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when people say "do your own research" they generally mean "do not trust anyone with any relevant training or experience"

Dastardly Elites Are Lying to You and Trying to Suppress My Truth is alas an incredibly effective propaganda angle

exactly. every woo woo crank is selling some miracle cure snake oil, and it can't work by definition because if it did, then pharma companies, hospitals etc would be selling it instead bsky.app/profile/lego...

all the worst incentives of Big Pharma without any of the scientific peer review apparatus to constrain them. that's how people end up gobbling horse paste, fish tank cleaner, colloidal silver etc

yeah. Fauci fucks up with masks (admittedly a bad fuck up) and somehow that discredits all science, but the cranks pay no penalty for being provably 180 degrees wrong about hydroxychlorquine, ivermectin, every vaccine, etc etc bsky.app/profile/idon...

How did he fuck up with masks exactly? Masks limit the spread of aerosolized pathogens. This really isn’t in dispute. Are you talking about outdoor use? Lockdowns lasting too long?

this one right here. and it wasn’t the only time he did this kind of “noble lie” stuff youtu.be/PRa6t_e7dgI?...

this is from just before virus hit the US. Entirely in line with pretty widespread guidance from pub health types at the time, based in part on poor data, in part on condescension abt effective use. NYC officials were saying very similar things. Guidance that was rapidly reversed.

2/ this really seems like pretty classic cherry-picking in the face of evolving knowledge.

I am interested in this topic because I have seen it too as a minor thing as knowledge was evolving. But the idea that it was a huge mistake is very widely held in my expc, including amongst a number of thoughtful biomedical science and/or policy people. So I’ve wondered if I was being too generous.

For @joshtpm.bsky.social: the screw up was (because of worries about mask shortage for health care workers) was that many claimed “actually masks blah blah” (to head off hordeing). This, along with the massive delay in saying “yeah, it’s airborne”, were issues that added fuel to fire for critics