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I really wish all the anti-vaxxer types would just listen to TWiV. The hosts and guests both openly and candidly talk about some of the disagreements they have

I really wish all the anti-vaxxer types would just listen to TWiV. The hosts and guests both openly and candidly talk about some of the disagreements they have with the prevailing public health guidelines while at the same time give so much detail and depth into virology and immunology so as to show how full of shit the big anti-vax misinformation peddlers are. So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled and then these prominent experts at the top of their fields do it every week on TWiV and don't get cancelled (because they aren't full of shit).

stingraycharles 4y ago
In my experience, it’s usually not about finding out the actual facts / truth for these groups of people, but rather based mostly on emotion. I have an extremely hard time believing that letting them listen to TWiV would have any meaningful impact.
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Just curious - if you say so many other people are forming their opinion based on emotion rather than facts / truth and don't realize that - why do you think you are immune to the same phenomena? I don't mean it as an insult, I probably also have a few beliefs like that, with no way to realize which ones. Certainly feels good to believe I am protected from a deadly disease and feels bad to wonder about side effects. So why listen to any critique of COVID-19 vaccines after I already got my shots?
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    Parent did not say they believe they are immune.
    - blueblueue 4y ago
      But strongly implied it.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      'these groups of people' does imply there are (other groups of) people immune to it, whichever group they believe themselves to be in. (That's an everyday speech 'imply', not a mathematical 'imply'; where of course the existence of sets containing x says nothing about the existence of sets not containing x.)
- uwagar 4y ago
  - space_fountain 4y ago
    Hey, that’s not how vaccines actually work. I think you’ve had fragments of the truth presented in a way to try to make you believe things that aren’t true. Vaccines aren’t a platform that can be triggered to do different things. It does use RNA which is cool because it allows for more rapid changes. The vaccine will mostly work with a wide variety of RNA payloads with the only difference being the exact antibodies it encourages. In a few decades that might mean we could start developing and deploying vaccines in weeks. But rna doesn’t last long. It’s pretty unstable so the only thing getting updated is your bodies natural immune response
    - uwagar 4y ago
      u are just reinforcing my understanding. so payloads, triggering and 'specific' products are all real. surely 'bugs' in this sequence are inevitable too with maybe devastating consequences for which no one is liable. who is to say the boosters are not updates that sneak in backdoors with additional 'features'? + these vaccines are peddled by for profit companies that refuse to share IP and emergency approved by govt agencies that have these company officers on their boards.... sorry, i refuse this workflow that treats my body like a phone that needs constant 'security' updates.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        > companies that refuse to share IP That only means they have an exclusive right to manufacture the vaccine. It doesn’t mean that the details are secret. For example: https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV2-spike-encoding-mRNA-sequences-for-vaccines-BNT-162b2-and-mRNA-1273/blob/main/Figure1Figure2_032321.fasta https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV...
      - space_fountain 4y ago
        Did you get flu updates in the past? What about yearly physicals? Obviously I’m not going to convince you, but I would like to invite you to wonder what the difference is. RNA tech is potentially scary, but the idea that vaccines are secretly doing something else is a bit silly. For one thing the number of people who can “decompile” the vaccine is pretty large. I believe there have been some research papers on it even and beyond that biology is pretty limited. You’d need a lot more than is in the vaccine to do anything more than your run of the mill virus does to you dozens of times a year and honestly a lot less than some because it can’t modify your dna, it can’t save itself anywhere.
- canoebuilder 4y ago
  In my experience, it’s usually not about finding out the actual facts / truth for these groups of people actual facts https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-deaths-in-israel-have-hit-an https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-deaths-in-israel-h... look at that chart and then recall the absolutely mad state so many people went into Summer 2021 "time to blame the 'unvaccinated'" "time to inject them against their will" "time to violate their basic human rights" https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-and https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/i-know-what-you-did-last... maybe, just maybe, the "unvaccinated" were able to see something you weren't and chose the better path
  - LadyCailin 4y ago
    Public health rights and not clogging up hospitals with easily preventable diseases readily outweigh your individual right to not get vaccinated, in general. Had the discussions around the specific Covid vaccines been argued with this in mind, a more productive conversation could be had, but instead it jumps immediately to a conversation about “muh rights” which is wholeheartedly disingenuous and/or selfish.
    - canoebuilder 4y ago
      The shots don’t work. Even if they did, people’s choice over what is injected into their bodies comes first. Even if they did work, the profile of who was at risk was clear, it wasn’t healthy young people. So why was it pushed on healthy young people? From the outset the risk reward ratio was not clear for those without high comorbidites, the minute the myocarditis signal showed up it should have been pulled for most people. Bearing in mind we now know myocarditis is just one of a multitude of negative side effects. So why did it go on being pushed and coerced to healthy people, actively harming them?
    - brigandish 4y ago
      To protect or support one individual's rights is to protect or support everyone's individual rights. That is why, for example, prominent free speech activists will support the right of people they vehemently disagree with to voice their opinions, as it protects one's own right to voice opinions. How is that selfish? > If you would like to be selfish, you should do it in a very intelligent way. The stupid way to be selfish is … seeking happiness for ourselves alone. … the intelligent way to be selfish is to work for the welfare of others.” - Dalai Lama
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
