A little while back a leading US medical journal, the American Journal of Medicine published a study allegedly showing that “distrust of the government” and “a belief in freedom” are linked to distrust of the Covid vax. And, worse of all, “unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash — in which at least one person was transported to the hospital — than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol.” The idea here is not that the vaxxes improve road safety skills, but that the unvaxxed are reckless, which shows up in their driving, allegedly: “"Our data do not explore potential causes of vaccine hesitancy or risky driving," the authors of the study said in a statement.
"One possibility relates to a distrust of government or belief in freedom that contributes to both vaccination preferences and increased traffic risks. A different explanation might be misconceptions of everyday risks, faith in natural protection, antipathy toward regulation, chronic poverty, exposure to misinformation, insufficient resources, or other personal beliefs. Alternative factors could include political identity, negative past experiences, limited health literacy, or social networks that lead to misgivings around public health guidelines. These subjective unknowns remain topics for more research."
The problem with this sort of statistical empiricism, is that correlations between all sorts of things can be produced, without proof of a causal mechanism. Lacking in the research, as they state, is actual proof of such a mechanism, only speculation about what might be the case, such as distrust of government. But a moment’s thought would indicate that those distrusting government would not disobey road laws, which would bring the police down upon them, as recent police slayings indicate, but such people would try to avoid the roads as much as possible. Hence, we would expect exactly the opposite of what these researchers found. Thus, I believe that the proposal is flawed.
“One way to hoodwink the populace into accepting ever-increasing control by the omnibenevolent and all-seeing federal government is to convince them that freedom and autonomy are bad for you. But surely Leftists wouldn’t stoop that low, would they? Sure they would. PJM’s Ben Bartee had the story on Saturday: the American Journal of Medicine has published a preposterous new study warning that “distrust of the government” and “a belief in freedom” are liable to get you killed. Get back in line, sheep! Don’t put your lives on the line chasing after freedom! Slavery is so much safer!
This arrant nonsense was actually published this month in the American Journal of Medicine, proving yet again that academic study in the United States has become irremediably politicized and open to cultural and intellectual fads. Honest investigation of a controverted issue, leading to the acknowledgment of unwelcome truths, is vanishingly rare. The pretext for pushing slavery on Americans is, once again, the COVID-19 vaccine. According to Fortune magazine, this study claims to prove that “if you passed on getting the COVID vaccine, you might be a lot more likely to get into a car crash.”
The study asserts that “unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash — in which at least one person was transported to the hospital — than those who were vaccinated. That’s similar to the increased risk of car crashes for people with sleep apnea, though only about half that of people who abuse alcohol.”
Does the vaccine somehow improve your eyesight and coordination, so that you can more easily get out of scrapes while driving? Oh, nothing like that. Unvaccinated people are more likely to wreck their cars because they’re the sort of people who don’t obey the rules. The study speculates that people who are so headstrong and stubborn as to resist getting a vaccine that is causing young people in perfect health suddenly to drop dead might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.”
Now, who in his right mind would get behind the wheel and neglect basic safety guidelines? Incorrigible lovers of freedom, of course: “Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, ‘faith in natural protection,’ ‘antipathy toward regulation,’ poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.”
So actually the study is all about why you should be a good conformist and do whatever the government tells you to do, no matter what the obvious risks may be.
This ridiculous and superstitious propaganda is frankly fascist in its warning against “a belief in freedom,” and it’s all designed to sell a shoddy and dangerous product to the weak and gullible. Epoch Times recently released a video entitled “Over 5,000 Cases of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS): Doctors Trying to Determine Why Young People Suddenly Dying.” It features Dr. Michael Ackerman, “a Mayo Clinic genetic cardiologist and the president of the Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS) Foundation,” who explains “how COVID and the vaccine affect heart conditions in people under 35.”
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(22)00822-1/fulltext#%20