Measles surge in Utah sparks fears US could undo decades of progress

6/14/2026 at 4:02:28 PM

Quite interesting to see that measles is coming back. I suppose there is a notion of generational memory. Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive unless it’s catastrophic and a measles epidemic is eminently survivable as a civilization if incredibly tragic for the families affected.

I had measles as a child, too. Fortunately, my parents are doctors and I was well cared for and nature was good to me as well. So here I am, pretty much fine. I’d rather have not had the disease, all things told. Incredibly contagious disease. I was in the room with the other sick child for only a few moments.

by arjie

6/14/2026 at 4:04:20 PM

It erases immune memory, taking away antibodies to recently exposed diseases. It's best not to get it.

by chasil

6/14/2026 at 5:29:52 PM

And by "it" you mean measles? Or do you mean the vaccine? Completely reverses the message of your post!

by bryanlarsen

6/14/2026 at 5:50:52 PM

> And by "it" you mean measles?

Yes. They mean that measles "erases immune memory, taking away antibodies to recently exposed diseases.".

The grandparent was discussing their measles experience and the parent was responding to that.

by WarOnPrivacy

6/14/2026 at 4:12:21 PM

And there’s a non-zero chance that it lives dormant in your brain and you die several years later. Absolutely bonkers.

by selectodude

6/14/2026 at 4:15:55 PM

What is the evolutionary advantage of this? I mean, if the host dies subsequently that's pretty bad for both parties, or?

by flawn

6/14/2026 at 4:21:33 PM

Sometimes, even usually, evolution finds a “local maximum” of effectiveness. Where the solution an organism finds is not optimal but it’s good enough for the organism to survive, even win.

So yeah I’m sure evolution didn’t create something perfect in the disease here but it survives long enough, and kills few-enough people slowly enough in the wild to survive

by californical

6/14/2026 at 4:32:26 PM

Evolution is just a race to "good enough to consistently reproduce" and everything after the sufficient reproduction is irrelevant. Like the goats whose horns have to be cut or they'll eventually pierce their own brain.

Generally it's more advantageous for your own anatomy not to kill you without intervention, but they reproduce and that checks off the "good enough" box.

by techjamie

6/14/2026 at 4:19:43 PM

If it can spread before killing the host, it has done its job (evolutionarily speaking).

by fhdkweig

6/14/2026 at 4:26:00 PM

Viruses don't care if the host dies. Evolution doesn't explain all things in nature.

by cjmcqueen

6/14/2026 at 5:01:09 PM

Evolution theory by itself doesn’t give us the ability to explain everything in a certain moment, but that’s only due to lack of knowledge on our part.

Consider that measles in itself comes originally from a animal but a mutation found itself be able to spread to humans. That, in and of itself, is the process of evolution.

So while it is not necessarily a useful lens to try to interpret a moment in time as many unknown factors are at play (for example the same gene that is important for mortality might also impact survival in certain environments, and therefore how contagious it could be), if we were to understand it’s history of every mutation that came and went, the environments it lived in, evolution theory would explain why the path looked like it did. And subsequently why it is like it is today.

by lightbulbish

6/14/2026 at 5:08:32 PM

I think that question is too simple.

1. We might not be the only hosts or place where it can survive. Measles seems to have mutated from a cattle virus.

2. Killing the host might be the virus' end-game, in which case it evolved to extinction. Mutations nor evolution don't have a goal. There's not always an advantage. I bet most changes aren't advantageous.

3. If you really want to see everything in terms of evolutionary change, the virus could even been seen as a tool in human evolution.

Evolution is a way to look at changes in and forces operating on living things. It is a property that emerges for human observers. Nature doesn't care about it.

by tgv

6/14/2026 at 5:01:54 PM

It’s a side effect in a small portion of the infected. It spreads well enough regardless, so it doesn’t particularly hurt it.

by lazide

6/14/2026 at 4:35:35 PM

The virus "cares" if it reproduces. There is often tension between the various levels of spreading mechanisms: for example airbourne spread diseases making you cough vs. the cough making the host feel poorly and not interacting with people or the cough killing the host really preventing further spread. There are plenty of optimum points between fast intense disease and asymptomatic disease.

Short term intense disease courses tend to only work for a short period of evolution for new infection mechanisms, the intensity makes them sensitive to any increased immunity which ends up halting the spread for more mild versions. Infectious diseases tend to lower in intensity over the long term.

by colechristensen

6/14/2026 at 4:13:59 PM

Wait, measles erases antibody memory?

First of all, this is scary. Secondly, I wonder if it hase the same effect on autoimmune disease?

by throwa356262

6/14/2026 at 4:18:57 PM

It destroys memory B-cells.

