The Pope Denounces Misinformation 'Infodemic' About Vaccines

›

• 2 hidden comments

• Re:

  Enjoy the irony, there's so little left

  • Re:

    Not to worry, politicians -- especially the Republicans -- will continue providing plenty of that.

• Re:

  Wow, you just can't let someone do a good thing, can you?

  You're too blinding by hatred to accept that someone you personally disagree with did something important.

  The pope just saved countless lives with this one message. That's more than you'll have or ever will accomplish in your entire life.

  But go ahead and pretend you're superior in some way. You're not. An you never will be.

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Sorry dude, the Catholic church has been a major cause of human misery, suffering and death for most of its existence. It's too easy to have a change of heart for the last few decades and get a free pass when they say one good thing or two.

    If the Pope truly wanted to improve humanity, he would immediately issue an apology, disband the church and return the Vatican to Italy.

    • Re:

      He is not directly responsible for what others did before him. He is responsible for what he does to improve things. Arguably, he could do more to help society as the head of a major religious organization than he could as just an individual. That isn't to say I side with his decisions, though his stance in this instance is sound, but it would make more sense to hold the position than give it up.

    • The Catholic church has nearly 2000 years of history. Any organization that has been around for so long will have its dark times which history will look poorly at.
      However in general it has done a better job at keeping the good, than other governments, or ideologies that have been in across history.

      While the Inquisitions make more interesting history lessons, vs. lessons where monks are keeping the books on antiquities copied so they can survive the ravages of time, and be read when society is ready for them.

      The history taught to non-historians mainly focuses around big events, and things that can be remembered so they can be answered on in a test. Protestantism is a big event that had happened in history, and to show what lead up to it, includes documenting the many time the Catholic church in its long history had done the wrong thing.

      Also Italy was founded back in 1946, while Vatican City was in 1929
      Pope Francis did actually offer an apology for many of the misdeeds that Catholic church had committed.

      • Just in my life time, while the Pope has been a major official in the church, the Catholic church has done the following:

        Covered up and barred attempts to learn about systematic sexual assault of children.

        Passed anti-blaspheme laws in Ireland to block news of the church's mis-doings.

        Prevented millions of people from using condoms during the African AIDS epidemic.

        Lied about, covered up, and blocked attempts to gain information on the deaths of thousands of First Nations children in Canada.

        That's just in the last two decades. The Pope has more blood on his hands, directly and indirectly, than I will ever have.

        Also, Italy was a country long before 1946. Italy fought in the first world war, three decades before 1946. Italy existed centuries before that in various forms. Pick up a history book some time.

      • You assert that point

        But I don't think you really supported it. I mean I think with a little bit of effort you could list off one terrible thing after another. But the main concern I have with the Catholic Church and all the major churches is that they bring in trillions of dollars (literally look it up) I have been shown to have one of the worst if not the worst rates of giving out money charitably. Seriously if you're going to donate money to charity churches tend to be the absolute worst you can pick in terms of the amount o

      • Re:

        Then what surrendered to the Allies in 1943? And what was Garibaldi doing in the previous century? You are talking about the current version of Italy, which makes as much sense as saying that Windows didn't exist before Windows 11.

        • Re: It takes one to know one

          Please do not compare Italy to Windows 11, I feel deeply offended as much as you're actually accurate:)

    • Re:

      The reason for all of this blinding hate is he and his compatriots are The Other to the progressive (i.e. far) left in America. For a good rundown of why this is, please read this outstanding essay "I can tolerate anything but the outgroup". [archive.is] It really hits the nail on the head and after you finish it, you'll understand the source of the hatred.

    • Re:

      Sure you can point to evil things that have come from the Catholic church, through most of its history humans were finding any reason they could come up with to do terrible things to each other. It's not as if the church was the one bad actor in Europe through the entirety of its post BC existence.

    • Re:

      Why in the world has this been rated "informative"? It is obviously meant to be funny!

• And who better to trust on the subject of science? His organization has, throughout history, fully supported scientific endeavors of all sorts.
  
  Really a cornerstone of human progress those people.

  • And who better to trust on the subject of science? His organization has, throughout history, fully supported scientific endeavors of all sorts. Really a cornerstone of human progress those people.

    You are being sarcastic, but you are actually correct. The Catholic Church has studied science throughout the ages, and with the obvious exception of believing in a god, are usually fairly good with facts. A Jesuit priest is responsible for the big bang theory, and contrary to the popular discourse on the matter, Galileo was not condemned for claiming the world orbits the sun; he was condemned for being an arsehole. Even in areas where the church is very obviously wrong, like the use of contraception and abortion, they rely on fuzzy arguments about morality and "gods will" and thus sidestep scientific studies of actual human welfare outcomes.

