I came to realize that there was a long-standing scientific controversy in the field, and I felt that I had no choice but to get to the bottom of things myself. Although I am not a medical doctor, I hold a PhD in neuroscience and am familiar with critically reading scientific literature. I decided that I would invest as much time as necessary to learn everything I possibly could on the subject. At that point, there was nothing in my life more important than finding out what had really happened to my son.
Definitely a tangent, but attributing that attitude to higher education is like someone attributing a doctor saving their life to an act of god. Like yeah if you squint I guess that’s true.
My experience with higher education has been that of administrators taking advantage of my naivety for profit, elitism towards those not in academia, and dismissal of any ideas that wouldn’t directly result in a grant or a good headline.
I wouldn’t really say that the author’s “mettle” is a result of the same environment.
But whether a person does use them, and for what, is entirely due to the person themselves.
First off, this was genuinely valuable during the first few months. Gigantic medical institutions were moving at a glacial pace and were making proclamations literally months behind the state of the research. In order to conserve masks, propaganda was put out that masks were only effective if you were a medical professional, and the most common way I saw this rationalised was that the general public was simply too stupid to wear a mask in a sanitary way. So I proceeded to wear a mask in a sanitary way. Then after a few months mask stocks started to pile up so propagandists THEN pronounced that more science was conducted and masks were actually effective for everybody!
That positive outcome aside, what other people saw was that the younger people got, the lower the risks of COVID, and the higher the risks of getting vaccinated. In fact, it seemed from the numbers (This is for the earlier strains of COVID), that for certain populations (young people who lived like hermits, in other words, hacker news readers) it could be on a selfish individual basis, be irrational to get the COVID vaccine. The risk from myocarditis could actually outweigh the risk of COVID itself. It was however, always in the collective interest for as many people to get vaccinated as possible, to reduce the transmission of COVID, and reduce the consequent strain on medical resources and the direct/indirect deaths this caused. Public health institutions did not get into this nuance, because it wasn't in the collective interest, so they just told everybody the vaccine was good for you. I proceeded to get vaccinated, and the main person I held discussions with did not, after both drawing the exact same scientific conclusion. Not every anti-vaccer was stupid, some of them were just massive civil libertarians.
What I saw from people who DIDN'T do their own research is that they were UNIFORMLY misinformed because they tended to either believe institutions who would lie to them whenever it served their purposes (2 weeks to flatten the curve!), or believed whatever podcaster told them about Ivermectin.
Anyone with the wherewithal can learn to “read and understand research” it’s not a magical power bestowed upon the few who receive recognition from some long standing bloated institution.
Attributing the drive and work of an individual to such an institution is weird and elitist.
I should note that if said institution paid for, assembled the team, and provided resources, then that institution obviously deserves credit.
Do not perpetuate the myth that the vaccines slowed the spread.
For instance, people who get accepted into Harvard but don't attend have the exact same life outcomes to those who get accepted and do attend. The same is now true for college in general once you account for opportunity costs.
Also think back to before we had good evidence on transmissibility/infection. Myocarditis hit the young, who were the last to be vaccinated, and consequently among the last to be researched. So the evidence of the vaccinations effects on transmissibility/infection led the evidence about myocarditis. Before either of those bits of evidence came out, the vaccines were nevertheless VERY effective at reducing hospitalisations from COVID-19 caused by early strains in those initial trials. I've also only really heard of the Pfizer trial's being severely criticised after the fact.
So there was good cause to get vaccinated the entire time, although the value of vaccination kept dropping as new strains kept cropping up which were seemingly less impaired by vaccination, and after omicron I saw a huge amount of people start to skip vaccination.
Can you point to some canonical sources on this? Preferably things that were published in the last year or so.
My understanding is that effects on infection and transmission were overstated and very short lived anyway. Didn't everybody get covid eventually, multiple times even?
It just turns out that they had far too little data and that in real-world conditions they weren't anywhere near the 90+% claimed effectiveness.
Even so, the latest population-level research still suggests that the vaccines were 50-60% effective at preventing Covid-19 entirely, at least for some months.
I remember that as I was questioning the diagnosis at the hospital and trying to make sure there wasn't another medical explanation, I was basically threatened by doctors who told me, "Just stop asking questions and accuse your nanny as everyone else, or you'll be the one in trouble". Apparently, it was very unusual for a parent to refrain from accusing the nanny when she was the suspect number 1!
I actually know one case where the parents (with a high education) were "too fast" in exonerating their nanny and tried to find a second medical opinion on their own to find out why their child was sick. Well, the judicial system didn't like it and they ended up being accused themselves. Their child was taken away for 4 months. The trauma was so intense that their family didn't survive and they eventually divorced (that's unfortunately the fate of many, if not most families).
There simply is no data to prove they ever prevented transmission. The trials were the best place to prove that, and they DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO TRY.
But it's far more common for academics to be able to do it because that's what academics learn to do. It's a large focus of the training.
It isn't elitist to say "car mechanics are good at reading and acting on the information in car engine manuals", that's just what car mechanics are trained to do and get consistent practice at doing.
Constructive criticism is good. But what I mostly see (and often do myself) is just grousing.
One can teach themselves how to be a mechanic and pass the ASE. Most go through some course to learn the trade, of course. It’s more structured that way and many find it easier.
I’ve never had my auto repair shop attribute their mechanic’s skill to where they learned to be a mechanic. I never turned down a mechanic bc they didn’t go to the brown or Harvard of car repair.
On the other hand I’m an expert in my field, but I’ve been turned down from at least 1 job specifically because I didn’t graduate from Brown university. (It was a backend job for the now-defunct Delivery Dudes)
OP attributed the mettle of the author to higher education and academia, which I think is weird and elitist.
Attributing success or ability to an institution fosters that kind of weird elitism.
Just that attributing the work and work ethic of an individual to the institution of academia is weird and fosters and propagates elitism.