"Once the measles virus contacts the mucosa lining the respiratory tract, it binds to SLAM (signaling lymphocyte activation molecule, also known as CD150) on the surface of macrophages and dendritic cells. These cells then take up the virus... These immune cells pass the virus on to other groups of immune cells, including B cells, T cells, thymocytes, and hematopoietic stem cells, which disseminate the virus to other organs during the incubation period.

"Immune amnesia

"The measles virus can deplete previously acquired immune memory by killing cells that make antibodies, and thus weakens the immune system, which can cause deaths from other diseases. Suppression of the immune system by measles lasts about two years and has been epidemiologically implicated in an increase in childhood mortality from other infectious diseases during this period. The measles vaccine contains an attenuated strain of the virus which does not deplete immune memory."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles

by chasil

6/14/2026 at 4:17:20 PM

Measles infections can trigger the following autoimmune diseases:

* Type 1 diabetes

* Multiple sclerosis

* Rheumatoid arthritis

by mrtesthah

6/14/2026 at 4:17:53 PM

It can. It’s not common, from what I understand, but there are cases where it has put various autoimmune disorders into remission, either temporary, or permanent.

That said, you become far more likely to end up sick with a whole bunch of other stuff, which can then eliminate any benefits for the autoimmune disorders.

Oh, and there’s also a chance it will give you an autoimmune disorder.

Absolute bastard, if you ask me.

by madaxe_again

6/14/2026 at 5:07:39 PM

> “Two generations out, people forget what the world was like. Forgetting like this on a civilizational level is probably adaptive”

We are forgetting the lessons of WWII, and the world is now stocked with thousands of nuclear weapons each hundreds of times more powerful than Hiroshima.

I don’t think we as a civilization can afford this kind of amnesiac adaptation anymore.

by pavlov

6/14/2026 at 5:35:12 PM

We've also lost everybody who remembers the lessons of the 30's.

There's a saying that people get more conservative as they age. But the Greatest Generation, those that experienced the 30's and WW2 tended in the opposite direction, voting more left as they aged.

by bryanlarsen

6/14/2026 at 4:55:38 PM

> Quite interesting to see.

No, the article is a shitshow.

Ben Dowse is an MD, not a pediatric nurse.

The family ended up accepting the antibody treatment before leaving the hospital. The Daily Mail article bizarrely implies that they never accepted the treatment.

Both journalistic mistakes are clear from reading the beginning of the Wired article linked in the error-laden Daily Mail article.

Did you notice these errors?

by jancsika

6/14/2026 at 5:08:15 PM

I did not notice those. And it's my fault for not looking at the Daily Mail critically by looking one level deeper. I should know better than this since this is something I complain about, and also I am aware the DM is rarely accurate. I suppose it aligned with my previous knowledge that we are on the verge of losing herd immunity in much of the anglophone world: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/2016217002008809982?s=2...

Thanks for contradicting.

I do think it's interesting that herd immunity is failing, but the linked piece itself is not very good, agreed. Amending now to make it clear I don't think it's that the article is interesting.

by arjie

6/14/2026 at 5:03:18 PM

The Daily Mail is a trashy tabloid, so it's not surprising. Weird to see it posted here as though it's a credible source for anything.

by entuno

6/14/2026 at 5:03:48 PM

It is not "generational memory", it is an active campaign of lies and FUD by crooks, grifters and idiots.

by Arodex

6/14/2026 at 5:08:57 PM

I would say generational memory is a factor, if you've seen an uncle or a grandparent who'd had polio, or you're old enough that measles was a thing in your youth, and you've seen these ailments disappear over your lifetime, the lies and FUD will have a much harder time taking root.

If these ailments are completely abstract in both their scope and personal effects, it's easier to be convinced by emotional manipulators. Especially if you're part of the... let's say low empathy population.

by masklinn

6/14/2026 at 6:26:13 PM

Look at COVID conspiracies. We literally had images of patients in the hospital parking, because the hospital could not handle the tsunami of severe infections, but there are still people who believe that we should have let it rip.

by enaaem

6/14/2026 at 5:08:34 PM

It is not lies if Mr. Kennedy actually believes vaccines are harmful. Idiot, yes. Liar, no.

by petilon

6/14/2026 at 6:15:33 PM

Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

by estebank

6/14/2026 at 4:14:38 PM

It seems like there’s a pretty strong parallel with the failure of the screw worm eradication programme. It just became a thing we did, rather than the absolute miracle it was - like vaccination - and then from complacency grows suspicion, for again, as you say, few people alive remember how it was.

by madaxe_again

6/14/2026 at 4:25:35 PM

Well the screw worm thing happened because Elon Musk hired a bunch of twitter nazis to put the government through a wood chipper.

This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch and then turbo charged by people being furious that they weren't allowed to go to TGI Fridays for six months.

by Avshalom

6/14/2026 at 5:03:50 PM

I don't think that's true. Supply-chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and response were probably a big factor - or so I've read, I'm not an expert. In any case, by 2024 (pre-DOGE), new-world screw-worm fly had breached the Panama boundary where we can feasibly keep it contained with a fixed on-going effort. I remember because some time during the pandemic I learned about the thing from someone linking a much older article in the Atlantic[1].