    • The Catholic Church isn't disputing any of the science behind contraception and abortion, they are disputing the ethics of performing/using them.
      For abortion they declared that an individuals live begins after conception, at that point there is a cell with a unique DNA sequence that isn't just the mother or the fathers DNA. Now that might be setting the bar to consider it alive to be much too high. As we are more than just our genetics, and at that point the Cell is no more complex than a Bacteria, in which nearly no one has an issue killing. But we can debate the start of life, to when it forms a heart, or perhaps with a sufficiently complex brain.... We could extend the logic out to a point after birth as a new born baby still isn't fully developed, and indeed other animals are born far more developed than humans are.

      They are not fuzzy arguments about the science, but fuzzy arguments for the morality, and deciding to set a high standard to the point where human life begins.

      • • Re:

          You should set them free at every opportunity!

        • Re:

          That reminds me of a list of misconceptions around sexuality collected by a magazine, one teacher wrote in the story of a teenage girl who was adamant that sperm has negative calories. Supposedly her boyfriend convinced her of that. Magazine reaction: what an assh0le. Most guys' reaction: now why didn't I think of that...

    • Re:

      The church allowed the pursuit of science in ways the benefitted them and prohibited it when it didn't. They were the most powerful and wealthy organization for a long time, so there weren't a lot of other options for supporting it.
      
      Your claim about the nature of the dispute between the church and Galileo is a complete fabrication lifted from Galileo and the Vatican, which is full on self serving bullshit revisionism written by a cardinal. The church tortured the guy to get him to recant, not assholism bu

    • Re:

      In fact, the Vatican has spent centuries specifically making up for the way it treated Galileo by operating its own world-class observatory:
      http://www.vaticanobservatory.... [vaticanobservatory.va]

      After its original location near Rome became smogged in, the Vatican Observatory moved its operations to the clearer air of Arizona. It had to overcome strident opposition by the green left, which has now outclassed the Holy Inquisition in trying to take humankind back to the Stone Age. Fortunately for human progress, this state mustered

  • * heliocentricism was proposed by Catholic canon Nicolaus Copernicus,
    * the "father of modern genetics" was Brother Gregor Mendel,
    * Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin was a noted paleontologist specialist of the Carbonifer era (before the dinos) and studied early hominids and the connection with the evolution of the brain.

    The Catholic church is perfectly cool with cosmology, quantum physics, the theory of evolution (Darwinism was declared compatible with the Catholic doctrine some 50+ years ago). You can get a Masters of Biotechnology, Neurosciences or Space science at a Pontifical university many places in the world.

    The modern anti-science (young earth creationism, flat-earthers, antivaxxers) is not promoted by the Catholic church, but more correlated to political extremism (who can be of any religion).

    The guy called Pope is an influencer with 1 billion followers and hundred of millions who regularly follow the Sunday morning podcast, this time he gave a good piece of advice to his fans, I don't see why we would complain.

    • I once had the opportunity to talk to Catholic Bishop over a dinner. One thing that got me was how freaking smart that guy was. Fluent in at least 1/2 dozen languages, Master Degree in at least Bio Chemistry, he probably had more (we didn't try to ring him for his resume). He was book smart, street smart as well, as he was a bishop of some rather tough neighborhoods, extremely personable and very thoughtful on his thoughts on topics.

• Re:

  This pope has actually read the bible.

  • Re:

    Especially the ode to boobies.

• Re:

  You know you're full of shit when the pope calls you on it.

• Re:

  Gods Capo has spoken.

• • Re:

    You'd like them to publish data that supports your hypothesis hey?

    • 2 hidden comments

    • • Re:

        The vaccines are highly effective at preventing you from showing symptoms. Breakthrough cases with the strains up through delta have run about 1 case in 5000. Because the omicron strain has significant mutations in the spike protein that the vaccines use to stimulate your immune system, the breakthrough rate has risen to 1 in 100 for this strain. An omicron-specific upgrade to Moderna is now in the FDA pipeline.

        What the vaccines have shown is tha the tests measure exposure, rather than infection. When some

        • Re: It takes one to know one

          Yup - and that is a long way from what the learned scientists promised initially. They have been slowly stepping back their exaggerated claims to the point where it is very clear that covid is mainly a geriatric disease and that vaccines, masks and movement restrictions are more or less useless for anyone under 75. BTW, Im 62 and I have many friends, relatives, children and grand children who got covid before and after the vaccines became available. Only one casualty and he had diabetes. So IMHO the vaccin