> I really wish all the anti-vaxxer types would just listen to TWiV. We call it science the process/method, rather than science the religion. > The hosts and guests both openly and candidly talk about some of the disagreements they have with the prevailing public health guidelines while at the same time give so much detail and depth into virology and immunology so as to show how full of shit the big anti-vax misinformation peddlers are. I'll keep that in mind next time I am censored. > So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled and then these prominent experts at the top of their fields do it every week on TWiV and don't get cancelled (because they aren't full of shit). Profanity aside, it sounds like you are touting controlled opposition, or, Establishment figures critiquing establishment positions.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  How do we know you're not 'controlled opposition'? If you want to make the argument that the people in question are establishment figures, then doesn't the same argument fly for you as well? How do we know you're not some agent of some other establishment pushing their own agenda other than 'trust me I'm a real person'? This line of debate leads nowhere other than a dead end where each side is convinced that the other is a spy. And considering your post history, I don't know if there's a reason to lend you much credence at all.
  - OrvalWintermute 4y ago
    The proper medical response, and ethical one, is pretty simple. To any medical intevention there is risk. A chance of adverse events. A chance it won't work. Side effects. Your physician should make you aware of these potential issues, making you aware of them, before treating you. We call it informed consent. The ethical angle is a little more complex. Considering above, but also, knowing the statistics around fatality rates of various conditions, and the adverse events that go along with the interventions. Some cases it means they should, or shouldn't be treated. Also, you have to consider a patient's personal beliefs, religion, etc. Running roughshod over patient beliefs is considered unethical. Each person should make their own decisions based on knowing their health, and consulting with a competent medical professional that understands all of above. There are simple calculators that exist for fatality rates around covid depending on age, weight, mordibities, etc. Thank JHU. Which I do, thanks mostly to my wife that is a dual board certified surgeon. > This line of debate leads nowhere other than a dead end where each side is convinced that the other is a spy. And considering your post history, I don't know if there's a reason to lend you much credence at all Either I am a liar, well-informed, or quite crazy. Take your pick. I'd just like to think that I married well
samuel 4y ago
There are several kinds of anti-vaxxers. It's easy to focus on the tinfoil hat kind but there are others that just kept an skeptic outlook and were equally by the ridiculized by media, when not directly accussed of being accomplices of homicide (I'm talking about Spain here, may be in other countries the situation was different). True experts' doubts just reinforce their positions instead of weakening them, IMO. For the record, I have got 3 shots (2 Pfizer + 1 Moderna), and I don't regret it. But I respect people who chose differently because the unknowns about the vaccines.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  There actually really isn't any difference between the two groups. They differ only in how they articulate the same bad logic. Vaccines became broadly available in relatively wealthy countries in 2021 wherein the only reasonable position would have been that vaccination of all groups would decrease net mortality even among those unlikely to die and reduce damage to people's bodies that we were already seeing even with mild infections of otherwise healthy people. A reasonable analysis of a complex topic with an unknown number of unknown factors is ultimately going to have at least some support among smart people for niche positions. Going with what your emotions proves you are intellectually incapable. Picking out one smart person with an articulate position that matches your emotional position proves you are an intellectually incapable person who thinks they are smart. Picking out a niche position and searching for a handful of smart people who support it because it makes you feel smart to be a contrarian makes you intellectually incapable AND smug. I respect people with the aptitude and the niche knowledge to break new intellectual ground even if they turned out to be wrong. I do not respect the 1000 idiots following that one fellow into the brush who ignored all the other smart people going the other way and neither should you.
  - logicchains 4y ago
    >Vaccines became broadly available in relatively wealthy countries in 2021 wherein the only reasonable position would have been that vaccination of all groups would decrease net mortality even among those unlikely to die and reduce damage to people's bodies that we were already seeing even with mild infections of otherwise healthy people. It's not necessarily a reasonable position when the clinical trials themselves showed an unusually large rate of adverse events in vacinees vs the placebos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2.... The bad logic is the logic that it's okay to assess the efficiency of a novel therapeutic by the protection it provides against infection rather than by it's overall effect on excess mortality, as such an approach is going to miss any safety signals.
raspberry1337 4y ago
>So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line What about the people who were silenced about their negative vaccine reactions...[1] orjournalists like Alex Berenson that were banned from twitter from talking about the data? The first journalist to win against twitter in court and get unbanned, ever [2] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-side-effects-blood-clots-b1843067.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-side... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-lawsuit-covid-misinformation/671219/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-...
- trention 4y ago
  Calling alex berenson a journalist is a travesty. The fact that he is a crank is obvious from all his writing about marijuana that precedes the pandemic.
  - raspberry1337 4y ago
    You are saying that someone cannot write about marijuana without being a crank? Not a very convincing point He is the first journalist to take twitter to court and get unbanned, so he is in fact already a historical journalist, wether you agree with him or not.
    - trention 4y ago
      I'm saying his writings about marijuana are cranckish, as can be confirmed by anyone with any expertise in the field. >He is the first journalist to take twitter to court and get unbanned The fact that he was a "journalist" had nothing to do either with the reason for banning him or why he was restored (he was restored solely because a twitter employee behaved like a moron).
logicchains 4y ago