0: https://web.archive.org/web/20240218010527/https://www.fas.u...

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...

by arjie

6/14/2026 at 4:53:37 PM

> This is the end result of decades snake oil moguls empowered by orin hatch

What did Hatch do (I mostly know him as the paid servant of the copyright industry)?

by WarOnPrivacy

6/14/2026 at 5:05:32 PM

This is likely about Orin Hatch's dedication to the idea of a "balanced federal budget", to be paid for with program cuts instead of taxation.

by cptroot

6/14/2026 at 4:28:32 PM

According this administration forever chemicals are good but vaccines for deadly diseases are bad.

by wnevets

6/14/2026 at 4:40:42 PM

Any position you take that gets people to argue with you. Engagement is the currency of politics, today more than ever.

by thomastjeffery

6/14/2026 at 4:47:08 PM

I never saw it through this lens before but you might be right.

by inigyou

6/14/2026 at 4:52:33 PM

You should read Amusing Ourselves to Death. It is the single most informative book on politics I've ever read. Unfortunately the conclusion it points to is not great. But worth reading anyway!

by estearum

6/14/2026 at 4:50:50 PM

There's a fantastic web series that explains the whole dynamic: the alt-right playbook.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbAN...

by thomastjeffery

6/14/2026 at 4:57:53 PM

It’s reductive to frame this as an alt-right only phenomenon. As long as we’re subject to modern ad-fueled social media, this is the basis for all non-retail politics.

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 5:15:34 PM

The alt right playbook isn’t identical to other political movements because it’s facing different pressures.

Right now it’s dealing with second generation propaganda where much of the leadership believes the narrative rather than the underlying justification for that narrative. This is mitigating by the older generation retaining a great deal of power, but it creates some IMO really interesting dynamics.

by Retric

6/14/2026 at 5:18:12 PM

> The alt right playbook isn’t identical to other political movements

Straw man. Nobody claimed this. Just that the factor identified, politics by attention economics as a result of social media, is not unique to the alt right.

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 5:24:29 PM

> this is the basis for all non-retail politics.

My point was there’s an internal disconnect inside the alt right movement which makes this play out in very distinct ways. Dig into say China’s political to social media connections for some wildly different dynamics.

> is not unique to the alt right

Sure, that I can agree with but it’s a long way from your earlier blanket statement.

by Retric

6/14/2026 at 5:35:11 PM

> Dig into say China’s political to social media connections

China regulates social media in a way we don’t. The fundamental dynamic doesn’t apply there.

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 5:36:30 PM

Even the US regulates social media. UK, Germany, South Africa, and Brazil are all interesting because of just how different yet similar a role social media plays in politics.

First past the post vs representative representation create some really interesting points of divergence.

by Retric

6/14/2026 at 5:42:35 PM

> Even the US regulates social media

Federally? Not really.

> UK, Germany, South Africa, and Brazil are all interesting because of just how different yet similar a role social media plays in politics

Could you expand on this?

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 6:22:49 PM

> Federally? Not really.

TikTok is just one of many examples where the federal government has played a significant role. I mean you can debate about how relevant terrorism, CSAM, etc are here, but lots of debatably minor changes still add up.

> Could you expand on this?

It’s a lot to try and summarize in a comment, but just as an example. UK elections can take place early when a coalition breaks up this places a lot more power in the hands of voters and thus social media mid cycle. In the US passing unpopular legislation early means it’s less likely to be remembered next election cycle.

by Retric

6/14/2026 at 5:23:03 PM

That's a reduction that isn't being made.

This is a playbook that was utilised by the alt-right first, and adopted by nearly everyone else; particularly (though not exclusively) Republicans in the US, followed by most conservative organizations around the world.

by thomastjeffery

6/14/2026 at 5:06:26 PM

Some brass neck coming from the Daily Mail who championed Andrew Wakefield.

by blipvert

6/14/2026 at 4:21:26 PM

Pro tip for my fellow graybeards: get a measles booster if you were born before 1976! Even then, it might not hurt if you are in an area where the risk is high.

Disclaimer: I am an internet rando -- talk to your doctor.

by pstuart

6/14/2026 at 4:55:43 PM

I asked for that and they gave me an antibody titre, and I still have enough to be safe from measles.

by lanstin

6/14/2026 at 5:41:26 PM

But what about the stolen legos?

by daft_pink

6/14/2026 at 4:26:23 PM

“marking the latest and longest-lasting series of measles outbreaks in the US since last year as health officials panic.“

Having trouble parsing this one.

by bethekidyouwant

6/14/2026 at 4:45:25 PM

The CDC has a measles tracker that includes the number of annual cases since 1985 [1]. Measles was officially "eliminated" in the US in 2000. Technically it still has that status but outbreaks like this caused by low vaccination rates are threatening it [2], which is what the article is referring to.

