35 ms·

As a virologist I’m shocked my work has been hijacked by anti-vaxxers

82 points by ystad 5y ago

warning26 5y ago
It's interesting how almost all of the anti-vax propaganda has some weird kernel of truth which is then completely interpreted incorrectly or otherwise taken out of context. I suppose that makes it easier to rope people in.
- belltaco 5y ago
  It depends, really. Sometimes it's just completely made up but ends up getting viral.
  - warning26 5y ago
    One particularly interesting one I found was an oft-repeated story about Australia "forcing kids to get the vaccine without their parents present". This claim is repeated in almost every anti-vax comment section -- is it based on anything? The answer is, there's a program where parents can sign a permission slip for kids at school to get the vaccine. So, it's taking a kernel of truth "kids are getting the vaccine without their parents present", adding a bit of completely false info (the "forcing" part), and then repackaging it into a highly repostable nugget of scary misinformation.
    - hammock 5y ago
      >One particularly interesting one I found was an oft-repeated story about Australia "forcing kids to get the vaccine without their parents present". This claim is repeated in almost every anti-vax comment section -- is it based on anything? Yes, it is. Australia did a jab campaign inviting 24K children inside a stadium, and not permitting parents to enter with their child. https://twitter.com/unhealthytruth/status/1427396086977777668?t=UwMts3h-FdywgpTnoPkrYw&s=19 https://twitter.com/unhealthytruth/status/142739608697777766...
      - cygx 5y ago
        Specifically, students in their final year of high school, ahead of end-of-school exams. It was an entirely voluntary operation you had to sign up for... https://apnews.com/article/health-australia-coronavirus-pandemic-ap-fact-check-ba06a8878646c33fb1ff7635a0050b7a https://apnews.com/article/health-australia-coronavirus-pand...
        warning26 5y ago
        I appreciate how that person evidently just...stopped reading my comment halfway through to repeat the exact same piece of misinformation. Like clockwork!
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        I appreciate how they answered your question and everything they said in their post was factually correct. >Yes, it is. Australia did a jab campaign inviting 24K children inside a stadium, and not permitting parents to enter with their child This is what the misinformation story was based on, the gov invited 24k children inside, it did not allow parents.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  It lets them "research" it, see that the kernel is true, and then extrapolate from there.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  All the best lies have a kernel of truth. This is not remotely unique to antivax.
- nonomaybeyes 5y ago
  How should I interpret for example the data from Israel? Highly vaccinated country with both cases and deaths peaking: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    Cases are mostly irrelevant, death peak is lower than previous deak peaks
    - hammock 5y ago
      >Cases are mostly irrelevant Tell that to Australia?
      - anoonmoose 5y ago
        Sure: Australia, stop focusing on cases and pay attention to hospitalization and death rates. Idk what your comment was meant to convey.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    You should interpret it in the context of other countries.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    The data out of Israel plainly shows that vaccinated people have significantly better outcomes: They are much less likely to get seriously ill and die. Stop it.
  - CarelessExpert 5y ago
    > How should I interpret for example the data from Israel? By reading the following analysis and familiarizing yourself with Simpson's paradox: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... You're spreading misinformation. Stop it.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  That is because in real science it often turns out there are multiple sides to a story and more than one has compelling evidence. But with respect to corona it’s presented as if ‘science’, as represented by one blessed scientist or group, is the universal and incontrovertible truth and everything else is ridiculous idiocy. Look at the messaging surrounding Ivermectin. It is medication that has been prescribed to humans for decades. But it’s also prescribed to horses. Now someone has done some study that appears to show it works against corona and people start trying it on themselves. What’s the answer? Haha those idiots taking that horse dewormer! Which of course is nonsense. Is it smart to take medication for a purpose for which it is not known (whatever that means) to work? Debatable. Is it lunacy to try medication that’s not dangerous for a potentially lethal disease? You could always try praying, I guess.
  - tynpeddler 5y ago
    The thinking in this comment is incredibly muddled. Scientists and doctors have not concluded that ivermectin is effective. Some studies have claimed efficacy, most have not. The dosages of ivermectin claimed to be effective against covid is much higher than the dosage that's safe for humans. Horse dewormer is not the same as Ivermectin. It contains ivermectin, at a dosage higher than what's safe for humans, and it also contains other compounds that have not be judged safe for humans. Why trust the muddled science on ivermectin, and ignore the more conclusive science on vaccines? If the scientific process is good enough to discover ivermectin, why isn't it good enough to discover good vaccines?
    - Sammi 5y ago
      Has the high dosage been tested in humans? Is it just unknown whether it is safe, or is it proven that it is unsafe?
pstuart 5y ago
