Hint: It's like religion. If you can't accept that bad things just happen, you create evil and personify it as the Devil. "God" is just the projected anthropomorphic Sky Daddy who will either protect you from evil or punish you. If you are anxious, desperate, or afraid, grifters can take advantage of your fears and sell you "burn insurance" and take you for all you've got...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-psychological-features/

The dangerous consequences of the conspiratorial perspective—the idea that people or groups are colluding in hidden ways to produce a particular outcome—have become painfully clear. The gunman who shot and killed 11 people and injured six others in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018 justified his attack by claiming that Jewish people were stealthily supporting illegal immigrants. In 2016 a conspiracy theory positing that high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child sex ring involving several Washington, D.C., area restaurants incited one believer to fire an assault weapon inside a pizzeria. Luckily no one was hurt.

The mindset is surprisingly common, although thankfully it does not often lead to gunfire. More than a quarter of the American population believes there are conspiracies “behind many things in the world,” according to a 2017 analysis of government survey data by University of Oxford and University of Liverpool researchers. The prevalence of conspiracy mongering may not be new, but today the theories are becoming more visible, says Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University in England, who studies the phenomenon. For instance, when more than a dozen bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and Trump critics, as well as CNN, in October 2018, a number of high-profile conservatives quickly suggested that the explosives were really a “false flag,” a fake attack orchestrated by Democrats to mobilize their supporters during the U.S. midterm elections.

One obvious reason for the current raised profile of this kind of thinking is that the U.S. president is a vocal conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump has suggested, among other things, that the father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas helped to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and that Democrats funded the same migrant caravan traveling from Honduras to the U.S. that worried the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

But there are other factors at play, too. New research suggests that events happening worldwide are nurturing underlying emotions that make people more willing to believe in conspiracies. Experiments have revealed that feelings of anxiety make people think more conspiratorially. Such feelings, along with a sense of disenfranchisement, currently grip many Americans, according to surveys. In such situations, a conspiracy theory can provide comfort by identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby making the world seem more straightforward and controllable. “People can assume that if these bad guys weren’t there, then everything would be fine,” Lewandowsky says. “Whereas if you don’t believe in a conspiracy theory, then you just have to say terrible things happen randomly.”

It led to Nazi Germany.

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hint: It's like religion. If you can't accept that
> bad things just happen, you create evil and
> personify it as the Devil. "God" is just the
> projected anthropomorphic Sky Daddy who will
> either protect you from evil or punish you. If you
> are anxious, desperate, or afraid, grifters can
> take advantage of your fears and sell you "burn
> insurance" and take you for all you've got...
>
> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-
> drawn-to-conspiracy-theories-share-a-cluster-of-ps
> ychological-features/
>
> The dangerous consequences of the conspiratorial
> perspective—the idea that people or groups are
> colluding in hidden ways to produce a particular
> outcome—have become painfully clear. The gunman
> who shot and killed 11 people and injured six
> others in a Pittsburgh synagogue in October 2018
> justified his attack by claiming that Jewish
> people were stealthily supporting illegal
> immigrants. In 2016 a conspiracy theory positing
> that high-ranking Democratic Party officials were
> involved in a child sex ring involving several
> Washington, D.C., area restaurants incited one
> believer to fire an assault weapon inside a
> pizzeria. Luckily no one was hurt.
>
> The mindset is surprisingly common, although
> thankfully it does not often lead to gunfire. More
> than a quarter of the American population believes
> there are conspiracies “behind many things in
> the world,” according to a 2017 analysis of
> government survey data by University of Oxford and
> University of Liverpool researchers. The
> prevalence of conspiracy mongering may not be new,
> but today the theories are becoming more visible,
> says Viren Swami, a social psychologist at Anglia
> Ruskin University in England, who studies the
> phenomenon. For instance, when more than a dozen
> bombs were sent to prominent Democrats and Trump
> critics, as well as CNN, in October 2018, a number
> of high-profile conservatives quickly suggested
> that the explosives were really a “false
> flag,” a fake attack orchestrated by Democrats
> to mobilize their supporters during the U.S.
> midterm elections.
>
> One obvious reason for the current raised profile
> of this kind of thinking is that the U.S.
> president is a vocal conspiracy theorist. Donald
> Trump has suggested, among other things, that the
> father of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas helped to
> assassinate President John F. Kennedy and that
> Democrats funded the same migrant caravan
> traveling from Honduras to the U.S. that worried
> the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.
>
> But there are other factors at play, too. New
> research suggests that events happening worldwide
> are nurturing underlying emotions that make people
> more willing to believe in conspiracies.
> Experiments have revealed that feelings of anxiety
> make people think more conspiratorially. Such
> feelings, along with a sense of
> disenfranchisement, currently grip many Americans,
> according to surveys. In such situations, a
> conspiracy theory can provide comfort by
> identifying a convenient scapegoat and thereby
> making the world seem more straightforward and
> controllable. “People can assume that if these
> bad guys weren’t there, then everything would be
> fine,” Lewandowsky says. “Whereas if you
> don’t believe in a conspiracy theory, then you
> just have to say terrible things happen
> randomly.”