I'm old enough to have lived with Y2K. It's not really talked about much nowadays and I suspect a good number of people don't even know about it but leading up to 2000, everybody knew about it. By 1998 it was something you'd see on the news. Anyway, a ton of work went into eliminating Y2K issues and when 2000 happened, everything kinda kept on working.

Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax. I actually wonder if this was a significant contribution to the distrust in authority that contributed to the rise of anti-vaxxers. To be fair, that did start before 2000. The disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield blew up in the late 1990s over the UK's triple jab and his effort to sell an alternative, which failed.

Polio (effedtively eliminated in most countries), smallpox, measles, Guinea worm (due for elimination in the coming years), etc didn't disappear on their own. Australia is on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 due to the widespread adoption of the HPV vaccine [3].

Sometimes it's hard not to feel like we live on the dumbest timeline.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

[2]: https://www.kff.org/other-health/measles-elimination-status-...

[3]: https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-rebecca-white-mp...

by jmyeet

6/14/2026 at 4:55:10 PM

>Lots of people looked at that and unironically said that Y2K was a hoax.

You're committing a fallacy of equivocation. "Y2K" has two distinct meanings:

1. A software bug related to date handling that could cause incorrect behavior that was unpredictable in the specifics but bounded in the kind and extent of damage it could cause.

2. A software bug that could cause the collapse of society.

You might or might not remember this, but prior to the turn of the millennium there were plenty of people regularly talking about Y2K using the latter meaning. When people say that Y2K was a hoax, they're saying that the second meaning was not something that was ever within the realm of possibility, not that Y2K would not have caused any problems whatsoever.

by fluoridation

6/14/2026 at 5:09:41 PM

Around 20% of people have a fear of needles. Around 4% have a clinical phobia, often intense enough to induce fainting.

I suspect a lot of "vaccine skepticism" is just an expression of such needle phobia.

Maybe developing more needle free vaccine delivery mechanisms would solve a lot of this problem. I have much doubt about arguing people out of phobias.

by BurningFrog

6/14/2026 at 5:36:22 PM

I don't see any evidence that the level of fear of needles is different now from what it was 10, 20, 30 or more years ago, so it is hard to see how it could be a significant factor in falling vaccination rates now.

by tzs

6/14/2026 at 5:17:44 PM

It's not. It's scientific ignorance combined with lies (Wakefield) and misinformation. There may be some small percentage of people who completely avoid injections but most people who understand vaccines accept the benefits outweigh the short term fear / pain of needles.

by driverdan

6/14/2026 at 4:33:47 PM

While both sides of the political spectrum have crazies in them that are skeptical of vaccines let it be known that this latest insanity is being promulgated by red states and red politicians who are showing themselves to be just the biggest science denying idiots the world has ever seen

by gigatexal

6/14/2026 at 4:45:20 PM

What's craziest to me is that I know lifelong Mormons that left the church because the last CEO, a surgeon, was pro vaccine.

by nosioptar

6/14/2026 at 4:38:50 PM

Horseshoe theory enters the chat. I associate vaccine refusal with the ultra-crunchy Marin County unschoolers and other sequelae of the 1960s. Of course, I understand these people to be reactionary conservatives, but they describe themselves as progressives.

This time series suggests, however, that Marin has handed the torch to its MAGA neighbors. https://vax.edsource.org/school?schoolCode=6988448&schoolNam...

by jeffbee

6/14/2026 at 4:31:39 PM

“What did children do before vaccines!?”

They died, Kayleigh. There were just 9 other siblings to see who survived

by yieldcrv

6/14/2026 at 4:49:01 PM

Well, good news to that, birth control might be outlawed soon...

by inigyou

6/14/2026 at 4:33:37 PM

[dead]

by arghandugh

6/14/2026 at 3:51:46 PM

[dead]

by farceSpherule

6/14/2026 at 3:57:40 PM

[flagged]

by BowBun

6/14/2026 at 4:21:24 PM

Everything is a tradeoff. If big pharma had their way, we would get shot every second week (bi yearly shots for flu and covid, some tropical malaria, ebola, mad cow disease...)

Preventable disseases can be prevented by enforcing basic hygiene, but most people do not like that.

by throw83939494

6/14/2026 at 4:23:11 PM

Big pharma would rather sell you medicine as an ongoing thing vs a one-off vaccine.

> Preventable disseases can be prevented by enforcing basic hygiene, but most people do not like that.