>So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled and then these prominent experts at the top of their fields do it every week on TWiV and don't get cancelled (because they aren't full of shit). On the one hand you say anti-vaxers are not cancelled but on the other hand you refer to them as full of shit. In spite of so many of their claims about the vaccine having been proven correct: it doesn't prevent transmission, it doesn't prevent severe covid or death, and for some age groups the risks outweigh the benefits: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070.
- lovich 4y ago
  He didn’t say they weren’t cancelled, he said that their claim that you can’t have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled. Anti vaxxers tend to not discuss nuanced details and instead come out with unsubstantiated claims like “vaccines cause autism” which is going to get most people to stop listening to them
  - logicchains 4y ago
    >Anti vaxxers tend to not discuss nuanced details and instead come out with unsubstantiated claims like “vaccines cause autism” which is going to get most people to stop listening to them Have you actually read any of the publications by prominent anti-vax scientists? For instance, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359989585_Innate_immune_suppression_by_SARS-CoV-2_mRNA_vaccinations_The_role_of_G-quadruplexes_exosomes_and_MicroRNAs https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359989585_Innate_im... is hardly lacking in nuanced details or full of unsubstantiated claims, nor is https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/c-19-mass-vaccination-triggers-a-chain-reaction-of-new-pandemics-and-epidemics https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog... .
    - lovich 4y ago
      I’m finding it difficult to summon the energy to read through these fully when the abstract of the first link has a political dog whistle[1] in the abstract before it gets to any actual hypothesis or claims. Finishing the abstract I see they end it with this sentence[2], implying this isn’t even original research? Is this actual research or a statistical analysis of the VAERS database? This second link is even worse, it’s a blogpost with a a short paper riddled with citations linking to other blogposts from the same site making wild claims about how the vaccine actually makes things worse. I started on section 1 after his synopsis and he just points to a diagram included in his paper and then trots out the debunked anti vaxxer claim of > vaccinees are now increasingly becoming asymptomatic shedders of SC-2. There is no data or citation supporting that beyond his diagram. He just makes a claim and then starts making logical leaps off that claim. This is the kind of “evidence” that makes everyone groan and roll their eyes when people claim that the anti vaxxers actually have proof and no one’s paying attention to them because it’s a conspiracy or doesn’t toe the party line. I am legitimately upset that I gave you the benefit of the doubt and wasted my time reading through these just to find out that your claims are as weakly supported as I had assumed. [1]the sentence below, anti vaxxers commonly bring up lack of precedent as a reason the vaccines can’t possibly work > The utilization of mRNA vaccines in the context of infectious disease has no precedent. [2] > We show evidence from the VAERS database supporting our hypothesis.
theiz 4y ago
I really wish there was a normal conversation on this topic. If you would state that it might be better to offer vaccinations to the 50+ a few months back, you were an anti-vaxxer. That wording alone is also just to ridicule everyone that is somewhat critical on the Covid vaccination rules. There has been hardly any science in the regulations and mandates, just as there has been little science in the conspiracy people. And that is where we are now: A soccer match with hooligans shouting non-sense. So I agree with people that have to listen to specialists. At the same time your statement (2nd part) tells me that you are not open to listening, or having a conversation with anyone saying anything outside the allowed communication path.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- m000 4y ago
  > If you would state that it might be better to offer vaccinations to the 50+ a few months back, you were an anti-vaxxer. And rightfully so. Policies adapt to the currently prevailing COVID variant. A change of policy today is not a vindication for statements made months ago under different circumstances. Also, if the one making the statement is not an expert themselves, they're typically cherry-picking statements of real experts to match their preoccupations, while the topic is in fact still under debate and the verdict can swing either way.
Test0129 4y ago
I got my original two vaccines. I refused pfizer and moderna on principle. I refuse to get any boosters. The signal to noise ratio is basically 0 at this point and I am having a hard time "trusting the science". You know the only people more full of shit than the anti-vaxxers? The "trust the science" shills. The anti-vaxxers may have the wrong idea but from 2020 to...well about the last few months we saw that anyone who even remotely questioned the efficacy of vaccines was "anti-science" and a "science denier". Major platforms spent millions (billions?) to kill as much of this as they could despite the fact the "fact checkers" had no idea either. Fact checkers by-and-large are editorial writers on a power trip. I don't think anyone whose been awake at the wheel for the last 4 years is surprised at this. But they gained an entirely new level of unjustified power in 2020. A few years later all of the sudden some of the "conspiracies" were at least shown to have some veracity: the vaccines aren't nearly as effective as advertised, the studies were rushed/manipulated, boosters are not effective, the lab leak hypothesis, etc. Now, a real "science believer" would simply change their view at this point to match the reality of the situation. We spent two years pretending we have a full view of exactly what COVID is, what caused it, where it started, etc. The truth is we have no idea. The best scientists so far can't even agree on if a booster works or not (and by works I mean is effective along a wide population of varying demographics). People are seemingly religious bound to the "wear your mask, trust the science" non-sense. If anything, these people are just as bad as the people saying the vaccine is carrying nano-robots. If you recall, in 2020 especially, the idea that the virus originated in the BSL lab in Wuhan was put into several papers. None of which can be found anymore (at least I cannot find them). These scientists were "canceled" immediately. There's a lot of nonsense coming out of both sides. But to pretend it's simply "those pesky anti-vaxxers" as if none of them can rub a collective two brain cells together is frankly funny. I have a feeling the Pfizer documents once fully released and analyzed will be a treasure trove of hindenberg level disasters once the religious party-line fervor comes to an end.
- comex 4y ago
  Citation for boosters not working?
