science

My mom died in November 2020 due to something like an upper respiratory infection. Antibiotics could have saved her, but she chose vitamins and colloidal silver. She'd been part of this christofascism cult since the 90s

Someone I loved very much died because he thought the Covid vaccine would kill him. Before he fell down the alt-medicine rabbit hole, he was one of my favorite uncles. He was a good guy.

He had four kids, all still in grade school, and a wife who's now a single mom. He didn't deserve to become a casualty of a confidence scam. He deserved to live. It pisses me off when people look at the death toll of a believable lie and gloat about how it's removing the 'right' people.

They fell for a scam. That doesn't merit the death sentence.

Edit: I didn't think that publicly showing some vulnerability by talking about a dead loved one was such a god damned controversial take. Humans are a social species. We are hardwired to trust our peers because it is part of how we evolved to survive.

When that evolutionary advantage is exploited by con artists and cult leaders, it is difficult to fight. No one is immune to believing a lie. No matter how smart, sensitive, or cynical, we have the same fundamental weakness; we trust our in-group before we trust an unknown outlier. Consider the last time you found out that a fundamental part of your worldview turned out to be part of a broader deception, and how difficult it was to overcome that in spite of the mountain of obvious evidence.

I asked for people to remember that, and have empathy. Nothing more. The reason? The only way to convince someone to get out of a cult is to give them some empathy, and wait. To quietly demonstrate, through sustained neutral interactions, that a piece of their worldview doesn't work. That strategy fails when you alienate them. Alienating them validates their conditioning and drives them deeper into the deception and the alternative reality it offers.

Someone you love believes something that isn't true. And eventually, they'll run into evidence that denies their view. For my uncle, that opportunity to change his mind came too late. Lies kill people. That is a fact. Have a god damn heart, and be patient. Unraveling your whole world is a terrifying undertaking, and they need a hand when that moment comes, not hatred..

Is everyone who falls for a scam--whether it's crypto, alternative medicine, or MAGA--a good person? Hell no. Should you make that effort for everyone? Again, no. All I'm asking is that if someone you love falls for a trap, try to pull them out of it before it's too late.

Good. They deserve that.

Accelerate the rate, pls

Some takeaways from the study:

One goal of the study was to separate external vs internal causes, that is things like car accidents and violence vs heart attacks and diabetes.

The gap appeared not just in those who identified long-term with either side but with those who flipped from one side to the other. Those who went right to left and left to right had better or worse outcomes respectively. The other factors that correlated with the gap the most were income, insurance, education then religiosity and marriage. Race, ethnicity and gender were the least correlated. Those who identified as moderates at some point correlated the least. Marriage and religiosity tend to correlate with longer lives (religion due to social support).

The negative coefficients in the first years of all-cause deaths show that liberals died at rates higher than or similar to conservatives in the early 2000s, although the coefficients do not statistically differ from zero. However, by 2020–2022, more conservative respondents (as measured in waves 3 and 5) were significantly more likely to die than more liberal ones.

Although ideology became more predictive of health during the 2010s, the relationship between politics and mortality became consistently significant only after 2020...A strong relationship appears: participants who identify as very conservative were about 1.144 percentage points...more likely to die in 2020–2022 than those who were very liberal. Unlike in the biomarker analyses, moderate, conservative and very conservative respondents showed worse health - not only the most conservative.

...even conservatives and liberals living in the same county have different health outcomes. These data cast doubt on entirely policy-driven explanations for differences in health outcomes.

Existing research shows that while confidence in medicine was once non-partisan, Republicans began to show less confidence than Democrats during the pandemic...

While both groups (left and right) were just as likely to have visited their PCP right aligned were less likely to trust or follow their recommendations. Right aligned were more likely to go to the ER but again, less likely to trust or follow their recommendations.

