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You're making a circular argument. Anyone who looks at the UK data showing negative effectiveness cannot avoid being "anti vax" because if vaccines make COVID m

You're making a circular argument. Anyone who looks at the UK data showing negative effectiveness cannot avoid being "anti vax" because if vaccines make COVID more prevalent rather than less, then the cost:benefit ratio cannot possibly be positive. In your construction, actually observing published government statistics and acting rationally on it automatically makes someone a "notorious antivaxxer". It's ideology, not rationality.

renaudg 4y ago
No, What I'm saying is that this guy is a run-of-the-mill antivaxxer, even outside Covid. Check his tweets and blog : he writes fallacious pieces against childhood vaccinations like : https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/florida-vaccine-hesitancy-reduced https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/florida-vaccine-hesitancy-... And no, he's not acting rationally. It may have the flavor of it at first glance, but the implications of what he says being true would invalidate large swathes of science. So is he a genius or a crank ? I don't have time to comb through and debunk every single claim (Brandolini's law !) but good old Occam's razor says he's a conspiracist crank who fallaciously massages data until it fits what he set out to prove. That is to say, an ideologue.
- native_samples 4y ago
  Well, full marks for honesty I guess but aren't you just proving my point? You haven't read his article or engaged with his argument at all, but he must be a crank because you can't stomach the implications if he was right. A cursory inspection of the first few paragraphs shows that (a) it's about 2021 so definitely not "outside COVID" and (b) it's another example of what I was pointing out: he is looking at government data that looks pretty concerning and reacting to it in a rational way. Your only argument he's not rational is that "vast swathes" of science would be invalidated if he's right, therefore he must be a crank. That's not even an argument, is it? 1. Some of the biggest leaps forward in science have come from invalidation and correction of deeply fundamental science. That's why Einstein is famous. The potential to invalidate pre-existing scientific beliefs is pretty much a pre-condition for a study to be interesting. 2. Vaccine efficacy is a tiny sub-area of the overall scientific enterprise. If everything people believed about vaccines was disproven conclusively tomorrow that'd certainly be far less than 0.1% of all scientific knowledge. 3. Your heuristic is totally unable to correct handle or react to groupthink or bad incentives. The entire field of virology claimed that there was no possible way SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab and anyone who claimed it could was spreading conspiracy theories. Those same scientists were simultaneously writing private emails saying a lab escape was definitely possible and even looked likely. You were the sort of person who was successfully fooled by their conspiracy, and maybe still are. Fundamentally, your attitude here is poisonous to the search for truth that defines science to begin with. If you can't be bothered evaluating their arguments then don't express opinions on them.

renaudg 4y ago

No, What I'm saying is that this guy is a run-of-the-mill antivaxxer, even outside Covid. Check his tweets and blog : he writes fallacious pieces against childhood vaccinations like : https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/florida-vaccine-hesitancy-reduced https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/florida-vaccine-hesitancy-... And no, he's not acting rationally. It may have the flavor of it at first glance, but the implications of what he says being true would invalidate large swathes of science. So is he a genius or a crank ? I don't have time to comb through and debunk every single claim (Brandolini's law !) but good old Occam's razor says he's a conspiracist crank who fallaciously massages data until it fits what he set out to prove. That is to say, an ideologue.

native_samples 4y ago
Well, full marks for honesty I guess but aren't you just proving my point? You haven't read his article or engaged with his argument at all, but he must be a crank because you can't stomach the implications if he was right. A cursory inspection of the first few paragraphs shows that (a) it's about 2021 so definitely not "outside COVID" and (b) it's another example of what I was pointing out: he is looking at government data that looks pretty concerning and reacting to it in a rational way. Your only argument he's not rational is that "vast swathes" of science would be invalidated if he's right, therefore he must be a crank. That's not even an argument, is it? 1. Some of the biggest leaps forward in science have come from invalidation and correction of deeply fundamental science. That's why Einstein is famous. The potential to invalidate pre-existing scientific beliefs is pretty much a pre-condition for a study to be interesting. 2. Vaccine efficacy is a tiny sub-area of the overall scientific enterprise. If everything people believed about vaccines was disproven conclusively tomorrow that'd certainly be far less than 0.1% of all scientific knowledge. 3. Your heuristic is totally unable to correct handle or react to groupthink or bad incentives. The entire field of virology claimed that there was no possible way SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a lab and anyone who claimed it could was spreading conspiracy theories. Those same scientists were simultaneously writing private emails saying a lab escape was definitely possible and even looked likely. You were the sort of person who was successfully fooled by their conspiracy, and maybe still are. Fundamentally, your attitude here is poisonous to the search for truth that defines science to begin with. If you can't be bothered evaluating their arguments then don't express opinions on them.