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What's your definition of anti-vaxx? To me, anti-vaxx means someone who is positively against vaccines, as in "vaccines give people X, so people shouldn't get

What's your definition of anti-vaxx? To me, anti-vaxx means someone who is positively against vaccines, as in "vaccines give people X, so people shouldn't get vaccines", where X is some undesirable condition, autism, thrombosis, etc. Being skeptic, but not against vaccines is not anti-vaxx. If someone says "I don't know if vaccines are safe", I don't think that's an anti-vaxx stance. In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have, and not getting a vaccine is also a reasonable decision if you're not sure about the safety. I personally don't know if COVID vaccines are safe, and I still got it, but I understand that I'm taking a risk by getting the vaccine without understanding it, because I figured the risk of not taking it is higher, but my estimation was relatively uninformed.

danans 5y ago
> In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have Then they should also avoid all medications, since similarly to vaccines they probably don't have a deep enough understanding of biochemistry and pharmaceuticals. In the end, trust in medical interventions is based on trust in the institutions that produce them, the individuals that administer them, and to some degree the public statistics around their efficacy, because it's not really possible to know exactly what the outcome will be in your individual case.
- dorgo 5y ago
  > Then they should also avoid all medications oh, but they do avoid medications. At least I do and am lucky to be able to. ( I'll make an exception for this vacine though ) > trust Trust is a desparate last resort measure. Avoid it if you can.
fossuser 5y ago
> "If someone says "I don't know if vaccines are safe", I don't think that's an anti-vaxx stance." Eh - after hundreds of millions of doses I think it's functionally equivalent most of the time. It's not a huge surprise to me - I've worked with otherwise intelligent people and then find out they're deeply religious or even creationist. Sure strictly speaking "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is different - but in practice there's not some deep level of analysis going on, people that don't like vaccines are just falling into cognitive bias and using motivated reasoning to dress it up. People are wildly inconsistent and many people believe insane things. Critical thinking and accuracy are not the strength of most of general humanity. Even those in favor of the vaccines didn't arrive there from reading about them for the most part - they just picked a tribe. Thankfully there's a small percentage of humanity that's pretty good at accuracy and they're working to save the rest of us.
alisonkisk 5y ago
There are millions of things that each of us is not expert enough to judge safety of. Why single out this vaccine, while ignoring everything else, including the coronavirus?
jussij 5y ago
We know flying is 'not safe' yet we still fly, we know cars are 'not safe' we still drive. In raw numbers, the vaccines are many times safer than flying or driving, yet there still remains this irrational response to the vaccine. In reality, people scared of the vaccine should really be more concerned about the many other things found in their day to day life that have a better chance of killing them.
sellyme 5y ago
> In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have That's not really a stance, that's just a statement of fact. The problem comes when people assume that this statement of fact about their knowledge imparts any information about vaccine safety. I'm broadly of the opinion that someone who "do[es]n't know about biology or virology" should: A) keep their opinions on biology and virology to themselves, and B) listen to the people who do know what they're talking about when their decisions will affect others. It's all fine and well to make decisions based exclusively on your incomplete personal understanding when it only affects you, but that's not the case with vaccination. > and not getting a vaccine is also a reasonable decision if you're not sure about the safety. Imagine you're standing at the edge of a river. There's a bridge to cross the river, but it looks a little rickety and you're not too sure it's safe. Alternatively, you could try to swim across the river. Now imagine that you've just seen 3.75 million people get eaten by sharks trying to swim across the river, and there's a team of architects who have inspected the bridge telling you that it's safe to cross. I would not describe anyone who tries to swim as behaving reasonably. NB: throughout this comment "you" is used as a generic third-party pronoun to describe any individual, not you personally.
- dorgo 5y ago
  Nice methaphor. 3.75 million is meaningless. I'd rather compare the 3% eaten by sharks to 0.0...1?% slipped and died on the bridge. And I'd rather trust these statistics than the architects (assuming I can trust the ones who collected the data)

danans 5y ago

> In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have Then they should also avoid all medications, since similarly to vaccines they probably don't have a deep enough understanding of biochemistry and pharmaceuticals. In the end, trust in medical interventions is based on trust in the institutions that produce them, the individuals that administer them, and to some degree the public statistics around their efficacy, because it's not really possible to know exactly what the outcome will be in your individual case.

dorgo 5y ago
> Then they should also avoid all medications oh, but they do avoid medications. At least I do and am lucky to be able to. ( I'll make an exception for this vacine though ) > trust Trust is a desparate last resort measure. Avoid it if you can.

fossuser 5y ago

> "If someone says "I don't know if vaccines are safe", I don't think that's an anti-vaxx stance." Eh - after hundreds of millions of doses I think it's functionally equivalent most of the time. It's not a huge surprise to me - I've worked with otherwise intelligent people and then find out they're deeply religious or even creationist. Sure strictly speaking "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is different - but in practice there's not some deep level of analysis going on, people that don't like vaccines are just falling into cognitive bias and using motivated reasoning to dress it up. People are wildly inconsistent and many people believe insane things. Critical thinking and accuracy are not the strength of most of general humanity. Even those in favor of the vaccines didn't arrive there from reading about them for the most part - they just picked a tribe. Thankfully there's a small percentage of humanity that's pretty good at accuracy and they're working to save the rest of us.

alisonkisk 5y ago

There are millions of things that each of us is not expert enough to judge safety of. Why single out this vaccine, while ignoring everything else, including the coronavirus?

jussij 5y ago

We know flying is 'not safe' yet we still fly, we know cars are 'not safe' we still drive. In raw numbers, the vaccines are many times safer than flying or driving, yet there still remains this irrational response to the vaccine. In reality, people scared of the vaccine should really be more concerned about the many other things found in their day to day life that have a better chance of killing them.

sellyme 5y ago

> In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have That's not really a stance, that's just a statement of fact. The problem comes when people assume that this statement of fact about their knowledge imparts any information about vaccine safety. I'm broadly of the opinion that someone who "do[es]n't know about biology or virology" should: A) keep their opinions on biology and virology to themselves, and B) listen to the people who do know what they're talking about when their decisions will affect others. It's all fine and well to make decisions based exclusively on your incomplete personal understanding when it only affects you, but that's not the case with vaccination. > and not getting a vaccine is also a reasonable decision if you're not sure about the safety. Imagine you're standing at the edge of a river. There's a bridge to cross the river, but it looks a little rickety and you're not too sure it's safe. Alternatively, you could try to swim across the river. Now imagine that you've just seen 3.75 million people get eaten by sharks trying to swim across the river, and there's a team of architects who have inspected the bridge telling you that it's safe to cross. I would not describe anyone who tries to swim as behaving reasonably. NB: throughout this comment "you" is used as a generic third-party pronoun to describe any individual, not you personally.

dorgo 5y ago
Nice methaphor. 3.75 million is meaningless. I'd rather compare the 3% eaten by sharks to 0.0...1?% slipped and died on the bridge. And I'd rather trust these statistics than the architects (assuming I can trust the ones who collected the data)