Mike Pence refuses to wear face mask at Mayo clinic....WTF?!!

[Soule]

I think all main stream media is lying sacks of shit.

[jfsully]

Currently many pockets of humans who live more close to Nature like the Okinawans, the Caucasus Mountain people, and the like who don't have much interface with Modern civilization or modern health care live long and lets not confound people living long with something killing them, especially if that something is a direct result of modern living....so the reason people are living longer is because we are getting better at living in a modern industrialized urbanized polluted society...we are constantly tweaking some of the gross mishaps of human civilization...and we have eliminated some of the direct causes of things that killed humans in the past...just because a caveman got eaten by a saber tooth tiger in his 20's...does not mean his body was not designed to live 120 years...and just because we wiped out polio does not mean civilization did not cause it to begin with....so there is a lot of confounding factors in that statement but that doesnt change the fact that a healthy human could have lived easily to a 100 years old, pre-civilization ,and had lower years of morbidity that his modern counterpart and that modern society isnt detrimental to health and longevity

"they could have" but they didn't, on average. I doubt it was primarily because they couldn't fend off the tigers. Now they can live that long, with some regularity, in too short of a time for our DNA to have been significantly altered by evolution. We live longer now with caveman genetics, in large part because of all the unnatural things we do: vaccines, sanitation, clothing, medicine, training. Modernity has produced longevity.

Look, maybe masks aren't good for you in the long run. I certainly don't plan to be a permanent mask-wearer. But if they're not, it's not because they're "unnatural."

[Mark E. Hurling]

I think all main stream media is lying sacks of shit.

American media was born in advocacy. Each side had their own house organs and both sides were at least open and honest about what they stood for. This came to the fore as early as the Federalists and the Democrat/Republicans when Jefferson was slugging it out with Hamilton for control of our economic destiny. During WWII the media portrayed itself as neutral honest brokers, although by then most of it was in the tank for FDR.

Postwar, journalism declared itself a white collar profession rather than mere journeyman scriveners for hire with the rise of J-schools. But by then the die was cast, virtually all big national media was part of the Big Blue Machine.

The only digression from that was Fox (once upon a time) and talk radio.

[Vek]

Young, impressionable voters are influenced by all sorts of whimsy and bad press for not wearing a face mask at the mayo clinic is enough to lose a vote. He should know better.

You are aware that fox news is reporting this as well, right?

Young, impressionable voters will not hear one truthful or positive thing about this administration from any mainstream press. The mask does not matter. Had he worn a mask, the story would be how reckless it was for him to be there in the first place. None of this is difficult to figure out.

As for Fox News, you're going to have to explain why their reporting of this incident is germane to this discussion. We're all a little slow, so you're going to have to spoonfeed us.

[Soule]

Young, impressionable voters will not hear one truthful or positive thing about this administration from any mainstream press. The mask does not matter. Had he worn a mask, the story would be how reckless it was for him to be there in the first place. None of this is difficult to figure out.

As for Fox News, you're going to have to explain why their reporting of this incident is germane to this discussion. We're all a little slow, so you're going to have to spoonfeed us.

Nah i think I’ll pass on this internet argument. If you want to defend your boy, Pence, that is your prerogative. I don’t think we’re ALL a little slow.

[Mainstream]

"they could have" but they didn't, on average. I doubt it was primarily because they couldn't fend off the tigers. Now they can live that long, with some regularity, in too short of a time for our DNA to have been significantly altered by evolution. We live longer now with caveman genetics, in large part because of all the unnatural things we do: vaccines, sanitation, clothing, medicine, training. Modernity has produced longevity.

Look, maybe masks aren't good for you in the long run. I certainly don't plan to be a permanent mask-wearer. But if they're not, it's not because they're "unnatural."

We evolved in much smaller somewhat isolated groups that were not nearly exposed to the staggering amount of pathogens that the modern world throws at us....and we are exposed to other UNNATURAL toxins that weaken the immune system...so we have vaccines....

sanitation same thing...we create such staggering amounts of human detritus that we need sanitation to recycle it...clothing is way overblown ...a good bear skin for you and deer skin for the squaw and papooses and you're good to go....medicine evolved to deal with all the sickness caused by modern society...by people living , eating and breathing poison and shit all day...and we already dealt with training ...training is a modern adaption to RECREATE some of the Necessary physical activity our bodies were designed to do....

