7 ms·

A medicine that sometimes stops a bad thing from happening is hard for people to appreciate, because if it works you'll never know it, and it might have some si

A medicine that sometimes stops a bad thing from happening is hard for people to appreciate, because if it works you'll never know it, and it might have some side effects. We need to improve public education about why we believe these medicines work. I want to see the studies presented on social media: "We gave 30,000 people this drug and you won't believe what happened!" Less censoring people and more presenting the studies in a way people can understand. Less appealing to authority and more appealing to observations; yes, you observed your 2 relatives, and I observed 30,000 people, judge for yourself which is more persuasive. Most people aren't going to read your 3 paragraph abstract, let alone the the full paper. You have to tell them the observations in a few sentences, preferably with minimal added interpretation.

heavyset_go 4y ago
It's been my experience that people do not understand or care about what representative samples are.
cm2187 4y ago
And also be transparent about the pros and cons. One of the mistakes with covid is having made all sort of false statements about the efficiency of the vaccines (like it stops infections, the virus would be gone if everyone was vaccinated, kids are at risk of covid and must be vaccinated, etc) while the actual merits of the vaccine (dramatically reduces deaths and hospitalisations) should have been enough to convince the population at risk. Once you lied to people once, it takes a lot of time to re-establish trust.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  dont need masks do need masks we lied because we think you’re stupid and would hoard all the masks now you don't believe we need masks because we said prevent instead of reduce, and nothing was prevented now you bolstered your opinion because we said “no evidence” instead of “the study hasn't been completed” yes we said it affects young people and that caused a panic as if it was 1918 all over again, but you have to understand that 50 year olds are young to us and we are always speaking in a health professional context that nobody else knows even during the one time the public needs clear communication
  - enraged_camel 4y ago
    >> do need masks we lied because we think you’re stupid and would hoard all the masks People panicked and hoarded toilet paper, of course they would also have hoarded masks and deprive healthcare workers of them.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      Not even sure that concern was legitimate. Do healthcare workers get their masks from the local supermarket?
      - 0dayz 4y ago
        That would most likely been true given the fact that most emergency stock had been severely undercut before to the gospel of "fiscal responsibility and efficiency".
    - _aavaa_ 4y ago
      A) This is acting under the belief that if told the truth (healthcare workers need the masks and they need us regular people to make the sacrifice of not using those so that healthcare workers get them) that they would not made that sacrifice in great enough numbers. B) This burns credibility by saying an obvious lie. People aren't just gonna immediately forget that the government just lied to them because "they couldn't handle the truth".
jostmey 4y ago
Cancer vaccines would be given to someone with cancer. These vaccines would not be preventative
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  That there is confusion just emphasizes that the term therapeutic vaccine needs more education around it. When I think of vaccines, I think of something that’s preventative - regardless of the mechanism. Even the coming “Lyme Disease” vaccine is still preventative though it’s more of a tick bite vaccine. Someone please school me. Why is it a therapeutic vaccine - what’s wrong with calling it a treatment?
  - svara 4y ago
    It's a vaccine because it doesn't work on the cancer directly but rather teaches your immune system to attack the cancer.
    - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
      Thanks. That clears that hang up up.
- mig39 4y ago
  Giving HPV vaccines to teens (including boys) seems to be preventative.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    Which is not the type of vaccine the article is about.
- Izkata 4y ago
  Then these shouldn't be called vaccines.
  - thallium205 4y ago
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> I want to see the studies presented on social media: "We gave 30,000 people this drug and you won't believe what happened!" We've had two years of that... get vaccinated and you won't get it, also get vaccinated and you won't get your grandparents ill! Somehow all the censoring was done on people who didn't believe these claims.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  To be fair we also now have stories that some people were injured from the vaccines ?
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    We had them before too. A girl died in my country due to a J&J shot, autopsy was done by a whole panel of doctors, we officially stopped using J&J vaccine, our minister of health made an apology (while not admitting that she got vaccinated due to his mandates), official reports were published... ...and people here got all snarky when I mentioned her death, and attacked me with stuff like "what are your qualifications to rule her death as caused by vaccines?" and "i'm guessing you did the autopsy yourself?"
- mig39 4y ago
  I guess we were hearing different messages? I thought the vaccine message was "get vaccinated so you won't die when you get it."
  - vinyl7 4y ago
    It depended on the day of the week. Sometimes it was slow the spread, sometimes it was to prevent getting covid, other times it was to reduce the severity if you got it.
    - sdiacom 4y ago
      I think a big part of it is that COVID has become an attention point in our lives, it entirely dominated the media cycle for months. There's something everyone wants to hear about and _we just don't know that much about it_, so the media increasingly plays telephone with itself in an attempt to report anything. Various people gave their hopefully somewhat informed opinion at the time to different members of the media, who reported on it with different levels of accuracy, attributing often undue levels of confidence to it. And that quickly mutated into "the media's trusted sources can confirm that the experts definitely know the vaccine will have exactly these effects and will be effective for these specific cases" I think it's worth questioning what influence there was in which narratives did or didn't get pushed, but I also think it's worth keeping in mind that the media is also just... fallible.
anonporridge 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox
the-printer 4y ago
> "We gave 30,000 people this drug and you won't believe what happened!" Lab coat Clickbait?
pydry 4y ago
>Less appealing to authority and more appealing to observations Antivaxxers aren't exactly scientifically inclined skeptics who will change their minds if fed more objective, impartial evidence. They probably can be reached but I'm certain this isnt the way.
- dmix 4y ago
  Every antivaxxer I know is skeptical because it ties into their existing beliefs of some hidden overarching power-system trying to control them. Censorship and hiding criticism (informed or not) ‘for the greater good’ is like throwing gasoline on the fire. I have a family member who was merely just a lightweight New Age/holistic type of…skeptic. But the whole COVID response made it way worse. She doesn’t watch videos about why vaccines are bad, 90% of them are how the virus government/billionaires/big tech did x shady thing, so therefore don’t trust the vacinnes. It’s really easy to spin that sort of thing into “they must have something to hide”. I highly doubt all of the effort Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc put into silencing dissent really did anything to promote better science or quell the fringes. I don’t think anyone even cares if it did or not after-the-fact.
  - robocat 4y ago
    > Every antivaxxer I know is skeptical because I know a bunch of anti-vaxxers in New Zealand, and they notably each had a different stated reason for being antivax. Perhaps because we don’t have the same political partisanship in this country (although partisanship was still a factor: it was interesting hearing right leaning people here reproduce sound-bites that I thought were American Republican political cliches).
    - dmix 4y ago
      Political issues being global is not a new phenomenon. Hyper-partisans and fringe groups have always sought out a broader set of sources when they don't find it in their immediate local range. Which is why local censorship is becoming dumber than ever with a global internet, something I saw often here in Canada. Although I guess some people hope their views become a part of some global cohesive overton window. Maybe with some super-efficient global media/internet moderation system it will finally stop people like my conspiracy relatives. But so far they've only made it worse.
90d 4y ago
We need to improve public education >more propaganda No.. we need to improve transparency and actually do the studies?

