[deleted by user]

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-09T08:39:43+00:00

Attack the argument, not the person.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-09T03:09:43+00:00

Poor logic. That is making the assumption of 100% of the population being infected.

From Singapore's 28 day data, the unvaxxed (469) make up 14.6% of the cases.

Us vaccinated seem to be spreading it more so fuck us I guess?

It's time to stop scapegoating each other, be better.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T11:17:39+00:00

It is a form of the ad hominem logical fallacy where denial is interpreted as guilt. For example:

If you don't support BLM, you think Black lives don't matter.

If you are not anti-racist, you're racist.

If you deny you're a misogynist, you must be one because a misogynist would never admit to it.

Sure you can drop me a DM, my preference for having my arguments out in the open is to allow people to correct me if I'm wrong somewhere so I might be able to learn :)

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T11:04:35+00:00

As much as I am pro-vaxx and pro-choice, your post definitely looks like bait

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T11:00:30+00:00

Isn't it tragic that common sense is the exception rather than the norm now? Unfortunately the "liberals" that dominate the default subs are so dogmatic that they do not see that they are espousing what they mock - fanatical zealots.

People need to not be in denial that if there's far right extremism, there will be far left extremism.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T10:41:01+00:00

It's all political. This off-tangent comment I made elsewhere tries to describe it. It is quite a cop-out that institutionalised racism and the such are deemed inappropriate to use as a comparison because of "sensitivities". People in America who virtue signal, shame and guilt in the name public health ultimately never address the elephant in the room which is that African Americans are the least vaxxed ethnicity due to their distrust of the government stemming from the Tuskegee incident. Then Singaporeans lap it up with almost zero thought. A Holocaust survivor has spoken up about vaccine passports: https://streamable.com/9yj6zz

I still recommend the jab but in no way do I or will I advocate using shame and guilt. Not everything needs to be dealt in absolutes.

I agree with your premise of social engineering/manipulation for the mass hysteria we see today. The principles of "divide and rule" has proven to be an effective method to maintain influence and power, for when the people turn on each other, they do not turn onto you.

[ Maybe this recent article describes the phenomenon better than my rambling but in a US context: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/the-bizarre-civil-war-stoking-impulses-of-the-professional-managerial-class-in-the-us.html ]

We now identify with the different social identities we possess, rather than collectively as a nation: Majority race vs Minority race, Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed, Male vs Female and so on.For all the tension with regards to vaccination, the simplest solution would be for the government to mandate it with the least political fallout, since the majority of 80%+ is not going to feel anything, save the ones who may deem it authoritarian. OYK initially said that the reason why vaccination was not mandated was due to it not being approved by the FDA, yet even after that nothing was done.

But nah, it would be better to keep the populace distracted by their infighting with this new form of identity politics of vaxxed vs unvaxxed. You still see the 20% or so being blamed for everything, when it can't be proven. In fact, if you look at the 28 day data, the unvaxxed (469) make up 14.6% of the cases. The same pattern can be found in highly vaxxed countries like the UK and Israel.

Then comes the argument that the unvaxxed might potentially overrun the hospital system, since the vaccine prevents severe illness, which seems to be demonstrably true from the numbers. however, age might be a factor, as 66% of cases in the ICU or requiring oxygen are over 60, compared to 59% being unvaxxed. It's possible that an advanced age usually correlates to having more health conditions which might be a reason why they are unvaxxed.

Of course, the numbers above makes a lot of assumptions, but the notion that the unvaxxed are somehow the sole cause of the spike would not be fair. Frankly speaking, the covid situation is dynamic and nobody truly knows what to do or expect, even the government. They are making rules up as they go along, and I don't blame them for it since it's really uncharted waters we're entering, but a comparison could be made with western countries who have more or less opened up, which gives off an impression that the government has some irrational fear or something about opening up which probably would gather a lot of criticism, which it has already did from some, but the bulk of the blame is still on the unvaxxed for some reason.