Any sort of compassion I have for those who are nervous about getting injected with medicine they don't understand is overwhelmed by disgust at the lying and magical thinking that surrounds that. Vaccines are not perfect. They are not guaranteed 100% safe. But they're the best thing we've got for dealing with epidemics.
- warning26 5y ago
  Absolutely; I suspect it all comes back to cognitive dissonance. "I am a smart and reasonable person" + "I'm afraid to get injected with a needle" metamorphoses into "clearly, my fear of getting injected is because I am so much smarter than everyone else", leading them to latch onto conspiracy theories as a coping mechanism to make them not only feel in control, but also make them feel like they're smarter than the average bear.
- pattrn 5y ago
  The most common concern I hear among younger people is that they are worried that the vaccine may cause infertility. After the infertility issue with the HPV vaccine, which took many years to figure out, their trust in new vaccines has decreased substantially. Would you describe that line of reasoning as "lying" or as "magical thinking"? Edit: My apologies for repeating what I've been hearing for the past few months from a small group of friends. I haven't done the research into HPV vaccines, so it turns out that it may fall into the category of "magical thinking".
  - rejectedandsad 5y ago
    Absolutely I would because infertility is completely unrelated to the operational mechanism of the vaccine
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    > After the infertility issue with the HPV vaccine, which took many years to figure out ... Wait, which issue? There is no such issue recognized by mainstream medical authorities.
belltaco 5y ago
>In another, I’m introduced as the head of the “UK bioweapons programme”, being caught admitting that the Covid vaccine could somehow destroy your immune system. Opinions are undoubtedly protected by free speech(both the concept and the laws), but should misinformation like this be protected by free speech laws as well? Or can we carve out a narrow exception for just blatantly lying and writing fake news, like we already do in libel laws and in cases of phishing and fraud? It feels like whenever this comes people seems to confuse opinions vs misinformation, whether intentionally or not, which serves their point. I wrote about this a few days ago about how Reddit Inc. did that recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426181 Why can't we separate the two, both in discussions and in laws?
- hammock 5y ago
  >but should misinformation like this be protected by free speech laws as well? Ask Copernicus or Galileo?
  - belltaco 5y ago
    The court system has come a long way since then, and does not usually enforce religious doctrine. If the next Copernicus or Galileo among the people writing fake news e.g. [1], [2], [3] presents evidence for their assertions being plausible, and the prosecution fails to prove their assertion was impossible then I doubt a judge would against them. That's why I said narrowly written, to get the worst, repetitive and most obvious examples to stop, not cast a wide net. E.g. [3] [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_godfather_of_fake_news https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_godfather_of... [2] https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ [3] https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/verify-was-clinton-foundation-cargo-ship-raided-at-port-of-baltimore/65-439392715 https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/verify-was-clinton-...
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Well, they had reproducible scientific tests to provide their theories didn’t they? Seems like a slam dunk in todays world that they would be taken seriously. At least by the majority of rational people. Though I get the point you were trying to make, the fact that you gave two scientists as examples is deliciously ironic.
pattrn 5y ago
It's a shame that the mainstream has adopted the term "anti-vaxxers" to describe people who don't want to get a COVID vaccine. Many of my friends and colleagues have concerns about mRNA vaccines, but they have no issue with any other standard vaccinations. Despite this, they get labeled as "anti-vaxxers." This makes them defensive about being insulted, thereby reinforcing their existing opinions. It's a completely counter-productive cycle that may actually increase COVID vaccine hesitancy.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  There's no legitimate reason to doubt the safety or the efficacy of these vaccines such that the benefits of immunity don't vastly outweigh the reason. You seem like you're trying to normalize some midpoint between vaccine acceptance and anti-vaxxing to radicalize individuals here. Reddit went ahead and banned anything resembling your post to avoid anti-vaxx wolves amongst sheep. I hope HN does the same here too. Edit: I’m okay with all the anti-vaxxers in this thread. I think you’re all arguing in good faith and I’m more than happy to compare information with you. You’re all to be commended for engaging in the marketplace of ideas. It’s just the guy I was replying to that I think is a bad-faith actor trying to perniciously sway otherwise moderate people to his side by misrepresenting his initial position on the topic to be more moderate than it actually is.
  - desine 5y ago
    Telling people their concerns are not valid also does not help
  - mwint 5y ago
    Wait, did you just argue that there is zero room for dissent?
    - geofft 5y ago
      That is generally how arguments about claims of fact work, yes. If you genuinely believe that, say, the earth is round, then your position isn't going to be that the earth is probably round but there are valid reasons to believe otherwise, or that you can have the opinion that the earth is flat, or whatever. It's fundamentally not a matter of opinion, and part of your belief is that it isn't a matter of opinion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
