7 ms·

But nobody is "pathologically questioning" anything around vaccines, regardless of what some people may wish to believe. The questions are all very much relevan

But nobody is "pathologically questioning" anything around vaccines, regardless of what some people may wish to believe. The questions are all very much relevant, on point and - given the untrustworthy nature of public health authorities up to this point - necessary to ask.

pvaldes 5y ago
Ok, you don't want the health authorities, virologists and experts in pandemics to answer your legit questions about vaccines. Who do you think that has earned the stripes and the authority to answer your questions then? FOX news?, a Russian troll farm?, Beyonce?, Jesus? Please propose somebody that you would trust and why you think that should be seen as an expert in this field, so we can solve this obstacle and move on with our lives.
- mdp2021 5y ago
  > somebody that you would trust Presumably, a whole society, even in limited though adequate number, of experts who are capable of reassuring by asking the same questions the subject may raise, and providing convincing answers, and by avoiding acting with the most unconvincing signals. "The incumbent shall have an elephant detector and will positively and publicly acknowledge and properly assess all the specimens found in the rooms s/he will be assigned to".
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    Its a start at least, but that's still very vague. Can you specify more?
    - mdp2021 5y ago
      No prob. I did not mean to be vague, I wanted to specify the principles. Suppose that John was waiting for the availability of some treatment. Then John is reached by information about side effects of concern. It is normal that John will see something outside initial expectations ("a few days of distress owing to bodily reaction") around him (say, persistent inconveniences of some, maybe a few critical occurrences of somebody else - "Mary has been itching for three months", "Lucy's mother fell out of the window"), and by looking for further information he will reach extreme but unreliable information ("Anon wrote on a web billboard his cousin caught fire within four days of inoculation"). The expectation of John will probably be that these cases will be actively explained by theory and assessed case by case, at least in a representative sample (e.g. subject to active monitoring). What he will encounter will easily be worlds with little and scarcely effective inter-communication: publications for academics containing large number of pages relevant to general topic but none apparently assessing the questions emerging from his experience; "renegade" researchers speaking of toxicity; no mention of said toxicity elsewhere. Adding to that, the scenario is made more complex and/or confusing through the message of articles like "The final nail in the coffin of medical research";, through increasing diffusion of lapidary password constructs (take 'safe and effective' - which is not per se meaningful as its two members are not absolute, yet it is proposed (even here, nearby) as a final judgement); through the usual lunatics making extraordinary claims; through a public debate that obsessively refers to the usual lunatics, factually honouring them as The Interlocutors of choice; through censorship (Lex Fridman denounced it and went on to say that at the MIT researchers have started preferring to remain quiet and silent); through the extension of the same into principles that e.g. forbid the statement that 'vaccines are dangerous' (YouTube), which is a complete reinvention of the language, so even the common ground of communication is gone (as now for "dangerous" an arbitrary threshold is set and in the new vernacular fighting for dominance paracetamol, water, the sun are not dangerous anymore); through a defence of a principle of responsibility about the consequences of how a tick and a mouse may interpret your words (but not the consequences of how intellectual profession and principles bend under the weights of a tick and a mouse). In all of that John will continue wondering "how and why had Mary been itching for months, and why was not that brought clearly to topic: all of that cannot be normal". John will not only expect explanations that put his experience into theoretical context, but also a slice of some system in which problematic experience is treated as expected: as something pending waiting for answers. -- Edit: your post now reads, «Its a start at least, but that's still very vague»: you must have edited while I was writing: you know this is not the original poster writing, right?
      - pvaldes 5y ago
