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Another revealing term for a phrase like 'anti-anti-antivax' is Orwell's double-plus-ungood. It's in line with a standard tactic in propaganda: Take a complex

Another revealing term for a phrase like 'anti-anti-antivax' is Orwell's double-plus-ungood. It's in line with a standard tactic in propaganda: Take a complex topic, reduce it to simple statement even a small child could understand, then repeat, repeat, repeat. Twitter is the ideal tool for this approach, with its character-limited format. No wonder that state/corporate PR outfits (aka 'the media') and politicians congregate there. The article does have some good advice, though: Jacobs recommends extending our temporal bandwidth through a deliberate engagement with the past through our reading as well as a deliberate effort to bring the more distant future into our reckoning. This is ideal for addressing the vaccination issue. The first question to ask of any self-styled 'vaccine expert' would be, "What are the 100 top vaccines that have been introduced in the past 100 years, and what are some examples of success and failure in these efforts"? (What I'd expect from Twitter is cherry-pickers finding the best and worst examples to push their own particular agenda, rather than an across-the-board debate). Granted, answering that question in detail would take a whole book, although wikipedia has a decent introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines Some of the ancient religious views on illness seem to be playing a role here as well, i.e. illness is a divine punishment for human sin, so anyone effecting cures is clearly an agent of dark Satanic power, who should be burned at the stake etc. None of that excuses pharmaceutical manufacturers who run dirty production lines and end up contaminating their vaccines, however: "Viral contamination in biologic manufacture and implications for emerging therapies (2020)" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
This particular conversation typically conflates two separate questions: 1) is a person's decision to get a vaccine based on (however defined) accurate knowledge of vaccines and how they work? and 2) how can we ensure that individual rights to choose one's own medical and preventative treatments are protected regardless of the perceived answer to #1?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else?
  - logicchains 4y ago
    > 3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else? I believe you mean: "Is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual and endanger their life if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else". Because for the covid vaccines at least there's ample evidence they're not without nontrivial risk: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
      It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large.
      - tablespoon 4y ago
        > It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large. Problematic is kind of an overloaded term, so it's not clear to me exactly what you mean here. It can certainly be true that "a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large." There are a lot of example of that (e.g. unvaccinated people with naive immune systems allowing the resurgence of disease, violent psychopaths). That fact certainly can cause problems where the contradictions between the sloganized-forms of certain social axioms need to be resolved.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        Many (most?) "natural" states and activities of human beings are considered unacceptable in society even without posing existential risk to other humans (you might find anything adjacent to reproduction in particular quite a minefield). Should vaccination be any exception? I suspect if we tried to define "natural" we'd find the term meaningless and applied very selectively where it suits someone's agenda.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

This particular conversation typically conflates two separate questions: 1) is a person's decision to get a vaccine based on (however defined) accurate knowledge of vaccines and how they work? and 2) how can we ensure that individual rights to choose one's own medical and preventative treatments are protected regardless of the perceived answer to #1?

rootusrootus 4y ago
3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else?
- logicchains 4y ago
  > 3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else? I believe you mean: "Is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual and endanger their life if that individual makes choices that endanger everyone else". Because for the covid vaccines at least there's ample evidence they're not without nontrivial risk: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large.
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large. Problematic is kind of an overloaded term, so it's not clear to me exactly what you mean here. It can certainly be true that "a human in their natural state of being poses a risk to society at large." There are a lot of example of that (e.g. unvaccinated people with naive immune systems allowing the resurgence of disease, violent psychopaths). That fact certainly can cause problems where the contradictions between the sloganized-forms of certain social axioms need to be resolved.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      Many (most?) "natural" states and activities of human beings are considered unacceptable in society even without posing existential risk to other humans (you might find anything adjacent to reproduction in particular quite a minefield). Should vaccination be any exception? I suspect if we tried to define "natural" we'd find the term meaningless and applied very selectively where it suits someone's agenda.