Florida’s controversial surgeon general is drawing criticism for his handling of an elementary school’s measles outbreak, telling parents of unvaccinated children it is their choice whether their students attend class — a contravention of federal guidelines calling for their mandatory exclusion.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, nationally known for his outspoken skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccine, sent a letter this week to parents at Manatee Bay Elementary School near Fort Lauderdale after six students contracted the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus. Such outbreaks are rare in the United States, though reported cases have spiked from 58 for all of 2023 to 35 already this year.
The letter notes that when a school has a measles outbreak, it is “normally recommended” that unvaccinated students who haven’t previously had the disease be kept home for three weeks “because of the high likelihood” they will be infected.
The “experimentation” would most likely be where the line is that anti-vaccers decide they were incorrect and get their kids vaccinated. Or how long the majority of the population living there puts up with these dangerous health decisions. At this point, it is a popular enough opinion on the far right, that any sort of mandate govt action right now would only escalate the situation.
I suppose you are talking about the FAAFO principle (since its meaning is crucial, I will spell it out to make certain we are all on the same page: Fuck Around And Find Out) - like a child sticking a fork into a live socket to “see what happens”. There are no “controls”, no observations are “recorded” for the future, there is no careful “design” of the factors involved, and second most importantly, no bothering to look up if the answer was somehow already known in the first place, that could have avoided the need to do the experiment altogether.
But I was arguing that the CRUCIAL factor of PRIME importance is likewise missing: the willingness to learn from whatever outcome may derive from the actions. If a child sticks a fork into a socket, but b/c it’s low amperage somehow just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket AGAIN, etc. -> those are not “experiments”, it is just plain dumb stupidity. No “learning” takes place, hence it was never an “experiment”, just playing.
In contrast, when the USA started it up again after a long hiatus, democracy itself was our “experiment”. It looks like it is about to fail, being too susceptible to internal squabbling + coercion from outside forces:-(.
But e.g. when Trump was impeached, the first time, and then when he was impeached, the second time, it was not an “experiment” to “see if he could be impeached” (very much unlike Biden’s ongoing impeachment procedures), it was just what needed to be done.
TLDR: these people are not “experimenting” with anything, they are just Fucking Around, having not yet reached the Find Out stage (and never will, even long after the evidence becomes plainly and clearly obvious to anyone at all who is receptive to “evidence”).
You are right that the antivaxxers are just fucking around and finding out, but for scientists learning about how such people react to finding out will be really interesting when the disease inevitably sweeps through Florida schools. Also it’ll be a good model for the loss of herd immunity.
I’m not opitimistic that Floridians will change, but what I’m really curious about is if their government will decide to do anything when the worst happens. It reminds me about how people were big into crypto and NFTs and stuff because they are unregulated, only to slowly learn that we have regulations for a reason. How many children (who would likely become their own constituents) are Florida republicans willing to sacrifice to earn some political points with crazy people?
Except Florida will fudge the numbers, and nobody will even know anything beyond “excess deaths”, unless they take to hiding even those. Also, I still think “experiment” bespeaks of some intentionality, while simply being watchful and mindful of one’s surroundings does not raise to that high bar. But you are correct: mindful people can learn from just about anything (“the sun has risen today, again, mark that on the recordings please, that is one more day in which that observation has occurred”).
Anyway, I am giving you a hard time, but yeah I see what you mean: they wanted to lose herd immunity, so here goes nothing…
And no, I doubt the Florida government is willing to do much of anything at all, and the federal government is incapable. The Supreme Court is distracted, the upcoming Democrat Presidential candidate won’t win Florida no matter what and the Republican Presidential one is likely to just egg the situation on further, and Congress hasn’t even passed a budget yet, almost into the third month of calendar year 2024, but remember that this is the sixth month into the fiscal one - that’s right, HALF THE YEAR HAS PASSED already without one yet, and they STILL are threatening another showdown when they come back from their weeks-long vacation. And even with such gridlock on all sides, the state government of Florida that is not struggling with a 2-party system at all still cannot hold a candle to the high level of functioning that even our entirely inept and broken (and corrupt) national government ends up having to do (see e.g. the Disney situation, making the state lose out on a BILLION dollars, and that is only one of the various ENORMOUS disasters that is just CURRENTLY going on in that state - the migrant worker crisis is another ofc, and there are far more besides).
This is why I say that this “experiment” of seeing whether and how democracy itself will work as a viable government strategy is currently underway. And so far the grim reaper seems to be winning:-(.