It is because masks are UNNATURAL....The incredible hubris of humans astounds me..it must be a mental pathology of modern civilization...that we in our pea brain know more than millions, no billions of years of evolution, get real...yes again masks have some utility but its because we have created unnatural conditions that require an unnatural response ...its like taking a drug to treat the side effect of the drug instead of addressing the root cause of the original disease

[jfsully]

So if all those modern advances serve to correct problems created by modernity, why do we live twice as long as we did a few hundred years ago, on average? Seems like modernity should have shortened life expectancy, then maybe recovered some of it.

It’s maybe hubris to think that you have a clearer idea of nature and evolution and progress than the sum total of humanity to date.

[Mainstream]

So if all those modern advances serve to correct problems created by modernity, why do we live twice as long as we did a few hundred years ago, on average? Seems like modernity should have shortened life expectancy, then maybe recovered some of it.

It’s maybe hubris to think that you have a clearer idea of nature and evolution and progress than the sum total of humanity to date.

I thought I answered that...that we have adapted better to this unnatural way of life..its like the first wild animals thrown in zoos...most of them died quickly but gradually over generations now there are zoo animals that live a pretty long time..its not that zoos are better than the wild..its that they adapted even to this unnatural way of life and had many of the dangers that killed them in the wild removed...

I am not saying I understand NATURE ...I am saying that I respect it....and I don't even know what the sum total of humanity to date means...you mean collective wisdom....this aint collective wisdom because I have never seen people wearing masks all the time...this is artificial...collective wisdom means like the belief in a higher power..the belief in societal mores and such...yes I do respect collective wisdom because again that evolved over 100 of thousands of years of human experience...this is relatively new and doesn't have that provenance

[jfsully]

I thought I answered that...that we have adapted better to this unnatural way of life..its like the first wild animals thrown in zoos...most of them died quickly but gradually over generations now there are zoo animals that live a pretty long time..its not that zoos are better than the wild..its that they adapted even to this unnatural way of life and had many of the dangers that killed them in the wild removed...

I am not saying I understand NATURE ...I am saying that I respect it....and I don't even know what the sum total of humanity to date means...you mean collective wisdom....this aint collective wisdom because I have never seen people wearing masks all the time...this is artificial...collective wisdom means like the belief in a higher power..the belief in societal mores and such...yes I do respect collective wisdom because again that evolved over 100 of thousands of years of human experience...this is relatively new and doesn't have that provenance

I think zoo animals live longer in zoos now because the practices in zoos are different now than 100 years ago. I don't think the animals arriving in the zoos are any better adapted; they live longer and it's not that zoos exclusively housing animals "zooified" over generations.

My point is that whether something is natural/unnatural is not helpful in determining whether it is beneficial or not. It's also pretty darn subjective and arbitrary. Almost everything can be considered natural or unnatural. Yes, we can and do learn a lot from "nature" in terms of what we should or shouldn't do, and how things work, but the test of whether we should do something, like wear a mask, is based on its perceived risks, benefits, and the actual outcomes observed when people do it. Whether a caveman did it is irrelevant.

Should you eat mushrooms? They're natural. Some are good, some can kill you. Should you drive a car? That's unnatural. It might make your life possible. Also, you can die in a crash. Should you wear a hat? glasses? underwear? I don't think that determining how "natural" something is helps you at all with making decisions, if you can even agree on it.

Life expectancy was probably around 30 for most of human history, and now is around 80 in developed countries, with the real increase starting in the late 19th century, and in industrialized countries. I would say that if you care about people doing "unnatural" things, the industrial revolution was really the onset of the most unnatural era in human history, which continues today, and that the health outcomes in this era demonstrate that "Unnatural" does not automatically mean "bad" or life-shortening. Actually, I wouldn't say that, because I think the natural/unnatural distinction is not a helpful one, and certainly not one I would really consider when making decisions about behavior for my health.

[Mainstream]

I think we are using somewhat different terminology regarding natural or unnatural....you are referring to the use of that term...like " buy this beer..its ALL natural " as a fuzzy unuseful term , mostly a marketing ploy and mostly subjective as to whether its truly natural or not...a misused, abused, even misguided term right up there with fat- free and sugar- free nonsense

I am using the term in its truest sense ......but recognize that I may be wrong in my understanding of biology or evolution or human anatomy, or whatever natural phenomena we are talking about .and thus incomplete in my understanding of Nature....but I start with the question ...is this compatible with how nature designed us?...is this compatible with how we are supposed to function ...I admit I may still be wrong in my eventual interpretation but that is where i start the discussion