I mean, we hear about things like infection rates, hospitalization rates, and even death rates from covid. We hear them in the form of news, either from TV or newspapers. However, the thing is, for the vast majority of us, there is simply no way for us to verify the truthfulness of these claims. It seems to me that people hear something on TV, and they just assume that it's true. They probably think, "they would never show it on tv if it weren't true. TV is consumed by hundreds of millions of people. The stuff on it must have been carefully verified." I bet this is the mindset of a lot of people.

Note I am not saying that TV or newspapers are definitely lying to us. I don't have proof of that. But I just want to point out that we as consumers should always take the stuff we see on TV and read in papers with a grain of salt. Because they could be lying to us. And more importantly, we simply have no way of personally verifying most of it, which is why we should always be a little doubtful. And if someone (usually from the internet but not always) disagrees with these outlets, we should hear him out. We mustn't be quick to write him off just because he says stuff that's different from what we see on TV or read in newspapers.

we had h1n1, we had ebola, we had avian bird flu.

all diseases the media told us were a BIG DEAL.

i dont know a single person who had, let alone died, from any of those.

almost every person i know had covid, and i know at least 5 people who died from it, another dozen or so who had bad cases.

My point isn't, "covid isn't real". Rather, it is, "we shouldn't believe everything we see on TV".

What you are doing right now is unproductive. Instead of saying "take everything with a grain of salt" try telling us how we can reliably verify information. It's easy to break things down, but it's not productive unless you are also building up something else.

You could talk to medical professionals in your area. They're pretty accessible.

You could educate yourself on scientific matters and learn how to read scientific literature.

You could do any number of things.


but... if you aren't willing to *actually* put in the work, shut the fuck up and listen to those who did. Not the "I did some facebook research and the meme said to take ivermectin". The actual scientists who dedicate their life to the study of infectious disease and who have a strong track record in the field.

You are only doing harm by saying "take everything with a grain of salt if you can't verify it" and then not doing the work to help verify or disprove it.

Some things are literally un-verifiable by the average people. If you are one person, how are you going to verify the national death rates from covid? You gonna go to all the morgues in the country to count the bodies?

So live in fear and ignorance and trust no one and nothing.

Got it. Back to the stone ages everyone!

What you are arguing for is a (very stupid) version of direct realism. I.e. it only exists if I can see it. You're dumbing it down to "be more skeptical if you can't see it", but fundamentally it's the same.

There is no reason to distrust national death rates from Covid. You aren't an expert who's going to have a nuanced opinion on this versus that method of counting deaths.

So that's when you accept it as true because the numbers being off by any significant margin requires positing an insane nation-wide conspiracy theory.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Apr 14 2022 01:57pm

It's good to have healthy skepticism. However, I don't think there's a good reason to "hear people out" if they are contrarian. We should hear people out if the make a logical, compelling case. Most of the time, contrarians are debunked with ease by knowledgeable people or they end up in some form of "well we can't know anything at all." Ultimately, people need to know their place and shut the fuck up about things they know nothing about.

I never said trust no one. I said be doubtful about things you cannot personally verify.

Apparently you think trusting the TV blindly is a good thing, haha.

Imagine sitting around all day doubting every single thing you don't personally understand or have first hand experience with.

Holy shit I just realized i'm not a rocket scientist and therefore any rocketry I see on tv I must doubt it! Earth is flat cause that's all I can see from my perspective!