• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    “Viruses are a hoax” seems to have been growing ever since COVID. I never encountered it before that, now I’ve encountered it multiple times. There was a guy in the skeptic sub on Reddit who came in to argue like mad that viruses didn’t exist.

      • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        People were lined up around street corners to get the polio vaccine when it came out because they all knew just how horrible polio was.

        And now that we’ve had decades of basically no polio because of the vaccine, people think vaccines aren’t needed, are dangerous, and that diseases are a hoax.

        Education is critical.

        • Andonyx@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I do work for a bunch of pharmaceutical companies and developing nation health outreach type organizations. (Don’t ask me much technical, I’m not personally on the medical side.) But I can tell you that most major pharmas, Health NGOs and Government drug safety regulatory bodies are keenly aware that “Vaccines are a victim of their own success.” They have multiple approaches to dealing with the problem that a successful vaccine campaign makes the need for the vaccines socially invisible. There are varying degrees of success, but not a lot of generalized and reliable ways to combat this kind of cognitive disconnect.

    • Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      The spectrum of human thought is astounding some times.

      On the one hand you have people adamant that viruses don’t even exist against all rational thought, reason, the almost daily experience of their existence, and over a hundred years of scientific research around the world learning more about them in detail and cataloguing at least 15,000 distinct species.

      While simultaneously you have people who know so much that they can manipulate viruses into becoming our own little machines to deliver working copies of genes straight into particular types of cells in someone’s body and treat their deadly genetic illness with gene therapy.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      6 months ago

      There was a guy in the skeptic sub on Reddit who came in to argue like mad that viruses didn’t exist.

      What did he think they were? Bacteria? People and doctors colluding to fake symptoms? Demonic possession?

      I mean, said guy has to have had the common cold at some point.

        • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          You joke, but I have an uncle who is basically on the liberal version of the COVID conspiracies who seems to be saying exactly this now. That big pharma is engineering everything from pandemics to allergies to psychosis to sell drugs. And that we should revert to monke to survive.

      • kase@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Good question, I would like to know as well. I wonder if he thinks that getting “sick” is something that bodies just do, no virus required. Or maybe that it’s because of the fluoride in the water. Idk, just spitballing here; my money is on demonic possession for sure.