Prediction: When we get the first COVID vaccine that’s widely available, there will be more people in the streets protesting against it than celebrating it.
It will be interesting to see if the antivax movement dimishes its spread if COVID-19 ends up being eradicated from countries where vaccination campaign have been led, and is still killing left and right in countries where antivax and distrust of science is common.
Especially, it would mean that the cost of antivaxxers will be enormous to the country. Maybe this would incentivize government to act more on it.
Do not underestimate the creativity of conspiracy theorists. Allow me to give you a summary of Russia-sponsored conspiracy broadcast in my country:
If you compare the ratio of infected people to dead people in Italy and Germany, you see the mortality is different by an order of magnitude. That clearly shows the numbers are made up.
The people who “died of COVID-19” in Italy were actually victims of vaccination.
The people who “died of COVID-19” in Italy were actually old people, who had their 81-st birthday in spring 2020, which is an expected life length there, which means they all died of old age. It’s just that doctors found that in some of their bodies the corona virus was present (but not a cause of death), and the Western media misinterpreted this to create a mass hysteria.
The people who “died of COVID-19” in Italy were actually victims of air polution from Italian factories. That explains why they had lung problems.
COVID-19 is actually less fatal than flu or common cold. Scientists all over the world support this fact. Even WHO admitts that people who died of COVID-19 this year are a tiny minority of overall deaths worldwide in 2020.
Stuff like this circulates on social networks, along with warnings not to give children face masks, because face masks cause infections (which is exactly what Big Pharma wants, so that they can sell you the cure later). What actually helps is vitamins C and D, and most importantly, positive thinking and avoiding negative messages from mainstream media!
...so, I don’t really see how numbers of dead people could convince anyone. You can always attribute them to a different cause. And on the English-speaking web, people still celebrate Swedish “success”, don’t they?
If you want to see “creativity”, here is a book apparently by a US doctor and printed by a major US publisher that argues against the germ theory, claims Pasteur renounced it on his deathbed, and suggests that covid is due to “electromagnetic pollution” (including of course 5G): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Contagion-Myth/Thomas-S-Cowan/9781510764620
It’s going to look like it’s coming from newhere but here’s one opinion.
There is something strange when people take a large dose of some serotonin agonists : they think that the universe is wonderful and life has a purpose or something like that. They basically find purpose and emotion in something, without usually being able to rationnaly explain it afterwards.
Reading about someone who apparently had enough cortex to become an MD then somehow linked 5G to viruses makes me think : is there the possibility of a neurological [bug/change/disorder] where extreme purpose is derived from some random factual event?
To me it could potentially be the same system. The “purpose finder” system.
I am not convinced. I feel there could be a huge variance in how people actually believe there conspiracies. And it look extremely hard to estimate it.
Of course I have no doubt that there are/will be people that actually believe these things. But it could be that the proportion of people who believe them is small while the proportion of people who don’t believe it but are now doubting is large.
I have never been entirely convinced that it’s implausible that there is a majority of the conspiracy theorists that are actually susceptible to a cognitive bias that is typical of people that have never encountered bayesianism :
When they face a new idea like “putting facemask will kill your children”, they integrate that facemasks are risky, but don’t compare it to the alternative : “do I think covid is risky?”. The consequence is that those people are now in doubt and will prefer the status quo (not using masks), not that they actually believe that trump is actively disseminating poison on facemasks. This can be reinforced by the bias that riskiness can be felt as correlated to how frequent you hear about how dangerous it is, ignoring the actual risk.
And your argument that I should not underestimate their creativity as I can see from how crazy their facebook propaganda is seems invalid to me. It seems quite possible that in 5-10 years we’ll see that those ads were mostly funded by [foreign governments/rich minority with X or Y interests] fueling political instability. This would explain that the propaganda we see is actually crazier than the current state of what most conspiracy theorists actually believe.
But I’m rather new here, so I’m guessing this has already been treated extensively. I would be very thankful for good essays on the proportion of hardcore-conspiracy-theorists vs people who know doubt and stay in status quo.
Wow, you actually made me a bit optimistic about this! Indeed, if foreign propaganda makes things worse, that means the domestic conspiracy theorists are actually less crazy than they seem.
Glad I got my point across, I was really not sure it was clear.
My position is that this matter is complicated and it looks hard to gather more data. For example I can’t see a satisfying way to make surveys about what those people think. Especially : the “conspiracy theorists” that are actually prone to doubt could be so susceptible to this bias they if you ask them about the president being a lizard they would answer of course without actually believing it prior to the survey. (Maybe something to do with a very short term attention span coupled with a paranoid tendency?)
An idea I had been thinking about was maybe trying to survey not what they think, but how incoherently they think. Like saying that the moon landing is true but the earth is flat, or the earth is round but there is no gravity etc. But I haven’t thought too much about this.
But anyway, I definitely try not to be optimistic either. The problem is hard. I think the propaganda I see is actually probably crazier that people’s actual beliefs. But in case people are that crazy : it’s so dangerous and important that it should definitely not be ruled out.
Good point. The discussion too often revolves around the death/recovery opposition and forgets permanent damage.
Still, I’m not convinced a vaccine is necessary. HCQ seems to be an efficient treatment when administered early, before the virus has done much damage, and for that reason the chance of permanent damage is probably lower than with patients who need to be hospitalized.
