Tom makes a valid point that not all anti Vaxers are idiots. I spent a significant percentage of my time these last 8 months talking to the vaccine resistant about the reasons for their position (My sample is biased of Flores, but a lot of the people I work with are needle/injection phobic, not stupid or skeptical, and look for rationalizations to cover their fear).
But I’m not sure I agree that someone like Bialik getting a prominent platform will be without consequence. Every month a small but steady trickle of Americans who had been anti vax cross over and get vaccinated. Someone like Bialik getting mainstreamed, even if she never talks about it on the show (I’m sure she won’t, unless perhaps to encourage vaccination) could potentially slow that conversion rate somewhat, validating the concerns and fears of the resistant. I have other reasons for thinking she is not the best choice. On Sat, 28 Aug 2021 at 1:50 PM Tom Wolper <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 7:11 PM [email protected] <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> Maybe the plan of having an anti-vaxer host is to try to appeal to the >> demo of stupid people who feel the show is too smugly smart. >> > > There are a lot of intelligent and highly educated people who fall for > these types of things. It's confounding to decide they are all simply > stupid and the only people who listen to them are stupid. The one thing > that science communicators continually have trouble with is that a lot of > anti-vax and climate denier folks aren't suffering from a lack of data or > an inability to understand it. A lot of PhDs somehow got this bias that > makes them disbelieve the consensus. > > If Mayim Bialik becomes Jeopardy host none of that changes. Nobody who is > having second thoughts about getting their child the MMR vaccine will make > a final decision based on who is hosting Jeopardy. As painful as it is, the > people who listen to her podcast and buy the stuff she fronts are not > troglodytes. They're educated and affluent. Some have had bad experiences > with the medical establishment and have just lost trust in its authority. > It wasn't anti-vaxxers who caused the opioid crisis. It was the mainstream > medical community. People are going to make strange and often bad decisions > about things like supplements and homeopathy no matter how much > counter-information is out there. Taking the host position away from Bialik > won't help or hurt that. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiFdz7zPAVyaSH9%2B-yKka4uTNN__LvONDFK-q3MzEQNJog%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiFdz7zPAVyaSH9%2B-yKka4uTNN__LvONDFK-q3MzEQNJog%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJjTt0pZZFRw%3Dmc-Rot2WFXvYDnBAmKJPZk0uWQ5enZ4w%40mail.gmail.com.