        > Your post now reads, «Its a start at least, but that's still very vague»: you must have edited while I was writing: you know this is not the original poster writing, right? Just for the record. The original post was: "This is still very vague, can you specify more?" I think that it sounded a little harsh and I was not the meaning that I wanted to express so I changed it. Is this a problem to you?
        mdp2021 5y ago
        No harshness was perceived on the first formulation; the second one with «Its a start at least», creates doubts about "what exactly missed a start, what remained unexplained before that partial disclosure". Among the tentative interpretations of those doubts was that you may have understood that the original poster was replying clarifying his own position, as you elicited. There is little hidden about what is unconvincing in the situation. I just submitted an article from The Atlantic, "The Myth That Democracies Bungled the Pandemic" (they do not, to the reading of some data by that author), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28748382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28748382 , and in providing a few quotations in the opening post I noted a there reported statement from Francis Fukuyama: > it is not necessarily democracy but “whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state” that is crucial to defeating a pandemic This is another way to express the issue, and another formulation of The Reply to a reading of your post as "what does one demand to trust": trustworthiness.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Sadly, at this point even some published NIH scientists think that the figureheads that dictate the policy on TV have lost the plot (since Delta). That's what I've been told in a private conversation by a published researcher at NIH, who does mRNA research for therapeutic vaccines. I don't know what to think of this. Known him for years. I don't think he has any motive here, and he is also fully vaccinated, so no antivaxx angle either.
- native_samples 5y ago
  It would be nice to have trustworthy authorities to answer these questions, but it appears they don't exist. Virologists in particular seem to have spent most of their time covering up evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from one of their own labs: the exact opposite of the behaviour they should have been engaged in. Given the absence of that, it is sufficient for people to make their own decisions based on whatever sources they personally find adequate. There is no need for fights over which organization gets to be the anointed provided of truth. Personally, I don't feel a need for any of these self-proclaimed "experts". The data from public statistics is clear enough, as is evidence collected by talking to people around me.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
> But nobody is "pathologically questioning" anything around vaccines, regardless of what some people may wish to believe. When the USA is having massive numbers of deaths and severe lasting illnesses, due to refusal to take the safe and effective vaccines and other necessary precautions, this opinion is just not tenable. It's literally causing deadly disease, at scale. If that's not classifiable as "pathological", then I don't know what is.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  It is a documented fact that medical authorities in the United States lied to the American people to manipulate their COVID-related behavior. Specifically, Dr. Fauci discouraged people from wearing masks, not because there was a shortage and they needed to be saved for front-line medical workers (the real reason), but because - he claimed at the time - they were not particularly effective. "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often there are unintended consequences. People keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face." At this point, it is dishonest to characterize Americans' distrust of medical authority as pathological. The distrust is well and truly deserved.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
    So, you're saying that the evolving understanding of the use of _masks_ explains the _vaccine hesitancy_ ? That seems like a loosely-related change of subject to me. Why bring out this talking point? If you're not happy with nuance, probabilities rather than certainties, and changing understandings of a new situation then the modern world might not be for you. To be clear, you're saying that the avoidable unvaccinated disease mass casualties, are not pathological, i.e. illness-related, because, that mask guy the one time? That seems more like the kind of bogus reason that people seize upon to explain what they want to believe, than a logical explanation.
    - native_samples 5y ago

