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To: exDemMom; Bikkuri
I've returned to take up the fight against misinformation again because I'm afraid that conservatism will not have a future as long as we can be painted as antiscience antivax kooks.

Right out of the Peter Hotez / Center for Countering Digital Hate playbook. He published an editorial in Nature which called the Peril posed by anti-vaxx, anti science as as bad as (among other things) nuclear weapons and terrorism. He wanted a multidisciplinary task fore which would report, not to the elected government, but to the UN. Do you endorse that? I've asked you that twice before. It looks like you're ducking the question.

103 posted on 10/30/2023 5:42:50 PM PDT by grey_whiskers ( The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: grey_whiskers
Right out of the Peter Hotez / Center for Countering Digital Hate playbook. He published an editorial in Nature which called the Peril posed by anti-vaxx, anti science as as bad as (among other things) nuclear weapons and terrorism. He wanted a multidisciplinary task fore which would report, not to the elected government, but to the UN. Do you endorse that? I've asked you that twice before. It looks like you're ducking the question.

No, not ducking any question. If I reach the end of my energy or I have already written a very lengthy post, I'll stop responding to comments in your post.

I may or may not have previously seen the Hotez editorial in Nature. Nature sends me a newsletter every day, and it might have been in there. However, I am very familiar with the threat that antivax/anti-science beliefs pose to human health. This is a problem that the scientific community has been trying to find ways to counter for a long time now.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but... how many people have died from atomic bombs or terrorism? How many people die because they refuse to get vaccinated as a result of antivax rhetoric? How many people die from cancer or heart disease or malnutrition, etc., because they believed some charlatan who posed as a health guru in order to sell them snake oil? Those are questions to which I do not have an answer, but I am quite aware that the problem is large enough to concern the scientific community.

The idea of a task force is good. Having it report directly to the UN rather than our health agencies and senior political leadership is not so good. While working with international partners on topics of health is generally desirable, any policies we develop should be a result of our decisions as US citizens, not of foreign entities. And ditto for our international counterparts--they should develop their own policies based on the needs of their citizens. The scientific community is, in general, a world community. Some totalitarian countries like Cuba or North Korea don't participate in the worldwide community, but the majority of scientists from around the world do.

106 posted on 10/30/2023 7:12:36 PM PDT by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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