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H5N1 Bird Flu Isn’t a Human Pandemic—Yet. American Contrariness Could Turn It into One
(www.scientificamerican.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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If people understood germ theory, it wouldn't be an issue. Instead, we spend a lot of time in high school biology on hydras, for example. Hydras are cool, reproduction by budding is weird, but maybe that time would have been better spent on some history of plagues and their impact on society?
With better education half our population would not be so easily manipulated into bad choices.
I think there's a different class that might be better suited to discussing past plagues lol
On a serious note, I get what you mean. I think classes need to be more integrated on their lessons, so like the science class is discussing the mechanics of how diseases reproduce at the same time history class is covering past epidemics, while the social studies class covers how systemic injustice worsened epidemics for the poor and minorities.
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Well, I don't know. Finland has – or rather had until very recently, thanks to conservatives doing what they always do – one of the best education systems in the world and our conservatives were just about as easily manipulated into idiotic shit during COVID.
I think the reality of the matter is that a huge chunk of the population is simply too stupid to be able to function in a modern, complex society and no amount of education can fix them.
Perhaps we all need more classes on media, propaganda and civics?
Regardless, my point is this: the more we try to us/them our problems, the shittier our problems get.
I agree to a point, but we also have to recognize that with eg. COVID and now H5Nx preparedness, the conservative mindset is a huge issue and purely driven by politics that they themselves purposefully try to polarize, by eg. outright lying about the effects of vaccines or even whether the disease was a real one or just some sort of communist plot to sap and impurify their precious bodily fluids.
I'm not sure how something like this can be solved, when there's a huge segment of the population who not only doesn't believe in basic science but sees attempts at teaching it as attacks against their "values" and will sometimes react with literal violence
The solution is going to be that those groups self-select for infectious death. Taking some good people with them.
Its just so unnecessary.
Yeah, a H5Nx pandemic will have a good chance of having a fatality rate of something in the range of 10% to 50%. It'd end society as we know it, and conservatives are generally the ones who are doing their damndest to prevent sensible action being taken now to help at least slow the jump to humans.
If (or, more likely when) we do see a HPAI pandemic, we know who we can thank for it. It'll likely kill hundreds of millions of people, but at least by refusing vaccinations due to idiotic reasons, conservatives will have a higher mortality than people with functioning brains.
YES. Yes. Exactly. Or, y’know, ANY classes on those things. Civics isn’t even taught in most schools now. BECAUSE REPUBLIQANS.
That’s very sweet, but really not how conservative groupthink works. All for better education, though, sign me up for that.