joelbondurant 5y ago
Coronavirus > Communist Trash
NoblePublius 5y ago
I see the prevalence of antivaxxers from two angles: the failure of public education and the reasonableness of medical skepticism. Understanding the differences between efficacy and effectiveness, infection and transmission, and cases and infections requires solid understanding of biological and statistical concepts that are not even covered in most high school biology and maths courses. And I haven’t even mentioned the basics of the immune system, germ theory, or the difference between a bacterium and a virus, or RNA and DNA. Most anti vaxxers seize upon the half truths cited here because they don’t even have half comprehension of the terms in use. Don’t blame them; blame your local school. Second, skepticism of institutional medical claims is perfectly reasonable. The Faucis of the world are the same types who told you that OxyContin is not addictive, that your child needs Ritalin, that your hysterical wife needs a lobotomy, that your unborn child needs thalidomide, and that it’s totally reasonable to purposefully infect African Americans with syphilis. The Faucis are ultimately responsible for this outbreak as it was their job to stop it in the first place; the Faucis of the world love mask mandates and lockdowns because it flips the narrative of responsibility from them (Fauci has had his job for almost 40 years; Trump was an intern by comparison) to us: cases are rising not because every epidemiologist knew they would rise but because YOU failed to wear a mask and had the audacity to go to your mother’s funeral in person. The vaccines are free, highly effective against serious disease of all variants, and universally available. Why are we saying anything but that, and why are any more restrictions needed given those facts?
colordrops 5y ago
I'm convinced that the anti-vax movement in the US is fueled by foreign operatives. Initially I thought it was just organic hysteria. But then the "vaccine is 98% graphene" meme came out. If you look at a 2% graphene solution, it's dark grey, and yet the vaccines are transparent, so they are obviously not 98% graphene. I decided to deep dive into some "sources" of the graphene story, and they are inevitably all on fly-by-night "conservative" blogs, with videos that look suspiciously similar to RT produced content. Grammatical errors everywhere. It is clear that these stories are not just a misunderstanding, but an intentional lie. My theory is that Russia and China, and perhaps even local political party operatives, are involved in spreading these lies. For Russia, the goal is to divide and weaken the country, payback for the US propaganda campaigns that took down the Soviet Union. For local political parties, the goal is to corral their base for short term gain.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  I mostly concur, though I suspect the Russian psy-ops have been grooming the US populace for this since the early 2000s at least, making people more open and susceptible to conspiracies. Amplifying emotional responses, biases, investment [1], tribalism, in-group out-group, etc. Now they’re reaping the fruit of that long game. One thing they understand that I’m not sure US leadership does is that the fringe eventually becomes the center, and shaping the fringe has been a key to their long term strategy. Now in some respects it’s becoming the center. I’m not sure the Chinese are involved though, b/c the CCP has never been very good at propaganda, simply because in China they don’t have to be. From their idiotic “wolf warrior” diplomacy to just about everything written in CCP mouthpieces like the Global Times, there’s a complete lack of subtlety, sophistication, and therefore believability. It’s all produced from the point of view that the populace is required to think this, instead of having to convince the populace to believe this by anticipating and addressing the reasons they may not believe it. But who knows, maybe they have some secret elite team somewhere that does understand how to do propaganda and psy-ops in the West. [1]: https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/. (Munger: investment - financial, ideological, emotional, etc. - is one of the main root causes of bias and misjudgement)
HelixEndeavor 5y ago
I'm not taking the COVID-19 shot.
TrianguloY 5y ago
> Every time Twitter or YouTube blocked one of these videos, people commenting on it took it as proof that its misinformation was therefore true. This is a big issue. Deleting conspiracy and fake videos may seem like a good way to stop misinformation, but I think it provokes exactly the opposite. If it is deleted from platform A, it will be posted on platform B, and so on until it stays. In the end this creates a lot of dedicated sites where all this content are aggregated (YouTube clones, telegram chats, etc) and where only people who believes in this content stays, without anyone else to discuss back. And worse, they do have discussion but with the wrong conclusions, so people who want to analyze and don't believe anything without seeing both sides of the story, will only find that type of discussion there, and have the wrong conclusions and believe the conspiracy and...well, we all know. Moderation like here, hn, where this type of content is flagged or sent to the bottom but not deleted allows users to explain and discuss, so people with doubts can see for themselves the whole story, but with the better conclusions.
RickJWagner 5y ago
If I were the author, I'd be mad, too. Taking snippets out of context, deceptive editing, etc. has become all too common. Even 'nice' people like Katie Couric have done it. https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editing-reflects-poorly-on-couric-and-her-gun-documentary https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editin...