We're talking about measles here: you're completely wrong in your assumption in regards to measles.

by pstuart

6/14/2026 at 4:48:07 PM

Its time, to accept the retardation, as a permanent fixture. Every 3 generations, we will have to redo all of these. As in relive them. Rediscover the cure, after horrific maimed people become the "anitbodies".. so we need cultural vaccinations every 3 generations. The education does nothing. All that helps is to relive the nightmare.

by cineticdaffodil

6/14/2026 at 4:59:44 PM

> time, to accept the retardation, as a permanent fixture. Every 3 generations

Why? Previous generations didn’t have to accept this. This is entirely a product of ad-fueled social media.

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 5:08:08 PM

Go look up how people reacted to the Spanish flu. Or various religious death cults that pop up with regularity.

This isn’t a modern thing - most people rely on their social network about what is true and those social networks can be infected with cultural disease and rot and die just like the body. The problem is that cultural diseases have impacts to the entire species since we’re social creatures and technology has further shrunk the distance between cultures and the time disease takes to spread making it difficult to contain.

by vlovich123

6/14/2026 at 5:14:54 PM

> Go look up how people reacted to the Spanish flu

“The Anti-Mask League was an organization formed in San Francisco, California, United States to protest an ordinance which required people in that city to wear masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The ordinance it protested lasted less than one month before being repealed. Due to the short period of the league's existence, its exact membership is difficult to determine; however, an estimated 4,500 citizens showed up to a meeting to protest the second ordinance in January 1919” [1].

I’m not seeing anything comparable, or as epidimeogically relevant, as what we have today. Organic social spread is slow and controllable. Online social media is instant wildfire everywhere.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 4:15:53 PM

Why do problems caused by anti scientific behavior occur in a country like the United States, which has so many outstanding scientists? From a third party perspective, I wonder if it's because, as stratification has progressed in the US, distrust of the social class that scientists belong to has led people to deny even their achievements.

Why does distrust arise toward the institutions and hierarchies that speak for science? There is distrust of the universities, government agencies, media, pharmaceutical companies, and big tech that those scientists belong to. And that distrust turns science from a matter of conclusion into a matter of identity, based on 'who said it' rather than what the evidence shows.

In fact, 42% of US graduate degree holders trust scientists, but only 21% of high school graduates do [1] But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this. Maybe humans are beings who create hierarchies and live within identities regardless of the truth. Some people think humans built civilization because farming created a need for labor, but I sometimes wonder if instead, people gathered around a certain identity (whether religious or otherwise), and then farming began in order to feed that labor force. That ideal I always heard as a child, a world where all people become one, without class, race, or discrimination, might just be something that the human species can never truly possess.

[1]https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20244/public-perceptions-of-sc...

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 4:23:21 PM

> But when you think about it, governments, state agencies, and even universities themselves are not actively trying to improve this

They are, all the time, doing outreach. It's just as Isaac Asimov said:

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

The origin story the government brainwashes everyone through public schools is partly to blame. There are people challenging it, but mostly they end up pushing for a different form of anti-intellectualism :(.

by coryrc

6/14/2026 at 4:30:51 PM

I disagree with Isaac Asimov on that point. The reason is that professors and universities have failed to communicate that knowledge persuasively to the public. In other words, it's establishment science. They ignore opinions that oppose corporations, and they give grants to research that suits corporate tastes. This pattern keeps appearing in the United States. So it seems that public experience and word of mouth have created opposition to scientists. I know a few examples of this. The 'lead' crisis is one such case.

In fact, some academic societies are deeply tied to corporations and operate in alignment with their direct interests. I think the accumulation of such cases has led to public distrust. I don't think it's any single party's fault. Both sides are just doing what feels right within their own identities. Scientists resist corporations to fulfill their own self actualization and curiosity, and the public simply hates those corrupt corporations. I'm not saying that all scientists are on the side of corporations. It's just that when the achievements of certain scientists are publicized, the ones with the megaphone are the corporate scientists. It's a complicated issue

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 4:55:36 PM

The Scopes trial? What was "corporate" about evolution?

The Salem witch trials.

McCarthyism

And "Universities" are the mouthpieces of corporations? The people keep electing politicians who are anti-worker-protection laws. They're purposely choosing corporation-owner-friendly legislators. This is not the fault of universities.

Of course it's a complicated issue, but it's not my University friends doing public outreach for kids that's to blame for not doing enough. It's the authoritarian public school system, it's that we allow people to be shitty parents and pass on generational trauma/poverty, it's that the foundational mythos is you can do everything yourself (even though 99.999% of people don't live somewhere nor have the skills to be self-sufficient) because the government and rich owners like keeping people divided.

by coryrc

6/14/2026 at 5:04:11 PM

In a society flooded with knowledge, we cannot know everything, so we construct our arguments from fragmented information. In that regard, an example that supplements my argument is the case of the Trump administration and Columbia University in 2025. Harvard resisted, but I don't think every university did.