Taken together, these results suggest that right-leaning Americans - as measured by their vote choice, partisanship and to a lesser extent their ideology - are less willing to visit, trust and adhere to the advice of their PCPs. This is true even among people with chronic conditions that require regular contact with the medical system for management and appears across a variety of outcomes unrelated to care for COVID-19.

I think it needs to be said that the timing of this study is relevant. 30+ years ago, it may have said that liberals die more often for the same reason. The woo woo healing crystals hippy to MAHA pipeline is very real, and it has exactly the same cause.

Who has a higher birth rate? Libs or Conservatives?

Die faster.

This is one way to make America healthy again.

Finally, some good fucking news

This wouldn't bother me so much if these same people are inflicting this bullshit on their children. If you want to kill yourself by being an idiot that's fine, but don't drag the innocent into it.

If you're a racist religious fascist and think an ivermectin enema will cure your polio, I'm ok with this. You do you.

Who would have thought that having people like RFK sowing distrust in medicine would lead to people dying.

natural selection

Two words: Vaccine. Denial.

The problem is they're trying to bring everyone else with them. Guns, covid, fossil fuels, cults, etc.

Probably got hit with some huge unexpected medical bills and started avoiding doctors since they didn't trust them anyway.

Not fast enough.

Thank god. Can we get them to eat hemlock with their horse dewormer or something?

This is only satisfactory if they die before reproducing

Do not interrupt your enemy where they are making a mistake.

"When the enemy is conducting themselves in error, do not interrupt them." -Sun Tzu

diabetes is liberal propaganda

Just like during COVID. Maybe there's a horsepaste shortage.

In other news, people who dislike seatbelts die earlier in accidents.

Not fast enough.

Nice

Man, I was wondering why there were so many. They're so stupid I would have thought they would die out by accidentally putting their heads into wood chippers or something. Guess I was right, it's just taking a little longer.

Anecdotally speaking:

Older & conservative folks who use nicotine seem to smoke cigarettes at a far higher rate than other groups who tend to go for options with less health impacts or simply don't use at all. Again, this is anecdotal, but this is where I see biggest disparity in death rates in my personal life.

Although drugs and alcohol are a tit-for-tat mixed bag because it's such a complex issue, in my experience, older, hard-right, conservative men have a very high incidence of heavy drinking and/or hard drug use that is probably only rivaled by younger underprivileged and over privileged adults. I don't really see a lot of middle ground in that group either, it's like they don't drink at all or they drink very heavily, very little in between. And to top it off, in a lot of circles, conservative drug/alcohol users have to hide it because it's not "socially acceptable" which seems like it makes the problem so much worse and the health outcomes much more dire. Liberal folks tend to be more open and forthcoming about it, and also things like mental health medications, and although heavy drinking is heavy drinking, when you don't have to hide it, that does make it a bit less stressful.

There's been a relatively recent, sudden, and fairly massive adoption of "all-natural" ideology in conservative circles. Raw milk. No vaccines. Pseudo-science medical care / medicine. Doctors "don't know nothing". This seems to be what the article is leaning towards. And once again, older, conservative men trend higher towards ignoring their health issues and "toughing it out" when they do have real problems, leading to worse outcomes. So, no big surprise if it shows up as a higher death rate in that group.

I don't know the exact scientific definition of death rate, but I assume this is something that's corrected for age. A lot of my examples seem to focus on older conservatives, I'm guessing that this phenomenon is seen across all age groups? I've only known 2 younger people (in their 20s) who died from covid. They were conservatives and no they weren't vaccinated. One of them believed the vaccine would make him sterile and the other likely caught covid at that dude's funeral. I know of a 17/18 year old girl from a conservative family that died from fentanyl laced drugs as well, but I don't know what her political leanings were. Still, even if she was liberal leaning, that'd be 2-to-1 just in my small circle.

That’s sad. I’d rather they learn to grow up and not be conservative. They shouldn’t die just because they’re foolish.

With the exception of the far-right white Christian nationalist Nazi types. I hope they die in droves.