[slab_happy]

Usually Goop loving middle class mum, bringing little Farquhar in for the first time, while she shops online for Himalayan salt enema kits (or whatever it is currently in vogue).

Yeah, there's a terrifying pathway from "wellness" circles into anti-vaxxer stuff and then sometimes deeper down the conspiracy theory rabbithole -- one researcher coined the fantastic phrase "Pastel QAnon"

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-pastel-antivax-natural-parenting-community-freebirth-1098518/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yoga-disinformation-qanon-conspiracy-wellness

[andy popp]

FWIW (which is very little, as I'm the only poster living here), Denmark went back to masks mandated on public transport and a whole bunch of other indoor public spaces yesterday, after many months without any mandates. Casual observations suggest very high (95%+) levels of compliance so far.

[battery]

Usually Goop loving middle class mum, bringing little Farquhar in for the first time, while she shops online for Himalayan salt enema kits (or whatever it is currently in vogue).

Yeah, there's a terrifying pathway from "wellness" circles into anti-vaxxer stuff and then sometimes deeper down the conspiracy theory rabbithole -- one researcher coined the fantastic phrase "Pastel QAnon"

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/qanon-pastel-antivax-natural-parenting-community-freebirth-1098518/
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/yoga-disinformation-qanon-conspiracy-wellness

I just offer a word of caution about that rolling stone article which is based in America and does not reflect my experience of birthing and parenting within the UK. Natural parenting has got fuck all to do with herbal remedies and antivax and everything to do with supporting children in finding their own way (the word support there being key). The fact that the image they have chosen to use for that article is infuriating - breastfeeding is hard enough, and still comes with judgement and stigma making it even more difficult - it could do without this kind of association.

[slab_happy]

That's a fair point -- not meaning to imply that natural parenting has to have anything to do with this sort of bullshit at all, any more than yoga does (for example).

But within both of those worlds, I think there are particular subcommunities which lean into the "conspirituality" type of stuff, and that can be starting points for various rabbit holes.

[battery]

More so than in any other community?

[Oldmanmatt]

More so than in any other community?

No, probably not.

Polly was very active in the BF community, becoming a peer support volunteer etc. However, the local group became overwhelmed by certain individuals who became really quite militant and very, well, odd, about it all. Very much bullying some women who struggled with breast feeding (please don’t ask me what their struggles were, I only know that one lady ended up with awful open sores, apparently). Then there was a whole load of crap of magical thinking about the super powers of breast milk to cure all known diseases and on and on.
The group pretty much broke up. One of the worst members, is still a FB friend of P and she’s now a total weirdo, her anti-vaccine, Covid denial ramped up and up over the last two years, to the point she pulled her children out of school because “they” were going to fatally harm her kids. Now, she’s all over flat earth, paedophile Santa Claus symbology and F knows what else.
Obviously, she’s suffering from something and the most alarming part of it are the comments of support for her bizarre rants, that she gets from her FB acolytes.

It’s not any one community, they’re everywhere and they corrupt even the most well meaning endeavours.

Social media just amplifies their crap.
Still a small minority though, just loud.

Unfortunately, anything with a hint of “natural” is like shit to a house fly for them and they gravitate in and firmly grasp the wrong end of the stick and start beating people with it.

[slab_happy]

More so than in any other community?

No, absolutely not! But you get a different route for people falling into anti-vaxx stuff when it's coming out of communities focused on natural parenting or "wellness" practices like yoga, versus the route into anti-vaxx stuff out of right-wing politics, for example. Or the one out of CrossFit!

And I was being kind of snarky, I admit, and no disrespect intended towards the natural parenting community (although disrespect absolutely intended towards Goop).

But I genuinely do think it's important for communities to be aware when you get these entries for rabbitholes forming in them. Because they're all over the place, and they can get slippery partly because the community is good and valuable to you and the connections you form are important, and then you get a corner where people have come a little ... unglued.

