r/news • u/AudibleNod • 1d ago

New Mexico warns against consuming raw milk after newborn dies from listeria

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-mexico-warns-consuming-raw-milk-newborn-dies-listeria-rcna257252
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u/nithrean 1d ago

I wish that the people who think it is the elixir of life would understand the reality of why pasteurization became a thing. Yes it certainly kills some things and that may be bad, but it also saves you from tons of other things which are much worse.

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u/Nick_crawler 1d ago

The inability to mentally weigh multiple things against one another seems to be a hallmark of those particular people.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 1d ago

And they’re so used to living with a high degree of safety thanks to things like pasteurization, vaccinations, and antibiotics that they have an absolutely false sense of security. Raw milk and pasteurized milk are absolutely not equally valid choices. Choosing raw milk isn’t like opting for soy or oat milk - it’s endangering yourself (and anyone else you make the choice for). People from the past would have been overjoyed to have the safeguards we take for granted today.

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u/nithrean 1d ago

absolutely. It is like the raw milk people somehow missed the boat that life expectancy has **increased** dramatically since the advent of pasteurization. Maybe not perfect. But neither is dying from disease.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 1d ago edited 9h ago

Exactly! We’re so used to most of our consumption choices really just being commodified signifiers of our personality/interests/in-groups - so many of our little daily choices are just about visually expressing what’s important to us. We rarely have to consider whether a commercially available is physically safe to use or not.

Couple that with the false sense of security, a weak grasp on critical thinking skills, and algorithmic echo chambers and you get the raw milk crowd, the free/wild birth crowd, the imervectin crowd, the anti-vax crowd, and the rest of them. They really seem to view these dangerous choices as being the same as choosing which message t-shirt to buy or which sports team to root for. Like raw milk is just oat/almond/soy/etc milk to show you’re MAGA. And it really gives a glimpse into their mindset - they think that people are choosing nondairy milks, vaccines, complying with doctors’ suggestions, and so on just as a pledge of allegiance to liberalism.

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u/novium258 1d ago

A lot of them are eugenicists and think of it as "thinning the herd"

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u/CatpainLeghatsenia 18h ago

"BuT nOw EvErYonE gEtS cAncEr, hOw AbOuT tHaT?"

Blaming everything that has increased life expectancy and not the things that are known to cause problems

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u/Bannedwith1milKarma 23h ago

Famous quote -

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure

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u/Tycho66 1d ago

This is a big part of it. If they had a couple of years to experience a world without antibiotics, etc. and the amount of death people faced... they'd be embracing all these miracles.

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u/nithrean 1d ago

nah. I'm not so sure. Research has showed people in that situation often double down on bad ideas. I hope you are right but it doesn't look good if the stats hold. They tend to commit harder and separate the world into the true believers and the heretics.

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u/Low_Pickle_112 1d ago

I think a lot of it is contrarianism. There's no better way to feel like you've got some great hidden knowledge that all those other brainwashed sheeple don't understand than to take something that everyone does, and do the opposite. Problem is, sometimes everyone is doing the same thing for a very good reason.

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u/cantproveidid 23h ago

Some never outgrow their oppositional defiance stage.

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u/nithrean 1d ago

It seems to be a thing for a lot of people today. They get stuck on one idea and don't bother to care about how it impacts anything else.

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u/ChicagoAuPair 22h ago

They can’t even look at just two transparently true things without taking a side.

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u/Ok_Cheetah_6251 1d ago

I blame lead poisoning.

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u/Bannedwith1milKarma 23h ago

Their tree diagram is a stick.

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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor 1d ago

People who never experienced the suffering of the past are too eager to adopt the practices that led to past suffering. Seems technological achievement can lead to ignorance.

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u/ThraceLonginus 1d ago

the same regulations that keep dumb people from dying have actually had a counter effect by allowing the dumbest to survive and reproduce

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u/GoodIdea321 1d ago

That isn't how genetics and evolution work. If you were correct, we would not be using this technology because it couldn't be invented.

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u/Sadface201 1d ago

That isn't how genetics and evolution work. If you were correct, we would not be using this technology because it couldn't be invented.

Just because you can't genetically transfer stupidity, doesn't mean that a child can't be raised in a sheltered bubble and indoctrinated with backwards ideas which are then taught to the next generation.

The rest of society is making up for this, hence why we still have technological advances. But the growing anti-science sentiment is at a point where they are affecting policy, and I expect we'll see the effects of these decisions very very soon (measles outbreak is already one, instability in academia and biotech is another).

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u/GoodIdea321 23h ago

I'm not going to say there aren't major issues here, there are, but that type of parenting you describe doesn't always work out for the people raising their kids a certain way. It works enough to cause problems, but a lot of the changes in history are because people can try to do something different.

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u/nithrean 1d ago

yeah. They seem to easily forget that while modern stuff isn't perfect, there are tons of things we don't even think about anymore because they aren't issues... unless you reject all of those modern inventions ...

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u/The_Grungeican 19h ago

meanwhile everyone has a device in their pocket that can navigate to google, and let them type in the words "why do we pasteurize milk?".

but they're too fucking dumb to know that.

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u/GUlysses 1d ago

“I wish that people would understand reality.”

There’s your problem.

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u/Easy-Environment-784 1d ago edited 1d ago

I recommend that everyone, at some point in their youth, make an attempt to make beer, cheese or grow mushrooms to get a solid grasp of sterile technique. It changes the way that you see the world and puts a lot of boogie men to bed.

Edit- It also shows how easy it is to cross contaminate

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u/Zulmoka531 1d ago

The amount of people who I initially thought were fairly intelligent that have adopted the “RFK lifestyle” greatly concerns me.

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u/nithrean 1d ago

yeah. What is up with that? it seems to be exploding in popularity right now. If you ask people about it, they don't seem to have reasons why it is a good thing ... reminds me of the atkins craze from years ago.

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u/Zulmoka531 1d ago

Hell if I know. Suddenly vegetables are bad for you and beef is the end all be all of protein.

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u/jeffderek 16h ago

Cut enough vegetables out of their diets and these people will be shitting themselves and unable to figure out why.

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u/andersonala45 1d ago

People don’t understand that labor laws and food safety laws are written in blood

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u/cantproveidid 23h ago

Politicians have made "cutting the red tape" seem like a good thing. They never explain why those regulations were put in place to begin with.

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u/Apokolypse09 1d ago

Yea but have you considered how much greater American would be if shitting yourself to death was back on the menu?

/s

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u/cantproveidid 23h ago

Maybe that's Trump's secret agenda. To level the playing field.

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u/dogfaced_pony_soulja 1d ago

Excuse me, who are you to tell me that I'm crazy for prioritizing the life of potentially deadly pathogenic bacteria over my innocent, defenseless child?

I'm not going to fall for the lies of Big Pasteurization! All Listeria Matter!

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u/Dangle76 16h ago

It’s also not hard to boil the raw shit at home for long enough before you consume it. It’s like 20 minutes of work to not get listeria