82 points by ystad 5y ago

It's interesting how almost all of the anti-vax propaganda has some weird kernel of truth which is then completely interpreted incorrectly or otherwise taken out of context. I suppose that makes it easier to rope people in.

belltaco 5y ago
It depends, really. Sometimes it's just completely made up but ends up getting viral.
- warning26 5y ago
  One particularly interesting one I found was an oft-repeated story about Australia "forcing kids to get the vaccine without their parents present". This claim is repeated in almost every anti-vax comment section -- is it based on anything? The answer is, there's a program where parents can sign a permission slip for kids at school to get the vaccine. So, it's taking a kernel of truth "kids are getting the vaccine without their parents present", adding a bit of completely false info (the "forcing" part), and then repackaging it into a highly repostable nugget of scary misinformation.
  - hammock 5y ago
    >One particularly interesting one I found was an oft-repeated story about Australia "forcing kids to get the vaccine without their parents present". This claim is repeated in almost every anti-vax comment section -- is it based on anything? Yes, it is. Australia did a jab campaign inviting 24K children inside a stadium, and not permitting parents to enter with their child. https://twitter.com/unhealthytruth/status/1427396086977777668?t=UwMts3h-FdywgpTnoPkrYw&s=19 https://twitter.com/unhealthytruth/status/142739608697777766...
    - cygx 5y ago
      Specifically, students in their final year of high school, ahead of end-of-school exams. It was an entirely voluntary operation you had to sign up for... https://apnews.com/article/health-australia-coronavirus-pandemic-ap-fact-check-ba06a8878646c33fb1ff7635a0050b7a https://apnews.com/article/health-australia-coronavirus-pand...
      - warning26 5y ago
        I appreciate how that person evidently just...stopped reading my comment halfway through to repeat the exact same piece of misinformation. Like clockwork!
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        I appreciate how they answered your question and everything they said in their post was factually correct. >Yes, it is. Australia did a jab campaign inviting 24K children inside a stadium, and not permitting parents to enter with their child This is what the misinformation story was based on, the gov invited 24k children inside, it did not allow parents.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
MattGaiser 5y ago
It lets them "research" it, see that the kernel is true, and then extrapolate from there.
andrewflnr 5y ago
All the best lies have a kernel of truth. This is not remotely unique to antivax.
nonomaybeyes 5y ago
How should I interpret for example the data from Israel? Highly vaccinated country with both cases and deaths peaking: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/
- anoonmoose 5y ago
  Cases are mostly irrelevant, death peak is lower than previous deak peaks
  - hammock 5y ago
    >Cases are mostly irrelevant Tell that to Australia?
    - anoonmoose 5y ago
      Sure: Australia, stop focusing on cases and pay attention to hospitalization and death rates. Idk what your comment was meant to convey.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  You should interpret it in the context of other countries.
- mthoms 5y ago
  The data out of Israel plainly shows that vaccinated people have significantly better outcomes: They are much less likely to get seriously ill and die. Stop it.
- CarelessExpert 5y ago
