Can't help but wonder if the large number of anti-science bills out there right now will have an eventual impact on the industry. From sick calls, impacts on certain destinations to various outbreaks become more severe and frequent we might well see repercussions from this sort of policy making down the road.

https://apnews.com/article/vaccines-...31b2909812a004

 

Ramifications from that kind of thing won't arrive in a sudden wave, they'll start to pop up slowly over time and presumably corrections will occur. Hopefully government and academia science communities have learned some lessons about honesty, politics, and public trust... they brought a lot of this backlash on themselves.

 

We'll see about long term effects, but we likely won't be without any.

How do you mean academia and government brought this on themselves? Public distrust in science & education has largely been manufactured vs a natural falling out in my view. Facts still exist, some just choose to ignore them for one reason or another.

 

You can’t actually believe this?

 

Please explain.

 

There are ramifications from everything ever done. Or for that matter, what isn't done as well. The world we live in was shaped by decisions/policies etc that go back forever.

Ok, that's a nice vanilla thought. It might give the idea that I'm saying "whatever" to your comment.
Far from it.
While yes, whatever we do will affect the "eventual impact", some things will cause more harm than others. Humans, particularly we from Western cultures, absolutely suck at appreciating the consequences of long gestation periods.

The USA had built the premier science and technology research institutions in the world. China now produces more scientific papers than the USA.
Rather than attempt to reestablish America's scientific competiveness, we choose to invest in finance and crypto.

To make matters worse, there has been an ideological assault on academia and expertise in general. There has also been an underground war on critical thinking. This has emerged as a gradual, steady critique of anything in higher education that doesn't produce "practical" results. This ranges from the humanities to pure science.
It is not a coincidence that our elected leaders regularly display a profound ignorance of history, cultures, basic science, and overall general knowledge.

The defunding, the censorship, the destruction of people's careers who choose not to obey, will accelerate the demise of what has been the driver of innovative thought in this country.
Unfortunately we are unlikely to understand what will have happened. It will be considered just normal. We will decry how we are no longer the leading nation in intellectual thought, but with essentially zero understanding of how it came to be.

The "eventual impact" will be immeasurably great, and it will last for generations

 

Yeah, I'm more putting this out there as a data point for consideration. I have more thoughts, but trying to keep within the 'not-at-all-subjective' TOS application at times around here.

 

Yes we can, and you can add in the education establishment and the media as well. It’ll take a generation for all of them to earn back the credibility their predecessors had accrued over generations.

They could start by admitting there is no “settled” science. Science by its nature requires you to keep an open mind to alternative possibilities, and for damn sure not try to censor them.

 

Where is this is censoring occurring?

 

Is the naivety intentional or are you really that oblivious? Only in a lefty world would the removal of Stanford, Harvard, John Hopkins and UCLA medical experts on Twitter, not be censorship.

I wouldn’t worry about any communicable diseases unless you’re in a border town or live somewhere illegal immigrants were bussed and flown to.