@toronto_Georgia

I have never thought vaccines were safe, I'm sufficiently antisocial that propaganda does not work on me.   On the other hand that means I'm equally suspicious of people who reject social norms.  Antisocial positions can and do arise in people who are too pro social.  These kinds of people are extremely sensitive to the autistic like characteristics necessary for progress, what many people mistake for sociopaths or psychopaths.  There is good reason for this as people with autistic traits want to systematize things that should not be systematize, Margaret Sanger being a eugenics proponent for example.

Modern medicine is dehumanizing.  It's driven in large part by making a buck.  It's often crude because it wants to be efficient.  Efficient at making money.  I still prefer it to Orthopathy.  That mostly has to do with the effectiveness of reductionism.  We may agree that complex chaotic systems cannot be reducible but until someone comes up with the demonstrable alternative I'm sticking with reduction.

Keep in mind there is no such thing as safe medicine, the hypocritic oath is an oxymoron.  Rationally everything is a cost benefit analysis, truth a delusion.  

@wolfhnd I agree for the most part. I find medical care in the US is based on hunting for disease (opportunity) and then treating a body part as though it somehow were unrelated to all other body parts. Add profitability and its one hell of a mix. Needless to say I am not in the slightest bit impressed by a nation that has done remarkable things in the medical world only to turn around an act in a totally unrelated manner towards patients.

@toronto_Georgia

I'm pretty impressed by the systems ability to keep people alive. That is the approach applied to the pandemic. It's not about keeping people healthy but keeping them alive. It comes down to a personal decision. I would rather be alive and sick than healthy and dead. Most people however have to be healthy to stay alive because they need to work and care for others etc. The more money you have the easier it is to have both health and life. It's an arithmetic that most people find unpleasant. The thing is that the U.S. health care industry shows the benefits of wealthy patrons. Science in fact was better in a lot of ways before it was taken over by the government. Institutions are too rigid for the kind of openness that innovations require. That is why many highly intelligent people drop out of university.

@wolfhnd
"I would rather be alive and sick than healthy and dead."

I fall into the latter category. Sickness and disability are something I psychologically have little tolerance for, and constantly paying heavy medical costs are also not something I'd bear well. Had some experience with that in recent years. I'll pass, thank you.

It truly is sad "The more money you have the easier it is to have both health and life." This is not the case in other countries where a little patience is all that is necessary to obtain world class health care.

@toronto_Georgia

How much of that world class health did they develop? How much of what they did develop was driven by a natural sense of competition? How many providers for medical tourism in other countries trained in the U.S. ? It's also no coincidence that as the U.S. medical system becomes more centralized and corporatist that the rate of relative innovation has declined.

I have dug deep into the statistics and find that you can't trust the results shown for countries who have National Health Care. Anytime the same people who are providing a service are evaluation it distortions will take place even if there is no intentional fraud. Additionally the U.S. is the most unhealthy country among the developed nations in terms of lifestyle. For example 80 some percent of Covid deaths were related to obesity. There are a lot of factors to consider and it's almost impossible to build a reliable model. I put Germany's health care system at the top because unlike places like Norway they face many of the challenges that a country like Norway do not. It is a mixed system of private and public insurance with a somewhat diverse population but one that is not nearly as diverse as the U.S. I'm not going to get into the weeds and go over the statistics everyone has to do that for themselves and guess.

That said health care alone isn't the only issue. "This study from University College London was published in 2020. It found that rich people in both England and the United States got eight to nine more years of disability free life than the poor. That’s almost a decade!" [thedarwiniandoctor.com]

[academic.oup.com]

@toronto_Georgia

One final thing I want to say is that people avoid the unpleasant.

IQ and income track fairly reliably. It seems to be a statistical norm people cannot accept. Perhaps because of the moral codes surrounding equality.

If you look at the trait of conscientiousness among high IQ proponents of socialism you will find a relatively lower level of conscientiousness than might be expected. Conscientiousness in fact is higher in some poor populations, especially the working poor. The poor have been subject to higher levels of selection, especially in the recent past, that in weird way make them more "civilized" or domesticated. They choose socialism out of need not orientation. Among the under employed poor you will find lower levels of conscientiosness becuse they are adapted for a fast lifestyle. In any case the difference between the poor and the wealthy isn't just money. The rich overall make better choices, that is how they got rich and stay rich over many generations. The poor make poor choices and get relatively poor over generations. Their poor choices to some extent include unhealthy lifestyles. It isn't just a matter of intelligence either, the poor have been selected to process calories more efficiently. They are at risk of obesity not just because of poor choices but genetics.

All of the above is just to lay the foundation for this unpleasant reality. Socialism is a way of compensating for bad life choices and mis matched adaptation. If everyone had an IQ above 120 a lot of the need for a Nanny state and police state would go away. Healthcare in particular would be more affordable because of better lifestyle choices. Peer pressure to adapt healthy lifestyles would be more extreme as it is among the existing middle class. Even the rich would be under more pressure to adapt to middle class morality as the poor would no longer be a distraction for middle class Karens. You can see this at work in places such as Norway and Japan. Both high IQ and homogenous countries. The fact that they both have national health care has as much to do with cost as anything else, they can afford it. Places with diverse populations will struggle to emulate their success, especially at containing cost.

I understand this is a gross oversimplification. I just think that we often gloss over the unpleasant aspects of life.