heavyset_go 4y ago

It's been my experience that people do not understand or care about what representative samples are.

cm2187 4y ago

And also be transparent about the pros and cons. One of the mistakes with covid is having made all sort of false statements about the efficiency of the vaccines (like it stops infections, the virus would be gone if everyone was vaccinated, kids are at risk of covid and must be vaccinated, etc) while the actual merits of the vaccine (dramatically reduces deaths and hospitalisations) should have been enough to convince the population at risk. Once you lied to people once, it takes a lot of time to re-establish trust.

yieldcrv 4y ago
dont need masks do need masks we lied because we think you’re stupid and would hoard all the masks now you don't believe we need masks because we said prevent instead of reduce, and nothing was prevented now you bolstered your opinion because we said “no evidence” instead of “the study hasn't been completed” yes we said it affects young people and that caused a panic as if it was 1918 all over again, but you have to understand that 50 year olds are young to us and we are always speaking in a health professional context that nobody else knows even during the one time the public needs clear communication
- enraged_camel 4y ago
  >> do need masks we lied because we think you’re stupid and would hoard all the masks People panicked and hoarded toilet paper, of course they would also have hoarded masks and deprive healthcare workers of them.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    Not even sure that concern was legitimate. Do healthcare workers get their masks from the local supermarket?
    - 0dayz 4y ago
      That would most likely been true given the fact that most emergency stock had been severely undercut before to the gospel of "fiscal responsibility and efficiency".
  - _aavaa_ 4y ago
    A) This is acting under the belief that if told the truth (healthcare workers need the masks and they need us regular people to make the sacrifice of not using those so that healthcare workers get them) that they would not made that sacrifice in great enough numbers. B) This burns credibility by saying an obvious lie. People aren't just gonna immediately forget that the government just lied to them because "they couldn't handle the truth".

