7 ms·

It is so amazing to me how many people don't seem to recognize this. My (somewhat baseless) speculation on this is that a lot of the people in forums like HN a

It is so amazing to me how many people don't seem to recognize this. My (somewhat baseless) speculation on this is that a lot of the people in forums like HN are early adopter types who mostly work from home, and so were able to avoid exposure and got the vaccine relatively early. From this standpoint, I could see it being harder to empathize with folks who were exposed in everyday life (it's just a simple jab, I did it, why can't everyone else? Or maybe even those folks must be bad/lesser people if they didn't stop themselves from being infected). Combine that with the constant onslaught of media time that pointedly ignores the categories that you breakdown above, and maybe it's no wonder that people have the opinions on this that they do.

hatware 5y ago
Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. It's almost like there's a narrative here.
- tharne 5y ago
  > Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. Source?
  - twofornone 5y ago
    Consider for a moment that the "antivaxxers" are correct, that there is enormous bias in our medical, pharmaceutical, and media establishments in favor of vaccine safety. Could you really expect a reliable source on the subject if this were the case? What proportion of people are willing to speak out and risk career and social suicide for being labeled an "antivaxxer"? It is a self reinforcing chilling effect - few people speak out, data does not surface, fewer people look for evidence of adverse events, and over time it becomes riskier and more difficult to convince people that something is amiss. Meanwhile the internet is awash with anecdote of severe symptoms following vaccination, and particularly concerning are frequent reports of doctors who are dismissive and/or refuse to submit reports on adverse effects. And then there are occasional claims of specialists in various neurological or heart related disciplines who claim to be seeing an unprecedented spike in certain normally rare symptoms among vaccinated patients. Yeah, they could all be lying or this could be the nocebo effect or it's an army of bots spreading antivaxx propaganda...or maybe you can't magically accelerate a 5+ year testing and evaluation schedule for a novel technology merely because the president says he wants a vaccine yesterday? Note that the clinical data from pfizer and moderna is not available to the public - we are essentially relying on the manufacturers good faith with respect to the safety data that lead to approval by the FDA (moderna still isn't approved, by the way). https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      You've presented an unfalsifiable story. There's no way to prove it wrong, that's just more evidence of the conspiracy.
    - binaryblitz 5y ago
      A massive global coverup of the vaccine being bad, or conspiracy theorists using facebook to spread their narrative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
    - allturtles 5y ago
      > Consider for a moment that the "antivaxxers" are correct, that there is enormous bias in our medical, pharmaceutical, and media establishments in favor of vaccine safety. Could you really expect a reliable source on the subject if this were the case? I'm sorry, but this is just classic conspiracy theory thinking. "The very absence of evidence that I'm right is proof that I'm right."
      - twofornone 5y ago
        The point is that it is borderline disingenuous to ask for a source when the allegation is that the sources are deeply biased in favor of their own consistent and pervasive "safe and effective" propaganda. I'm not alleging that this proof of anything.
        hatware 5y ago
        Even if you spell it out for them, something tells me this person will keep calling you names, and finding every excuse not to question how they got to "believing" what they do.
        tharne 5y ago
        I'm the one who originally asked for a source - there was no name calling, nor should there be. If someone is going to make a bold claim about something generally considered to be safe, actually causing a significant number of injuries, it's irresponsible not to provide a source.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Myocarditis and "long covid-like" side effects have both been widely reported... Just search in this page for "vaccin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocarditis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocarditis Full disclosure: I'm vaccinated, am pro-vaxx, but every choice has risks.
    - e40 5y ago
      And myocarditis is caused by the COVID virus. Search for that on the same page. I would imagine that it's highly likely that people who get myocarditis from the vaccine would have gotten myocarditis from the virus. Certainly more than the general population.
      - pengaru 5y ago
