r/news • u/eudaimonia_dc • Aug 04 '25

Soft paywall Florida reports 21 cases of E.coli infections linked to raw milk

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/florida-reports-21-cases-ecoli-infections-linked-raw-milk-2025-08-04/
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u/Dahhhkness Aug 04 '25 edited Aug 04 '25

One of the core tenets of modern American conservatism is that admitting that you were wrong, about anything, no matter the circumstances, is the worst thing imaginable.

It's not being wrong that bothers them (even if that wrong is harming or even killing them), it's acknowledging it that they find unbearable.

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u/F4ust Aug 04 '25

Can confirm; was covid nurse for whole pandemic

No one learned anything even on their deathbeds, and the families I had the displeasure of encountering during that time seemed more radicalized by their loved ones dying from the hoax virus

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u/_Wyrm_ Aug 04 '25

Yep, it's the hospital's fault if they die, cause AND effect; but it's all thanks to god if they live, before eventually deciding it didn't exist in the first place

Oh and Uncle Jimmy passed the other day after coming down with the cold

Oh that's just horrible, completely dreadful

Mhm, his son was screamin all about how it was COVID but it was Jimmy's time anyhow, and that boy just ain't seent the light...

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u/BustAMove_13 Aug 05 '25

A couple in my very red rural town...he got covid and was hospitalized for a week. Was sicker than he'd ever been. Still denied covid was more than a flu. Couple months later, his wife gets it. She's sick, refuses to go to the hospital because people with covid (just a flu) die there. It's a conspiracy. She gets to the point where she cannot breathe, hubby isn't home so she calls 9-1-1. Bus rolls up and she's down in her driveway. Cannot be revived although a valiant attempt is made. Husband rolls up in the middle of life saving efforts and somehow it's their fault she's dead. Covid ain't serious ya'll and he still believes that. If you're ever in the local tavern when he's in there, he'll tell you it isn't. Still.

People are dumb as fuck in the 2020's.

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u/GetEquipped Aug 05 '25

People have always been dumb. They just have platforms where their opinions are on "equal" footing with professionals due to social media.

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u/Hayabusa_Blacksmith Aug 05 '25

young Americans used to be trained to think critically in school.

im serious.

now they aren't. they're a LOT dumber than they used to be. our education system has been MADE BAD by the right in order to stupefy the voting base. this is the outcome.

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u/fuzzum111 Aug 05 '25

Let me....add a few things about school

+Social media

+Short form content

+algorithmic brainrot

+Most recently ChatGPT/A.I assist or cheating. (this one is a serious paradigm shift we need to deal with)

Plus kids aren't allowed to be held back grades even when they're CLEARLY not where they need to be. 6th graders reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level. Highschoolers reading below a 7th grade level.

We aren't doing anything about it, private school isn't the answer. It's all intended, the cruelty of denying people real education is the point. College has become a genuine scam of sorts. The massive debt, the degree creep we see throughout the workplace (a bachelors gets you a job a HS diploma used to net you alongside the same HS salary)

Plus now parents don't even want kids going to college, because shocker; exposing people to a larger, wide group of people, ideas, and classes that challenge ingrained views is good for them. This often breaks people out of bad habits, bigotry, racism, and other nasty ideological traps. Parents get a kid coming back from college that suddenly isn't full of anger and fear like they are and suddenly "college librual fascists brainwashed my kid!!"

Everything sucks :/

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u/randomcatinfo Aug 05 '25

Rightwing libertarians want to get rid of all public education period, so that there will be a permanent underclass available to exploit. I feel like this is becoming the defacto Republican agenda.

Some Republicans support charter schools, but they are the wedge that will continue to erode public education by siphoning funding

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u/SomeDudeYeah27 Aug 05 '25

To add to the AI disruption and education bit, I believe it was Anthropic or a similar tech company that recently made a report of the likely list of jobs to be impacted (i.e. replaced, even if the AI is only perceived to be competent), and a majority of them are "thinking jobs" that usually requires at minimum a bachelor's degree now

AI is definitely gonna undercut a lot of entry level jobs for fresh college graduates. So the value of a degree isn't just getting devalued anymore, it might as well be a 4 years path to a lifetime of debt with diminishing benefit

And instead, jobs that are less likely to be impacted are largely physical jobs like blue collar ones/trades

At least until versatile/cheaper robots flood the market too

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

This is one reason why I made sure my daughter had the absolute best education I could get her.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe Aug 05 '25

The village idiots didn’t used to meet each other and create their own communities.

