Philip Bump comments on a forthcoming report showing doctors with right-wing leanings have been more likely to prescribe bogus medicines for COVID than other doctors.
He reminds us that "polling repeatedly showed Republicans as less likely to express concern about the virus or to take steps to prevent infection."
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/06/coronavirus-pandemic-conservatives-ivermectin/
And: "After vaccines became widely available, Republican-voting counties were more likely to see covid-19 deaths relative to their populations than Democratic-voting ones. In fact, research has shown an explicit gap in the death toll between Republicans and Democrats.
Not only were Republicans more likely to reject recommended approaches to the virus, they were more likely to embrace unproved ones."
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The amount of stupidity now stalking through solid red parts of the country, when it comes to assessing COVID and vaccines, is mind-boggling. How have we made ourselves so dumb at this point in time?
I have a cousin who is recovering from COVID. He's in his upper 70s. He says he has never been so sick in his life and thinks he'd not have made it if he had not been multiply vaccinated and had taken Paxlovid.
Friends are telling him the vaccines CAUSED him to get COVID.
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@wdlindsy
I have a thought that it is mainly performative/normative behavior rather than that they actually believe these things privately.
It seems that once opposition to vax/masking/distancing is part of the group identity, people will often try to rationalize any contradictions, and police each other on any deviation.
Nobody wants to be the one saying yeah, the virus is a killer and good thing you got the vax, they would rather pretzel themselves to come up with a conformant argument
It's an interesting take. I've wondered this about our family's former pediatrician. He happily vaccinated our kids, following the established regiment, when they were smaller. He spoke highly of vaccines at the time.
Last time we saw him he had decided to tailor his practice to off-label prescriptions(think, want some ivermectin? We can get that for you!) and "doesn't do" vaccinations of *any kind* anymore. I've often wondered if this was a belief, or a business decision.
He was always a deeply religious man, so I've never been able to figure out if it was a business decision, seeing that about 70% of the locals voted for Trump, or if he belongs to one of the local anti-vaxx churches and they changed his mind on his practice.
@BE @mloxton There have definitely been high-profile cases of doctors willing to swallow (and peddle) the Trumpian BS, haven't there? I think of Ronnie Jackson and the absurd check-up report he provided Trump with. And there was Stella Immanuel and her off-the-wall claims about COVID and cures, all laced with toxic religious ideology. In my state of Arkansas, there was the case of Robert Karas, who treated COVID patients who were inmates with ivermectin without their consent, allegedly.
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@wdlindsy @BE
Yeah, and that is a fascinating thing that speaks to that people often hold multiple worldviews at the same time and may layer some and switch between others.
Those doctors showed me that their self-identification qua physician was weaker than their identification "as Conservative" or "as Christian", etc. To me that is a problem because as a quality & safety clipboard, I want those "other" beliefs to serve a core scientific belief system of evidence-based care, not replace it
@mloxton @BE My perspective is that people are entitled to whatever they want to believe. But when they make a commitment as health professionals to engage in the craft of healing, they need to park their religious beliefs outside the hospital or clinic doors, except insofar as those beliefs sustain and motivate them as healers intent on showing mercy and kindness.
@wdlindsy @BE
YES!!!
Exactly that.
If your belief in Wotan, Zeus, ancestral spirits, whatever, makes you kind, gentle with patients, and gives you resilence, then that's peachy.
But otherwise leave it in the car and don't bring it into the care environment. In that domain, only science and evidence work.
@BE @wdlindsy
That is so sad. A guy who left the path and is now lost to humanity.