3 ms·

Are all these studies and conversations from or led by pharma outsiders? If so can you provide any evidence of that? I mean it sounds like people are starting

Are all these studies and conversations from or led by pharma outsiders? If so can you provide any evidence of that? I mean it sounds like people are starting with a strongly held belief that there is a conspiracy and everyone is evil/corrupt (true of pharma I admit), then accepting, rejecting, and constructing arguments and evidence just to suit their preexisting beliefs which in turn have simply been constructed to serve their own goals and world views. Whew, well maybe this theory of why people believe what they do about covid and govt is me constructing self serving conspiracies. Shit is complex, but yeah this is my theory because otherwise I'm completely baffled that mostly smart people seem to be acting so completely irrationally.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
It's because of human psychology. You start off with a small group of "vaccines cause autism" crackpots, and they're irrelevant. Because vaccines still cause R < 1 if 90+% of people get them even if some single digit percentage of crackpots refuse. But the crackpots are really loud and refuse to be defeated by science or logic. So some genius decides that what we need to own the refuseniks are vaccine mandates. From a human psychology perspective, this was an incredibly bad idea. Because now you've gone from fighting seven lizardmen crackpots to fighting millions of regular people who don't believe in non-consensual medical treatment and can point to a long list of historical precedent for why that's a bad idea. They literally changed the dictionary definition of "anti-vaxxer" to include people who oppose vaccine mandates: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer So now that you've put millions of people on "the other side," they are, by human nature, going to follow confirmation bias into being more likely to believe anything that helps "their side." So now large numbers of people start to believe that vaccines are dangerous and people should be afraid of getting them and they're less effective than claimed and they're only getting pushed by greedy pharma companies to make money, because that's what helps "their side" so they're more inclined to believe that it's true. Conversely, the other side dismisses the possibility that any of those things are true for the same reason, even if some of them might be.
- spurgu 5y ago
  Yup. I'm twice vaccinated but still labeled as an anti-vaxxer because I show skepticism towards for example vaccinating young kids and I'm outright against vaccine mandates, to the point where I will refuse any boosters just out of principle.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

It's because of human psychology. You start off with a small group of "vaccines cause autism" crackpots, and they're irrelevant. Because vaccines still cause R < 1 if 90+% of people get them even if some single digit percentage of crackpots refuse. But the crackpots are really loud and refuse to be defeated by science or logic. So some genius decides that what we need to own the refuseniks are vaccine mandates. From a human psychology perspective, this was an incredibly bad idea. Because now you've gone from fighting seven lizardmen crackpots to fighting millions of regular people who don't believe in non-consensual medical treatment and can point to a long list of historical precedent for why that's a bad idea. They literally changed the dictionary definition of "anti-vaxxer" to include people who oppose vaccine mandates: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer So now that you've put millions of people on "the other side," they are, by human nature, going to follow confirmation bias into being more likely to believe anything that helps "their side." So now large numbers of people start to believe that vaccines are dangerous and people should be afraid of getting them and they're less effective than claimed and they're only getting pushed by greedy pharma companies to make money, because that's what helps "their side" so they're more inclined to believe that it's true. Conversely, the other side dismisses the possibility that any of those things are true for the same reason, even if some of them might be.

spurgu 5y ago
Yup. I'm twice vaccinated but still labeled as an anti-vaxxer because I show skepticism towards for example vaccinating young kids and I'm outright against vaccine mandates, to the point where I will refuse any boosters just out of principle.