this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 37 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

"We're not gonna make it, are we? Humans I mean" -John Connor- Terminator 2

[–] hangman@lemm.ee 26 points 12 hours ago

“It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves”

-the terminator

[–] orbitz@lemmy.ca 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I could feel my dread go as I heard that lines over the years, as a young teen? Of course we will we always have, we endure. As a middle aged adult? I'm not so sure we aren't going to shove ourselves back to the cave man era and not enough people will listen to anyone with survival knowledge for the species to survive.

Then I think about how many species that must have and will happen to in this vast universe, so we'll probably be an average result heh in the grand scheme of things that is.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 3 points 10 hours ago

Okay, so we're roughly in the middle...Are we on the left or the right of Fermi's bell curve?

[–] arc@lemm.ee 35 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

RFK jr is going to kill and cripple a lot more kids if he gets the chance to. He'll make pretend polio / measles is eradicated and then somebody will get on a plane where there are cases, and it will spread amongst the unvaxxed and kids will die. When this happens he should be charged with negligent homicide but I doubt that will happen.

[–] UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world 86 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

In 1955... Most people personally knew someone aflicted with polio. They knew how bad it was

[–] SOB_Van_Owen@lemm.ee 34 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

In Appalachia, it was unlikely to not know someone on a vent or dead from Covid, yet...

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 21 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Fox News tells you not to believe your eyes, and conservatives trust Fox News more than their own eyes.

[–] hume_lemmy@lemmy.ca 14 points 13 hours ago

Their final, most essential command.

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I knew three people who died from COVID and another after they recovered from COVID, unfortunately unless it's their direct family they would just assume 'theyre just making it all out to be covid'

I assume most people would blame social media for this, but here's my c/unpopularopinions take, it's inevitable with a profit oriented news platform, where they try to scaremonger in both 'we are all going to die' and 'government is putting chips in our bloodstream' directions

In other nations, unless a blunder by government policy, they werent as affected by the anti vaccine shenanigans, even though they were as affected by social media and such

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

Dude my grandmother died of Covid in August pf 2020, and yet my father and his sister who is a nurse and gave her the dease arge to this day weather covid is bullshit or not. AT HER funeral they argued about mask mandates. Maga brains will watch millions die from covid, and polio and still call it fake news.

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[–] Allonzee@lemmy.world 97 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (10 children)

Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. We know what kind of country we live in, a nation of proud, almost patriotic willful ignorance. By design. An laborer ignorant to who is fucking them is a dependable laborer, after all.

So in the spirit of playing to the audience we have, have we tried rebranding the "vaccines" as, and I'm just spitballing here, Freedom Blessings, Robert E Lee Juice, The Joe Rogan Vein Experience, or the Prove You Hate Commies Test?

[–] monotremata@lemmy.ca 36 points 17 hours ago (5 children)

I had a thought along the same lines. I was thinking we should coin the term "immunition," and tell people it was a way to arm your immune system to defend itself. It's not even all that misleading.

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[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 10 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I think social media algorithms have fried people's brains. Imagine we'd ban them, go back to content being kinda diverse and random, without adversaries able to game the system and push massive swaths of propaganda to people. The fact alone that most youths get their news from freaking TicTok of all places...

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

You know your local news network has a TikTok right? There’s nothing wrong with news from social media. The problem is that media is unregulated and people are allowed to lie and pass off that information factual.

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

You know your local news network has a TikTok right?

That's not what people watch though. People get their news from "influencers", often time those with far right alignments, or straight from fascist parties who are the ones with the most reach on TicTok.

The problem is that media is unregulated and people are allowed to lie and pass off that information factual.

That's literally what the free press is, and a fundamental pillar of a free and democratic society. Regulated media is censored media, and exactly what fascists want. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press

[–] Pacattack57@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Being “press” does not give you blanket protection from lies. Alex Jones just lost his company because he lied about Sandy Hook victims.

[–] infinite_ass@leminal.space -2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If it's propaganda to make people believe the truth, is it bad?

