So... we should add poverty deaths in Ukraine and Russia to Putin's illegal invasion of another country?
Yep. That's about it. Well done.
- Do we have infinite media space? No.
- Do people have infinite resources? No.
- Do people have infinite capacities to act? No.
- Do people have infinite attention spans? No.
So it matters which issues are brought to the fore, doesn't it.
It's not a question of the non-truth of the first option, but a question about the psychological reality of setting up folk-devils to divert attention from systemic crimes of far greater magnitude.
Focus on Putin, Trump, Biden, ...whoever, sucks oxygen from any discussion of the systemic structures causing whole orders of magnitude more death and misery.
half of the people don't believe it's an existential that needs addressed and most of the other half are either morally opposed to such political action or feel like it can be managed without resorting to it just yet.
Yeah, pretty much my point. Hardly an 'existential crisis'. Screaming about the end of civilisation and then starting a leafleting campaign to prevent it is pretty much textbook virtue signalling - the 'signal' is out of proportion to the act.
burning those companies to the ground doesn't do anything to the demand for their product
I can guarantee it would cause more discussion in the (ashes of the) boardroom than a strongly worded letter to The Times. And we don't have to worry about demand. Just refuse to pay them for it until they provide a better alternative.
Monetarily incentivizing their creation is our primary need
Why 'monetary'?. Why not violence? Civil disobedience? Strike action? Rude gestures? Not inviting them to your dinner party?
Why does the incentive have to be money? Isn't that pretty much what got us into this mess?
Killed in Ukraine - around 200,000
Deaths from poverty in the US over the same period - 490,000 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/how-many-u-s-deaths-are-caused-poverty-lack-education-other-social-factors
Did I miss your scathing post about US presidents?
That's just not what they are incentivized to do on their own. Consumers can sometimes influence those incentives, but there is not always enough market choice to put that kind of pressure on corporate behavior.
So why doesn't the same apply to governments? If the alternatives aren't there we can't vote for them.
If everyone refused to pay their gas bill. BP would collapse in a week. But of course there'd never be such action because people don't care it's all just virtue signalling.
Apparently we're supposed to be in a 'climate emergency' that represents an 'existential threat' to humanity, and the best humanity can muster as a response is a very strong leafleting campaign.
If it's really an actual threat to the survival of humanity then just storm BP headquarters and threaten to burn the place down if they don't stop funding new oil. No one will, might break a nail.
Yes, because MI5 never lie for the government do they? Famous for telling the absolute truth all the time are MI5... terrible at counterintelligence as a consequence... But at least they're honest...
Unbelievable. If the government says jump, you say...?
Antibiotics and other prescription medications are more often prescribed to older folks
But https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6996207/
In this study, we also analyzed antibiotic prescription rates according to age. The highest prevalence rates were observed in patients aged 71 years (80.3%) followed by 4-year-old children (60.7%).
Since 71 year olds wouldn't show any long term effects, that leaves the four year old group.
as a prescriber, I do warn my patients of the dangers of taking antibiotics willy nilly.
Of course you do, I've no doubt you're very diligent. Because now we know they have serious negative consequences. 40 years ago, however, the people this article is about would have merely been told they were "safe and effective". That's exactly the point I'm making.
You now have to take precaution with a medicine because of new information about its safety that wasn't known at the time it was developed.
Same is true for every other factor mentioned in the report. Human innovation is absolutely suffuce with things we thought were safe and effective at the time, but later turn out to be quite unsafe.
Yet taking this unequivocal fact and applying it to a rational scepticism about new medicines has, since 2020, become 'misinformation'.
Its the one that coincides with a concern of mine, yes.
Do you comment on absolutely everything regardless of whether it interests you or not?
Are you suggesting that the mere fact of being more interested in some issues than others indicates some kind of unreasonable level of fantisicm?
So "no firm conclusions" means what, in terms of the other comments here?
As far as I can tell, people are understandably a bit troubled, and a bit cross (since some of the proposed causes probably should have been dealt with a lot earlier). They're maybe hastily jumping to theories about a few likely candidates. Do you blame them?
Or should we just do nothing? Wait, and put all our faith in...? What?
The vast majority of the things mentioned would do us absolutely no harm at all to avoid, or even legislate against as a precaution. So is there a good reason we should wait for "firm" conclusions?
Seemed as good a place as any.
I assume the report wasn't posted in the spirit of "oh well, nothing we can do about it". I assume the message was, "let's try not to let this happen again".
But maybe im assuming too much basic human compassion.
No, not at all.
I'm pointing out that concern about vaccine safety is legitimate given that many treatments thought "safe and effective" at the time later turn out to have been harmful. The effect antibiotics have on the gut biome being just the latest example.
People concerned about the safety of the drugs they are told to use are not all "lunitic conspiracy theorists" as often branded. Some simply have a completely reasonable caution about the hubris of the medical establishment.
Funny how so many responses have skimmed over the implication of antibiotic use.
Now ask yourselves, these antibiotics... If you'd have asked your doctor at the time "are these drugs safe and effective?", what do you think the answer would have been?
Now ask your doctor if the latest vaccine is safe and effective and tell me how confident you feel about their response.
None of it is 'clear', and of course we don't 'know'. The question is what on earth you have on your list of reasons to give Antony Blinken the benefit of the doubt.
I'd love to know what it is about his record in office that inspires such trust.
Honestly, the level of fawning obsequiousness to the government these days is like something from Mccarthy's America, I thought we'd moved on as a society.
The point isn't whether he actually did approve bombing aid trucks. The point is that he, like any government official, should be terrified of the response if he did, because it's only that fear that reigns in the abuse of power.
Do you think Antony Blinken is going to be terrified of "oh, we don't have absolutely conclusive proof he actually said those exact words so we'll just drop it"?
there are indeed people with ideas so toxic and so dangerous they need to be removed.
Probably. But the argument is about who gets to decide who they, not whether they exist.
Nazis are identified by their affiliation with the Nazi party. People you think are Nazis are identified by your opinion of them and absolutely nothing more.
If you could provide an objective definition of these 'apologists', we might have something to discuss, but clearly there can be no such definition, these are not facts like the shape of the earth or the speed of light.
We (almost) all agree that some levels of intolerance should not be tolerated, what we disagree on is which opinions confer such a status on someone.