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"If someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they're worried about it — you know, that's a difficult thing to say from my perspective

"If someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they're worried about it — you know, that's a difficult thing to say from my perspective that you shouldn't be allowed to express at all." Where I'm from, we call that misinformation.

igorstellar 6y ago
Someone’s opinion is misinformation?
- teslademigod1 6y ago
  When it's an all-caps, MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE I mean, that's misinformation. When you know that no medical literature supports the idea that autism is caused by vaccine, and you still spread it...
  - ghostpepper 6y ago
    If the post literally reads "MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE" then it's not that hard to refute with scientific literate. What is much harder to police with a coherent set of guidelines is a facebook page where thousands of moms have each written "I got my child vaccinated and then they developed autism". When a new mom, with little sleep and little background in biological science, who is still on the fence about vaccines, see those thousand posts all together it paints a compelling narrative without ever really having contradicted science.
  - igorstellar 6y ago
    I mean, don’t they have a right to say if not “A because of B” but “B happened right after A”, which could be an observation? At what point we should do thought police? I do agree it sounds not very well educated but that could be a good start to get this education from someone in the comments. If it’s only echo chamber of like-minded people, I doubt thought policing helps in this situation as well and nothing will change their minds at this moment. If anything, blocking people’s posts strengthen conspiracy theorist ideas about invisible forces controlling information.
tarr11 6y ago
The front page of the NYT today is about AstraZeneca halting their trials because of a patient’s adverse reaction to the vaccine. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronaviru...
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Pausing, and that's why we have trials.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue. The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms. > “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. under former President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.” If anything, this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    > this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine. Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed. A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      > A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety. So is one that issues false alarms every 5 minutes, which is generally a better analogy for anti-vaxxers.
afarrell 6y ago
This is a _much_ harder epistemology problem than you are giving it credit for. Do you know of a way to ensure that a newly-developed effective vaccine has a non-figuratively literally 0% chance that it could cause anti-dependent enhancement or other harms. If so, I'd love to also hear your technique for writing software with absolutely 0 bugs. Otherwise, we are dependent on trusting institutions to 1. Gather data about the statistical prevalence of harms. 2. Analyse that data and confer with their peers. 3. Broadcast judicious conclusions to the general population.
kryogen1c 6y ago
then you are misinformed. vaccines cause harm all the time. its why the us has a mechanism to settle damages from vaccines. that doesn't mean vaccines arent one of the cheapest, effective, and most life-saving instruments in human history, but it also doesnt mean you get to ignore the part of reality where vaccines can and do have a negative impact.

igorstellar 6y ago

Someone’s opinion is misinformation?

teslademigod1 6y ago
When it's an all-caps, MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE I mean, that's misinformation. When you know that no medical literature supports the idea that autism is caused by vaccine, and you still spread it...
- ghostpepper 6y ago
  If the post literally reads "MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE" then it's not that hard to refute with scientific literate. What is much harder to police with a coherent set of guidelines is a facebook page where thousands of moms have each written "I got my child vaccinated and then they developed autism". When a new mom, with little sleep and little background in biological science, who is still on the fence about vaccines, see those thousand posts all together it paints a compelling narrative without ever really having contradicted science.
- igorstellar 6y ago
  I mean, don’t they have a right to say if not “A because of B” but “B happened right after A”, which could be an observation? At what point we should do thought police? I do agree it sounds not very well educated but that could be a good start to get this education from someone in the comments. If it’s only echo chamber of like-minded people, I doubt thought policing helps in this situation as well and nothing will change their minds at this moment. If anything, blocking people’s posts strengthen conspiracy theorist ideas about invisible forces controlling information.

tarr11 6y ago

The front page of the NYT today is about AstraZeneca halting their trials because of a patient’s adverse reaction to the vaccine. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronaviru...

ceejayoz 6y ago
Pausing, and that's why we have trials.
ForHackernews 6y ago
You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue. The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms. > “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. under former President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.” If anything, this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.
- afarrell 6y ago
  > this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine. Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed. A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety. So is one that issues false alarms every 5 minutes, which is generally a better analogy for anti-vaxxers.

afarrell 6y ago

This is a _much_ harder epistemology problem than you are giving it credit for. Do you know of a way to ensure that a newly-developed effective vaccine has a non-figuratively literally 0% chance that it could cause anti-dependent enhancement or other harms. If so, I'd love to also hear your technique for writing software with absolutely 0 bugs. Otherwise, we are dependent on trusting institutions to 1. Gather data about the statistical prevalence of harms. 2. Analyse that data and confer with their peers. 3. Broadcast judicious conclusions to the general population.

kryogen1c 6y ago

then you are misinformed. vaccines cause harm all the time. its why the us has a mechanism to settle damages from vaccines. that doesn't mean vaccines arent one of the cheapest, effective, and most life-saving instruments in human history, but it also doesnt mean you get to ignore the part of reality where vaccines can and do have a negative impact.