  - canoebuilder 4y ago
cm2187 4y ago
Depends what you mean by anti-vaxer. It goes from crazy conspiracy theorist to people who don't see the point of vaccinating healthy children. I don't think I am an anti-vaxer, I got two shots despite having had covid. I totally see the benefits for the population at risk. But for a mild virus like omicron, for a population that wasn't even at risk of the original strain, I just don't see the point of mandating vaccines. It is certainly doing nothing meaningful to transmissions (if it did it would be another matter), and it does have side effects (I spent a full day in bed with fever after the second shot, and this is quite common), and what happened to "my body my choice"? So not being in the population at risk I have no intention to take a booster. Am I an anti-vaxer? I certainly disagree with public health policy in most countries.
- octopoc 4y ago
  According to Merriam-Webster you are an anti-vaxxer if you oppose the use of some or all vaccines, or if you oppose vaccine mandates, or usually both[1]. So if you oppose vaccinating healthy children then yeah, you are likely an anti-vaxxer. If you also oppose any vaccine mandates then you are definitely an anti-vaxxer. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer
  - jhugo 4y ago
    By that definition, "anti-vaxxer" is so broad as to be meaningless. Certainly useful as a way for people not caught up in its expansive definition to feel superior, I guess.
  - blub 4y ago
    From your link: “ As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the use of the term anti-vaxxer has both increased and broadened.” It used to refer to parents which completely refused to vaccinate their children. It has transformed into a weapon, like racist, fascist, etc and is used to silence and manipulate discourse.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  There are many strange effects of covid still being understood, like blood clots: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/04/covid-patients-may-be-higher-risk-blood-clots-6-months#:~:text=Ho%20and%20Pell%20said%20that%20while%20many%20Omicron,of%20infections%20%2894.5%25%20in%20this%20study%29%2C%22%20they%20wrote.
mcv 4y ago
A problem is also that both anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers have a tendency to interpret any nuanced discussion as proof that the expert don't know either and therefore it's all a lie. It's an incredibly destructive attitude to any honest discourse.
- cm2187 4y ago
  But you can't negate the fact that we have also been told a lot of bullshit. I remember the same speech in Jan 2022 where the health minister of France explained that covid was dangerous for children and therefore they will mandate vaccinating children, immediately followed by the minister of education explaining that covid isn't dangerous for children, that the number of children hospitalised for covid is less than for rare diseases, and therefore they will keep schools open during the covid wave. Should I stop believe my lying eyes?
  - jonathanstrange 4y ago
    And what's bullshit about that? Did you expect French politicians to be all-knowing robots who can never be wrong? This sounds like a run-of-the-mill political debate that hopefully in the end was decided on the basis of an expert panel. (And no, of course, medical experts are also not infallible. I don't think we have investigated a disease and responded to it as fast as to this one ever before in the history of mankind, so there were bound to be made some wrong or misleading hypotheses.)
    - 988747 4y ago
      >> Did you expect French politicians to be all-knowing robots who can never be wrong? I would expect government members making decisions to consult expert virologists/epidemiologists first. The fact that they can make two contradictory statements means that either they did not consult any experts, or they consulted different experts, which means there is no consensus among experts on the topic.
      - jonathanstrange 4y ago
jhugo 4y ago
If normal public health messaging was as forthright as TWiV then misinformation might already be less of a problem.
alvah 4y ago
Is your casual "anti-vaxxers" slur aimed at the pre-2020 definition of anti-vaxxer, or the more recent iteration?
- sharken 4y ago
  If you're talking about multiple iterations of the term "anti-vaxxers", then I'd argue that the term itself is no longer useful. Nowadays it is used to create an us or them division. Which in turn removes any nuances.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Depending on the country, people lost their jobs, weren't allowed to travel and were locked inside for not getting the vaccine(s), Austria even went as far as to introduce a law mandating everyone to get those vaccines (which they never executed and then promptly overturned). Now whole governments are admitting that people under 50 don't really need those vaccines after all. We now have studies claiming that serious vaccination side effects are more likely than serious covid sickness in young men. The anti vaxxers were proven RIGHT by this in many of their claims. How should they EVER trust governments again? How should they ever leave their anti-vax echochambers again? It was shown time and time again that governments and their high profile rockstar twitter "experts" get the facts right as many times as a broken clock the time, sometimes even spreading deliberate misinformation/lies ("Faucis noble lies") and absolutely can not be trusted. My government as well scammed me into getting a second vaccine, after the retracted their claim that the single shot J&J vaccination would suffice. I am not even an anti vaxxer -I am happy my parents are vaccinated. They always were at an at-risk age, but I am not and I am not interested in getting another covid vaccine. I remain terrified at the prospect of a reinstatement of the green pass system.
- scoofy 4y ago
  > Now whole governments are admitting that people under 50 don't really need those vaccines after all. We now have studies claiming that serious vaccination side effects are more likely than serious covid sickness in young men. Wtf are you talking about. TWiV absolutely thinks everyone needs two cycles of vaccination period… and it’s likely beneficial to get three.
mrtksn 4y ago
Many anti-vaxxer are politically motivated, in a venn diagram you can find them in the same region with the anti-globalist, national socialists, radical leftist, libertarians, anti-americans, science-sceptics etc. The overlap is not exact, that's why I say use a venn diagram but essentially anything anti-establishment has a anti-vaxxer component since vaccinse are considered establishments' game.
maxehmookau 4y ago
I wish they'd listen to anybody with any actual knowledge rather than doing "research" on Google.
BrainVirus 4y ago
- trention 4y ago
  Have you considered that a lot of people in the medical field have always been latent antivaxxers and that was just the moment to out themselves? Spoiler alert, antivaxxers are always wrong.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    How utterly dogmatic and closed-minded.