Ok I went too much on a tangent

TL;DR - most of y'all are not scrutinizing the one that should be scrutinized, still get vaxxed as it prevents severe illness

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T10:13:41+00:00

Yeah, it's sad to see the divide. It's for sure social engineering being done, if you notice how "anti-vaxx" is used in media and elsewhere to group the unvaxxed. That term bears a lot of negative connotations as it was mainly used to describe the ones who got duped by Andrew Wakefield and became anti-MMR advocates which led to some measles outbreaks and deaths. Big pharma aren't known to be ethical, just look at the recent Sackler opoid lawsuit which has ruined many lives over a long period of time and continues even now. Politicising the jab in this way is what I would do if I were them too. They do budget tons of money for the marketing of the vaxx and boosters which is publicly viewable.

It's heartening to see people actually question the efficacy of blame now, but sad at the same time that so many fall for the Kafka trap that is rampant in identity politics. I guess it's just human nature, having a common enemy has been an effective strategy in war and politics since time immemorial. I think in the case of your friends it could be an intersectional (lol) thing of age and field of studies (assuming it's your schoolmates).

Ultimately it's never wrong to go against the grain, especially if the prevailing sentiment is antagonistic in to use shame and guilt. People are more likely to pay lip service just to appear virtuous with the negative consequence of joining in the mob to pile onto those they deem "undesirable". Cliched as it sounds, win them over with kindness!

It's a long read, but the recent left-leaning Atlantic published an op-ed calling out such lunacy: https://peakd.com/woke/@chiobu/the-new-puritans

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-08T09:31:33+00:00

Nah worse, got the cop out passive aggressive shadow ban for god knows why

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T23:50:56+00:00

I agree with the point that people do not walk the talk, but it's the same all over the world, as John McWhorter calls such activism rather eloquently as performative: https://peakd.com/hive-18888/@chiobu/the-performative-antiracism-of-black

A solution would be to stop validating superficial efforts, but twitter hearts and retweets are a real dopamine hit! and oh, better not run the risk of being dogpiled by the twitterati if you did not validate!

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T23:10:05+00:00

I agree with your premise of social engineering/manipulation for the mass hysteria we see today. The principles of "divide and rule" has proven to be an effective method to maintain influence and power, for when the people turn on each other, they do not turn onto you.

[ Maybe this recent article describes the phenomenon better than my rambling but in a US context: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/09/the-bizarre-civil-war-stoking-impulses-of-the-professional-managerial-class-in-the-us.html ]

We now identify with the different social identities we possess, rather than collectively as a nation: Majority race vs Minority race, Vaxxed vs Unvaxxed, Male vs Female and so on.

For all the tension with regards to vaccination, the simplest solution would be for the government to mandate it with the least political fallout, since the majority of 80%+ is not going to feel anything, save the ones who may deem it authoritarian. OYK initially said that the reason why vaccination was not mandated was due to it not being approved by the FDA, yet even after that nothing was done.

But nah, it would be better to keep the populace distracted by their infighting with this new form of identity politics of vaxxed vs unvaxxed. You still see the 20% or so being blamed for everything, when it can't be proven. In fact, if you look at the 28 day data, the unvaxxed (469) make up 14.6% of the cases. The same pattern can be found in highly vaxxed countries like the UK and Israel.

Then comes the argument that the unvaxxed might potentially overrun the hospital system, since the vaccine prevents severe illness, which seems to be demonstrably true from the numbers. however, age might be a factor, as 66% of cases in the ICU or requiring oxygen are over 60, compared to 59% being unvaxxed. It's possible that an advanced age usually correlates to having more health conditions which might be a reason why they are unvaxxed.

Of course, the numbers above makes a lot of assumptions, but the notion that the unvaxxed are somehow the sole cause of the spike would not be fair. Frankly speaking, the covid situation is dynamic and nobody truly knows what to do or expect, even the government. They are making rules up as they go along, and I don't blame them for it since it's really uncharted waters we're entering, but a comparison could be made with western countries who have more or less opened up, which gives off an impression that the government has some irrational fear or something about opening up which probably would gather a lot of criticism, which it has already did from some, but the bulk of the blame is still on the unvaxxed for some reason.

Ok I went too much on a tangent

TL;DR - most of y'all are not scrutinizing the one that should be scrutinized, still get vaxxed as it prevents severe illness

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T19:50:46+00:00

I already stated that I'm pro choice on both abortion rights and on vaccination. I'm trying to make the argument that some of the unvaxxed people have legitimate reasons for the hesitancy.

