- Where does the 10x number come from? Is this something your friend is saying? Have you seen this in the news or something somewhere? I have attempted to Google this and cannot find a good number on it
- The crux of what you're saying feels like - because health care centers have to shut down more due to unvaccinated workers and lose more money, that unvaccinated workers are a liability. I can understand hospitals diverting resources due to COVID patients, but sick staff? What is happening here?
- The 10x is vague and refers to the greater likelihood of transmission and hospitalization among the unvaccinated. This varies by group but I've seen something like 5x for younger people and well over 10x when we're talking about the most at-risk groups.
- When your job is caring for the most immunocompromised people out there you should not be allowed to work sick, I think this is reasonable.
Here's the better question, and apologies for wasting your time by not thinking to ask this originally - How many more days a year are going to be missed for vaxxed vs. unvaxxed?
That's some real nice rationalization you've got going there.
Groupthink? Come on. How convenient.
Group think has existed forever. Look at medicine. The evidence that washing your hands reduced the possibility of spreading disease existed before it was widely accepted because the groupthink was opposed to it. The people who discovered that ulcers can be caused by bacteria had to fight a years long campaign to get their findings accepted. Not because their evidence was bad, but because the groupthink was on the side of ulcers being a stress reaction. Or science. Look at how everyone poured tons of time and effort into String Theory even though it was obviously thin. Or politics. After 9/11 everyone fell into a pro-war fever dream.
I cannot possibly imagine you don't know this. I cannot possibly imagine that you haven't seen group think in your own life.
Expert consensus evolves over time but that doesn't mean you have a better alternative. Scientific agreement does change, slowly, as understandings evolve, but it's still the surest bet for the time you live on. I respect that some people may see Doctors who are actively engaged in research of the questions on the table and may follow different advice but regular lay people can't hope to come up with something better on their own and not as real participants in science. The among of time the expert advice actively harmed people probably pales in comparison to the amount of times that people throughout history were harmed by quacks or just by self-treating their ailments without trained help.
- It's not necessarily about better alternatives so much as it is how much we have to act on any sort of expert consensus. With the COVID shots in particular, there's not enough there, and can't be enough there, to belittle people who don't take them, call them selfish, call them stupid, and so on. I also find any mandates regarding them very troubling in part for this reason
- One issue with any professional is what incentives they are subjected to. What social groups do they run in, who do they get their money from? We have seen what happens to perfectly qualified medical professionals or data researchers who speak out against the expert consensus. Social media bans, pressure to be fired from your academic institutions, and I have to assume (though I suppose I can't recall specific examples of) difficulties getting grant money. How many people disagree with the narrative but don't say anything because of the consequences? How many people support the expert consensus, in spite of disagreeing with it, because they're afraid of what will happen if they disagree? This is especially an issue when you get into "public health", where the major decision makers aren't even practicing physicians or researchers but bureaucrats with "Dr." in front of their name
- What I find more useful is when experts disagree with each other, because then you can read informed discussion. It's hard to see that when the consensus experts on COVID don't like going on alternative media and the skeptical experts are banned from/won't be let on corporate media sources. 'Tis a shame
- I don't have an intuition in my head for precisely how often in medicine experts are wrong vs. right, but I think the track record of experts is a bit spottier than you're characterizing it is. Over-prescription of anti-bacterial drugs having to be pulled back, the Opiod epidemic, replication crisis. And I'm sticking with the stuff that's least controversial
- I also think something that's being conflated here is actual expertise vs. "the experts". I agree completely that you should usually get opinions/advice from people who have expertise. I am still hoping Millah writes his post about vaccine engineering. He has expertise in that subject and I do not. But I..... highly question if "the experts" actually have any expertise in the fields they're supposedly experts in. And I think that public policy decision making involves knowledge about people that (a) everyone access to and (b) "the experts" are terrible at understanding. The CDC released some recommendation a few months back about how children should not hug or make contact with their pets because of some medical ailment I don't remember. The only thing I got out of that recommendation is that the people who work for the CDC don't understand people. And I don't understand on a human level how you can ever think that's an appropriate thing to recommend
That's some real nice rationalization you've got going there.
Groupthink? Come on. How convenient.
Group think has existed forever. Look at medicine. The evidence that washing your hands reduced the possibility of spreading disease existed before it was widely accepted because the groupthink was opposed to it. The people who discovered that ulcers can be caused by bacteria had to fight a years long campaign to get their findings accepted. Not because their evidence was bad, but because the groupthink was on the side of ulcers being a stress reaction. Or science. Look at how everyone poured tons of time and effort into String Theory even though it was obviously thin. Or politics. After 9/11 everyone fell into a pro-war fever dream.
I cannot possibly imagine you don't know this. I cannot possibly imagine that you haven't seen group think in your own life.
Of course I've seen groupthink. But not all of those examples you used are groupthink, and it's a flimsy accusation to cast in the direction of the consensus opinion being one you don't like. It is, dare I say, tin foil-ish.
Which is really weird.
A lot of this I addressed above - but as to the tin-foil hat thing specifically - People who thought there would be vaccine mandates were tin-foil hats. People who thought COVID was made in a lab were tin foil hat conspiracy theorists. People who thought there would be additional COVID shots were conspiracy theorists. The term has been rendered meaningless at this point.