I read that when it originally came out almost 2yrs ago.
I didn't see much in way of a solution back then, except, this, his final paragraph,

"By asking thoughtful questions about the stories we encounter, it is still possible to separate truth from lies. It may not always be an easy task, but it is a crucial one for all of us."

That's what we find here, fortunately.

Thanks for asking the thoughtful question.

After 2 years of deep denial and sowing divions "Our Social Dilema" has sunk its roots far deeper, to the point where 88% of one party still believe their CULT leader won the election, despite ALL of the news outlets calling it for the challenger.

That's the definition of delusion: maintaining erroneous beliefs, despite superior evidence to the contrary.

And it's not just a harmless kind of delusion. There's a huge overlap between the anti-maskers and that 88% who still think their CULT Leader won the election. They're going to refuse to take the vaccine, which will kind of be like refusing to take a vaccine for Measles, or anything else that will keep you out of a public school. It means the disease will stick around for a very long time in America.

Do brain scans give any indication of the types of brains more likely to believe?

I actually think these crazy people are scary, they are completely nuts!

No, there aren't any brain scans that can be written about or talked about freely. These scans show that some people have fewer folds in the prefrontal cortex. The fewer folds, the less intelligent the person is.

There are also IQ tests, which, IMO, which are fairly accurate indicators: the minds more likely to believe in conspiracy theories score lower on IQ tests.

Low IQ Narcissists can be laughable in their buffoonery, but, actually, they are scary.

A person who is mentally ill with a psychosis or neurosis is also more likely to believe. For example, paranoia is common in psychopaths, Narcissists, and other Cluster B sick personality types, as well as paranoid schizophrenics, who are the most dangerous people of all. They are the most volatile. Psychiatrists believe that these people should not be put into leadership positions or positions of power, and should not have access to weapons.

This is very scary stuff!

2020 has resembled some the LDS temple in some senses, e.g.

* veiling/covering of the face (recently discarded),

*barriers between people (at the veil).

* washing and anointing constantly.

* being told you cannot be led astray.

* being told to have absolute faith in authority which will not lead you astray.

* being told to consecrate yourself to that authority and give all your money to it.

* constant mention of the dead.

* no outside info is let in

2020

Curious resemblance Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

Don’t forget about the part about COVID-19 probably being transferred from a wild animal to a human, probably a bat to a human.

That’s exactly like LDS temple.

What you are doing is cherry picking. You have to look at the whole picture to balance things out.
Cherry picking is bad.
Take the entire basket and present the entire basket to the world.

~~~~iceman9090

Sounds like they're being led astray to me...

anybody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

It’s like the John F. Kennedy assassination case. It is difficult for people to accept that a lone gunman could hate the president to the point of killing him.
There was an assassination done in Armenia as well, in 1999. five armed men led by Nairi Hunanyan. Some say the president payed them, had them sent to Turkey to get trained.

People say all sorts of things. What they don’t tell you is that they are speculating. They feel like it devalues their imaginations and opinions if they tell you that they are only speculating.