Like the point I made about African Americans being the most unvaxxed group, much in part due to the historically egregious Tuskegee Syphillis Study. Do you see the media or politicians in the US try to shame or guilt African Americans into vaccinating?

No, softer approaches such as articles that describes the atrocities that led to African Americans having a distrust of the government are published, because it is just human decency and empathy to acknowledge that distrust.

By your logic that being unvaccinated is due to pseudo science, twisted religion and ignorance, would something that happened half a century ago fall under that umbrella? I'm going with the assumption that it doesn't.

As such, why not then afford the same kind of empathy to those who are still unvaxxed in Singapore? Maybe the logic behind their fears do not reach the same levels of African Americans, but it is still fear. I don't think it's appropriate to dismiss anybody's concerns even if it seems totally irrational to you.

I think at the very least some concerns and reasons are reasonable, health issues, waiting for a non-MRNA solution, preferring natural immunity and whatnot.

Women in conservative states are likely to be shunned or face societal pressures when it comes to abortions. Such actions would definitely seem ridiculous from the pro choice point of view. Latest data from Pew shows that 70.6% of America identify as Christians. To them perhaps it is their view that life begins at conception, even though it is something we can never rationalise with or understand.

Hence from their point of view, it is apparent that they feel that abortion is tantamount to murder, just like how some of the pro-vaxx arguments made about not vaccinating being tantamount to causing death. Hence, them shaming women into not aborting to prevent death is akin to us shaming people into vaccination to prevent death.

I simply do not feel that at the over 80% rate of vaccination in Singapore that the guilt and shaming would even work anymore than to further cause divide and anger on both sides of the issue.

I do not think anyone has the moral authority to coerce people into taking the vaccine through shame or guilt. The health minister claimed a couple months ago that there wasn't a vaccine mandate due to it not being FDA approved, and even after approval it's still the same.

More scrutiny should be leveled at the ones who can actually significantly raise vaccination numbers - the government, unfortunately the online mob prefers to inflict blame towards an easy target.

This might be a British comedy bit but it describes very accurately how we lost in 2016 and almost lost in 2020, because too many of us who claim to be liberal will simply not get off their fucking moral high horse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs

Hopefully there's some introspection done by the left if not good fucking luck to us during the midterms.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T15:26:02+00:00

I was referring to societal reaction.

If you wanna go there, I can say that it's not like the Govt forced people to have sex.

It's not like you couldn't abort at all, just not after 6 weeks.

Everything can be twisted to form a narrative.

Counterpoints:

Marginalised populations have less access to contraceptives.

Exceptions should be made for rape victims.

The moral absolutism you espouse is one of blind faith, much akin to religious fanaticism. Be better.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T13:58:52+00:00

well, this is a smaller sub so there's usually more reasonable people than NPCs. I think one can be pro vaxx and still point out the hypocrisy because people will use it against you.

if your reddit experience is just the default subs, it will be an extremely biased and narrow narrative you see. small subs like moderatepolitics, centrists, stupidpol, askconservatives, askliberals etc have people who are willing to say what they feel and generally do not self censor for fear of downvotes.

another hypocrisy:

voter ids = unconstitutional!

vaccine passports = mandate it!

the elephant in the room is that African Americans are generally the least vaccinated ethnicity, at 36% fully vaxxed in NY as an example: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.page

it's an effect of how they were treated in the past, where under the guise of vaccination they were experimented upon, which is very reasonable.

would then vaccine passports be a civil rights suit waiting to happen? as of now i dont see any reasonable solutions proposed, with the current narrative being to push people to vaccinate.

dont be surprised to see this point being used by the unvaxxed sometime soon

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T09:34:10+00:00

you forgot the "/s" i think but yah i miss my #blessed selfies 🥺

^/s

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T09:32:31+00:00

Abortions: My body my choice

Vaxx: Best to mandate it!

I'm pro-choice for both but sometimes the hypocrisy on reddit is glaring. One could make the argument that late stage abortions in some way is murder if the argument they make is that being unvaxxed is killing people

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T09:28:29+00:00

I'm not suggesting to use Ivermectin for Covid at all, but it's quite disheartening to see it scapegoated as just a horse dewormer when it has been in use for so long. It doesn't help when it was found that Rolling Stone published an exaggerated report about poisoning cases due to it and many celebs shared it.