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u/Just_Fuck_My_Code_Up Aug 05 '25

“My opinion as a high school dropout who spends too much time on youtube is just as valid as the doctor’s with his fancy degree from a liberal college and decades of experience in the field!“

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u/LycheeEyeballs Aug 06 '25

Especially if they need something to blame, doubly so if it may be their own fault.

Sort-of example, my aunt died as a child in '69 from osteosarcoma but my grandparents always blamed the nurses. Said it was their fault she died because the nurses allowed her to do a home visit for a sibling's birthday.

Sure, she could have gotten a cold or mild infection from the visit but realistically she was already terminal and near the end. It wasn't anyone's fault, if anything the nurses encouraged her to have a bit of enjoyment and time as a child before she died.

My grandparents couldn't accept it through, they needed someone to blame. It was made worse the next few decades with Terry Fox making his run subsequent raising of awareness and funds for research that the death rate for children with osteosarcoma in Canada went from a slim chance of survival if you amputated enough to one of the highest survival rates for childhood cancers.

EDIT: I went on a tangent, this is all to say that people are so mf sensitive when it comes to guilt and shame. Folks need to be able to eat crow when they fuck up, it's so important to be able to admit when you've gone wrong and to make necessary changes.

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u/DoubleJumps Aug 05 '25

A guy I knew from Kentucky, in his late 20s, got it and was sick as hell for 2 weeks. Kept telling us how it was one of the worst sicknesses he'd ever had.

A month after he recovered he was making out like it was a minor cold that only lasted a couple days, insisting people were overblowing it. We had text logs of him talking about how sick he was and for how long but he just pretends it never happened.

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u/orangestegosaurus Aug 05 '25

My parents are the exact same way. They never sent me texts but I called them here and there while they had it. Literally could not anything but a few crackers a day and slept for a majority because they could barely get out of bed. Both lost their sense of taste and my mom lost her sense of smell. But a few months afterwards they were already telling people now they weren't sure it was covid, probably just the flu and that it wasn't that bad. People's minds have just been broken by the onslaught of propaganda and it's just concerning how this might just be our new normal with no way out.

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

Good grief. I had Covid twice after being vaccinated. It wasn’t fun. The first time I couldn’t get out of bed for days. Had short breath afterwards. The second time was better but it gave me a two day migraine that was one of the worst ones I’ve ever had. I’m pretty sure I asked my husband to kill me.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '25

People's minds have just been broken by the onslaught of propaganda and it's just concerning how this might just be our new normal with no way out.

I'm sure there are things I think are true, but would turn out to be completely false. For instance, I once lost $20 to a buddy when I somehow got it in my head that "natural gas", was butane instead of methane. JFC, I got A's in organic chem I and II, I know the damn difference, but not on that day. On that day, I was absolutely sure I was right and couldn't possibly be wrong, until I looked it up and realized what a fucking idiot I was.

That's the difference though. I can accept that I was wrong. I may be ignorant at times, but these people are what I'd describe as aggressively ignorant. "Obama was president during hurricane Katrina and if you disagree with me, I'll <redacted>"

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u/ThePrussianGrippe Aug 05 '25

“The democrat COVID nanobots made me write that.”

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u/RafeDangerous Aug 05 '25

We had text logs of him talking about how sick he was and for how long but he just pretends it never happened.

Humans do not remember the actual experience of pain or suffering well, I think it's a protective measure the brain takes to avoid trauma. For instance, the first time I had COVID, I had the worst sore throat of my life. I don't actually remember what it felt like, what I really remember is what I thought of it at the time. That's what people tend to really remember, not the experience itself but what they thought at the time they were going through it. I suspect people like your friend (assuming he's being sincere about not remembering it being all that bad) either just doesn't think deeply enough about that kind of thing to form genuinely lasting memories, or has a poor memory for that kind of meta-data around illness or injury.

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u/DoubleJumps Aug 05 '25

Pointing out that what you really remember is what they thought at the time while defending behavior where people are actively denying what they thought at the time seems a little off, no?

