Ignoring survivorship bias and failing to recognize normalcy bias, 26 April 2025
PA State Rep Abigail Salisbury speaks about the harms of RFKJr's remarks on autism.
A misconception about the "evolution" of the pandemic is ignoring survivorship bias.
A problematic misconception is that people inappropriately assert that covid isn't severe anymore (wrong) and it’s because of "immunity" – either because someone suggests natural immunity or indeed vaccine immunity. The truth is most people aren't getting updated vaccines, way too many people haven't gotten vaccinated for covid at all, and resistance effects from infection aren't long-lived, so this isn't so clearcut. There's a lot of moving parts here that we shouldn't miss with blanket statements anyway.
A big issue nobody likes to talk about because it's unpleasant is survivorship bias. Frankly it seems ghoulish to not recognize those who have died any time we talk about this. The high risk vulnerable people who got severe covid in 2021 and died can't die again in 2025. That's just how reality works and it's called survivorship bias. A LOT of people died in the first few years of the pandemic – A LOT, and yes, a LOT of them were over 50, and yes covid took out many of the most at risk in those early years of the pandemic. And those people are now gone from us ever since, so they won't be needing hospital anymore. That’s hardly cause for celebration even if it seems like a relief to many.
Another issue of bias is that vaccine uptake, including updates to stay current, are disproportionately being sought out by people in higher risk groups like seniors. And a lot of people in high risk groups tend to mask more in risky settings. A lot of high risk people choose to live a life that involves avoiding covid to one degree or another, much to the chagrin of people who like to use psychological tactics to sell you stuff in person. So many of the people most likely to be hospitalized or die from covid just aren't getting covid, or at least not getting covid without a recent vaccine update.
Even today, getting covid unvaccinated is risky though, including for "young healthy" people – the CDC has long considered "unvaccinated" to be a covid risk condition itself! Children still sometimes die from covid, and some get hospitalized. We should be glad that hospitals aren’t getting overwhelmed on the regular, but it's doing a disservice to then dismiss it as nothing much just because there's no freezer truck morgue on the news. That's a really low bar!
🗞️ In the news
The Hill - RFK Jr. calls autism an epidemic: It ‘dwarfs COVID’ - Ashleigh Fields - Sun, April 20, 2025 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a new interview, said autism was an epidemic with an impact that surpasses the COVID-19 pandemic. “This is an epidemic. It dwarfs the COVID epidemic and the impacts on our country because COVID killed old people. Autism affects children and affects them at the beginning of their lives, the beginning of their productivity,” Kennedy said during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.”
Fierce Biotech - CORRECTED: HHS abruptly terminates funding for Atlanta biotech’s next-gen vaccine study By Gabrielle Masson Apr 16, 2025 11:02am “While the recent HHS/BARDA Stop Work Order action was disappointing and surprising, our commitment to protecting vulnerable populations remains unchanged, and our clinical momentum is strong in support of our ongoing phase 2 GEO-CM04S1 programs,” GeoVax President and CEO David Dodd said in the release. Despite the stop work order, GeoVax said it “remains committed to the critical medical need addressed by GEO-CM04S1.” The biotech will continue to work on two other ongoing, mid-stage COVID studies for its investigational vaccine, Dodd told Fierce Biotech.
Normalcy bias explains a lot of peculiar surprise.
I realize a lot of people are confused and shocked with everything rolling out, even though many have been warning about this for a couple of years. Did they think people were kidding? I think a lot of strange confusion can be chalked up to normalcy bias, which is still very dangerous to our safety.
The Decision Lab - Why do we believe that nothing bad is going to happen? The Normalcy Bias, explained. The normalcy bias describes our tendency to underestimate the possibility of disaster and believe that life will continue as normal, even in the face of significant threats or crises.
Workers wearing masks while working with food just makes sense, think about it.
My letter to reps:
I think everyone who works with food ought to be wearing a mask just like they wear hairnets. Yet I'm hearing about food service companies forbidding their employees from wearing masks. Are you kidding me? You need to do something about this yucky disease-prone situation that makes no sense. Just think about that for a minute. At the least employees ought to always have the option to wear a mask to protect themselves and or others. But honestly I think masks ought to be standard in food preparation and service.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Bonkers quack anti-vax conspiracy social media research pseudoscience stuff floated as legislation.