stingraycharles 4y ago

In my experience, it’s usually not about finding out the actual facts / truth for these groups of people, but rather based mostly on emotion. I have an extremely hard time believing that letting them listen to TWiV would have any meaningful impact.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Just curious - if you say so many other people are forming their opinion based on emotion rather than facts / truth and don't realize that - why do you think you are immune to the same phenomena? I don't mean it as an insult, I probably also have a few beliefs like that, with no way to realize which ones. Certainly feels good to believe I am protected from a deadly disease and feels bad to wonder about side effects. So why listen to any critique of COVID-19 vaccines after I already got my shots?
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  Parent did not say they believe they are immune.
  - blueblueue 4y ago
    But strongly implied it.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    'these groups of people' does imply there are (other groups of) people immune to it, whichever group they believe themselves to be in. (That's an everyday speech 'imply', not a mathematical 'imply'; where of course the existence of sets containing x says nothing about the existence of sets not containing x.)
uwagar 4y ago
- space_fountain 4y ago
  Hey, that’s not how vaccines actually work. I think you’ve had fragments of the truth presented in a way to try to make you believe things that aren’t true. Vaccines aren’t a platform that can be triggered to do different things. It does use RNA which is cool because it allows for more rapid changes. The vaccine will mostly work with a wide variety of RNA payloads with the only difference being the exact antibodies it encourages. In a few decades that might mean we could start developing and deploying vaccines in weeks. But rna doesn’t last long. It’s pretty unstable so the only thing getting updated is your bodies natural immune response
  - uwagar 4y ago
    u are just reinforcing my understanding. so payloads, triggering and 'specific' products are all real. surely 'bugs' in this sequence are inevitable too with maybe devastating consequences for which no one is liable. who is to say the boosters are not updates that sneak in backdoors with additional 'features'? + these vaccines are peddled by for profit companies that refuse to share IP and emergency approved by govt agencies that have these company officers on their boards.... sorry, i refuse this workflow that treats my body like a phone that needs constant 'security' updates.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      > companies that refuse to share IP That only means they have an exclusive right to manufacture the vaccine. It doesn’t mean that the details are secret. For example: https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV2-spike-encoding-mRNA-sequences-for-vaccines-BNT-162b2-and-mRNA-1273/blob/main/Figure1Figure2_032321.fasta https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV...
    - space_fountain 4y ago
      Did you get flu updates in the past? What about yearly physicals? Obviously I’m not going to convince you, but I would like to invite you to wonder what the difference is. RNA tech is potentially scary, but the idea that vaccines are secretly doing something else is a bit silly. For one thing the number of people who can “decompile” the vaccine is pretty large. I believe there have been some research papers on it even and beyond that biology is pretty limited. You’d need a lot more than is in the vaccine to do anything more than your run of the mill virus does to you dozens of times a year and honestly a lot less than some because it can’t modify your dna, it can’t save itself anywhere.
canoebuilder 4y ago
In my experience, it’s usually not about finding out the actual facts / truth for these groups of people actual facts https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-deaths-in-israel-have-hit-an https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/covid-deaths-in-israel-h... look at that chart and then recall the absolutely mad state so many people went into Summer 2021 "time to blame the 'unvaccinated'" "time to inject them against their will" "time to violate their basic human rights" https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-and https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/i-know-what-you-did-last... maybe, just maybe, the "unvaccinated" were able to see something you weren't and chose the better path
- LadyCailin 4y ago
  Public health rights and not clogging up hospitals with easily preventable diseases readily outweigh your individual right to not get vaccinated, in general. Had the discussions around the specific Covid vaccines been argued with this in mind, a more productive conversation could be had, but instead it jumps immediately to a conversation about “muh rights” which is wholeheartedly disingenuous and/or selfish.
  - canoebuilder 4y ago
    The shots don’t work. Even if they did, people’s choice over what is injected into their bodies comes first. Even if they did work, the profile of who was at risk was clear, it wasn’t healthy young people. So why was it pushed on healthy young people? From the outset the risk reward ratio was not clear for those without high comorbidites, the minute the myocarditis signal showed up it should have been pulled for most people. Bearing in mind we now know myocarditis is just one of a multitude of negative side effects. So why did it go on being pushed and coerced to healthy people, actively harming them?
  - brigandish 4y ago
    To protect or support one individual's rights is to protect or support everyone's individual rights. That is why, for example, prominent free speech activists will support the right of people they vehemently disagree with to voice their opinions, as it protects one's own right to voice opinions. How is that selfish? > If you would like to be selfish, you should do it in a very intelligent way. The stupid way to be selfish is … seeking happiness for ourselves alone. … the intelligent way to be selfish is to work for the welfare of others.” - Dalai Lama

OrvalWintermute 4y ago

> I really wish all the anti-vaxxer types would just listen to TWiV. We call it science the process/method, rather than science the religion. > The hosts and guests both openly and candidly talk about some of the disagreements they have with the prevailing public health guidelines while at the same time give so much detail and depth into virology and immunology so as to show how full of shit the big anti-vax misinformation peddlers are. I'll keep that in mind next time I am censored. > So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled and then these prominent experts at the top of their fields do it every week on TWiV and don't get cancelled (because they aren't full of shit). Profanity aside, it sounds like you are touting controlled opposition, or, Establishment figures critiquing establishment positions.