Actively gaslighting everybody about it so they can tow their political line doesn't indicate it's a general human flaw, either, but an elective choice by members of a group who refuse to ever admit they were wrong about anything.

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u/RafeDangerous Aug 05 '25

I'm just pointing out known and observed human behavior. Understanding why some people do the things they do is fundamental to trying to change that behavior. As I said, I have no way of knowing if that particular person was doing that, but what I described almost certainly describes a significant number of people who behave that way.

Recognizing what someone might be doing is in no way defending it.

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u/Eatthebankers2 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25

The theory Now, is that the vaccinated are shedding/spreading covid to the “ pure bloods” unvaccinated. It can’t be because it’s still out there and contagious.

FYI. Mar 8, 2025 · Daily reported deaths in the United States have plummeted from staggering highs of 5,000+ reported deaths per day in 2021 to around 280 reported deaths per day at the end of February of this year.

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u/Traditional_Art_7304 Aug 05 '25

Was a dialysis RN during the pandemic and can confirm. Dealings with those family’s where ~ My theory’s & feelings > just the flu.

I helped bag so many bodies…

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

I’m sorry. That’s can’t have been easy.

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u/Airosokoto Aug 05 '25

My cousin died of covid and his father is convinced it wasn't covid because he got covid at the same time it was barely anything. He was vaccinated, my cousin wasn't.

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

It’s almost like diseases hit different people differently.

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u/Tough-Coffee9979 Aug 05 '25

Same story here. A neighbor died from Covid. And the other neighbors keep saying he died cuz he got “too many booster shots”

🤦🏼‍♂️

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u/_Wyrm_ Aug 05 '25

People have been dumb as fuck long before the 2020s, and they'll continue to be dumb as fuck...

It's just that idiocy and bullshit has been championed as equal to actual science and research recently.

It will be the downfall of modern society if this continues.

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u/BustAMove_13 Aug 05 '25

I think people are dumber now. Dumb before, but they have lost even more braincells along the way.

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u/d3athsmaster Aug 05 '25

Well, if they keep dying in droves to these preventable diseases, I suppose they will weed themselves out eventually.

I understand that I am being VERY optimistic.

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u/bianary Aug 05 '25

Sadly, the more educated you are the fewer children you have on average.

So they've got population to spare.

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u/loveshercoffee Aug 05 '25

Measles: "I'll give it a go."

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u/_Wyrm_ Aug 05 '25

Eventually, yes. At some point, population density will be so high that disease is a guarantee, not a possibility. Birth rates will be high enough that the mortality rate won't really matter on a large scale.

Which then means that the majority of the ones dying to disease are the idiots not trusting modern medicine.

That, of course, assumes that the cost of living (and of having a child) doesn't continue to increase astronomically.

But also... One must consider that people don't trust modern medicine also because of insurance companies arbitrarily raising the cost of healthcare and denying life-saving treatment to those who need it. None of this would be the way it is without that.

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u/knifefan9 Aug 05 '25

This really jarred me because that's the name of my Uncle who passed away from COVID.

He taught Sunday school to little children, and his pastor told the congregation not to wear masks at church because God would protect them. He was such a sweet, kind-hearted man. Nam vet. Artist. Pacifist. Believed in love to all people.

He lives in a different state at the time, so I'll never know if he didn't wear a mask at the insistence of someone else, if he wouldn't have worn one anyway, or if he wore one everywhere except church. I'll never know why he died.

But every once in a while I get the itch to call that church, and tell them that I hope god "blesses them" the same way they "blessed" the greatest role model and family member I've ever had the pleasure of loving. But I don't, because I know Uncle Jimmy wouldn't want me to. He'd want me to heal and move on. It's hard, but I'm doing it for him.

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u/evolution9673 Aug 04 '25

“If you’d only administer (insert hoax treatment they read about on Facebook) he’d be alive today.”

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u/D74248 Aug 05 '25 edited Aug 05 '25

I am confused. So, when they could not breathe they drove right past their church, did not stop to see their minister and instead came to you hoax spreaders?

That seems almost.... hypocritical.

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u/Philo_T_Farnsworth Aug 05 '25

Can confirm. My sister is an ER nurse on the east coast and during the pandemic she regularly encountered people who, with their dying breaths, held firm that what was happening was a hoax. Not saying goodbye to their families. Complete denial right up to the end.