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 5:16:06 PM

However, in the essence of your argument, I sometimes sense a hint of elitism. Your logic is very solid and rational. If I entered your area of expertise, I probably wouldn't even be able to engage with you on any logical level. And I'm not trying to win an argument in the first place, but I don't think you should frame things as 'the public was ignorant' using the witch trials as a pretext.

We all become 'the public' in some context.

Were the witch trials really a problem of the public? The church and judicial authorities monopolized the knowledge of the Bible and used it as a tool to maintain ruling order. Couldn't there be a perspective that sees it the other way around, that the elites used the public as a tool instead? When you study medieval European history, education was handled by the church. The authority to identify 'witches' ultimately rested with the church, and that actually makes me think that the public was the educated one.

Regarding the Scopes Trial, frankly, I don't know much about it. So I can't offer a lengthy rebuttal. I can't casually criticize something I don't know about.

But I think your comment shows how the problem of stratification that we're thinking about actually applies

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 4:44:50 PM

Nah, I don't agree. I don't see how the US is special in this regard, yet anti-vaxers, flat earthers, fundies, conspiracy nutjobs, sovereign citizens, and every other flavor of anti-intellectual crank are a distinctly US phenomenon.

by fluoridation

6/14/2026 at 4:57:50 PM

And what's worse, like an infectious person, we're sending out that corruption into other countries. We're actively funding and sending people to stoke homophobia in Africa, our idiots are indoctrinating others online to work against their own interests.

by coryrc

6/14/2026 at 4:48:33 PM

Very occasionally, I think I'm being rational, but they probably see me as just as irrational as I see them

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 4:58:31 PM

Since 1974, when science increasingly underwrote policy, it’s become entwined with politics through the EPA, climate change, treatment of gender and sexuality, public health, mandatory teaching of evolution, and “critical race theory.”

Conservatives don’t have as much of a problem with science when it avoids “impact science” and sticks to topics that don’t conflict with church teachings or business interests.

But trust in science has never been universal. Trust in institutions and experts had to be built painstakingly over generations. The Social Transformation of American Medicine is a great account of this process for American doctors.

by directevolve

6/14/2026 at 5:00:41 PM

There is active propaganda against scientists and institutions; and scientists are decent but not excellent communicators. They lost the communication war and now the general public is very distrusting of science.

by beowulfey

6/14/2026 at 4:31:38 PM

My parents have been religiously listening to the likes of Rush Limbaugh since the early 90's on a daily basis. I recall listening to it on our drive into work together.

30+ years of hearing whatever the tv/radio host du jour says, without critical thinking, taking it at face value, 8+ hours every day. In the car to work, radio on while working, drive home, and then turn the TV on till bed time.

Then take a drive through rural America and see that education isn't an important pillar.

I went to college (neither of my parents did) and made it out with a different perspective, but my brother did not. He peddles in conspiracy theories and doesn't believe humans landed on the moon. My father regrets sending me to college.

by scwoodal

6/14/2026 at 4:47:53 PM

Dismantling the education system has been a political project decades in the making.

by inigyou

6/14/2026 at 5:31:10 PM

I won't answer your questions, but I think you'll find a lot of answers in Sapiens and Nexus, both books from Yuval Noah Harari. They explain a lot about the fantastic questions that you are posing.

by ruicraveiro

6/14/2026 at 5:17:56 PM

In Europe we actively pushed the crazies to emigrate to the US. We had so many crazy religious people that we got tired of them. They went to the US and we thought we got rid of them, but now they are back with a vengeance.

by mpol

6/14/2026 at 5:33:45 PM

I really can't tell if you are serious or just trolling. Assuming the latter, I'd be laughing out loud if the consequences weren't so tragic.

by ruicraveiro

6/14/2026 at 4:49:41 PM

My personal theory is that many responsible for teaching science in the K-12 grades are not doing a great job of communicating that science is a process for finding truth. Definitely not laying this at teachers’ feet - standardized testing and curricula, overcrowded classrooms, underfunded schools etc all contribute I’m sure, but I get the impression from talking to even well educated people that they were taught science much like they were taught math: there is a right answer, your job is to regurgitate it.

Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization at its heart, and it’s easy to lose sight while getting the current thinking jammed into working memory that in the bigger picture, science is a process. Fast forward to various stages of adulthood, and when ‘science’ (not actually a thing as a whole but presented as such in the media), in light of new information, changes course or updates its priors on something you’d accepted as fact, and you might perceive scientists, a group of whom you may know none, as condescending and overconfident. In fact scientists disagree over everything and doubt way more than the public would believe but that’s often a footnote to the way the story of the scientific process is presented.

by doctorhandshake

6/14/2026 at 5:00:09 PM

I deeply agree with your statement.

In fact, I think science teaches a specific methodology and a specific mental model for viewing the world. However, the scientific method is a shareable verification procedure, whereas scientists' mental models are fragmented depending on individuals or schools of thought.

