San Francisco once tried to ban Happy Meals and golf. Their residents and political leaders overwhelmingly believed vaccines were causing autism.

All of those were backed by science, they said. They loved science. Science was on their side.

Reality was quite different. Instead of accepting science, they were picking a lone study or fringe finding and embracing it. No differently than how people who believe in astrology or that a vaccine does not create "natural" immunity only read things that support their confirmation bias.

While claiming they loved science, they opposed it. San Francisco, Los Angeles and the west coast were the top 3 US states in the anti-vaccine movement, and California alone had more "philosophical" exemptions than the rest of the US combined, according to the CDC. When I noted that inconvenient truth, during the heyday of Party Of Science self-congratulations for their victory against The Republican War On Science after President Obama was elected, I was met with academics who claimed that despite it coming from the CDC, it was just not so. On surveys, they noted, there was little distinction between political parties when it came to being anti-vaccine.(1)

San Francisco may feel like they are being more cautious and compassionate by telling residents to get a fourth COVID-19 shot. They believe in the vaccine, right? Actually, that is evidence they still don't trust science at all.(2)

Like Neil Young pretending he is making some stand for science by leaving Spotify over Joe Rogan, San Francisco residents overwhelmingly act in ways that reflect the political winds of change but their beliefs about science have not shifted. Young isn't going to do a pro-science album the way he did an anti-science one in 2015 and San Francisco saying they are encouraging people to take a fourth shot is evidence they don't trust the scientific method at all.

Do they take 16 aspirin for a headache? Why not, if 2 may not work? Spread 20 lbs. of the organic certified pesticide copper sulfate because it must be twice as good as 10? None of it makes any sense. 

Like Frisco when it comes to science. 

NOTES:

(1) But surveys are scientifically meaningless. All that matters when it comes to public health is behavior. As a population level exploratory 'maybe this is interesting' precursor to truth, okay, but on surveys Donald Trump was losing the 2016 election easily, because surveys are not votes, and mapping survey results to disease groups, like International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences do to try to claim any chemical or product they choose to target can be linked to cancer, is only convincing to other sketchy epidemiologists. No scientists accept it without real studies the same way FDA won't approve a drug based on a computer model. 

(2) San Francisco people don't even believe they are anti-science, they instead believe they are anti-corporate. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, they oppose eeeeeevil corporations. To the rest of the world, this is a head fake. Since half of US basic research and all of applied science is done by corporations, how can you be pro-science but opposed to 70 percent of it? You only trust science done by a small university group working with roundworms or fruit flies? Though 100 percent of safety studies are required by law to be done by corporations to get approved, people who deny science say 'the studies were funded by corporations' as a reason to undermine evidence.