> Appeal to authority is only a rhetorically valid challenge if the authority is wrong.… That whole paragraph is erroneous from the start. The truth or falsit

> Appeal to authority is only a rhetorically valid challenge if the authority is wrong.… That whole paragraph is erroneous from the start. The truth or falsity of a statement that appeals to authority is not what make it fallacious - nor would it for any logical fallacy. As the name hints at, it is the logic which is in question, the reasoning, the form, not the truth. "2 + 2 = 4 because n + 2 = 4" is fallacious yet the statement "2 + 2 = 4" is correct. Appeal to authority is a fallacy of relevance - like ad hominem - because it does not address the reasoning. 2 + 2 = 4 isn't true because my maths teacher says it's true, and to say it is because my maths teacher is a maths teacher or has a degree in maths is irrelevant to why 2 + 2 = 4 is correct (or not). Schoolboy error. > And there's not one single authority I'm appealing to here: it's all the people on earth most qualified to say whether or not people should get vaccinations. Except for notable exceptions: “No. Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people, and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.” - Martin Kulldorff, until recently he was professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. I'll let Wikipedia continue: > He is a member of the US Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and a former member of the Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Or we can look at his fellow signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, Sunetra Gupta: “What we’ve seen is that in normal, healthy people, who are not elderly or frail or don’t have comorbidities, this virus is not something to worry about no more than how we worry about flu,” “most of us don’t need to worry about coronavirus,” and unquoted but attributed[1]: “Gupta said that she thinks the coronavirus pandemic will end naturally and will become part of our lives just like influenza.” Sunetra Gupta is an infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. So you're stuck with your appeal to authority, and you've multiplied it with argumentum ad populum. > Your argument that the young and healthy shouldn't doesn't apply here. It's moot to bring it up at all, and it's bad rhetoric. I don't think you understand what moot means, and as for bad rhetoric, "lol". Case in point: > The chance of you having a negative side effect from a covid vaccine that's worse than a bad covid infection, is lower than the chance of you having a really bad covid infection. Now that's moot. > So, why don't you get the vaccine? Because I'm not at risk. (See, it was moot) > This on top of the social benefit upsides of slowing the spread of COVID, reducing hospitalization, etc. a) Thanks again, Mao b) Isolating when symptomatic slows the spread more effectively c) It reduces hospitalisation for those at risk > As far as I know nobody's forcing anybody to get covid vaccinations. Let's look at the first result I got for "Biden vaccine mandate" from NBC News[2] to see your wilful ignorance: *Biden announces sweeping vaccine mandates affecting millions of workers* > My argument is more medically and ethically sound, that's all. On that[3]: > The measles vaccine provided sterilizing immunity in most people. > That's not the case with these vaccines. > How can mandates be moral in this case? With a non-sterilizing product, it's nobody's business except mine if I want to get vacced or not. > > Sunetra Gupta @SunetraGupta > Jan 28, 2022 > Replying to @neorevolt > Exactly Well well. Not so moral, in the eyes of a world renowned expert in vaccines. Your argument is based on false premises and a lack of basic knowledge. It is littered with errors of reasoning and fact which makes it in no way ethically sound. Much like moot and fallacy, I doubt you know what sound means in the context of argument. > Also, since when are the nazis socialists lmao. Wait... because the German translates to "national socialism?" Yes, I based it entirely on the name.I wouldn't, for instance, have bothered to know basic facts about the most important event of the 20th century before coming to that conclusion, just the name. Why didn't they call themselves international socialists? I wonder. Why are they against individual liberty? I can't fathom. Why does the 25 point plan read like a socialist manifesto. Who knows? Jesus wept. > My earlier accusation that you must be smarter isn't an ad hominem - your claim is extraordinary It's ordinary, medical orthodoxy, which is why mandates and pushing for not at risk populations to vaccinate is contentious. > Your idea, that almost all doctors on earth are telling almost all people on earth to get a COVID vaccine are either wrong or lying, requires an extraordinary explanation. I haven't ever claimed such a thing, while you are making a claim on behalf of "all doctors on earth" that they haven't made either. The more correct claim is that doctors in top government positions are telling people to get a COVID vaccine. Others contradict them (I can give you a long list). > Either a massive failure in the scientific process in thousands of research centers across the globe From [4]: > Randomized trials show all-cause mortality reduction from the AZ/J&J/S adenovirus-vector vaccines (RR=0.37, 95%CI:0.19-0.70) but not from the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines (RR=1.03, 95%CI 0.63-1.71). By Dr. @StabellBenn et al. And from Stabell-Benn's interview with Unherd[5]: > It is also a bit of a Pandora’s box, I think, for health authorities, because if they start acknowledging these effects there is also the huge problem of potential negative non-specific effects that have actually been brought to the attention of the WHO already 20 years ago, but they haven’t really responded with the investigations. So you can see the potential backlash for the WHO, for vaccination programmes, if it actually comes out that some vaccines have carried these negative non-specific effects. > So I’ve been in this business for many years and I know that there are powers out there who aren’t interested in really digging into these findings. And again, it also has implications for the way we test vaccines, so you can see it is complicated stuff also for companies, for regulators, if we need to design vaccine phase 3 trials which do not only study the specific disease but also study all-cause mortality and morbidity. If the mRNA vaccines aren't as effective then the risk/benefit ratio changes, so I should take something like the AZ vaccine, but that was withdrawn in several countries as the risks outweighed the benefits, but I should still get the vaccine, right? You might also note this[6], in the BMJ, November 2021: > A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company [Pfizer] falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial. Staff who conducted quality control checks were overwhelmed by the volume of problems they were finding. After repeatedly notifying Ventavia of these problems, the regional director, Brook Jackson (video 1), emailed a complaint to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ventavia fired her later the same day. Jackson has provided The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. That's a massive failure - and possible conspiracy - in some research centers across the globe. Isn't funny how that company's claims of vaccine efficacy and safety are now being questioned? What's really funny (not haha) is how they weren't questioned more before, but we have the Twitter Files to answer that conundrum. > if you want to be on the side of the flat earthers, Kulldorf, Gupta and Stabell-Benn are flat earthers? Interesting. > please by all means, but at least be aware of the hilarious irony of doing so and then turning around and accusing those of us that got vaccinated as engaging in "cognitive dissonance." And there we have your go-to, a straw man. I have written repeatedly that it is up to people to decide whether they get the vaccine, and that they should base it on their situation i.e. risk/benefit and good conscience. I've not accused anyone of cognitive dissonance for getting vaccinated. I have, however, observed cognitive dissonance in you, and we're about to see some more: > You haven't provided a good argument to not get vaccinated. Uh huh. > You dropped a lot of links around, Right. > but none of them counter the core argument Didn't read them, I see. Finally: > > as will anyone else reading this. > lol, nobody is reading this, days old and deeply buried thread. Just me and you here. I often read entire threads on HN. Perhaps this isn't the place for you, it requires a higher standard of thought, which itself requires concentration. [1] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/most-of-us-won-t-need-covid-19-vaccine-oxford-expert-explains-how-the-pandemic-is-likely-to-end/story-WfEpXIWK3HuHlQiS9zFMmM.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/most-of-us-won-t-n... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announce-additional-vaccine-mandates-he-unveils-new-covid-strategy-n1278735 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announce-... [3] https://twitter.com/SunetraGupta/status/1487003944274563073 https://twitter.com/SunetraGupta/status/1487003944274563073 [4] https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/1516923354078449668 https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/15169233540784496... [5] https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/ https://unherd.com/thepost/study-into-mrna/ [6] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635#main-content https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635#main-content