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RFK Jr’s team quietly updates CDC website to say science doesn’t know if vaccines cause autism
(www.independent.co.uk)
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
dart board;; science bs
rule #1: be kind
We need to address the class divide that defines America right now, and that's the divide between the educated - who tend to be wealthier, urban and liberal - and the uneducated - who tend to be poorer, rural and conservative.
The way I see it, the rich urban liberals have a greater responsibility here, because they have financial and intellectual resources that the rural poor do not. If the liberals are expecting poorer and less educated people to spontaneously gain the knowledge and experience necessary to make better political choices, then they're delusional. Maybe the liberals think, "hey, that's a them problem, not a me problem." If so, they're wrong. Unless they want to amend the constitution so that only rich liberals can vote, it's a you problem.
Edit: I realized I asked someone else to provide a source for their claim that even as I had not provided one for mine that "the educated...tend to be wealthier, urban and liberal."
Here's what I was able to get from factually.co:
So it is not necessary the case that the educated are wealthier. It may have been more accurate for me to say that "the educated tend to be affluent, urban and liberal.
A lot of poor and uneducated people don't need help understanding that vaccines are real and helpful. Everyone has exposure to the literal health experts in their community (doctors) who recommend them.
I'm not even sure what you're thinking the wealthy urban educated could do that literal face to face doctors have failed at. The problem is the politicized misinformation that's served up by algorithms and convinces idiots of all education and wealth levels that their doctor is part of a 5G conspiracy to give their kid autism. RFK never lacked in wealth, education, or engagement from rich educated urbanites.
It’s not a lack of ability to understand that’s at issue, it’s a lack of trust. Poor, rural, uneducated conservatives don’t doubt the intelligence of doctors, they mistrust them.
Recall that doctors once told pregnant women to take Thalidomide (warning, don’t click on the article about the scandal unless you’re prepared to see disturbing pictures). More recently, the Surgeon General lied to the public about the effectiveness of masks for preventing COVID transmission.
When experts lie to the public, the loss of trust can last for generations. It’s a huge problem that is all too casually dismissed.
This opinion piece from the BMJ entitled “The illusion of evidence based medicine” sets the stage: https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702.
There is so much corruption and industry capture that it can be genuinely difficult to separate the real, unbiased science from “Big Pharma make number go up”. Telling people they are uneducated dipshits and to just “follow the science” ignores and further degrades the fundamental lack of trust.
And now RFK is trying to muddy the waters between politicians and health officals/healthcare workers so that uneducated/poor folks dont know who to trust
So is the problem the misinformation or the "idiots of all education and wealth levels?" If we get rid of the misinformation, will those people then stop being idiots? If not, what should be done with all of these idiots? What causes idiocy? Is it genetic or biological in some way?
The wealthy urban educated liberals could push for better education in rural areas, by any means possible. Donate to schools in poor counties. If you teach, go out there to teach for at least some of your career. Go to their school board meetings, like the MAGA nut jobs who go to ones in liberal areas.
The average Republican voter is wealthier than the average Democratic voter.
Every media company is controlled by Republican interests.
Could you provide a source for that? I'm not necessarily doubting that it's true but I'm also not just going to take your word for it.
Pew Research polling finds Republican leanings in every economic class except the absolute highest and lowest earners. They're the closest thing America has to middle class voters, not the poor and stupid underclass you suggest.
But that's not what I said, though. I didn't say that "Republicans" are "the poor and stupid underclass." I said:
I shouldn't have said that the educated, specifically the college educated, tend to be wealthier, because that's not necessarily true. However, it is true that college educated people tend to have higher incomes than non-college educated people.
Link
What about the median? I don't think that statement holds up then. Average is susceptible to outliers
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/average-income-republican-vs-democrat/
It doesn't answer the median question, but lower income households identify with the Democrats by 58-36. Upper income voters also favor Democrats, but only by 53-46.
The picture of Republicans being the party of the poor relies on a picture of the poor that only includes rural white people.