  > How should I interpret for example the data from Israel? By reading the following analysis and familiarizing yourself with Simpson's paradox: https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-efficacy-vs-severe-disease-be-strong-when-60-of-hospitalized-are-vaccinated https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... You're spreading misinformation. Stop it.
tinus_hn 5y ago
That is because in real science it often turns out there are multiple sides to a story and more than one has compelling evidence. But with respect to corona it’s presented as if ‘science’, as represented by one blessed scientist or group, is the universal and incontrovertible truth and everything else is ridiculous idiocy. Look at the messaging surrounding Ivermectin. It is medication that has been prescribed to humans for decades. But it’s also prescribed to horses. Now someone has done some study that appears to show it works against corona and people start trying it on themselves. What’s the answer? Haha those idiots taking that horse dewormer! Which of course is nonsense. Is it smart to take medication for a purpose for which it is not known (whatever that means) to work? Debatable. Is it lunacy to try medication that’s not dangerous for a potentially lethal disease? You could always try praying, I guess.
- tynpeddler 5y ago
  The thinking in this comment is incredibly muddled. Scientists and doctors have not concluded that ivermectin is effective. Some studies have claimed efficacy, most have not. The dosages of ivermectin claimed to be effective against covid is much higher than the dosage that's safe for humans. Horse dewormer is not the same as Ivermectin. It contains ivermectin, at a dosage higher than what's safe for humans, and it also contains other compounds that have not be judged safe for humans. Why trust the muddled science on ivermectin, and ignore the more conclusive science on vaccines? If the scientific process is good enough to discover ivermectin, why isn't it good enough to discover good vaccines?
  - Sammi 5y ago
    Has the high dosage been tested in humans? Is it just unknown whether it is safe, or is it proven that it is unsafe?

pstuart 5y ago

Any sort of compassion I have for those who are nervous about getting injected with medicine they don't understand is overwhelmed by disgust at the lying and magical thinking that surrounds that. Vaccines are not perfect. They are not guaranteed 100% safe. But they're the best thing we've got for dealing with epidemics.

warning26 5y ago
Absolutely; I suspect it all comes back to cognitive dissonance. "I am a smart and reasonable person" + "I'm afraid to get injected with a needle" metamorphoses into "clearly, my fear of getting injected is because I am so much smarter than everyone else", leading them to latch onto conspiracy theories as a coping mechanism to make them not only feel in control, but also make them feel like they're smarter than the average bear.
pattrn 5y ago
The most common concern I hear among younger people is that they are worried that the vaccine may cause infertility. After the infertility issue with the HPV vaccine, which took many years to figure out, their trust in new vaccines has decreased substantially. Would you describe that line of reasoning as "lying" or as "magical thinking"? Edit: My apologies for repeating what I've been hearing for the past few months from a small group of friends. I haven't done the research into HPV vaccines, so it turns out that it may fall into the category of "magical thinking".
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  Absolutely I would because infertility is completely unrelated to the operational mechanism of the vaccine
- rsynnott 5y ago
  > After the infertility issue with the HPV vaccine, which took many years to figure out ... Wait, which issue? There is no such issue recognized by mainstream medical authorities.