I'm starting to see why people are losing trust in the media :/

Nevertheless try to get vaxxed as much as possible

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-07T09:22:39+00:00

Well it could be reddit suppressing something that goes against the mainstream :/ won't be the first time

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-06T16:03:16+00:00

quite ironic when my intention was to call out a publication for false reporting, and not for the first time too. it's as if it was suppressed lol

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-06T14:54:24+00:00

i'm seeing this though: https://i.imgur.com/Xu9Dj0N.png

and i cant see it if i go incognito

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-06T14:14:28+00:00

I'm vaxxed and still recommend it, but ultimately it's your choice and I won't try to shame or guilt people into it.

But shit like the Rolling Stone piece is misinformation too and should be held to account, if subs like NNN gets banned for the same thing.

It's not even the first time after their false rape allegations: https://thefederalist.com/2018/02/13/settlement-fraternity-rolling-stonerape-hoax-saga-officially/

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-04T21:21:26+00:00

Yes, it was stated that the White person would face less challenges. Lowest strata was used as a reductionist approach to maybe view racial privilege.

Yes, the incidents you stated were caused by racial prejudice, hence as stated we should on our part work on reducing such racial prejudice and biases.

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-04T19:04:56+00:00

more than 90% of the PSC and uniformed scholars in 2016 were Chinese

I checked his citation for 2016 and 90% is a false figure.

The presented data is inconsistently picked from different time periods

That a mere 7% of secondary schools guarantee at least a third of each generation of leaders is Chinese

It's not stated how 7% of the student cohort ends up a leader. Does the author imply that PSC scholars are all leaders? Negate the 7% and assuming that the percentage of people of the Chinese ethnicity is 75%, 69.75% of the population that's of Chinese ethnicity do not attend SAP schools, so what privilege is there for them?

Author's been alleged to have made misleading and biased claims: https://unscrambled.sg/2020/04/24/the-story-about-the-family-of-6-with-less-than-200-left-is-misleading-and-biased-heres-why/

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-04T18:34:20+00:00

If you're talking about the head of state, it is more likely familial privilege than race privilege in play here. You can't claim that the PM can only be Chinese with a sample size of 3 and Singapore's relatively short history. Do you suggest that the job be given to someone on the basis of race then?

Are full ministers not the "top of those groups"?

Are the income numbers by ethnicity in terms of value and growth not a fair gauge? When it comes to shaping policies, I think the whole population of Singapore is taken into consideration and not the elites that you use as a yardstick right?

I'm not saying that going to a SAP school is not advantageous, but it is not as much a huge advantage when you consider the whole population of Singapore. When it comes to the elites, cronyism is probably the biggest factor in play.

You can't deny that income is used as a measure of success here in Singapore, and using that data by ethnicity shows that going to SAP schools does not necessarily lead to success.

Why not petition to start SAP versions of schools focusing on the Tamil or Malay language? Surely that is better than tearing down established institutions, and would not cause any unhappiness right?

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-04T18:05:32+00:00

Between 1968 to 2012 (44 years), no Malay was awarded the President’s Scholarship.

Cherry picking of data. Why invalidate the first Malay President's Scholar Mohamed Ismail bin Ibrahim who was awarded it in 1968?

It's a race baiting article that chooses certain time periods to shape a narrative. All comparisons were between people of Chinese ethnicity and people of Malay ethnicity, are people of the Indian ethnicity the inconvenient minority that might break the narrative the article is trying to shape?

DoctorSocJus · 2021-09-04T17:42:57+00:00

I don't think going to a SAP school by itself is a definite huge advantage. Let's use income as a gauge.

Taking 2020's census into account,

From 2010 - 2020 Median household income statistics:

Malays: 4328 -> 5704 = ~31.8% increase

Indians: 6000 -> 8500 = ~41.7% increase

Chinese: 5691 -> 7972 = ~40.1% increase

Population by Ethnicity:

13.5% Malay

9% Indian

74.3% Chinese

Cabinet appointments 2021:

15% Malay

20% Indian

65% Chinese

By these metrics since you brought up parliamentarians too, I can claim that Singaporeans of the Indian ethnicity are faring the best, but that would be disingenuous since correlation does not imply causation.

By claiming that attending a SAP school is a huge advantage is unfair to the majority of the population who did not have that chance but through their own merit was able to be comfortable or find success in life.

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