        Sure, but there are people who believe they can avoid catching covid-19, and they might be capable of that. Especially if you're living like a hermit or in an otherwise isolated and/or sparse community, you may be well positioned to just ignore this whole mess. Somewhat orthogonally, I never caught chickenpox, at least nothing symptomatic... Edit: I think it's also worth noting the history of mRNA vaccines is fraught with toxicity issues [0], and even to this day the stuff I read is pretty damn handwavy surrounding the "modified" pseudouridine toxicity fix which took 7 years to find. One just can't make the argument that the real virus and this synthetic soup of poorly understood nanoparticles are analogous. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Oct 2021, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injury-claims-mount-recourse-is-lacking-those-harmed-2021-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injur... > More than 1,300 COVID vaccine-related injury claims are now pending before an obscure government tribunal ... Lawyers tell me the vaccine is so new that there’s virtually no definitive research on injury causation to cite ... In the meantime, people like McFadden face a strict one-year deadline from the date of vaccination to file a claim with the CICP. Unproven causality, but here's a database of 2021-2022 news reports on heart issues in athletes (missing baseline numbers for prior years): https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Vaccine injuries are reported from official sources just the same as covid-related injuries. There’s not a big media buzz around it because the numbers are so small, and everyone knew going in that there would be a small number of adverse reactions.
  - hatware 5y ago
    Were you used to seeing myocarditis and pericarditis in the news regularly before 2019...?
    - FireBeyond 5y ago
      Are those more likely to be a) a side effect/risk of the vaccine, or b) a known result of the disease, which is present in people who have had COVID, even unvaccinated? I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, but it certainly seems like you're saying it's newsworthy due to the vaccine.
      - hatware 5y ago
        >Are those more likely to be a) a side effect/risk of the vaccine, or b) a known result of the disease I have a more pressing question for you: Do you expect the medical establishment to accurately and honestly attribute the increase in myocarditis and pericarditis as side effects of the vaccine, or purely a result of the disease? I sure as shit don't. I expect the medical establishment to do and say whatever it takes to protect their profits.
    - creato 5y ago
      No, and after seeing the rates of cases related to both the vaccine and COVID, it probably should have stayed that way.
tinus_hn 5y ago
These days you have to add ‘eligible for booster and chose not to get it’, ‘got booster shot’ and ‘not eligible yet for booster shot’. In the Netherlands we started the booster campaign on November 18, but we get graphs claiming ‘hardly any people with boosters in hospital!’ with the data including hospitalizations from November 19 onwards.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
srcreigh 5y ago
Encouraging natural immunity is asking for hospitals to get filled up by people giving themselves covid on purpose. This affects non covid patients too. I suspect that's why the media doesn't do it.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Recognizing that naturally acquired immunity exists for tens of millions isn't the same thing as encouraging people to intentionally catch covid to gain natural immunity. Failure to differentiate between the two is just another way the injection maximalists look out of touch or unempathetic.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  That's also why many governments do not accept proof of recovery in lieu of proof of vaccination. Those who do have vaccine-skeptic people catching the virus intentionally and risking death. https://globalnews.ca/news/8524409/hana-horka-czech-singer-covid-death/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8524409/hana-horka-czech-singer-c...
  - walterbell 5y ago
    Let's remember that the best case for vaccinated people is Covid recovery. Wilful ignorance of the best case would be unwise. https://cbs12.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-detected-in-at-least-40-different-countries https://cbs12.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-detected-in-a... > "Omicron is acting like a super booster," Unnasch said. "People who have gotten omicron are going to be really well protected against infection, not just disease moving forward, which is a really good sign."
    - smnrchrds 5y ago
      The best case is never catching COVID again. Even vaccinated people put themselves at risk (albeit less than non-vaccinated people) if they catch COVID intentionally. No one recommends just going out there and catching COVID. But when proof of vaccination systems allow for it, some people do it anyway and some of them die instead. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/
wallacoloo 5y ago
> From this standpoint, I could see [..] there are so many different standpoints you could take from the HN population. - "HN focuses on tech; novel tech tends to be anti-regulation => HN must be anti-mandate." - "HN focuses on engineering; engineering is often an optimization game that involves balancing tradeoffs => HN must believe COVID response relative to all the other risks we face is an over-reaction." - and of course the one you presented. my theory is that opinions within any group are just more divergent than people realize. some groups do a better job than others in (a) understanding that and (b) working with that. it's almost all cultural: do people in your culture publicly voice their non-conforming views, and to what degree do people in your culture update their beliefs when they hear new information?

