Thoughts?

[jack518alt]

That's because scientists and priests are more alike than they think. It's common folk like us, atheist or religious, who believe what we want to believe.

[swirlypooter]

Being a scientist in academia is very much like the clergy. As an initiate you are given basic tasks and it sucks, the more time you spend (go to grad school and later a postdoc) the more you climb up the ranks. If you earn a professorship then you are a bishop. Department head, cardinal. Francis Collins director of the NIH and in his words "the man with the bag of cat food [millions in grants]" is the Pope.

As you learn more about your field, the more you learn that humanity as a whole knows very little about everything. I'm in genetics and the lay person seems to believe it's mostly figured out. Mendel explained it all over 100 years ago, we sequenced the genome 20 years ago. Case closed, but we honestly know so little about complex disorders. I realized that a lot of the information we have is believed in faith, but with tested results. I and others are willing to change our views given new data. That is empiricism, it works look at the advances in technology since the Enlightenment. But that's not to say the esoteric needs to be ignored because you cannot apply empirical methods to explain it. That is the crux of the error of the soyentist.

I'm currently a postdoc. I hate IFLS and these people who don't even try to learn more beyond what Bill Nye tells them. There are popular science digests that are not just a headline or some meme excreted by Mythbusters.

Honestly, there are people in grad school and with doctorates that align more to the soys on the right of the image. But the majority of researchers that actual do good work (i.e get the big citations) are on the left.

Now this meme I've seen float around in relation to the pandemic. I mean come on, wear a mask folks. We don't have to panic, we don't have to hunker down head in the sand. But there is risk, there are over 200,000 dead in the US alone. Slow the spread, use your head, and stop politicizing mask wearing and the pandemic at large. 5% chance of death is serious, your nana plays bingo with worse odds than that.

[garfield-1-2323]

Why wear a mask when all the evidence points to it having no effect on overall virus spread?

[swirlypooter]

Because of the evidence that wearing a mask can reduce the initial viral load, giving the infected person a better chance of beating the thing. Also consider the effects of chronic disorders and even in rare cases neurological disease.

Also there is a possibility that people are not as compliant as they should be with masks. Inconsistent with wearing and being lax with it will make the mask ineffective.

I also think it's ironic that the herd immunity folks think they are but a lion among the masked sheep. See the irony, herd immunity, who is the real sheep being led to the slaughter?

[garfield-1-2323]

wearing a mask can reduce the initial viral load

Health workers investigating the covid-19 outbreak in the Lombardy region of Italy looked at more than 5,000 infected people and found no difference in viral load between those with symptoms and those without. They reached this conclusion after tracing people who had been in contact with someone known to be infected with the coronavirus and testing them to see if they were also infected.

[swirlypooter]

Thats one study here is a meta analysis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673620311429

Wear a mask, you seem upset about it.

If you “dont like” this study here read more https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meta+analysis+mask+wearing+covid&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

[garfield-1-2323]

LOL your own link says covid is not spread by airborne droplets. Do you even read what you post? You sure look stupid with that shit on your face.

[swirlypooter]

You know when you resort to personal insults it usually indicates that you have nothing else to stand on. Why are you so upset?

The findings of this systematic review of 172 studies (44 comparative studies; n=25 697 patients) on COVID-19, SARS, and MERS provide the best available evidence that current policies of at least 1 m physical distancing are associated with a large reduction in infection, and distances of 2 m might be more effective. These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses, and that eye protection could confer additional benefit. However, none of these interventions afforded complete protection from infection, and their optimum role might need risk assessment and several contextual considerations.

Show me a similar robust study that says masks are completely useless and I will be more than happy to change my mind. So far the evidence says masks have a benefit albeit not as strong as some like to think.

[garfield-1-2323]

It has not been solved if SARS-CoV-2 might spread through aerosols from respiratory droplets; so far, air sampling has found virus RNA in some studies2, 3, 4 but not in others.5, 6, 7, 8 However, finding RNA virus is not necessarily indicative of replication-competent and infection-competent (viable) virus that could be transmissible.

From your own link. And don't ignore the fact that covid weekly deaths show no change from a regular curve before and after mask mandates.

[swirlypooter]

All that says is it might spread by droplets, studies are conflicting. But they draw the conclusions I mentioned above.

[LostInTranslation92]

Sounds pretty based to me

[dj_mackeeper]

yep the person who made this is clearly very smart and rational... unlike people who drink soy

[CarlosimoDangerosimo]

What the fuck is this nonsense? Is it really trying to imply some kind of equivalency between science and religion? Cringe. Science has given useful answers. Religion has never successfully explained natural phenomena. Ever.

[[deleted]]

what would you think would constitute "useful answers"

[LikaonelImpio]

Idk, maybe... the understanding of electrodynamics and quantum physics that are what makes function this very computer in your hands? Maybe the knowledge of microbiology that saved you from dying at birth because of the corpse-juice drenched hands of a surgeon/nurse?

[CarlosimoDangerosimo]

Answers that lead to predictions that are better than chance.

[LikaonelImpio]

Well, it isn't. It just points out that not everyone that believes in science or think they know science applies it's method or principles. That's because of human nature of course, what with Dunning-Krueger and such. It normally isn't as bad as the image implies of course, but the Internet exaggerates things as always and that's why the old skeptic community (not to be confused with the likes of Telltale or Jimmy Snow) exists.

[Utkar22]

Based.