belltaco 5y ago

>In another, I’m introduced as the head of the “UK bioweapons programme”, being caught admitting that the Covid vaccine could somehow destroy your immune system. Opinions are undoubtedly protected by free speech(both the concept and the laws), but should misinformation like this be protected by free speech laws as well? Or can we carve out a narrow exception for just blatantly lying and writing fake news, like we already do in libel laws and in cases of phishing and fraud? It feels like whenever this comes people seems to confuse opinions vs misinformation, whether intentionally or not, which serves their point. I wrote about this a few days ago about how Reddit Inc. did that recently. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28426181 Why can't we separate the two, both in discussions and in laws?

hammock 5y ago
>but should misinformation like this be protected by free speech laws as well? Ask Copernicus or Galileo?
- belltaco 5y ago
  The court system has come a long way since then, and does not usually enforce religious doctrine. If the next Copernicus or Galileo among the people writing fake news e.g. [1], [2], [3] presents evidence for their assertions being plausible, and the prosecution fails to prove their assertion was impossible then I doubt a judge would against them. That's why I said narrowly written, to get the worst, repetitive and most obvious examples to stop, not cast a wide net. E.g. [3] [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_godfather_of_fake_news https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_godfather_of... [2] https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ [3] https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/verify-was-clinton-foundation-cargo-ship-raided-at-port-of-baltimore/65-439392715 https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/verify-was-clinton-...
- mthoms 5y ago
  Well, they had reproducible scientific tests to provide their theories didn’t they? Seems like a slam dunk in todays world that they would be taken seriously. At least by the majority of rational people. Though I get the point you were trying to make, the fact that you gave two scientists as examples is deliciously ironic.

pattrn 5y ago

It's a shame that the mainstream has adopted the term "anti-vaxxers" to describe people who don't want to get a COVID vaccine. Many of my friends and colleagues have concerns about mRNA vaccines, but they have no issue with any other standard vaccinations. Despite this, they get labeled as "anti-vaxxers." This makes them defensive about being insulted, thereby reinforcing their existing opinions. It's a completely counter-productive cycle that may actually increase COVID vaccine hesitancy.

jimbob45 5y ago
There's no legitimate reason to doubt the safety or the efficacy of these vaccines such that the benefits of immunity don't vastly outweigh the reason. You seem like you're trying to normalize some midpoint between vaccine acceptance and anti-vaxxing to radicalize individuals here. Reddit went ahead and banned anything resembling your post to avoid anti-vaxx wolves amongst sheep. I hope HN does the same here too. Edit: I’m okay with all the anti-vaxxers in this thread. I think you’re all arguing in good faith and I’m more than happy to compare information with you. You’re all to be commended for engaging in the marketplace of ideas. It’s just the guy I was replying to that I think is a bad-faith actor trying to perniciously sway otherwise moderate people to his side by misrepresenting his initial position on the topic to be more moderate than it actually is.
- desine 5y ago
  Telling people their concerns are not valid also does not help
- mwint 5y ago
  Wait, did you just argue that there is zero room for dissent?
  - geofft 5y ago
    That is generally how arguments about claims of fact work, yes. If you genuinely believe that, say, the earth is round, then your position isn't going to be that the earth is probably round but there are valid reasons to believe otherwise, or that you can have the opinion that the earth is flat, or whatever. It's fundamentally not a matter of opinion, and part of your belief is that it isn't a matter of opinion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