~~~~iceman9090

The bigger question is why are so many people uncomfortable with fact? Why is evidence a thorn in the side? Are most people just too weak mentally for truth?

There is great power in the acceptance of being powerless.

We love our escapism don't we? Let's us off the hook. Great novels are one thing, but the inability to separate fact from fiction has become a very rare art.

You're right, there are no conspiracies. Jeffery Epstein was protected from prosecution by nobody, even though he was an open secret since at least 2008. The Finders also weren't protected by the State Department and the Office of Counter Foreign Intelligence.

No need to question authority, just follow the prophet.

Just Passing Through Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You're right, there are no conspiracies.

No one said that. You are creating a straw man.

People get involved with conspiracies every day. The word means "to breathe together." People conspire to commit murder, fraud, robbery, and all sorts of things -- but conspiring to do something is not the same thing as believing in conspiracy theories,



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/01/2020 04:26PM by anybody.

Conspiracy theory. A phrase that is forever associated with fringe people with a shaky grasp of reality. Appropriate if it is used to describe exactly that.

Unfortunately, the phrase has been co-opted by people who choose to lazily halt rational discourse on topics that deserve scrutiny and discussion using reason and intellect to separate unsubstantiated allegations from truth.

Rather than use that politically charged phrase, would it not be more descriptive and correct to use the descriptor ‘a different viewpoint.

Just a thought.

You cannot make a false premise true.

You can't have "alternative facts" -- only erroneous ones.

In religion, you can make up whatever you want.

You can't do that with reality.

Facts are facts.

Please do not equate fact with viewpoint. Humans deal in viewpoint more frequently than fact. So much information is available and most is meant to sway a reader to agree with a certain ethos and in contrast fact is without persuasion. It exists only as fact. It is difficult to separate fact and viewpoint. Fact is truth. Viewpoint is tainted most of the time due to the observer's previous preconceptions.

That is the cause of nearly all argument.

But the problem now is that psychologically people do not want to live in the current reality of the 21st Century and create their own -- like "The Village" movie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2020 02:59PM by anybody.

True that.
Additionally, Most of the world that is living in a ‘first world’ state are actually bored, due to the lack of challenges to survive. Humans evolved from primitive conditions that essentially required high alert defense mode 24/7. In comparison, in these modern times we lead a relatively quiet uneventful life, which requires very little adrenaline in day-to-day activities.

Because of this ‘boredom’, humans are choosing sides and fighting over minor issues just to add some excitement to their otherwise pedestrian existence.

IMO: they believe conspiracy theories because they think they are smarter than the rest of us.

Hmmm. The people who love to tell the people who disagree with them that their viewpoint is a ‘conspiracy theory’ appear to be fairly keen on exerting their intellectual superiority on the ‘rubes’ that espouse conspiracy theories’.

To steal someone else’s tag line: “Or so it seems to me”.

There is a difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories. The question is what do the facts substantiate?

If one person, or a group of people, consistently trumpet claims that are unsupported by facts, they deserve to be ridiculed. That's the question: when you see facts do you accept them or do you "not believe what you are seeing," to cite the words of the Pied Piper.

If the interwebz has taught me anything, it is to not believe a damn thing you read therein without double and triple independent verification and absolutely no reliance on fact-checkers.

Thus is our world at the present state...

csuprovograd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If the interwebz has taught me anything, it is to
> not believe a damn thing you read therein without
> double and triple independent verification

The internet taught you that? I thought that was always the rule. I am astounded at the number of people who act like the need for double-checking is new, that claims of fact have ever deserved unskeptical acceptance; and who frankly don't have the habits of verification that have always been necessary.


------------------
. . . and
> absolutely no reliance on fact-checkers.

No. A refusal to rely on fact-checkers--which includes reporters, news outlets, researchers, and anyone who tries to discount lies--is itself a form of willful blindness.