So I think modern science is a collection of elaborately designed mental models for interpreting phenomena.

Those mental models differ from person to person, and when you read the writings of various scientists or prominent figures, you realize that even for the same theory, their interpretations are slightly different. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent.

I am an uneducated person, so it's hard for me to speak carelessly, but as you said, we often tend to overlook the fact that when we talk about something being 'scientific,' it's spoken of as if there is a single correct answer. And as that standardized version gets talked about as if it were the 'truth,' the essence gets diluted. I think you have a point there.

Thanks for giving me a perspective I hadn't considered. So being a 'Doctor' really does make you different

by jdw64

6/14/2026 at 5:05:45 PM

Thanks I am not a doctor - that’s an old music nom de guerre

by doctorhandshake

6/14/2026 at 5:17:47 PM

this is a huge point of frustration to me. the anti-science populist is resentful that science has claimed the mantle of authority to decide what is right. but all of the scientists I know personally, while they have a massive background context about phenomenon aren't claiming any such thing. they are struggling with methodological problems and just hoping to get an interesting glimpse about what's actually going on and show others. its basically forbidden in all the fields to use the word truth with a capital 'T'. I'm sure there are purely political and excessively egoistic scientists. but for the majority their relationship with the polity has been captured and twisted by .. I guess parasites?

by convolvatron

6/14/2026 at 5:19:36 PM

We don't pay teachers enough to entice people who are really good at science to teach at the K-12 level. There are some who do of course, but to make it a viable career choice for a talented person, we just need to pay better salaries (and vastly improve working conditions)

by 1auralynn

6/14/2026 at 5:01:07 PM

> Biology in particular but also chemistry is often taught with rote memorization

I’m guessing with high confidence none of the parents who are busy getting their kids sick got even this.

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 5:08:59 PM

It may be a correlation - I don’t have data - but I have some experience with ivy educated adults rejecting modern medicine and science with scorn for the perceived arrogance of doctors and scientists.

by doctorhandshake

6/14/2026 at 5:16:48 PM

> I have some experience with ivy educated adults rejecting modern medicine

Could they answer basic, and by basic I mean high-school level, chemistry or biology questions? (More pointedly, were they admitted in the free and clear, or are they legacy?)

by JumpCrisscross

6/14/2026 at 4:44:58 PM

I hate blaming things on social media, but I think that's at the center of it.

Once you start pausing on anything related to anti-vax or anti-science, you'll start seeing more and more people talking about alternative views.

And soon those alternative views are all you see, and those alternative views start feeling like mainstream views. And then you become confused when you're at a dinner party and no one agrees with your stance on vaccines.

I don't think it's any more complicated than that.

And it doesn't help that anti-vax views are spread with the support of bogus science. Anti-vaxxers don't view themselves as anti-science.

by cj

6/14/2026 at 5:37:33 PM

I don't hate putting a lot of blame on social media, just as much as I blame the tobacco companies for a lot of lung cancer. Put differently, social media companies are the tobacco companies of the mind.

by ruicraveiro

6/14/2026 at 4:27:57 PM

I would put some blame on medical billing, and the opiods pandemic also made some fertile ground for trolls (a work injury turning family member to an addict, followed by minimal fines and zero jail time for the conspirators that grew the pandemic). Basically a perfect setup to grow mistrust.

Just a couple of decades ago both sides of the US political aisles laughed at antivax style rhetoric, and didn't see forcing the issue further than it was as worth it (us religious grounds and similar).

by lithos

6/14/2026 at 4:34:10 PM

You need a certain baseline of power and influence in order to inspire a backlash like what we're seeing in the US.

It happens because so many Scientists are influential, and in particular because of the way that influence was used during COVID.

(I enthusiastically take my vaccines)

by Lonestar1440

6/14/2026 at 4:49:07 PM

The fact that there are so many people standing for a pro-science position is precisely the right circumstance for this situation.

The GOP has fully adopted the alt-right playbook. Here's how it works:

1. Publicly announce that you hold an overtly bad position.

2. Reasonable people begin to argue with you.

3. Bicker with them about it instead of arguing.

4. Illustrate that your in-group is divided from their out-group along the axis of this position.

5. Profit from the increased engagement.

First, the politicians and talking heads start the cycle. Everyone who considers themselves part of that in-group copies the behavior. Because engagement drives voting, people in power hold overtly bad positions; guaranteeing that people from the out-group will argue with them. The cycle cannot be stopped.

by thomastjeffery

6/14/2026 at 4:41:11 PM

Public health operations are hard because often when you reduce total life years lost you also redistribute the life years lost. Take the original Oral Polio Vaccine. I suspect that’s what I received as a child in India but it was also originally used here in the US. It had a small risk of causing paralytic polio. Until the ‘90s the US still had single digit cases of this. Would those people have gotten polio without being vaccinated? Since they lived in a mostly polio-free society probably not.