[mrjonathanr]

Some interesting articles on this (to me, anyway) in the Grauniad quite recently.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/11/injecting-poison-will-never-make-you-healthy-how-the-wellness-industry-turned-its-back-on-covid-science

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/17/eva-wiseman-conspirituality-the-dark-side-of-wellness-how-it-all-got-so-toxic

[Offwidth]

A new look at the Pandemic from The People's Covid Inquiry

Summary pdf here:

https://36085122-5b58-481e-afa4-a0eb0aaf80ca.usrfiles.com/ugd/360851_62aeecaeb6944934b6c55d41708d7eeb.pdf

The full report is linked here:

https://www.peoplescovidinquiry.com/

Roy Lilley's take on this:  "Jaw dropping"

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Jaw-dropping.html?soid=1102665899193&aid=KxkmfsfpwcE

[spidermonkey09]

Clicking on the summary report brings up a front page saying 'why did so many thousands die unnecessarily?' I happen to think the government fucked up in myriad different ways and a lot of people did die unnecessarily, but surely an independent report should at least have the pretence of independence?

Or as is perhaps more likely, given that the report was founded and presumably funded by a campaign group called Keep Our NHS Public, whose website would suggest aren't the biggest fans of the government anyway, that this report has concluded what it was always designed to conclude? Again, I suspect I agree with the reports conclusions and dislike ther government intensely but provenance matters and we might as well be clear about what we're reading.

[Offwidth]

Clicking on the summary report brings up a front page saying 'why did so many thousands die unnecessarily?' I happen to think the government fucked up in myriad different ways and a lot of people did die unnecessarily, but surely an independent report should at least have the pretence of independence?

Or as is perhaps more likely, given that the report was founded and presumably funded by a campaign group called Keep Our NHS Public, whose website would suggest aren't the biggest fans of the government anyway, that this report has concluded what it was always designed to conclude? Again, I suspect I agree with the reports conclusions and dislike ther government intensely but provenance matters and we might as well be clear about what we're reading.

It's a pressure group and not trying to hide that. The work is one of the few ways the voices of those who have lost loved ones are collectively being heard right now and it gives a comprehensive detailed collection of things the government actually got wrong. 

Such progressive cynicism is what the populists want.... if the information is useful and you can agree with the conclusions in the context of knowing it's from a pressure group, what exactly is the big issue here?

[spidermonkey09]

It's a pressure group and not trying to hide that. The work is one of the few ways the voices of those who have lost loved ones are collectively being heard right now and it gives a comprehensive detailed collection of things the government actually got wrong. 

I agree it wasn't hard to find but wanted to clarify. I also agree that the list of failures is useful, although there's nothing particularly new there from my skim read.

Such progressive cynicism is what the populists want.... if the information is useful and you can agree with the conclusions in the context of knowing it's from a pressure group, what exactly is the big issue here?

I have fairly deep seated scepticism that any pressure group for any topic can produce an inquiry/report into that topic and give recommendations that can be taken wholly at face value. If The Hunting Office produce a report into the benefits of fox hunting to local communities and ecology then I for one would take its findings with a distinct pinch of salt. Thats why its important to know who produced the report so one can balance the scales. Me having sympathy with the conclusions doesn't mean anything; knowing who wrote/says/contributed to something and why they might have done so is hugely relevant information. We all do it all the time when discussing pieces we disagree with, one shouldn't just ignore it when its something to agree with.

[petejh]

TLDR: ‘a sermon to the already converted’.

[Offwidth]

You could apply that argument to any charity or foundation or institute. The key issue your scepticism should be focussed on is the content. This 'balancing the scales' guff  is what populists want, it's part of false equivalence that boosts their side of the argument... they say liberal organisations are bad and not to be trusted, instead of a focus on the quality of the content. We know the libertarian institutes and foundations are too often bad from their information and research quality,  opaque funding support, lobby rule breaches etc.... not because they are libertarian.

[abarro81]

The key issue your scepticism should be focussed on is the content
[..]
opaque funding support,

Didn't take you long to fall fowl of your own views 

[spidermonkey09]

You could apply that argument to any charity or foundation or institute.

