Jay KuoA thought piece based on two items in the news, ones that don’t seem that connected at first but in fact track along the same vector of suspect data and misinformation. Vaccine skepticism and polling outfits, in today’s write-up. https://open.substack.com/pub/statuskuo/p/shady-data-and-misinformation?r=1zr8b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊Thank you for another excellent piece!
I do take minor but not enormous exception to the notion that antivaxxers are skeptical -- solely as a matter of terminology. Skepticism as a notion is all well and good, a matter of 'I need more information before I proceed' (and, in context, sometimes that information is 'people are dying from this plague now'), but I have rarely if ever met an antivaxxer who would be persuaded by any body of information, no matter how well-researched, self-evident, or just plain large.
Skeptics can, in the end, change their mind -- but ideologues have no such requirement, and even though the Lancet article was and is useful to them still, many of them would have found some other reason by now even without it. Which, of course, heightens the duty of care by media outlets.
Though RFK has also never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like. I'm quite certain he would be arguing about Apollo 11 save for image reasons.