Friend Infected With Right Wing Brain Worms - What to Do?

if a vaccine is rushed (i.e. not put through the usual rigor of testing) then i could see myself being hesitant to get it

I think vaccines are amazing things but this is my starting point too.
I thought she was saying that re her child not having previous vacs either.

As far as immunizing your children is concerned my line is that the state should do more to protect the child's individual rights and freedoms. Giving the decision to parents isn't extending freedom of choice, it's treating minors as property.

― clap for content-providers (Noodle Vague), Sunday, April 26, 2020 9:58 AM bookmarkflaglink

otm

if it makes everyone feel better, it's not even a given there will be a vaccine, since it's a coronavirus

that doesn't make me feel better at all!

sorry, I was being unhelpfully facetious

(waits for this to hit "pvmic")

ive seen a few articles repeating a who announcement that previous infection and recovery from covid 19 does not result in immunity, but none contained commentary on implications for the possibility for vaccines, and i keep thinking, well doesn’t this make a meaningful vaccine impossible? Or are only some people, but not all, immune to it following recovery? In that case, you’d need about 70% of total population vaxed and responsive for some herd effect?

my understanding is...and I'm way out of my depth here...is that a vaccine can still be developed even if there is no acquired immunity to the virus

There is no acquired immunity to tetanus for example, but a vaccine does exist

I'll guinea pig a vaccine right now tbh

especially if it comes with a stipend

hunt3r & neanderthal:

https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-our-attitude-toward-vaccines

ah, thanks j., that was interesting. i'm still interested on what how immunity from previous disease exposure and vaccine development are related, if it all, and i will post if/when i see anything.

my understanding from the similar reports i saw was that it was more a warning not to think a positive antibody test makes you invulnerable, given that the nature of the immunity relative to the virus (does it have strains, etc.) is not well known yet, plus given that some antibody tests out there right now are not necessarily very reliable.

yeah the false negative issue is insane-- i think two of the serum tests are like 15% false negative? other tests are like 1-2%?

I was talking to my friend last night and she said that her two year old son has not had any vaccinations and she's concerned that if a Covid-19 vaccine is produced then the government will force people to take it. She said that she's not an anti-vaxxer but she just didn't want her son to be vaccinated (she was a bit vague on her reasons for this).

I didn't challenge her on this (maybe I should have) because I'm not a parent and I'd imagine that having people who aren't parents telling you how to raise your child must be annoying, and I was worried that being too confrontational could be counter-productive. However I definitely think she should get her son vaccinated for obvious reasons. Should I raise this with her, and if so what's the best way to go about it?

― paolo, Sunday, April 26, 2020 3:54 AM (yesterday)

I suggest screaming at her, that's what I'd do

let loose with a big old "what the absolute fuck"

also don't hang out with them again, you might catch measles

Yeah, I don't know that I can deal with anti-vax folks in a measured way

she's not anti-vax! she just is against giving vaccines

Hah I've been thinking about this conversation too. I have a housemate that does not believe in Coronavirus!

I do not believe in COVID-19
By
Dr Seuss

And he had a friend over, breaching lockdown. Then this other fella has been going round to people's houses to have sex with them

These guys are so all round awful I'm just stuck really. Asking guy 1 not to breach lockdown resulted in him shouting 10 paragraphs of denialism at me

Ugh that’s awful cardamon

ffs yeah

Fucking hell.

It's like, you know what? The one who goes out shagging most likely will not catch Coronavirus and pass it on to the rest of us in the house. The worst case in that sense probably won't happen. It's the sheer lack of caring though, and from the denier, it is like talking into the abyss.

So I sit here figuring out if there's a way to say hey mate, you know how you've been kicked out by your wife and banned from seeing your kid, because of your booze n scratch cards habit, yeah? And that's why you've ended up moving in here. Well that's quite the situation and I can see how the weirdness of the lockdown isn't helping + that you would be tempted by these booty calls arranged online. But could you not?

'Please do not go and sit in your dealer's car to pick up weed'

My neighbor has 100% been ignoring social distancing when meeting his weed dealer. But he’s also an essential worker who gets up ridiculously early in the morning to go work at the water utility so 🤷‍♂️

Paolo's friend seems completely reachable to me.

Cardamons doesn't even seem like brainworms, just a half-assed cover for not giving af. Removing the 'brainworm' probably not even that hard, but then he'll just continue without the pretence of an excuse or cover

xp I’m choosing to read that as the weed dealer also working at the water utility, making him an essential worker twice over

Hunt3r:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/coronavirus-antibody-test-immunity/611005/

My weed supply hasn’t been effected, only now I post money and he posts weed, which I like a lot more because I don’t have to talk to him.

So have any of you ever successfully persuaded an anti-vaxxer (or indeed another type of conspiracy theorist) to change their minds?

Is this the friend that isn't going to take the covid-19 vaccine?