fzeroracer 4y ago
How do we know you're not 'controlled opposition'? If you want to make the argument that the people in question are establishment figures, then doesn't the same argument fly for you as well? How do we know you're not some agent of some other establishment pushing their own agenda other than 'trust me I'm a real person'? This line of debate leads nowhere other than a dead end where each side is convinced that the other is a spy. And considering your post history, I don't know if there's a reason to lend you much credence at all.
- OrvalWintermute 4y ago
  The proper medical response, and ethical one, is pretty simple. To any medical intevention there is risk. A chance of adverse events. A chance it won't work. Side effects. Your physician should make you aware of these potential issues, making you aware of them, before treating you. We call it informed consent. The ethical angle is a little more complex. Considering above, but also, knowing the statistics around fatality rates of various conditions, and the adverse events that go along with the interventions. Some cases it means they should, or shouldn't be treated. Also, you have to consider a patient's personal beliefs, religion, etc. Running roughshod over patient beliefs is considered unethical. Each person should make their own decisions based on knowing their health, and consulting with a competent medical professional that understands all of above. There are simple calculators that exist for fatality rates around covid depending on age, weight, mordibities, etc. Thank JHU. Which I do, thanks mostly to my wife that is a dual board certified surgeon. > This line of debate leads nowhere other than a dead end where each side is convinced that the other is a spy. And considering your post history, I don't know if there's a reason to lend you much credence at all Either I am a liar, well-informed, or quite crazy. Take your pick. I'd just like to think that I married well

samuel 4y ago

There are several kinds of anti-vaxxers. It's easy to focus on the tinfoil hat kind but there are others that just kept an skeptic outlook and were equally by the ridiculized by media, when not directly accussed of being accomplices of homicide (I'm talking about Spain here, may be in other countries the situation was different). True experts' doubts just reinforce their positions instead of weakening them, IMO. For the record, I have got 3 shots (2 Pfizer + 1 Moderna), and I don't regret it. But I respect people who chose differently because the unknowns about the vaccines.

michaelmrose 4y ago
There actually really isn't any difference between the two groups. They differ only in how they articulate the same bad logic. Vaccines became broadly available in relatively wealthy countries in 2021 wherein the only reasonable position would have been that vaccination of all groups would decrease net mortality even among those unlikely to die and reduce damage to people's bodies that we were already seeing even with mild infections of otherwise healthy people. A reasonable analysis of a complex topic with an unknown number of unknown factors is ultimately going to have at least some support among smart people for niche positions. Going with what your emotions proves you are intellectually incapable. Picking out one smart person with an articulate position that matches your emotional position proves you are an intellectually incapable person who thinks they are smart. Picking out a niche position and searching for a handful of smart people who support it because it makes you feel smart to be a contrarian makes you intellectually incapable AND smug. I respect people with the aptitude and the niche knowledge to break new intellectual ground even if they turned out to be wrong. I do not respect the 1000 idiots following that one fellow into the brush who ignored all the other smart people going the other way and neither should you.
- logicchains 4y ago
  >Vaccines became broadly available in relatively wealthy countries in 2021 wherein the only reasonable position would have been that vaccination of all groups would decrease net mortality even among those unlikely to die and reduce damage to people's bodies that we were already seeing even with mild infections of otherwise healthy people. It's not necessarily a reasonable position when the clinical trials themselves showed an unusually large rate of adverse events in vacinees vs the placebos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22010283 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X2.... The bad logic is the logic that it's okay to assess the efficiency of a novel therapeutic by the protection it provides against infection rather than by it's overall effect on excess mortality, as such an approach is going to miss any safety signals.

raspberry1337 4y ago

>So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line What about the people who were silenced about their negative vaccine reactions...[1] orjournalists like Alex Berenson that were banned from twitter from talking about the data? The first journalist to win against twitter in court and get unbanned, ever [2] [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-side-effects-blood-clots-b1843067.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-side... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-lawsuit-covid-misinformation/671219/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/08/alex-...

trention 4y ago
Calling alex berenson a journalist is a travesty. The fact that he is a crank is obvious from all his writing about marijuana that precedes the pandemic.
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  You are saying that someone cannot write about marijuana without being a crank? Not a very convincing point He is the first journalist to take twitter to court and get unbanned, so he is in fact already a historical journalist, wether you agree with him or not.
  - trention 4y ago
    I'm saying his writings about marijuana are cranckish, as can be confirmed by anyone with any expertise in the field. >He is the first journalist to take twitter to court and get unbanned The fact that he was a "journalist" had nothing to do either with the reason for banning him or why he was restored (he was restored solely because a twitter employee behaved like a moron).

logicchains 4y ago

>So many anti-vaxxers say you can't have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled and then these prominent experts at the top of their fields do it every week on TWiV and don't get cancelled (because they aren't full of shit). On the one hand you say anti-vaxers are not cancelled but on the other hand you refer to them as full of shit. In spite of so many of their claims about the vaccine having been proven correct: it doesn't prevent transmission, it doesn't prevent severe covid or death, and for some age groups the risks outweigh the benefits: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4206070.

