The media has gone absolutely schizophrenic on omicron, just totally unable to draw a coherent narrative or practice any patience where it’s owed — and even the most forgiving portion of its audience seems to be tired of getting pulled through the panic/blame shredder
A key phrase I’m seeing a lot is “giving ammo to the anti-vaxxers,” which IMO can reasonably be parsed as a frustrated expression of that which cannot be stated plainly: the people committed to following institutional advice are tired of being kept in a coercive state of panic
There continue to be really encouraging signals re: omicron, still room for concern (for example, how will regions compromised by recent delta waves fare?) but the bottom line is that people seem ready to return to a state of affairs where their medical decisions belong to them
If the people who’ve assumed an almost divine authority over individual pandemic response and medical decisions want to get 3rd and 4th shots in arms on their desired pace, they’re going to need to be a little more humble and a lot more transparent
There was decent public support for mandates when “fully vaccinated” meant something a lot of people already qualified for, but I think they’re slowly developing a degree of concern about their employment being contingent in the long term on what they do at the doctor’s office

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More from @webdevMason

10 Dec
Twitter’s moderation game is unreal. If there’s no remotely plausible TOS violation, simply append a “misleading” label (no elaboration necessary) and disable all engagement aside from quote-retweets
I enjoy getting into the weeds re: how misleading this actually is, but frankly I also think it’s fucking important that people are allowed to say things on social media that social media staffers consider misleading
The lab leak hypothesis was a completely baseless conspiracy theory until suddenly it wasn’t, because it turns out that immediate consensus-generation can be completely fucking wrong
Read 6 tweets
9 Dec
I’m struggling to understand how the entire medical & media infrastructure can be so invested in a novel drug with the potentially catastrophic risk profile of molnupiravir when there’s a standard FDA-approved SSRI that performed just as well in a widely lauded large-scale RCT
Molnupiravir caused such significant harm to fetuses in animal models that Merck has suggested ensuring contraceptive use during *and* after treatment, actively generates mutations that could theoretically lead to new variants & has a mechanism of action that may cause cancer
Fluvoxamine is a pretty standard SSRI with a standard SSRI risk profile that’s been FDA-approved to treat depression, OCD and anxiety disorders for nearly 15 years. Both appear to reduce hospitalizations by roughly 30% in rigorous clinical trials.
Read 4 tweets
4 Dec
Somewhat optimistic takes on Omicron out of South Africa bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Omicron is spreading fast, but no confirmed deaths globally so far. Depending on how long it’s been spreading, that could be a *really* good sign google.com/amp/s/www.alja…
From the beginning we’ve seen COVID hospitalizations lag behind cases and deaths lag behind hospitalizations, so I’m cautiously optimistic, but so far everything still looks like a potential best case scenario
Read 5 tweets
3 Nov
I usually argue a bit with Aella on this stuff, but honestly in a culture with low expected commitment norms she’s right that monogamous defaults basically just lead to serial breakups to trade up or enjoy the perks of novelty
Hesitantly accepting a polyamorous lifestyle so your partner doesn’t “have to” leave you when he or she wants to cheat doesn’t seem like such a big win to me though
And frankly, having a menagerie of partners to meet all current and future “needs” inevitably trades off against the kind of investment that makes two-adult households so useful and inevitably causes instability, since no one can promise those sorts of needs won’t change
Read 5 tweets
18 Oct
To be clear, I think #3 is substantially worse for most people than #1, and #2 is generally benign only because it is almost impossible to maintain by force of will alone
Otherwise bright people believing that their goals/desires are more malleable and subject to rational reconsideration than they actually are probably generates more personal angst and interpersonal drama in these groups than any other single factor
There's been much talk of sexual and cult-style abuse in some of these communities recently, and frankly I think it's really important to consider the role that endorsed goal modification has played with regard to enabling abuse
Read 4 tweets
18 Oct
One of the weirdest ideas in Bay Area rationalist/adjacent circles is that you become someone like e.g. Elon Musk, hyper-productive and motivated, by introspecting a ton
Introspecting to the extent that you're actually treating it like a dedicated hobby or job might do something for you, but I see no reason to believe that it will make you substantially more productive or motivated to do things other than introspect even more
In other words, Elon Musk was pricing out illicit Russian rocket parts while you were doing shadow work with LSD
Read 9 tweets

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