@Free_Idealist Nah there are tons of moderate left, right, and centrists i dont like too.

@Biggles Thry seem to manipulate or reject science that disagrees with their stance on a lot of things.

A good example was covid, i was am a research scientist who worked on covid throughout the pandemic. Me and many covid scie tists pointed out criticisms of the lefts ideology and opinions along the way, for example ones ability to be reinfected with covid or the liklihood that a covid vaccine coukdnt produce herd immunity. I was fairly violently attacked by the left on these issues despite being well within mainstream science and even accepted. Of course the right had its own issues with covid.

I tend to find similarly dishonest antiscience when talking about guns, which the left seems to assert quite confidently without even understand the basic ideas they are debating. This is both from the science behind guns themselves and the analysis of the stastics and consequences of gun laws.

@freemo

Rejecting science that disagrees with your current beliefs, whatever they are, seems to be a thing many people do - left, right, or center. Even actual scientists who should know better do it, sadly. Cognitive Dissonance is a harsh mistress. But thank you for the reply - I at least now can see where it comes from. I think with the Covid especially many people formed unsupported opinions early on and close their mind to new evidence, to their disadvantage, and it's an uphill battle to get people to understand that biology is a bit more wibbly-wobbly than many (including doctors) believe it is.

@Biggles Well no arguments there... the difference is when it is part of group-think, done in unison, and clearly ideologically gated its a very different thing.... nearly all of the extreme-left rejected science en masse to the same tune, much as the extreme right did... the center when it happens it is on a very individual basis and not something that manifests such consistent patterns along party lines.

The problem with covid wasnt simply about early on opinions, it was more about contrarianism.. Anything, and I mean anything, the right formed as an opinion the left had to reject, and violently fight against.. I mean hell I saw more than a few lefties get into fist fights over COVID nonsense with righties.

@freemo @Biggles I still wonder which of the early treatment interventions, like hydroxyurea or budesonide nebulizers, might have actually stopped this.

There was a bunch of quackery on the right, yes, but the left also seemed willing to suppress things that worked in order to Get Trump.

@mike805

Fair criticism. In all liklihood many of the alternative treatments would have had marginal impact at best... I mean never in the history of medicine have we ever been able to find a significant cure to a virus outside of vaccines, never.

Any treatments that could have potentially help would have addressed the symptoms and likely not cured the virus..

That said your right that blind suppression was at play and some of the treatments may atleast have been helpful if not a complete cure.

@Biggles

@freemo @Biggles Outside of vaccines abd antibiotics, almost all medicine is fixing symptoms.

People will generally recover from the virus if you can avoid lung involvement and other bad things. There is plenty of evidence that some of the alternative treatments the right was pushing did help with that.

If not, the virus was just going to get whoever it was going to get. Nobody has ever produced a sterilizing or long-lasting vaccine against a coronavirus either.

@freemo @Biggles Also, a lot of the people who were ready to hold people down and vaccinate them by force, were vaccine skeptics during the Trump admin.

The vaccine become a tribal identity marker.

On the other side, HCQ, IVM, and anti-mask became a tribal identity marker.

Humans are stupid.

@mike805

Thats not really true.. nutrient defiencies are cured with the proper nutrients, poisons are cured with their proper antidoes (methanol being cured with ethanol for example), surgeries usually directly fix the underlying issues (mending bones for example). In fact outside of mental illnesses and viruses most diseases can be cured directly rather than just mitigating symptoms.

@Biggles

@freemo @mike805

Thank you. I was just going to mention scurvy (and other vitamin deficiency diseases), and my own thyroid hormone replacement, which also doesn't fit. (My thyroid took a hike in my 20's - seems to run in the family)

But - it gets off topic. Maybe my local peer group is special, but I never saw significant pushback on vaccinations there, and we definitely lean liberal. The only real pushback in my very limited peer group has been from one who believes all illness comes from diet, and another who things both the virus *and* the vax are a government plot. Both very far right (wives). I mostly disregard their advice :-) but again, my peers and experience may be atypical, as we're mostly computer dorks...

@Biggles

I too did not see any pushback on vaccines from liberals.. in fact quite the opposite, I saw them very strongly pushing for it and being quite aggressive towards anti-vaxxers.

@mike805

@freemo @mike805

Ah - that may explain my perceptions, at least there. I didn't notice any strong pushing because I was already convinced. We lost 3 family members to the virus before the vax came out, and we were fairly desperate for a *real* solution - and I had read quite a bit of good makes-sense-to-my-comp-Sci-background info on the new class of vaccines. (We've lost one more since - a sister-in-law in Texas who was positive the vax was poison. Sigh. And we've seen multiple infections since, but the rest of us are vaccinated, and have done very well. Small sample size I know)

@Biggles

My opinion on the vaccine has been consistent... It deserved caution when it was authorized for emergency use and didnt clear the usual safety checks... now that it has full FDA approval its pretty stupid not to be vaccinated.

That said when i was voicing my concerns over the vaccine and other COVID issues (Keep in mind i am a research scientist who worked on COVID) I got very abusive resistance to my ideas fromt he extreme left and right, even though most of my ideas were fairly standard mainstream opinions.

@mike805

@customdesigned Are you claiming the vast majority of scientists have never and will never agree on anything? That doesnt sound right at all.

@freemo That disagreement is how science advances into new knowledge. Historically, the majority has been wrong/incomplete by current theories.

The issue I have is not with the majority opinion, but with censoring the scientists with a minority opinion.

@customdesigned Ok so its not an oxymoron at all, people should just be ok challenging the majority.

I would agree, you should. But when your opinions contradict the majority on almost everything then you are likely the one in the wrong.