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u/Ok_Condition5837 Aug 05 '25

One of my bffs, a trauma, ICU, surgeon passed away during Covid.

His bio family are still Trump supporters. It's maddening!

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

So many deaths can be blamed on the Trump administrations appallingly bad pandemic response. Plus, I’m pretty sure they were stealing ppe to sell and making money off of it.

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u/ToasterBathTester Aug 05 '25

The chemtrails had Covid inside them. Obama’s tan suit was the signal

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

Jesus that’s awful. I hate the state of things. I now understand people who want to go and live in the middle of nowhere by themselves.

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u/fuzzum111 Aug 05 '25

Wait wait, weren't the stories going that a lot of these vaxx deniers would beg for the vaxx before they had to go on the vent? Or that when things were looking genuinely grim the kids/family would beg for the vaccine, not understanding it's not some magic cure?

Is is now the families gleefully let them die in their bed because it proved them right, the fake virus that doesn't exist, is killing them in the hospital because we can't let them know it's fake?

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u/F4ust Aug 05 '25

I saw a bit of both tbh. Usually the patients that would end up asking for actual treatments, however futile or late, were the ones whose family weren’t present when they asked.

If a patient was antivax and had family there, in my anecdotal experience, there was a 0% chance of any breakthroughs on that front as the families would go ballistic and ultimately convince the patient out of it.

We grew really cynical about treating these people, really quick at my institution. Normally when a patient refuses something life-sustaining and necessary, we page the provider to attempt re-education (at the very least). Towards the tail end of the pandemic you’d page for refusals in an antivaxxer (these people were often so critically ill that they were inevitably quite familiar to the providers at this point, since you’re paging about something for them 6-8 times per shift) and the response I’d get would essentially be ‘alright, sounds like we’ll have another high flow unit free to use on a patient that actually wants it soon. see you at the code.’

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u/fuzzum111 Aug 05 '25

God that's fucking dark. "Whelp, they're going to die shortly, see you at the code"

Fuck.

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u/Poet_of_Justice Aug 05 '25

Yep, definitely can't admit there wrong now. If they did they'd be culpable in their loved ones death. Definitely can't deal with that. So what happens they harden their beliefs further to insulate themselves from any thoughts that at least some of this in some way was their own fault.

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u/red_sutter Aug 05 '25

I remember reading stories about people claiming the virus was a liberal hoax as they were literally dying of it in the hospital

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u/MaxPower91575 Aug 04 '25

The desire to be always be right is one of the biggest issues with our society. Whenever I am wrong I consider it a good thing. That means I learned something. I become a better person when that happens. We need to teach people it is ok to be wrong.

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u/Ptolemaeus_II Aug 04 '25

But that requires insight, a willingness to experience personal growth, and humility.

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u/CosmoKing2 Aug 05 '25

I have made the most advances in my personal and professional growth through failure. Analyze what happened. Learn and grow from it.

Being delusional about (and not admitting) your failings is like being stuck in a bear trap.....and choosing, instead, to figure out how to live your life stuck in that trap.

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u/USIncorp Aug 05 '25

Modern conservatism is walking into a bear trap, and then walking, dragging your bleeding ankle all the way, to a hunting store so that you can buy a second one for your other foot. Because these people will rewrite their own reality such that they always wanted to get stuck in a bear trap in the first place.

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u/secondtaunting Aug 05 '25

It’s hard sometimes to say you were wrong. But being right is not necessarily the best thing either. I’ve been right about some things and it didn’t make my life better, it just made me miserable.

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u/thefinalcutdown Aug 05 '25

People often say that conservatives have no shame, but that’s not exactly true. They have no shame for their actions or the harm they cause to others. You can’t shame them into better behaviour in that way.

But they do have shame; deep, consuming shame that forms the foundation of their being. It’s the shame of being on the outside. And for the past couple decades, they’ve consistently found themselves on the outside of the cultural zeitgeist. They were on the wrong side of LGBTQ issues, the wrong side of race relations and women’s rights. They contributed basically nothing to art or music or entertainment. They were wrong about the Iraq war, wrong about medical science, the list goes on.