pvaldes 5y ago

Ok, you don't want the health authorities, virologists and experts in pandemics to answer your legit questions about vaccines. Who do you think that has earned the stripes and the authority to answer your questions then? FOX news?, a Russian troll farm?, Beyonce?, Jesus? Please propose somebody that you would trust and why you think that should be seen as an expert in this field, so we can solve this obstacle and move on with our lives.

mdp2021 5y ago
> somebody that you would trust Presumably, a whole society, even in limited though adequate number, of experts who are capable of reassuring by asking the same questions the subject may raise, and providing convincing answers, and by avoiding acting with the most unconvincing signals. "The incumbent shall have an elephant detector and will positively and publicly acknowledge and properly assess all the specimens found in the rooms s/he will be assigned to".
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Its a start at least, but that's still very vague. Can you specify more?
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    No prob. I did not mean to be vague, I wanted to specify the principles. Suppose that John was waiting for the availability of some treatment. Then John is reached by information about side effects of concern. It is normal that John will see something outside initial expectations ("a few days of distress owing to bodily reaction") around him (say, persistent inconveniences of some, maybe a few critical occurrences of somebody else - "Mary has been itching for three months", "Lucy's mother fell out of the window"), and by looking for further information he will reach extreme but unreliable information ("Anon wrote on a web billboard his cousin caught fire within four days of inoculation"). The expectation of John will probably be that these cases will be actively explained by theory and assessed case by case, at least in a representative sample (e.g. subject to active monitoring). What he will encounter will easily be worlds with little and scarcely effective inter-communication: publications for academics containing large number of pages relevant to general topic but none apparently assessing the questions emerging from his experience; "renegade" researchers speaking of toxicity; no mention of said toxicity elsewhere. Adding to that, the scenario is made more complex and/or confusing through the message of articles like "The final nail in the coffin of medical research";, through increasing diffusion of lapidary password constructs (take 'safe and effective' - which is not per se meaningful as its two members are not absolute, yet it is proposed (even here, nearby) as a final judgement); through the usual lunatics making extraordinary claims; through a public debate that obsessively refers to the usual lunatics, factually honouring them as The Interlocutors of choice; through censorship (Lex Fridman denounced it and went on to say that at the MIT researchers have started preferring to remain quiet and silent); through the extension of the same into principles that e.g. forbid the statement that 'vaccines are dangerous' (YouTube), which is a complete reinvention of the language, so even the common ground of communication is gone (as now for "dangerous" an arbitrary threshold is set and in the new vernacular fighting for dominance paracetamol, water, the sun are not dangerous anymore); through a defence of a principle of responsibility about the consequences of how a tick and a mouse may interpret your words (but not the consequences of how intellectual profession and principles bend under the weights of a tick and a mouse). In all of that John will continue wondering "how and why had Mary been itching for months, and why was not that brought clearly to topic: all of that cannot be normal". John will not only expect explanations that put his experience into theoretical context, but also a slice of some system in which problematic experience is treated as expected: as something pending waiting for answers. -- Edit: your post now reads, «Its a start at least, but that's still very vague»: you must have edited while I was writing: you know this is not the original poster writing, right?
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      > Your post now reads, «Its a start at least, but that's still very vague»: you must have edited while I was writing: you know this is not the original poster writing, right? Just for the record. The original post was: "This is still very vague, can you specify more?" I think that it sounded a little harsh and I was not the meaning that I wanted to express so I changed it. Is this a problem to you?
      - mdp2021 5y ago
        No harshness was perceived on the first formulation; the second one with «Its a start at least», creates doubts about "what exactly missed a start, what remained unexplained before that partial disclosure". Among the tentative interpretations of those doubts was that you may have understood that the original poster was replying clarifying his own position, as you elicited. There is little hidden about what is unconvincing in the situation. I just submitted an article from The Atlantic, "The Myth That Democracies Bungled the Pandemic" (they do not, to the reading of some data by that author), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28748382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28748382 , and in providing a few quotations in the opening post I noted a there reported statement from Francis Fukuyama: > it is not necessarily democracy but “whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state” that is crucial to defeating a pandemic This is another way to express the issue, and another formulation of The Reply to a reading of your post as "what does one demand to trust": trustworthiness.
inter_netuser 5y ago
Sadly, at this point even some published NIH scientists think that the figureheads that dictate the policy on TV have lost the plot (since Delta). That's what I've been told in a private conversation by a published researcher at NIH, who does mRNA research for therapeutic vaccines. I don't know what to think of this. Known him for years. I don't think he has any motive here, and he is also fully vaccinated, so no antivaxx angle either.
native_samples 5y ago
It would be nice to have trustworthy authorities to answer these questions, but it appears they don't exist. Virologists in particular seem to have spent most of their time covering up evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from one of their own labs: the exact opposite of the behaviour they should have been engaged in. Given the absence of that, it is sufficient for people to make their own decisions based on whatever sources they personally find adequate. There is no need for fights over which organization gets to be the anointed provided of truth. Personally, I don't feel a need for any of these self-proclaimed "experts". The data from public statistics is clear enough, as is evidence collected by talking to people around me.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago

> But nobody is "pathologically questioning" anything around vaccines, regardless of what some people may wish to believe. When the USA is having massive numbers of deaths and severe lasting illnesses, due to refusal to take the safe and effective vaccines and other necessary precautions, this opinion is just not tenable. It's literally causing deadly disease, at scale. If that's not classifiable as "pathological", then I don't know what is.

torstenvl 5y ago
It is a documented fact that medical authorities in the United States lied to the American people to manipulate their COVID-related behavior. Specifically, Dr. Fauci discouraged people from wearing masks, not because there was a shortage and they needed to be saved for front-line medical workers (the real reason), but because - he claimed at the time - they were not particularly effective. "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And often there are unintended consequences. People keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face." At this point, it is dishonest to characterize Americans' distrust of medical authority as pathological. The distrust is well and truly deserved.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  So, you're saying that the evolving understanding of the use of _masks_ explains the _vaccine hesitancy_ ? That seems like a loosely-related change of subject to me. Why bring out this talking point? If you're not happy with nuance, probabilities rather than certainties, and changing understandings of a new situation then the modern world might not be for you. To be clear, you're saying that the avoidable unvaccinated disease mass casualties, are not pathological, i.e. illness-related, because, that mask guy the one time? That seems more like the kind of bogus reason that people seize upon to explain what they want to believe, than a logical explanation.
  - native_samples 5y ago