That is precisely what I do. Its common sense.

[Offwidth]

The key issue your scepticism should be focussed on is the content
[..]
opaque funding support,

Didn't take you long to fall fowl of your own views 

Good try. Lets see any evidence that Keep our NHS Public is actively hiding it's donors, like the shady Tuften St think tanks are. More false equivalence that helps the populist poison.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/revealed-how-uk-s-powerful-right-wing-think-tanks-and-conse/

[abarro81]

You seem to have entirely missed my point, which was that you argued that content rather than funding source was the place to focus scepticism/critique, and then two lines later took aim at opaque funding sources.

[Offwidth]

You seem to have entirely missed my point, which was that you argued that content rather than funding source was the place to focus scepticism/critique, and then two lines later took aim at opaque funding sources.

Well that was an easy mistake for me to make since I said content was key (rather than political slant). I added the other bits to be clear that poor governance is also a reasonable issue to be concerned about.

[mrjonathanr]

The key issue your scepticism should be focussed on is the content
[..]
opaque funding support,

Didn't take you long to fall fowl of your own views 

Chickens coming home to roost, clearly.

[reeve]

The key issue your scepticism should be focussed on is the content
[..]
opaque funding support,

Didn't take you long to fall fowl of your own views 

Chickens coming home to roost, clearly.

Now that's a poultry effort at a joke

[slab_happy]

For anyone who's got friends who are convinced that being "fit" means they don't need the vaccine:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/30/life-tragic-death-john-eyers-fitness-fanatic-who-refused-covid-vaccine

[Oldmanmatt]

For anyone who's got friends who are convinced that being "fit" means they don't need the vaccine:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/30/life-tragic-death-john-eyers-fitness-fanatic-who-refused-covid-vaccine

That was painful reading.

[duncan]

More so than in any other community?

There has always been a fringe in complementary medicine that sees itself as a replacement and not just complement to mainstream medicine which leads to some dangerous places. A friend of mine died of breast cancer probably because she didn’t engage in conventional treatment before it was too late.

This varies between and within the different types of complementary medicines, chiropractors and homeopaths are some of the worst. Some chiropractors see themselves as a complete system explicitly in opposition to conventional medicine, leading to a long history of aggressive anti-vaxx promotion by a minority. Their professional bodies have not done enough to bring their houses in order in my view. However, supporting battery's point, the proportion of antivaxx chiropractors is broadly similar to the wider population (20%, US pre-covid data).   

The lunatic fringe always make the most noise and are most noticeable. As battery says, we should be careful to ascribe the views of the fringe to the whole, there is a danger that you’ll alienate the merely cautious or uncertain. People respond to pro-vaccine messages from those they trust. The biggest predictor of vaccine hesitancy is distrust of institutions in general and medical institutions in particular. Matt’s FB friends are a good example of this. The danger comes when complementary practitioners leverage the trust they have established to promote anti-vaxx messages. Use of complementary medicines per se is not the same as this and is a much weaker predictor of vaccine hesitancy.

[Offwidth]

It's not really chiropractic leverage we need to worry about. It's more major bankrolling of the anti-vax message and how that seeped into major political party views, especially Trumpist Republicans, as per the recent channel 4 documentary. Plus as the world watched all this mad shit with Trump and Boris play out and the refusal to provide much cheaper vaccination and logisitical support for that (making the western pharmaceutical industry a lot more money) it all adds to the distrust of anything western, including vaccines.  South Africa had plenty of vaccine supply but lack of logistics support and hesitancy means it was not reaching enough arms quickly enough (population rates were only around a third). This all comes round to hit the west every time a new more problematic variant arrives. I despair with the quality of worldwide pandemic response coordination.

The pandemic isn't over until its over but a few western countries, including the UK are planning for 3rd boosters while the developing world increasingly desperately needs help. We even skim developing world supply with barely a political whimper: hardly anyone seems to realise that the UK used COVAX supply.

https://www.devex.com/news/uk-took-500-000-vaccines-from-covax-experts-worry-it-could-take-more-101607