So “free rider” antivaxxers would find themselves at lower risk in that society because herd immunity would protect them.

My understanding (limited as it is) is that OPV was sold as a “we’re all in this together” thing while simultaneously there were far fewer sources of information and so governments were on a different scale of information distribution than individuals.

But trust in those who speak for science isn’t automatic. Most people could look out and see that claims from these institutions were calibrated to create outcomes and not strictly speak the truth. I sympathize with the institutions because many of the people present inherit a memory of a time when these institutions controlled information spread in a more systemic way.

As an example, it’s pretty well-established (from first person views) that the HHS and their governed orgs claimed that masks don’t work expressly in order to ensure that masks were available for healthcare providers. One could imagine they came from a tradition which praises allowing Coventry to be bombed for the greater good of hiding that we’d broken the German code.

But “we lied to you for the greater good” lands poorly these days because information spreads easier and from multiple sources.

Take the case of COVID-19. Some jurisdictions interpreted restrictions to disallow people from hanging out in groups in public. In Dolores Park (I think, but in some park in SF), we had these little circles you were supposed to stay in. Meanwhile, scientists signed letters endorsing large scale protests.

Stories like this abound. A scientist who wants to stop a dam finds an endangered species that would be destroyed and blocks the dam. Years later it is found to be not a distinct species but genetically identical to another species that is not at threat.

In the past, information control permitted suppression of these things or reframing of them in a different way - the people of Coventry were heroes, even if they were volunteered as sacrifice unknowingly. Today, I think that wouldn’t work so well.

Today, people see scientists as individuals as well. If you believe in disparate impact being the standard of discrimination, it is now worthwhile to ask whether the guys who vote a certain way would vote to sacrifice you for their people.

Anyway, as an aside, GCHQ says today that the Coventry story as told is a myth. Pretty interesting read: https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/the-bombing-of-coventry-...

by arjie

6/14/2026 at 3:50:09 PM

With the World Cup starting in the coming days, this can spiral out of control very fast.

Football fans can get infected and spread the virus in their home countries if they get exposed.

by ahmedfromtunis

6/14/2026 at 3:53:37 PM

The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah

by soneca

6/14/2026 at 4:11:13 PM

> The World Cup already started. But there are no games played in Utah

For now, Utahns can travel freely to US states where World Cup games are played.

by mistersquid

6/14/2026 at 4:28:24 PM

Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.

by SoftTalker

6/14/2026 at 4:45:08 PM

I live in the suburbs of Kansas City where the World Cup is happening, and the only way it’s affected me is it’s really annoying to take my disabled kid to the children’s hospital downtown because there’s so much traffic.

I know exactly one person out of my friends that is going to one World Cup game, and he’s well known as the guy who likes soccer.

My wife has enjoyed the TikToks of Europeans coming to Kansas City and reacting to stuff that’s totally normal to us, like the Bass Pro Shop and Tornado Shelter signs.

by wincy

6/14/2026 at 5:01:05 PM

> Relatively nobody in the US cares about soccer, much less travels for it.

Utahns travel to US states with World Cup games for reasons other than the World Cup. Its Summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Utahns do travel, for example, to the San Francisco Bay Area for graduation ceremonies, to visit family, and for sightseeing. These Utahns may mingle with foreign visitors.

I’m not making a case that transmission of measles from a Utahn to a foreign visitor is likely, but the failure to consider possible routes of transmission is exactly why vaccination is so important.

by mistersquid

6/14/2026 at 5:59:14 PM

Why don't you check the figures rather than confidently spouting nonsense?

Soccer rates as either the fourth or fifth largest sports in the USA depending on how you count it.

by onraglanroad

6/14/2026 at 4:32:29 PM

Did people from outside the US travel here to see the world cup?

by 9eLeven

6/14/2026 at 4:37:09 PM

They didn't travel to Utah to see the world cup. Of all the things in the world worth worrying about, this isn't one of them.

by fhdkweig

6/14/2026 at 4:36:02 PM

The Olympics happen every two years and aren't the cause of such issues. I doubt the World Cup will be any different.

by fhdkweig

6/14/2026 at 5:18:02 PM

https://www.sciencedirect.com/org/science/article/pii/S23692...

It was enough of a concern before the most contagious virus resurfaced (measles) that researchers have been looking at sporting events as mass vector events for years.

"The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) via DHS provided $625 million in grant funding to the 11 U.S. cities in hosting states to enhance security and preparedness efforts for the “safe execution” of tournament events"

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antimicrobial-stewar...

by joshuahaglund

6/14/2026 at 4:13:19 PM

The World Cup aspect is still incredibly important to point out. The World Cup appeals to a very large demographic and so many traveling around could spell disaster.

by iJohnDoe