> Patently counterproductive
It is an international phenomenon, where (political) organizations and people copy and sync each others playbooks. Look at the Brexit, look at Orban, look at the tariffs, look at expelling talent and science, look at the killing of the free enterprise.
Fundamentally, parasites don't care about the host. If the host dies, they jump on the next one. That is why the Kremlin focuses on Ukraine and the rest, while the USA starts to talk about Greenland and Canada.
For normal people it is too crazy to believe, so we don't believe it.
Agree, though I think the why/how is interesting.
In watching it play out in several countries: (1) wealth concentration builds resentment against a minority (wealthy/elites) by the majority (poor), (2) someone from the wealthy/elite hijacks the majority dissatisfaction by saying they'll "get" the minority, (3) democracy sweeps that someone into power, (4) turns out, anyone wealthy/elite doesn't really give a shit about egalitarianism, and enriches themselves
I mean, when Brits vote in Boris Johnson or Americans Trump, do they really expect either to compromise their own wealth for the good of the nation, when it comes to that?
I don't think we have effective language to talk about this stuff.
You saying "vaccine skepticism" (or the real boogey man, anti-vaxxer) could mean anything from person who thinks the Jews are injecting microchips into us all, all the way to a person who has gotten all sorts of vaccines except for specifically the mRNA ones.
Obviously, these two people are very different cases.
In a discussion about cars, someone could say they wouldn't buy a Ford, and nobody feels the compulsion to call them anti-car. (And they probably actually understand some details about the car beyond eli5 marketing materials. Perhaps that explains it).
Yes, there are educated people and educated reasons to be skeptical of vaccines.
But in practice, at least in America, that represents a small portion of the entire vaccine skeptical community.
Skeptical seems an accurate description too, as most of them couch their beliefs in "Well, I'm just asking the question"ism.
Through and through anti-vaccine people are a smaller group.
What does this mean? People who don't know a lot about biology? That's effectively everyone who isn't a biologist (and probably even some who are), which is effectively everyone.
> who latch onto vaccines as their cause du jour
That sounds like more than skepticism to me.
> But in practice, at least in America, that represents a small portion of the entire vaccine skeptical community.
I have no way of evaluating whether this is true beyond gut feelings. Do you?
We, as people, are much more sensitive to loss because of action over loss because of inaction. Doing nothing at the risk of getting sick sometime later doesn’t feel as risky as choosing to go take a product with risks, even though the risks are a million times lower than if you get sick. Taking a vaccine feels like you are doing something risky. It is distantly related to the trolley problem.
Because it's patently counterproductive -- modern medical science saves lives.
So what you really have is a bunch of people getting riled up about something because they don't currently need it, then making dumb choices at critical moments, then denying their actions caused consequences if they have bad luck.
A partner was a critical care nurse during COVID, and said she had people dying in beds who still denied COVID existed. Mind-boggling.