hatware 5y ago

Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. It's almost like there's a narrative here.

tharne 5y ago
> Not to mention all of the vaccine injuries that do exist but are rarely reported on. Source?
- twofornone 5y ago
  Consider for a moment that the "antivaxxers" are correct, that there is enormous bias in our medical, pharmaceutical, and media establishments in favor of vaccine safety. Could you really expect a reliable source on the subject if this were the case? What proportion of people are willing to speak out and risk career and social suicide for being labeled an "antivaxxer"? It is a self reinforcing chilling effect - few people speak out, data does not surface, fewer people look for evidence of adverse events, and over time it becomes riskier and more difficult to convince people that something is amiss. Meanwhile the internet is awash with anecdote of severe symptoms following vaccination, and particularly concerning are frequent reports of doctors who are dismissive and/or refuse to submit reports on adverse effects. And then there are occasional claims of specialists in various neurological or heart related disciplines who claim to be seeing an unprecedented spike in certain normally rare symptoms among vaccinated patients. Yeah, they could all be lying or this could be the nocebo effect or it's an army of bots spreading antivaxx propaganda...or maybe you can't magically accelerate a 5+ year testing and evaluation schedule for a novel technology merely because the president says he wants a vaccine yesterday? Note that the clinical data from pfizer and moderna is not available to the public - we are essentially relying on the manufacturers good faith with respect to the safety data that lead to approval by the FDA (moderna still isn't approved, by the way). https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102 https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    You've presented an unfalsifiable story. There's no way to prove it wrong, that's just more evidence of the conspiracy.
  - binaryblitz 5y ago
    A massive global coverup of the vaccine being bad, or conspiracy theorists using facebook to spread their narrative. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
  - allturtles 5y ago
    > Consider for a moment that the "antivaxxers" are correct, that there is enormous bias in our medical, pharmaceutical, and media establishments in favor of vaccine safety. Could you really expect a reliable source on the subject if this were the case? I'm sorry, but this is just classic conspiracy theory thinking. "The very absence of evidence that I'm right is proof that I'm right."
    - twofornone 5y ago
      The point is that it is borderline disingenuous to ask for a source when the allegation is that the sources are deeply biased in favor of their own consistent and pervasive "safe and effective" propaganda. I'm not alleging that this proof of anything.
      - hatware 5y ago
        Even if you spell it out for them, something tells me this person will keep calling you names, and finding every excuse not to question how they got to "believing" what they do.
        tharne 5y ago
        I'm the one who originally asked for a source - there was no name calling, nor should there be. If someone is going to make a bold claim about something generally considered to be safe, actually causing a significant number of injuries, it's irresponsible not to provide a source.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Myocarditis and "long covid-like" side effects have both been widely reported... Just search in this page for "vaccin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocarditis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myocarditis Full disclosure: I'm vaccinated, am pro-vaxx, but every choice has risks.
  - e40 5y ago
    And myocarditis is caused by the COVID virus. Search for that on the same page. I would imagine that it's highly likely that people who get myocarditis from the vaccine would have gotten myocarditis from the virus. Certainly more than the general population.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      Sure, but there are people who believe they can avoid catching covid-19, and they might be capable of that. Especially if you're living like a hermit or in an otherwise isolated and/or sparse community, you may be well positioned to just ignore this whole mess. Somewhat orthogonally, I never caught chickenpox, at least nothing symptomatic... Edit: I think it's also worth noting the history of mRNA vaccines is fraught with toxicity issues [0], and even to this day the stuff I read is pretty damn handwavy surrounding the "modified" pseudouridine toxicity fix which took 7 years to find. One just can't make the argument that the real virus and this synthetic soup of poorly understood nanoparticles are analogous. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
- walterbell 5y ago
  Oct 2021, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injury-claims-mount-recourse-is-lacking-those-harmed-2021-10-19/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/covid-vaccine-injur... > More than 1,300 COVID vaccine-related injury claims are now pending before an obscure government tribunal ... Lawyers tell me the vaccine is so new that there’s virtually no definitive research on injury causation to cite ... In the meantime, people like McFadden face a strict one-year deadline from the date of vaccination to file a claim with the CICP. Unproven causality, but here's a database of 2021-2022 news reports on heart issues in athletes (missing baseline numbers for prior years): https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nicoburns 5y ago
Vaccine injuries are reported from official sources just the same as covid-related injuries. There’s not a big media buzz around it because the numbers are so small, and everyone knew going in that there would be a small number of adverse reactions.
- hatware 5y ago
  Were you used to seeing myocarditis and pericarditis in the news regularly before 2019...?
  - FireBeyond 5y ago
    Are those more likely to be a) a side effect/risk of the vaccine, or b) a known result of the disease, which is present in people who have had COVID, even unvaccinated? I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, but it certainly seems like you're saying it's newsworthy due to the vaccine.
    - hatware 5y ago
      >Are those more likely to be a) a side effect/risk of the vaccine, or b) a known result of the disease I have a more pressing question for you: Do you expect the medical establishment to accurately and honestly attribute the increase in myocarditis and pericarditis as side effects of the vaccine, or purely a result of the disease? I sure as shit don't. I expect the medical establishment to do and say whatever it takes to protect their profits.
  - creato 5y ago
    No, and after seeing the rates of cases related to both the vaccine and COVID, it probably should have stayed that way.

