I think we all kind of knew this -- if not from anecdotal evidence that don't pass the sniff test, or from triangulating among insane wokies using words like "neurodivergent" among other obscenities.

For years, public health debate has often fixated on a supposed rise in the prevalence of autism. Various culprits have been named, including the well-investigated but unsubstantiated claim that vaccines cause autism. More recently, additional risk factors have been proposed — many by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — including maternal Tylenol use, food dyes and additives, chemical manufacturing agents and other possible stressors affecting perinatal development

Everything causes autisim, and there's an autistic epidemic... but they're also simultaneously perfectly healthy, regular human lives that were with us always. So all is fine and dandy.

"there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist.""there is a bigger problem with the autism epidemic: It doesn’t exist."

diagnoses have risen like crazy... but their criteria have been loosened over time, putting medical names on perfectly regular human behavior and oddities:

a large-scale study published in December, drawing on CDC data from 24,669 8-year-olds across the country, found that this dramatic rise may be entirely driven by children with mild or no significant functional impairment. Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 464 percent increase in diagnoses among children with no significant functional impairment whatsoever.

Here's the cruel, cynical take:

some advocates support the narrative that autism is on the rise, because an ever-expanding “spectrum” that produces more diagnoses draws more attention and research funding — even if children’s underlying psychology remains unchanged.

I.e., we're all "autistic" now:

as Abigail Shrier argues in her 2024 book “Bad Therapy,” the more pressing concern may be a cultural and institutional drift toward overdiagnosis across child psychiatry. Like the rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and depression diagnoses among young people, the surge in autism labels may reflect shifting norms, looser diagnostic criteria and excess therapeutic attention directed toward ordinary struggles

"The result is a misallocation of scientific effort and a blurring of the real signals of environmental harm.""The result is a misallocation of scientific effort and a blurring of the real signals of environmental harm."

My two sats of what's going on here, and the conundrum you're intellectually stuck with is:

• the wokies built their worldview on everyone being different and everyone having a specific condition that, like, you have to respect!, so ultimately found themselves unable to call bullshit on the next minority/oppression thing (thus: you went from "don't castrate or imprison gays" to "what is a woman" and "neurodivergence" and "MAPs"
• the right/MAHA peeps say everything from vaccines to Tylenol causes autism, and so that's why we have an observed rise in diagnoses
• the left/regressives, instinctly knowing that the right/MAHAs are clowns and must be opposed every step of the way, doubles down or their initial error and says indignantly no, the MAHAs are clowns, of course there is an epidemic of autism.

...to which the MAHA clowns say, "OK, what caused it then?"

OOH NOOOTHING IT WAS ALWAYS THERE; YOU'RE JUST A BIGOT.

The obvious key to solve all of this is to realize the simple truth that there is no spoonThe obvious key to solve all of this is to realize the simple truth that there is no spoon

archive:
https://archive.md/g2eMe