lovich 4y ago
He didn’t say they weren’t cancelled, he said that their claim that you can’t have any disagreements with the party line or you get cancelled. Anti vaxxers tend to not discuss nuanced details and instead come out with unsubstantiated claims like “vaccines cause autism” which is going to get most people to stop listening to them
- logicchains 4y ago
  >Anti vaxxers tend to not discuss nuanced details and instead come out with unsubstantiated claims like “vaccines cause autism” which is going to get most people to stop listening to them Have you actually read any of the publications by prominent anti-vax scientists? For instance, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359989585_Innate_immune_suppression_by_SARS-CoV-2_mRNA_vaccinations_The_role_of_G-quadruplexes_exosomes_and_MicroRNAs https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359989585_Innate_im... is hardly lacking in nuanced details or full of unsubstantiated claims, nor is https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog/c-19-mass-vaccination-triggers-a-chain-reaction-of-new-pandemics-and-epidemics https://www.voiceforscienceandsolidarity.org/scientific-blog... .
  - lovich 4y ago
    I’m finding it difficult to summon the energy to read through these fully when the abstract of the first link has a political dog whistle[1] in the abstract before it gets to any actual hypothesis or claims. Finishing the abstract I see they end it with this sentence[2], implying this isn’t even original research? Is this actual research or a statistical analysis of the VAERS database? This second link is even worse, it’s a blogpost with a a short paper riddled with citations linking to other blogposts from the same site making wild claims about how the vaccine actually makes things worse. I started on section 1 after his synopsis and he just points to a diagram included in his paper and then trots out the debunked anti vaxxer claim of > vaccinees are now increasingly becoming asymptomatic shedders of SC-2. There is no data or citation supporting that beyond his diagram. He just makes a claim and then starts making logical leaps off that claim. This is the kind of “evidence” that makes everyone groan and roll their eyes when people claim that the anti vaxxers actually have proof and no one’s paying attention to them because it’s a conspiracy or doesn’t toe the party line. I am legitimately upset that I gave you the benefit of the doubt and wasted my time reading through these just to find out that your claims are as weakly supported as I had assumed. [1]the sentence below, anti vaxxers commonly bring up lack of precedent as a reason the vaccines can’t possibly work > The utilization of mRNA vaccines in the context of infectious disease has no precedent. [2] > We show evidence from the VAERS database supporting our hypothesis.

theiz 4y ago

I really wish there was a normal conversation on this topic. If you would state that it might be better to offer vaccinations to the 50+ a few months back, you were an anti-vaxxer. That wording alone is also just to ridicule everyone that is somewhat critical on the Covid vaccination rules. There has been hardly any science in the regulations and mandates, just as there has been little science in the conspiracy people. And that is where we are now: A soccer match with hooligans shouting non-sense. So I agree with people that have to listen to specialists. At the same time your statement (2nd part) tells me that you are not open to listening, or having a conversation with anyone saying anything outside the allowed communication path.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
m000 4y ago
> If you would state that it might be better to offer vaccinations to the 50+ a few months back, you were an anti-vaxxer. And rightfully so. Policies adapt to the currently prevailing COVID variant. A change of policy today is not a vindication for statements made months ago under different circumstances. Also, if the one making the statement is not an expert themselves, they're typically cherry-picking statements of real experts to match their preoccupations, while the topic is in fact still under debate and the verdict can swing either way.

Test0129 4y ago

I got my original two vaccines. I refused pfizer and moderna on principle. I refuse to get any boosters. The signal to noise ratio is basically 0 at this point and I am having a hard time "trusting the science". You know the only people more full of shit than the anti-vaxxers? The "trust the science" shills. The anti-vaxxers may have the wrong idea but from 2020 to...well about the last few months we saw that anyone who even remotely questioned the efficacy of vaccines was "anti-science" and a "science denier". Major platforms spent millions (billions?) to kill as much of this as they could despite the fact the "fact checkers" had no idea either. Fact checkers by-and-large are editorial writers on a power trip. I don't think anyone whose been awake at the wheel for the last 4 years is surprised at this. But they gained an entirely new level of unjustified power in 2020. A few years later all of the sudden some of the "conspiracies" were at least shown to have some veracity: the vaccines aren't nearly as effective as advertised, the studies were rushed/manipulated, boosters are not effective, the lab leak hypothesis, etc. Now, a real "science believer" would simply change their view at this point to match the reality of the situation. We spent two years pretending we have a full view of exactly what COVID is, what caused it, where it started, etc. The truth is we have no idea. The best scientists so far can't even agree on if a booster works or not (and by works I mean is effective along a wide population of varying demographics). People are seemingly religious bound to the "wear your mask, trust the science" non-sense. If anything, these people are just as bad as the people saying the vaccine is carrying nano-robots. If you recall, in 2020 especially, the idea that the virus originated in the BSL lab in Wuhan was put into several papers. None of which can be found anymore (at least I cannot find them). These scientists were "canceled" immediately. There's a lot of nonsense coming out of both sides. But to pretend it's simply "those pesky anti-vaxxers" as if none of them can rub a collective two brain cells together is frankly funny. I have a feeling the Pfizer documents once fully released and analyzed will be a treasure trove of hindenberg level disasters once the religious party-line fervor comes to an end.