The same rule I adumbrated above applies here: you can decide which fact-checkers are credible by seeing what proportion of their statements is vindicated by facts. The standard for truth is always the same: rely on sources that have proved their credibility with a confidence interval dictated by the degree of their accuracy.


-----------------
> Thus is our world at the present state...

We entered what "anybody" called a "post-factual reality" when a very large chunk of the American people decided to start trusting untrustworthy sources. For those naifs now to claim that others should check their facts is both redundant and ironic.


-----------------
Is the virus a hoax?

Was Obama born abroad?

Was the 2020 presidential election fraudulent?

Is China paying for the tariffs?

Were there fine people on both sides at Charlottesville?

Was Trump's inaugural crowd the biggest in history?


There are easy ways to determine people's relative susceptibility to the manipulation of charlatans.

2020 is not 1950.

You can pretend that it is, but it is not.

1950 interestingly puts us right in the McCarthy paroxysms, so I would argue that was one of the most delusional times in American history. What we observe now is a more extreme form, to be sure, of a government leader who promotes lies and punishes those who speak truth; who is supported by a supine political party who allows the Pied Piper to ruin lives and harm policy.

So 1950 was, in Tuchman's phrase, a distant mirror of the present situation.

Not everything is on the Internet.

Who changes old newspaper and magazine articles?
Who goes to every public library to change all the books?
Who alters your memories?

It's easy to check something if you bother to look.

There's also such a thing called "common sense."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2020 11:02PM by anybody.

Take a trip to your local library. It’s fun to find publications that were written years ago and compare them with a current publication that addresses the same topic. Good times!

"Does this make any sense?"
"Has anyone ever done this before?"

My parents lied to me too and I never fully trusted anything they said until it actually happened -- but that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is a lie.


No one person or single group of people can control everybody and everything. There are too many competing interests.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2020 11:16PM by anybody.

1] For the people who are insistent on pushback: please allow me to rephrase...”the interwebz has underscored the need to research...”

Oy. This is tedious just for the sake of arguing.

2) I regret to inform you that fact-checkers frequently reveal their biases. Even Snopes has been caught...so, no I don’t consider them reliable.

3) I will not take your bait...asking loaded questions which are proven to provoke vehement and unproductive arguing. Thanks anyway.

csuprovograd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1] For the people who are insistent on pushback:
> please allow me to rephrase...”the interwebz has
> underscored the need to research...”

Yes, that's better.


-------------------
> Oy. This is tedious just for the sake of arguing.

Nope. As you just demonstrated, the discussion led to a better definition of your principle. That's what debate is supposed to do.



-------------
> 2) I regret to inform you that fact-checkers
> frequently reveal their biases. Even Snopes has
> been caught...so, no I don’t consider them
> reliable.

You just demonstrated my principle: you trust sources in proportion to their demonstrated accuracy, no more.



-----------------
> 3) I will not take your bait...asking loaded
> questions which are proven to provoke vehement and
> unproductive arguing. Thanks anyway.

Yeah, that's the predictable retreat into victimhood. We were making progress towards mutually acceptable epistemological rules but you find that uncomfortable.

Unfortunate, that.

Do you truly believe that the answer to those questions are a valid measure of a person’s ability to determine fact from fiction?
Hell, I would daresay that those questions are leading and biased and the ‘answers’ lead to judgmental labeling without knowing the person you’re judging.

There is absolutely NO victimhood in declining to volunteer to be catergorized.

I am weary of the persistent need to divide people for virtually any reason that can be concocted. It is pointless and leads our society into habitually distrusting the ‘others’. Very counterproductive, IMO.

Each of those questions is factually verifiable.

The pandemic was never a hoax; even as Trump described it as such to the public, he was telling Bernstein it was a devastating illness.

Obama was not born abroad, nor is he a Muslim. Those statements are verifiable and verified.

The 2020 presidential election was not fraudulent. Even the DOJ and Republican leaders in GA and PA have stated that.

Countries hit with tariffs do not pay those tariffs. They send the products to the US at a given price, the US government then increases that price by 25 or whatever percentage, and the US consumer pays the sum of the Chinese price plus the 25% tax. That's mathematically and definitionally true.

