

A sceptical empiricist would say it's almost impossible your conclusions are right but highly likely your study is flawed. Yet a highly respected medical journal still chose to publish it.

While science may be the best tool for answering many questions, it is also one of the biggest sources of misleading and potentially harmful information too.

You qualified your statement and I'm not saying you personally are guilty of this but there are a lot of 'trust the science' type people out there who focus more on hagiographic platitudes about the normative functioning of sciences rather than the real world impacts of a human activity subject to human failings and careerist, economic and political influences.

Covid has illustrated both sides of the coin very clearly, yet it hasn't prompted the kind of introspection that such a stark illustration should merit.

 

[Twilight Hue]

How much has RF influenced you in your decision making?

It has a negative impact due to the extreme politicization of this pandemic. I've never seen it this bad in my entire lifetime so far.

There seems to be an eager preference for giving up liberty and freedoms in exchange for a little bit of safety and security, and that actually bothers me to see just how willing people are in handing all of their liberties and freedoms over to the government.