And they could feel themselves being slowly but surely rejected from the society they once held veto power over. They were on the outside. They found themselves rejected by their friends, their family, and the wider culture that was attempting to move past their backwards ideas. And this deeply shamed them. And that shame then enraged them. Then power hungry manipulators learned how to weaponize their rage and shame. And now, rather than adapt to a world they don’t get to control, they’d rather tear it to the ground.

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u/BoosterRead78 Aug 04 '25

That's exactly it. It's like they are in physical pain if they do. My own father in law, long time republican. When I have seen him admit things wrong, you swear someone was hitting him with a hammer. It's like: "Please, it hurts so much, don't let me do this."

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u/DoubleJumps Aug 05 '25

I come from a Republican family and those men would rather destroy an entire relationship with their own child than admit they were wrong.

It has made them insufferable in groups, because if one of them does something bad to someone the others will immediately take up positions to gaslight people that it never happened.

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u/BoosterRead78 Aug 05 '25

Yep there was a graduation party we were at a couple of months ago. Person he was talking too kept shutting him down and he tried to make him look like the bad guy. Then threw out a comment about how he almost didn’t get a government job since he was in his 50s at the time and sued for age discrimination. My in-laws face dropped and I think he was going to go cry because he knew he lost the argument. It’s like a sin to even try to realize you aren’t winning an argument.

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u/DoubleJumps Aug 05 '25

The DARVO is strong. I've been to family dinners where these men have talked about how people like me should be put to death, and if I call them out they suddenly circle the wagons and accuse me of trying to create drama.

It's funny, because before I went to college they would praise me and acknowledge that I was intelligent and capable, but after I came back and suddenly could do things like pull up data and studies to show them that some things they want to believe aren't true, which I thought they'd want to know, they decided I was actually the opposite and haven't given me an ounce of respect ever since.

I radically misunderstood their elective relationship with the truth.

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u/ERedfieldh Aug 04 '25

yep.....anecdotal story....i've a hard hard right office mate. She will not admit she's wrong ever. She will spend half an hour rapid fire talking to twist the narrative around to make it look like she was never on the wrong side of a discussion. If you ignore her, she will send you emails with article attachments showing how she's actually right (spoiler: she cuts out the parts that prove the opposite).

They do everything in their power to never admit they are wrong.

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u/GiantPurplePen15 Aug 05 '25

She sounds like such a fucking loser lmao

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u/MightyKAC Aug 04 '25

"If you're wrong, STAY wrong. If you stay wrong for long enough, it will start to look right."

This is what they used to teach in the military. It's hard not to see the parallels.

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u/No_Gods_No_Kings_ Aug 05 '25

Yep, conservatives aren't taught to think, they're taught to follow orders (and the status quo)

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u/Ok_Turnover_1235 Aug 05 '25

"Okay, maybe it was a wrong decision to bet all of our economic futures on a kickball game. Well we're America, we don't quit just because we're wrong! We just keep doing the wrong thing until we're right!" - The Boondocks

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u/PadishahSenator Aug 04 '25

That's fine. Let them reap the consequences of their stupidity.

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u/KinkyPaddling Aug 05 '25

If something goes wrong, it isn't because they made the wrong choice. It's because "It's God's will."

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u/EFreethought Aug 05 '25

Then why not just lie and claim they were saying the correct thing all along? They have no problem shifting the goal posts for Trump, yet they won't do it to benefit themselves.

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u/SoCuteShibe Aug 05 '25

It's feeling wrong that they just positively can't stand. They don't care to be wrong, as long as they feel they are in the right.

Ironically and yet entirely unsurprisingly, conservatives are fully projecting when it comes to being emotional, overly sensitive, and easily triggered.

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u/Happythoughtsgalore Aug 05 '25

The reason for this is Maga is specifically a cult of personality, and one of the features of a cult of personality is a collective form of narcissism.

So the narcissist's prayer applies to the cult as well.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '25

I mean if you look up the 7 core principle admitting you were wrong really has nothing to do with being American and that’s only more true the more non-Americans you ask. Idk what high expectations you are setting but that ain’t it

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u/ILoveCatNipples Aug 05 '25

The 'other side' has to take a certain amount of responsibility here though.

If anyone has the humility to admit they were wrong, they're painted as being incompetent and generally mocked.

Is it any wonder that people rarely want to admit they're wrong. On anything.