The size of Trump's crowd is measurable, as was Obama's and as will be Biden's. It does not require "fact checking" beyond looking at evidence that no one is hiding.

The problem you embody, therefore, is that you shy away from factually verifiable questions if you don't like the conclusions to which those facts may lead. Why is that? A hint is that you view those facts as "loaded"--since when have facts been susceptible to ideological "loading?"--which means that you occupy a vantage that encourages you to back away from facts if they threaten your worldview.

That's bad epistemology. Factual questions are objective matters and not dependent upon their ideological import. That we are arguing about that proposition indicates how profoundly delusion is now influencing people's perception of reality.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2020 11:50PM by Lot's Wife.

+1.0 x 10^10

You are not shy in passing judgment on others, are you?

Not to step into the political cesspool, because your phrasing leads to argument. For instance, your first question assumes that a person is lacking in intellect if they say the words “Covid is a hoax”. Much like your call out about the interwebz, the answer is not so simple.
Covid is proven to exist. The hysterical play-by-play gleefully recounted by our beloved press corps, however is not an accurate representation of facts. The counts are questionable and the fatality rate does not justify the shutdown of life as we know it.

I would suspect, although I cannot capably prophecy, that the consequences of this reaction will haunt us for generations. I have not found any study or conclusive evidence that the current reaction to Covid is the best solution. Lockdowns evidently are ineffective, no?


-30-

Let's see how that shakes out.


-----------------------
> Not to step into the political cesspool, because
> your phrasing leads to argument. For instance,
> your first question assumes that a person is
> lacking in intellect if they say the words
> “Covid is a hoax”.

That is not what I said. What I said was that a person is lacking in judgment if s/he *believes* that COVID is a hoax. I will definitely judge a person's logical faculties by the way they interpret the evidence that is available to them on such a topic: witness the number of people dying from COVID who insist to their caretakers that it must be cancer or something else because COVID does not really exist.

Conversely, I never opined that "saying" COVID is a hoax makes one stupid. To the contrary, some very intelligent people have said COVID is a myth because it enables them to increase their power. The question that interests and alarms me is how much of society is so credulous that they *believe* the lies issuing from such self-interested politicians.


-----------------
> Much like your call out
> about the interwebz, the answer is not so simple.

Ironic. You said the interwebz had taught you not to accept uncritically that which you are told or read. I said that was always the rule that thinking people have known and obeyed. It is naive to suggest the internet was what rendered intellectual skepticism necessary.


------------------
> Covid is proven to exist. The hysterical
> play-by-play gleefully recounted by our beloved
> press corps, however is not an accurate
> representation of facts.

You see? Here you immediately leap from a factual observation to a political interpretation of related statements that I never expressed. You only stayed on the fact for a nanosecond before jumping to more comfortable ground of ideology.


---------------
> The counts are
> questionable and

Yes, all the counts are questionable. So we apply logic and skepticism to see which sources have the best rates of accuracy and then rely more heavily on them than the others, adjusting as new information becomes available. The fact that we don't know something with 100% certitude is not reason to throw up our hands and say "there is no answer."


----------------
> the fatality rate does not
> justify the shutdown of life as we know it.

That seems a strangely confident description of the fatality rate for someone who just wrote that the counts are questionable. The switch from skepticism to confidence suggests that your analytical skills are sharp when applied to facts that challenge your preconceptions--the infection counts--but lose their edge quickly when coming to a factual assertion--low fatality rates--that accords with your ideological preferences.

Your statement is also hyperbolic, for no one in the United States has "shut down life as we know it." I therefore presume that by "lockdown" you mean the constraints that have been imposed to date.

Let's test the proposition that those constraints are unwarranted. The number of dead so far is nearly 1,000 times the deaths on 9/11, five times the troop losses in Vietnam, over twice the losses of World War One, and approaching the losses in World War Two. Moreover that does not include the long-term injury suffered by survivors or the increase that is already cooked into the population.