tinus_hn 5y ago

These days you have to add ‘eligible for booster and chose not to get it’, ‘got booster shot’ and ‘not eligible yet for booster shot’. In the Netherlands we started the booster campaign on November 18, but we get graphs claiming ‘hardly any people with boosters in hospital!’ with the data including hospitalizations from November 19 onwards.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

srcreigh 5y ago

Encouraging natural immunity is asking for hospitals to get filled up by people giving themselves covid on purpose. This affects non covid patients too. I suspect that's why the media doesn't do it.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Recognizing that naturally acquired immunity exists for tens of millions isn't the same thing as encouraging people to intentionally catch covid to gain natural immunity. Failure to differentiate between the two is just another way the injection maximalists look out of touch or unempathetic.
smnrchrds 5y ago
That's also why many governments do not accept proof of recovery in lieu of proof of vaccination. Those who do have vaccine-skeptic people catching the virus intentionally and risking death. https://globalnews.ca/news/8524409/hana-horka-czech-singer-covid-death/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8524409/hana-horka-czech-singer-c...
- walterbell 5y ago
  Let's remember that the best case for vaccinated people is Covid recovery. Wilful ignorance of the best case would be unwise. https://cbs12.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-detected-in-at-least-40-different-countries https://cbs12.com/news/local/new-covid-variant-detected-in-a... > "Omicron is acting like a super booster," Unnasch said. "People who have gotten omicron are going to be really well protected against infection, not just disease moving forward, which is a really good sign."
  - smnrchrds 5y ago
    The best case is never catching COVID again. Even vaccinated people put themselves at risk (albeit less than non-vaccinated people) if they catch COVID intentionally. No one recommends just going out there and catching COVID. But when proof of vaccination systems allow for it, some people do it anyway and some of them die instead. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/

wallacoloo 5y ago

> From this standpoint, I could see [..] there are so many different standpoints you could take from the HN population. - "HN focuses on tech; novel tech tends to be anti-regulation => HN must be anti-mandate." - "HN focuses on engineering; engineering is often an optimization game that involves balancing tradeoffs => HN must believe COVID response relative to all the other risks we face is an over-reaction." - and of course the one you presented. my theory is that opinions within any group are just more divergent than people realize. some groups do a better job than others in (a) understanding that and (b) working with that. it's almost all cultural: do people in your culture publicly voice their non-conforming views, and to what degree do people in your culture update their beliefs when they hear new information?