Minnesota Reformer - MN Republicans introduce vaccine criminalization bill drafted by Florida hypnotist By: Christopher Ingraham - April 22, 2025 10:50 am The bill’s language appears to have been drafted by Joseph Sansone, a Florida hypnotist and conspiracy theorist who believes that mRNA treatments are “nanoparticle injections” that amount to “biological and technological weapons of mass destruction.”
The article says "The bill has no chance of passage given the narrow margins in the House and Senate", and so it likely won't go anywhere. But just the fact that this extremely online right-wing anti-vax conspiracy fiction stuff is making it to the legislatures in states should be a clear indication that scientists and doctors need to get political. Politics controls governance. Governance influences every aspect of life, including healthcare. And the crackpot opposition is crowding out the legitimate reasonable experts enough to get bills introduced that are poo circus nonsense.
Because lab leak truthers are pandemic deniers.
Since there's a resurgence of lab leak truthing, and I see questions about how people can believe that stuff, yet don't take covid seriously, and how that doesn't seem like it should square... I thought people knew by now what this conspiracy theory propaganda entails, but if you don’t know…
I have an explainer on it!
Lab Leak Truthers are Pandemic Deniers. Chloe Humbert Oct 14, 2024
MAGA is actually still obsessed with covid.
I keep seeing these op-eds that float the idea that "liberals" or "leftists" are unusually focused on covid. I object to the framing of these pieces mostly because it's perfectly rational to take steps to avoid infectious diseases. Nobody would say someone on a one night stand using a condom is "obsessed" with HIV or STDs. So framing medical masks as an unusual fixation is bizarre when covid continues to circulate, we've had a really bad flu season, and there are now measles outbreaks in multiple states.
And the reason I know MAGA is actually fixated on covid is because I occasionally watch right-wing MAGA videos by far right pundits and various right-wing content creators, to find out what they're saying for myself. And on these videos, the ads are largely prepper stuff, supplements target marketed to men apparently with masculinity concerns – but the largest portion of the commercials seems to be bogus covid remedies, especially the debunked treatment ivermectin in "kits" being advertised. I saw an ad after the election with Tom Homan promoting some kind of EMP protection. And as recently as a few months ago, bogus covid kits with ivermectin were the sponsors on livestreams by right-wing religious organizations broadcasting Trump speeches. And remember, vendors wouldn't keep advertising these kits or even making them if there wasn't at least some level of continued demand. So we know that MAGA is still thinking about covid.
And yet I rarely seem to see The Atlantic running op-eds hand-wringing about the far right's obsession with nonsense quack "alternative" covid remedies, or lamenting how MAGA is fixated on covid prevention and treatment.
Average people are not aware of what right wing media people tell their audiences.
The lies being told on social media, where most people get their news, as well as on right-wing news sources, radio shows, cable tv, and youtube, are beyond what most sensible people can fathom. Likely most people don’t believe all of it, but with the mere exposure effect, many come to believe a lot of wrong and not real things.
Among the wildly unsubstantiated claims: Big covid checks are coming again, the stock market drop is Joe Biden’s fault, the migrants sent to an outsourced offshored prison are all convicted, hospital workers are actively killing people, or at least are masking in medical settings just to be so-called “woke”, and supposedly sexualizing newborn babies at the hospital. This is all a case of bullshitting, but that’s what’s out there, and that’s the media some people you know are consuming.
They use advertising, online marketing, the major media, social media, influencers, pundits, and content creators to signal, hint, and straight out tell false stories and promote gamified conspiracy fictions. And some people believe at least some of it, and make decisions based on wrong ideas all the time.
An ad on Youtube for right-wing influencer youtuber that shows a baby, a woman wearing a medical mask, and a man with a worried look, and the caption reads “What’s your baby’s sexuality? woke insanity hits creepy new low. Sponsored Brad Polumbo clips”
Quote:
"We do not need to dream of work to have value. Because people have an inherent value because they are people. Whatever diagnosis they may have and whatever capabilities they may have to achieve in America today. We don't have to write poetry. We don't have to have a job. We don't have to pay as many taxes as you want us to do in order to have value. We have value because we are people."