Is it your contention that 9/11, Vietnam, World War One, the Korean War, and World War Two were overstated and should not have resulted in the sacrifices imposed on the United States during those periods? Because if you don't brush off those tragedies the same way you disregard COVID now, you are being inconsistent.


-------------------
> I would suspect, although I cannot capably
> prophecy, that the consequences of this reaction
> will haunt us for generations. I have not found
> any study or conclusive evidence that the current
> reaction to Covid is the best solution. Lockdowns
> evidently are ineffective, no?

I agree with you that like the Vietnam War, World War One, the 1918 flu, and 9/11, COVD-19 and its consequences will change the world in unpredictable but significant and possibly permanent ways. As for "lockdowns," though, the evidence suggests they work very well. That is China's experience, Japan's, South Korea's, New Zealand's, and Australia's. The problem is that the United States never imposed full lockdowns, and piecemeal ones don't work.

That's one reason that the "COVID is a hoax" dialogue is so very dangerous. It is an example of why a country needs either an honest government or cynical and informed citizens. For when you get official dissimulation and a biddable populace, disasters multiple in frequency and magnitude.

Brevity is not your milieu, is it?
1) Your make many words. Me dizzy. Not even sure of your position after reading that.

2) Again, what? I was simply nodding to the similarities of your pushbacks.

3) it is fairly universally acknowledged that Covid allows 99+% to remember to wake up in the morning. Statistics may or may not be reliable as to actual cause of death, but the death is undeniable, even if another condition was the cause. You trot out other world events for comparison (ostensibly to shock and awe the uninformed). How about comparing annual death rates from cancer, heart disease or auto accidents?

4) Sweden didn’t lock down, they have a comparable rate of cases and deaths (again relying on published stats)

5) “Covid is a hoax” x your words not mine, but golly, you sure like to say those words, eh?

Underscore -> -30~



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2020 01:00AM by csuprovograd.

> Brevity is not your milieu, is it?

"Milieu" makes no sense in that context. In any case I'll try to use shorter sentences and smaller words.


---------------
> 1) Your make many words. Me dizzy. Not even sure
> of your position after reading that.

My positions are clear. Your dizziness stems from some other cause.


---------------
> 2) Again, what? I was simply nodding to the
> similarities of your pushbacks.

I'm not sure how I am supposed to follow unclear references.



---------------
> 3) it is fairly universally acknowledged that
> Covid allows 99+% to remember to wake up in the
> morning.

Do you mean the survival rate is above 99%? No, the best information available now puts it at 98% plus of course those who live but suffer heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary damage or pulmonary embolisms, and brain damage. Those "casualties" will one day be quantified; they are already significant, and they indicate that 98% is too low a measure of COVID's impact.


-----------------
> Statistics may or may not be reliable as
> to actual cause of death, but the death is
> undeniable, even if another condition was the
> cause.

An objective observer would say that the final numbers could be higher or lower. That you conversely see them as a unilateral variable reducing the import of COVID rather than increasing it, even in principle, again indicates your preference for ideological ground rather than strict logic.


-----------------
> You trot out other world events for
> comparison (ostensibly to shock and awe the
> uninformed).

"Ostensibly" is not the word you want here.

But no, my purpose is not to shock anyone. It is to put the COVID deaths in perspective. You minimize the harm of the pandemic, but it is exactly as I described it.



----------------
> How about comparing annual death
> rates from cancer, heart disease or auto
> accidents?

No, that's not logical. The question is the surplus deaths, the change in the existing pattern. Thinking the way you do, minimizing COVID, would have prevented even the half-hearted measures the US already took.

That would produce an entirely unrestrained economy, which is presumably why you want that minimization, but that's not at all how epidemiologists or risk managers think. They care about new factors and above-trend losses.


----------------------
> 4) Sweden didn’t lock down, they have a
> comparable rate of cases and deaths (again relying
> on published stats)

That is precisely my point. Neither the US nor Sweden locked down, so their losses are enormously higher than those countries that did.