[–] stepan@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 hours ago

Depends who's the arbiter of truth. Still propaganda

[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 89 points 19 hours ago (9 children)

Quite the difference from how half the US population reacted to a Covid vaccine. The power of political propaganda and social media conspiracy theories.

[–] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 58 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

And how those same people are cheering about Captain Brainworm's intentions to discontinue the polio vaccine.

Behold the power of mass lead poisoning. We truly live in the most stupid timeline.

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 24 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I think this is just the US returning to its pre super power roots. More and more it seems like the last 80 years were seen exception and now they are returning back to where they were before the world wars.

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 134 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

I used to think one of the biggest reasons there's so many antivaxx people is that, because they're so effective, people no longer have the fear of seeing their children in an iron lung, struggling to breathe. Then Covid respirators happened and antivaxx fucks somehow got worse

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 50 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Most people on this planet are idiots.

[–] excral@feddit.org 27 points 19 hours ago

The average person is quite stupid and about half the people are even stupider (sic)

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[–] leadore@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago

I used to think one of the biggest reasons there’s so many antivaxx people is that, because they’re so effective, people no longer have the fear of seeing their children in an iron lung, struggling to breathe.

Yes, I think that's absolutely right. The antivaxxers are people who didn't experience what it was like before vaccines.

Then Covid respirators happened and antivaxx fucks somehow got worse

I think part of it is that the effects of Covid were hidden from the public. The hospitals didn't let anyone in to see the rows of beds with people on respirators, so the public didn't see that on the news. They showed the refrigerated trucks but not the bodies in the trucks. So in the "pics or it didn't happen" timeline we're in, people didn't believe it was that bad. Even the aftereffects of long covid are barely recognized or mentioned. The whole thing has been bizarre.

In olden times, everyone saw the dead bodies openly carried off on carts, or saw piles of them buried in mass graves. Their relatives died right there in front of them, not hidden away in a hospital where they themselves weren't allowed to enter. Before, everyone directly experienced the crisis and suffering it caused. This time, the ugly reality was hidden from most of us other than the direct caregivers.

Side note: during the Vietnam war, reporters and camera crews were there and it was all shown on TV, the bodies, the wounded, the chaos. But the powers that be learned lessons from the horrified reaction of the public: do not show your failures on TV; keep your population in the dark. And we never saw our war casualties on TV again. Cameras were there, but we were shown nothing but scripted "reality TV", if anything at all.

They followed the same script with Covid. This is supposed to be the information age but we're more in the dark than ever. Real information is either not provided or is buried in misinformation. Remember the Florida whistleblower who leaked how the State was skewing their covid statistics and was quickly arrested and smeared?

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 39 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It's also why Trump is president-elect currently. People are stupid and are forgetting just how bad things can be.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 28 points 19 hours ago (7 children)

They forgot about 4 years ago.

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[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 16 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Oh how humanity hath fallen

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 101 points 22 hours ago (14 children)

NGL, I was choked up in my car when I was lined up for my very first COVID jab.

Honestly thought it was over, and the events since have informed much of my cynicism about our species.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 9 hours ago

Choked up? Like a rando strangled you?

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 19 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

On the other hand, half a century earlier-

So I guess the stupid waxes and wanes?

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 hours ago

I bet the wave of stupid correlates to the popularity of yellow journalism or the prevalence of its practices.

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 21 points 18 hours ago (5 children)

We are entering a stupid age, for which we may never recover.

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[–] Vorticity@lemmy.world 285 points 1 day ago (52 children)

It is amazing to me how short our memories are as a species. There are people who are still in congress who had polio. There are an estimated 300,000 people still alive in the US who survived polio. Even with that, the nominated head of Health and Human Services wants to do away with the polio vaccine.

I don't know what the problem is. Is it a lack of empathy? Is it willingness to swallow the bait surrounding conspiracy theories? Is it just a lack of education? How did we get to the point where it is even remotely okay for the future head of Heath and Human Services to be against the polio vaccine?

If being pro-polio isn't disqualifying for being the head of HHS, and if he gets confirmed, the U.S. will have very clearly shown that it is in rapid decline. It will have shown that the government is corrupt to its core and is irredeemable.

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