Its pretty tough to take down a conspiracy theory in one setting! You'll need patience....but if this is about covid-19 vaccine, you've got plenty of time, there's no vaccine on the horizon anyway? If you're going to persuade someone away from a conspiracy theory then you have to understand their take on it to find wherever the weak link is that you can focus on - and that means asking not telling

The trouble with that is that people will then cite utterly nonsensical 'research' they've read about on Facebook, that you can only disprove by spending far too much of your time reading about it yourself. People are always going to cherry-pick evidence to support an existing belief (we probably all do it to some extent), and if those beliefs are a bulwark against the random horror of the universe then they're not going to want to challenge them. Not sure where that leaves anyone tbh.

imo it’s not worth debunking bad info, just saying clearly what you believe and citing respected, practical organizations (like, say, the mayo clinic and not webmd) and then going silent. next time it comes up, clearly state it again, then turn off notifications

part of what lures people in is the absolute confidence that quacks seem to have. it seems like doing some sort of rational argument and debunking would be useful, but I’ve come to notice people would rather just follow one unwavering voice at a time, even if it means jumping to another view that’s diametrically opposite from their prior one

lol I do the "mic drop post then turn off notifications" all of the time. no reason to see the follow-up posts for the reasons you stated.

The trouble with that is that people will then cite utterly nonsensical 'research' they've read about on Facebook, that you can only disprove by spending far too much of your time reading about it yourself. People are always going to cherry-pick evidence to support an existing belief (we probably all do it to some extent), and if those beliefs are a bulwark against the random horror of the universe then they're not going to want to challenge them. Not sure where that leaves anyone tbh.

― all things must pasteurize (Matt #2), Saturday, May 2, 2020 7:37 AM bookmarkflaglink

yeah seriously, i"ve had more Washington Times Moonie crap dropped in response to any legit tries to debunk. one of my friends was shocked to hear about the origins of that paper.

I feel like there are different levels here, and Paolo's friend isn't TooFarGone (though only he can clarify!)

Agree that attempting to debunk crap in real time is far from effective (especially when you're likely to run into an unintentional gish gallop), but going into a conversation with the mindset of debunking is confrontational anyway - it means you're prepared for what they're going to say before they say it, which means you've already decided what they're going to say and aren't listening. This never works

If you're serious about this, you have to drop "I'm right, you're wrong" because that focuses on the end result, not the starting point, you have to go to where they are, the starting point, and work from there

my friend with right wing brain worms who I quarreled with over his pc-gone-mad type comments about (lol) UK rap star Dave's appearance at the Brit awards a couple of months back hasn't talked to me since. I'm so glad tbh he was phoning me every week and talking to him was exhausting and he's such a self-righteous tedious bore that now that he has key-worker status (his job involves coordinating shopping deliveries for Asda) I could imagine his expanded sense of self-worth combining with the right-wing brain worms in new even more awful than previously ways.

I was reminded of this thread when talking to my dad today. I don't think my cousin, who I have seen a handful of times in the last couple decades, has right wing brainworms per se, but definitely the obstinate reaction to information she doesn't like

my uncle (her father) called my dad asking if he could help move some dirt, because-- and this is where the illogical part comes in -- she didn't like that tree roots were above the ground below a tree and that grass would not grow there

my dad explained, yeah, you could haul in dirt and spread it over there, but that type of tree will push roots above the new dirt, and it's not like grass is going to grow there because it's a combination of the roots and shade. apparently he's answered questions for my cousin before and it's been a back-and-forth where if she doesn't like the answer, she just asks variations of the same question! like these are basic realities of the physical world and she thinks badgering her father and uncle will change the answer

I told him, just say the same explanation and then ignore whatever she says next if you really have to get involved, because sheesh

grass is such bullshit

Didn't even follow my own advice when talking to a dummy who thought Fauci ran the CDC and tried to pin decades of failure on him.

Spent twenty minutes explaining the diff between the two when i coulda just dropped a link and then eaten a cheeseburger

Fb post from a tangential acquaintance who was relatively sane until some current “researching” -

“DON'T let mainstream social propaganda put you on a leash...
Think and learn for yourself what is actually TRUE!”

I’m debating.. laugh react or... ?

"think and learn for yourself", they said as they c/ped something from someone else's meme

I did not understand where all this Bill Gates wants to kill us with mandatory vaccines shit came from until I read a thing where he was saying that amongst other good outcomes, widespread vaccination might result in negative or stabilized population growth, because, having your kids not die as often means ppl feel less need to have an over abundance of them. Suddenly it makes sense. All these people took away from that was “Bill Gates ADMITTED he wants depopulation via mass vaccination! omg the vaccines are killing us.” Like, no.

in twenty years, our textbooks will say "How AIDS Came from Socialism" on the cover

Gates is also saying that about people in developing nations, ie mostly the non-white people these dipshits are worried about doing a white genocide.

Fb post from a tangential acquaintance who was relatively sane until some current “researching” -

If you do want to down this rabbithole, I'd go with "hmm this feels a little like controlled opposition to me, something don't sit right about this guy either. Seems to be doing very well for himself"

There's a mixture of understandable mistrust coupled with desire for trust in a competing reality. The problem is probably more to do with creduluousness of the latter rather than lack of trust in the former