joelbondurant 5y ago

Coronavirus > Communist Trash

NoblePublius 5y ago

I see the prevalence of antivaxxers from two angles: the failure of public education and the reasonableness of medical skepticism. Understanding the differences between efficacy and effectiveness, infection and transmission, and cases and infections requires solid understanding of biological and statistical concepts that are not even covered in most high school biology and maths courses. And I haven’t even mentioned the basics of the immune system, germ theory, or the difference between a bacterium and a virus, or RNA and DNA. Most anti vaxxers seize upon the half truths cited here because they don’t even have half comprehension of the terms in use. Don’t blame them; blame your local school. Second, skepticism of institutional medical claims is perfectly reasonable. The Faucis of the world are the same types who told you that OxyContin is not addictive, that your child needs Ritalin, that your hysterical wife needs a lobotomy, that your unborn child needs thalidomide, and that it’s totally reasonable to purposefully infect African Americans with syphilis. The Faucis are ultimately responsible for this outbreak as it was their job to stop it in the first place; the Faucis of the world love mask mandates and lockdowns because it flips the narrative of responsibility from them (Fauci has had his job for almost 40 years; Trump was an intern by comparison) to us: cases are rising not because every epidemiologist knew they would rise but because YOU failed to wear a mask and had the audacity to go to your mother’s funeral in person. The vaccines are free, highly effective against serious disease of all variants, and universally available. Why are we saying anything but that, and why are any more restrictions needed given those facts?

colordrops 5y ago

I'm convinced that the anti-vax movement in the US is fueled by foreign operatives. Initially I thought it was just organic hysteria. But then the "vaccine is 98% graphene" meme came out. If you look at a 2% graphene solution, it's dark grey, and yet the vaccines are transparent, so they are obviously not 98% graphene. I decided to deep dive into some "sources" of the graphene story, and they are inevitably all on fly-by-night "conservative" blogs, with videos that look suspiciously similar to RT produced content. Grammatical errors everywhere. It is clear that these stories are not just a misunderstanding, but an intentional lie. My theory is that Russia and China, and perhaps even local political party operatives, are involved in spreading these lies. For Russia, the goal is to divide and weaken the country, payback for the US propaganda campaigns that took down the Soviet Union. For local political parties, the goal is to corral their base for short term gain.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
I mostly concur, though I suspect the Russian psy-ops have been grooming the US populace for this since the early 2000s at least, making people more open and susceptible to conspiracies. Amplifying emotional responses, biases, investment [1], tribalism, in-group out-group, etc. Now they’re reaping the fruit of that long game. One thing they understand that I’m not sure US leadership does is that the fringe eventually becomes the center, and shaping the fringe has been a key to their long term strategy. Now in some respects it’s becoming the center. I’m not sure the Chinese are involved though, b/c the CCP has never been very good at propaganda, simply because in China they don’t have to be. From their idiotic “wolf warrior” diplomacy to just about everything written in CCP mouthpieces like the Global Times, there’s a complete lack of subtlety, sophistication, and therefore believability. It’s all produced from the point of view that the populace is required to think this, instead of having to convince the populace to believe this by anticipating and addressing the reasons they may not believe it. But who knows, maybe they have some secret elite team somewhere that does understand how to do propaganda and psy-ops in the West. [1]: https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/. (Munger: investment - financial, ideological, emotional, etc. - is one of the main root causes of bias and misjudgement)

HelixEndeavor 5y ago

I'm not taking the COVID-19 shot.

TrianguloY 5y ago

> Every time Twitter or YouTube blocked one of these videos, people commenting on it took it as proof that its misinformation was therefore true. This is a big issue. Deleting conspiracy and fake videos may seem like a good way to stop misinformation, but I think it provokes exactly the opposite. If it is deleted from platform A, it will be posted on platform B, and so on until it stays. In the end this creates a lot of dedicated sites where all this content are aggregated (YouTube clones, telegram chats, etc) and where only people who believes in this content stays, without anyone else to discuss back. And worse, they do have discussion but with the wrong conclusions, so people who want to analyze and don't believe anything without seeing both sides of the story, will only find that type of discussion there, and have the wrong conclusions and believe the conspiracy and...well, we all know. Moderation like here, hn, where this type of content is flagged or sent to the bottom but not deleted allows users to explain and discuss, so people with doubts can see for themselves the whole story, but with the better conclusions.

RickJWagner 5y ago

If I were the author, I'd be mad, too. Taking snippets out of context, deceptive editing, etc. has become all too common. Even 'nice' people like Katie Couric have done it. https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editing-reflects-poorly-on-couric-and-her-gun-documentary https://www.npr.org/2016/05/26/479655743/manipulative-editin...