------------------
> 5) “Covid is a hoax” x your words not mine,
> but golly, you sure like to say those words, eh?

You were claiming logical objectivity. I wanted to see if that claim was realistic by asking you an emotionally charged but factual question. You answered the question reasonably but have on several occasions leapt back viscerally to the safer ground of ideology.

That answers my question.

The case fatality rate for Covid-19 in the US is 2%.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

>The question is the surplus deaths, the change in the existing pattern

>That is precisely my point. Neither the US nor Sweden locked down, so their losses are enormously higher than those countries that did.


Excess mortality as used below is the number of deaths from all causes in 2020 compared to the average number of deaths from all causes from 2015-2019

Country Excess all-cause mortality per 100,000

Moderate mortality (Covid-19 deaths 5-25/100,000)

Norway -2.6 -2.1
Denmark 5.1 1.8
Israel 8 5.4
Germany 10.0 -0.2
Canada 13.3 -7.6
Switzerland 17.0 -2.7
Austria 17.1 1.4
Finland 19.1 5.4

High mortality (Covid-19 deaths >25/100,000)

Sweden 50.8 3.7
France 51.5 2.6
Netherlands 55.1 -0.7
Belgium 67.8 -6.4
United Kingdom 94.5 -1.2
Spain 102.2 1.8
United States 71.6 19.4

The third column shows excess deaths after 6/7 and are lower mostly because of improvements in care

Board doesn't format the spacing of columns very well.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2771841
Unfortunately, you will need a subscription to access article online.

The discussion section states:
"Compared with other countries, the US experienced high COVID-19-associated mortality ans ecess all-cause mortality into September 2020. After the first peak in early spring, US death rates from COVID-19 and from all causes remained higher than evn countries with high COVID-19 mortality. This may have been a result of several factors, including weak public health infrastructure and a decentralized, inconsistent US response to the pandemic."


As for the economic impact, Sweden did worse thatn its Scandinavian neighbors

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryName=350

See results for second and third quarters of 2020.

Thank you for this, person whose name I cannot enunciate. We'll see if the data make any difference in csuprovograd's thinking.

Your note on economics is also apposite. Anyone who thinks a health crisis without emergency measures does not interfere with commercial activity is a dope fiend deserving of Eugene O'Neill's genius. What has happened to US GDP, in other words, would be even worse if the pandemic were not even partly abated.

That we should suffer prolonged recession as well as world-class fatalities demonstrates the stupidity of half-measures.

Arrrgghh!
That was a hideous typing job. I need to slow down and proofread.

Eugene O’Neill, if he were sober, would be appalled!

I'm appalled myself. My spelling tonight has been embarrassing.

The title of your linked article is: "People Drawn to Conspiracy Theories Share a Cluster of Psychological Features."

Since I did not read the article, and you did not identify such in your post, just what are the "psychological features" that people drawn to conspiracy theories share? Moreover, what criteria is used to identify "people drawn to conspiracy theories" such that a social scientist can compare their "psychological features." And finally, what psychological features are to be included in any relevant "cluster."

What you can see from this is that this "study" is likely circular in the following way: People that are drawn to conspiracy theories have certain psychological traits; and the psychological traits at issue are what defines people who are drawn to conspiracy theories.

In short, from the title alone, one can highly suspect that this is just more theoretical nonsense offered by some social scientist, coupled perhaps with some interesting anecdotal facts. This is not new for Scientific American, which is more interested in sales that science. What we need to learn is how to spot such "scientific" nonsense as effectively as we are able to spot religious nonsense!

Now, admittedly, I did not read this article. Maybe, just maybe, I would be surprised to find an exception rather than the rule with regard to "studies" in the social sciences. But the title suggests otherwise.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14786449608620846

If climate change were a "hoax," did people go back in time to "create" all of scientific work done in the nineteenth century?

If all information is "manipulated," why hasn't anyone ever exposed it?


If there is a secret "cabal" controlling everybody and everything, how did it remain a unified group for hundreds and even thousands of years?

At some point you have to realise that none of this makes any sense.