comex 4y ago
Citation for boosters not working?
- canoebuilder 4y ago

cm2187 4y ago

Depends what you mean by anti-vaxer. It goes from crazy conspiracy theorist to people who don't see the point of vaccinating healthy children. I don't think I am an anti-vaxer, I got two shots despite having had covid. I totally see the benefits for the population at risk. But for a mild virus like omicron, for a population that wasn't even at risk of the original strain, I just don't see the point of mandating vaccines. It is certainly doing nothing meaningful to transmissions (if it did it would be another matter), and it does have side effects (I spent a full day in bed with fever after the second shot, and this is quite common), and what happened to "my body my choice"? So not being in the population at risk I have no intention to take a booster. Am I an anti-vaxer? I certainly disagree with public health policy in most countries.

octopoc 4y ago
According to Merriam-Webster you are an anti-vaxxer if you oppose the use of some or all vaccines, or if you oppose vaccine mandates, or usually both[1]. So if you oppose vaccinating healthy children then yeah, you are likely an anti-vaxxer. If you also oppose any vaccine mandates then you are definitely an anti-vaxxer. [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer
- jhugo 4y ago
  By that definition, "anti-vaxxer" is so broad as to be meaningless. Certainly useful as a way for people not caught up in its expansive definition to feel superior, I guess.
- blub 4y ago
  From your link: “ As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the use of the term anti-vaxxer has both increased and broadened.” It used to refer to parents which completely refused to vaccinate their children. It has transformed into a weapon, like racist, fascist, etc and is used to silence and manipulate discourse.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
There are many strange effects of covid still being understood, like blood clots: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/04/covid-patients-may-be-higher-risk-blood-clots-6-months#:~:text=Ho%20and%20Pell%20said%20that%20while%20many%20Omicron,of%20infections%20%2894.5%25%20in%20this%20study%29%2C%22%20they%20wrote.

mcv 4y ago

A problem is also that both anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers have a tendency to interpret any nuanced discussion as proof that the expert don't know either and therefore it's all a lie. It's an incredibly destructive attitude to any honest discourse.

cm2187 4y ago
But you can't negate the fact that we have also been told a lot of bullshit. I remember the same speech in Jan 2022 where the health minister of France explained that covid was dangerous for children and therefore they will mandate vaccinating children, immediately followed by the minister of education explaining that covid isn't dangerous for children, that the number of children hospitalised for covid is less than for rare diseases, and therefore they will keep schools open during the covid wave. Should I stop believe my lying eyes?
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  And what's bullshit about that? Did you expect French politicians to be all-knowing robots who can never be wrong? This sounds like a run-of-the-mill political debate that hopefully in the end was decided on the basis of an expert panel. (And no, of course, medical experts are also not infallible. I don't think we have investigated a disease and responded to it as fast as to this one ever before in the history of mankind, so there were bound to be made some wrong or misleading hypotheses.)
  - 988747 4y ago
    >> Did you expect French politicians to be all-knowing robots who can never be wrong? I would expect government members making decisions to consult expert virologists/epidemiologists first. The fact that they can make two contradictory statements means that either they did not consult any experts, or they consulted different experts, which means there is no consensus among experts on the topic.
    - jonathanstrange 4y ago

jhugo 4y ago

If normal public health messaging was as forthright as TWiV then misinformation might already be less of a problem.

alvah 4y ago

Is your casual "anti-vaxxers" slur aimed at the pre-2020 definition of anti-vaxxer, or the more recent iteration?

sharken 4y ago
If you're talking about multiple iterations of the term "anti-vaxxers", then I'd argue that the term itself is no longer useful. Nowadays it is used to create an us or them division. Which in turn removes any nuances.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

Depending on the country, people lost their jobs, weren't allowed to travel and were locked inside for not getting the vaccine(s), Austria even went as far as to introduce a law mandating everyone to get those vaccines (which they never executed and then promptly overturned). Now whole governments are admitting that people under 50 don't really need those vaccines after all. We now have studies claiming that serious vaccination side effects are more likely than serious covid sickness in young men. The anti vaxxers were proven RIGHT by this in many of their claims. How should they EVER trust governments again? How should they ever leave their anti-vax echochambers again? It was shown time and time again that governments and their high profile rockstar twitter "experts" get the facts right as many times as a broken clock the time, sometimes even spreading deliberate misinformation/lies ("Faucis noble lies") and absolutely can not be trusted. My government as well scammed me into getting a second vaccine, after the retracted their claim that the single shot J&J vaccination would suffice. I am not even an anti vaxxer -I am happy my parents are vaccinated. They always were at an at-risk age, but I am not and I am not interested in getting another covid vaccine. I remain terrified at the prospect of a reinstatement of the green pass system.

scoofy 4y ago
> Now whole governments are admitting that people under 50 don't really need those vaccines after all. We now have studies claiming that serious vaccination side effects are more likely than serious covid sickness in young men. Wtf are you talking about. TWiV absolutely thinks everyone needs two cycles of vaccination period… and it’s likely beneficial to get three.

mrtksn 4y ago

Many anti-vaxxer are politically motivated, in a venn diagram you can find them in the same region with the anti-globalist, national socialists, radical leftist, libertarians, anti-americans, science-sceptics etc. The overlap is not exact, that's why I say use a venn diagram but essentially anything anti-establishment has a anti-vaxxer component since vaccinse are considered establishments' game.

maxehmookau 4y ago

I wish they'd listen to anybody with any actual knowledge rather than doing "research" on Google.

BrainVirus 4y ago

trention 4y ago
Have you considered that a lot of people in the medical field have always been latent antivaxxers and that was just the moment to out themselves? Spoiler alert, antivaxxers are always wrong.
- dekhn 4y ago
  How utterly dogmatic and closed-minded.