My understanding is that the permanent damage occurs to much of the same degree in people who don’t show any symptoms (and are of course, not treated).
Prediction: When we get the first COVID vaccine that’s widely available, there will be more people in the streets protesting against it than celebrating it.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/health/vaccine-hesitancy-coronavirus-safety-intl/index.html
It will be interesting to see if the antivax movement dimishes its spread if COVID-19 ends up being eradicated from countries where vaccination campaign have been led, and is still killing left and right in countries where antivax and distrust of science is common.
Especially, it would mean that the cost of antivaxxers will be enormous to the country. Maybe this would incentivize government to act more on it.
Do not underestimate the creativity of conspiracy theorists. Allow me to give you a summary of Russia-sponsored conspiracy broadcast in my country:
Stuff like this circulates on social networks, along with warnings not to give children face masks, because face masks cause infections (which is exactly what Big Pharma wants, so that they can sell you the cure later). What actually helps is vitamins C and D, and most importantly, positive thinking and avoiding negative messages from mainstream media!
...so, I don’t really see how numbers of dead people could convince anyone. You can always attribute them to a different cause. And on the English-speaking web, people still celebrate Swedish “success”, don’t they?
If you want to see “creativity”, here is a book apparently by a US doctor and printed by a major US publisher that argues against the germ theory, claims Pasteur renounced it on his deathbed, and suggests that covid is due to “electromagnetic pollution” (including of course 5G): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Contagion-Myth/Thomas-S-Cowan/9781510764620
It’s going to look like it’s coming from newhere but here’s one opinion.
There is something strange when people take a large dose of some serotonin agonists : they think that the universe is wonderful and life has a purpose or something like that. They basically find purpose and emotion in something, without usually being able to rationnaly explain it afterwards.
Reading about someone who apparently had enough cortex to become an MD then somehow linked 5G to viruses makes me think : is there the possibility of a neurological [bug/change/disorder] where extreme purpose is derived from some random factual event?
To me it could potentially be the same system. The “purpose finder” system.
I am not convinced. I feel there could be a huge variance in how people actually believe there conspiracies. And it look extremely hard to estimate it.
Of course I have no doubt that there are/will be people that actually believe these things. But it could be that the proportion of people who believe them is small while the proportion of people who don’t believe it but are now doubting is large.
I have never been entirely convinced that it’s implausible that there is a majority of the conspiracy theorists that are actually susceptible to a cognitive bias that is typical of people that have never encountered bayesianism :
When they face a new idea like “putting facemask will kill your children”, they integrate that facemasks are risky, but don’t compare it to the alternative : “do I think covid is risky?”. The consequence is that those people are now in doubt and will prefer the status quo (not using masks), not that they actually believe that trump is actively disseminating poison on facemasks. This can be reinforced by the bias that riskiness can be felt as correlated to how frequent you hear about how dangerous it is, ignoring the actual risk.
And your argument that I should not underestimate their creativity as I can see from how crazy their facebook propaganda is seems invalid to me. It seems quite possible that in 5-10 years we’ll see that those ads were mostly funded by [foreign governments/rich minority with X or Y interests] fueling political instability. This would explain that the propaganda we see is actually crazier than the current state of what most conspiracy theorists actually believe.
But I’m rather new here, so I’m guessing this has already been treated extensively. I would be very thankful for good essays on the proportion of hardcore-conspiracy-theorists vs people who know doubt and stay in status quo.
Wow, you actually made me a bit optimistic about this! Indeed, if foreign propaganda makes things worse, that means the domestic conspiracy theorists are actually less crazy than they seem.
Glad I got my point across, I was really not sure it was clear.
My position is that this matter is complicated and it looks hard to gather more data. For example I can’t see a satisfying way to make surveys about what those people think. Especially : the “conspiracy theorists” that are actually prone to doubt could be so susceptible to this bias they if you ask them about the president being a lizard they would answer of course without actually believing it prior to the survey. (Maybe something to do with a very short term attention span coupled with a paranoid tendency?)
An idea I had been thinking about was maybe trying to survey not what they think, but how incoherently they think. Like saying that the moon landing is true but the earth is flat, or the earth is round but there is no gravity etc. But I haven’t thought too much about this.
But anyway, I definitely try not to be optimistic either. The problem is hard. I think the propaganda I see is actually probably crazier that people’s actual beliefs. But in case people are that crazy : it’s so dangerous and important that it should definitely not be ruled out.
Why celebrate? Deaths from the COVID have plummetted. The epidemic crisis is over. A vaccine is unnecessary.
Just for record-keeping, here is the OWID global death tracker (from google), with the vertical line at the point when the comment was written.
Even when death plummed, we still have some evidence that suggests that 3⁄4 of the infected people will have permanent damage.
Good point. The discussion too often revolves around the death/recovery opposition and forgets permanent damage.
Still, I’m not convinced a vaccine is necessary. HCQ seems to be an efficient treatment when administered early, before the virus has done much damage, and for that reason the chance of permanent damage is probably lower than with patients who need to be hospitalized.
My understanding is that the permanent damage occurs to much of the same degree in people who don’t show any symptoms (and are of course, not treated).
“The parachute’s slowed us down, can’t we take it off now?”