jostmey 4y ago

Cancer vaccines would be given to someone with cancer. These vaccines would not be preventative

bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
That there is confusion just emphasizes that the term therapeutic vaccine needs more education around it. When I think of vaccines, I think of something that’s preventative - regardless of the mechanism. Even the coming “Lyme Disease” vaccine is still preventative though it’s more of a tick bite vaccine. Someone please school me. Why is it a therapeutic vaccine - what’s wrong with calling it a treatment?
- svara 4y ago
  It's a vaccine because it doesn't work on the cancer directly but rather teaches your immune system to attack the cancer.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
    Thanks. That clears that hang up up.
mig39 4y ago
Giving HPV vaccines to teens (including boys) seems to be preventative.
- bawolff 4y ago
  Which is not the type of vaccine the article is about.
Izkata 4y ago
Then these shouldn't be called vaccines.
- thallium205 4y ago

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

> I want to see the studies presented on social media: "We gave 30,000 people this drug and you won't believe what happened!" We've had two years of that... get vaccinated and you won't get it, also get vaccinated and you won't get your grandparents ill! Somehow all the censoring was done on people who didn't believe these claims.

bamboozled 4y ago
To be fair we also now have stories that some people were injured from the vaccines ?
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  We had them before too. A girl died in my country due to a J&J shot, autopsy was done by a whole panel of doctors, we officially stopped using J&J vaccine, our minister of health made an apology (while not admitting that she got vaccinated due to his mandates), official reports were published... ...and people here got all snarky when I mentioned her death, and attacked me with stuff like "what are your qualifications to rule her death as caused by vaccines?" and "i'm guessing you did the autopsy yourself?"
mig39 4y ago
I guess we were hearing different messages? I thought the vaccine message was "get vaccinated so you won't die when you get it."
- vinyl7 4y ago
  It depended on the day of the week. Sometimes it was slow the spread, sometimes it was to prevent getting covid, other times it was to reduce the severity if you got it.
  - sdiacom 4y ago
    I think a big part of it is that COVID has become an attention point in our lives, it entirely dominated the media cycle for months. There's something everyone wants to hear about and _we just don't know that much about it_, so the media increasingly plays telephone with itself in an attempt to report anything. Various people gave their hopefully somewhat informed opinion at the time to different members of the media, who reported on it with different levels of accuracy, attributing often undue levels of confidence to it. And that quickly mutated into "the media's trusted sources can confirm that the experts definitely know the vaccine will have exactly these effects and will be effective for these specific cases" I think it's worth questioning what influence there was in which narratives did or didn't get pushed, but I also think it's worth keeping in mind that the media is also just... fallible.

anonporridge 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preparedness_paradox

the-printer 4y ago

> "We gave 30,000 people this drug and you won't believe what happened!" Lab coat Clickbait?

pydry 4y ago

>Less appealing to authority and more appealing to observations Antivaxxers aren't exactly scientifically inclined skeptics who will change their minds if fed more objective, impartial evidence. They probably can be reached but I'm certain this isnt the way.

dmix 4y ago
Every antivaxxer I know is skeptical because it ties into their existing beliefs of some hidden overarching power-system trying to control them. Censorship and hiding criticism (informed or not) ‘for the greater good’ is like throwing gasoline on the fire. I have a family member who was merely just a lightweight New Age/holistic type of…skeptic. But the whole COVID response made it way worse. She doesn’t watch videos about why vaccines are bad, 90% of them are how the virus government/billionaires/big tech did x shady thing, so therefore don’t trust the vacinnes. It’s really easy to spin that sort of thing into “they must have something to hide”. I highly doubt all of the effort Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc put into silencing dissent really did anything to promote better science or quell the fringes. I don’t think anyone even cares if it did or not after-the-fact.
- robocat 4y ago
  > Every antivaxxer I know is skeptical because I know a bunch of anti-vaxxers in New Zealand, and they notably each had a different stated reason for being antivax. Perhaps because we don’t have the same political partisanship in this country (although partisanship was still a factor: it was interesting hearing right leaning people here reproduce sound-bites that I thought were American Republican political cliches).
  - dmix 4y ago
    Political issues being global is not a new phenomenon. Hyper-partisans and fringe groups have always sought out a broader set of sources when they don't find it in their immediate local range. Which is why local censorship is becoming dumber than ever with a global internet, something I saw often here in Canada. Although I guess some people hope their views become a part of some global cohesive overton window. Maybe with some super-efficient global media/internet moderation system it will finally stop people like my conspiracy relatives. But so far they've only made it worse.

90d 4y ago

We need to improve public education >more propaganda No.. we need to improve transparency and actually do the studies?