Iām surprised that Bobby Brainworm is so high on the list. I expected him to be near the bottom.
There are lots of folks, unfortunately, that share his bullshit opinions about vaccines.
Yeah me too, considering that heās basically dismantling healthcare, and science as applied thereto and is basically a eugenecist. Also surprised that AOC is in similar negative territory.
I donāt know the scope or methodology of the survey though so I take it with a huge grain of salt.
Itās a Gallup poll, from their website. For the most part, I find the organization reliable.
Instead of consuming huge grains of salt (which cardiologists tend to discourage), you can visit the site to learn about the processes they use.
Good to know the source, which, yes, is generally good. I was criticizing the nature and limitations of that kind of survey, not the messenger.
In my view a survey precipitated on vague questions of how one is or is not favorably disposed in the moment to any one person is less useful than one that dials down to specific matters of policy or action ā a thought that I am pretty sure Gallup would agree with; they are after all just offering up this survey for what it is.
All Iām saying is that I recognize measures of favorability or likability absent context as inherently less meaningful than, say, āif the election were held today who would you vote forā which I think if properly phrased would shift the results quite a bit. One might for instance see RFK on TV and have an impression of him thatās quite different from how one might react to a question like ādo you think all vaccines should be eliminated as dangerousā. My guess is that at this point far too many people donāt connect him with that position, and heās prevaricating on it as it is, though I think an informed person knows what he really is after there. (And of course due arguably to the communications failures of public health, combined with general ignorance, far too many people arenāt aware of how unambiguously successful vaccines are and how vapidly unsupportable anti-vaxxer arguments are).
Weāre rapidly losing the generations that remember what it was like every summer when thousands were stricken with polio. And when thousands more contracted diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, and other diseases before they were nearly eradicated by vaccines.
Later generations have become complacent precisely because vaccines have worked so well and should be grateful their parents werenāt anti-vaxx idiots.
Iām not old enough to have seen it first hand, but Iāve seen the fall out first hand (my uncle was sterilized by the mumps, like a year or two before the vaccine came out).
One of the best things about being a primate, is the ability to learn from the misfortunes of others. It seems we are losing even that.
That being said, to this day I cannot understand why Obama got it. When I first heard about it on the radio, I thought I was listening to a humour or satire programme.
Same here. I have no idea.
Yes, I have seen that, but letās just say that there have been and are other candidates that one could say have had a stronger āclaimā on the prize. That being said, the leader of the Nobel peace prize committee at the time, ThorbjĆørn Jagland, has been known to have had some odd opinions. As quoted in his Wikipedia page:
The announcement of Barack Obama as winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, raised a few eyebrows and Jagland had to clarify[51] this choice on several occasions. The Nobel Committee points to the fact that it has to execute the will of Alfred Nobel, in accordance with the following text in his will:
"ā¦The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following wayā¦the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankindā¦
The part about āthe preceding yearā is not something they have enforced strictly, to say the least, so I think that is a very weak explanation. A common opinion over here is that Obama got it for āpresidenting while blackā, as nobody really understood the explanation, the rationale, the reasoning behind it, and was fueled by the inability to explain it so people could understand. Later, Jagland was even demoted from his position as the chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee;
On 3 March 2015 Jagland was demoted by the five-person Norwegian Nobel Committee, which elected Kaci Kullmann Five as its new chair. Jaglandās demotion is without precedent in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. After the demotion, Jagland continued to serve as an ordinary member of the committee.
Edit: As for me, the explanation offered above, referring to A. Nobelās will, is quite puzzling, as it has been normal practice for decades to award the Nobel prizes (all of them) for achievements over many years, or lifetime achievements, or for achievements that happened years ago. So why the peace prize committee chairman suddenly chose to emphasize this particular aspect is a mystery. And it further mystifies the award for me.
I always assumed Obama got the Nobel because his last name wasnāt Bush.