3 ms·

Those "well-read antivaxxers" are the same as e.g. people with a fear of flying: they spend too much time looking at extremely rare catastrophic outcomes (dying

by rob74 7mo ago

Those "well-read antivaxxers" are the same as e.g. people with a fear of flying: they spend too much time looking at extremely rare catastrophic outcomes (dying or being seriously injured because of a plane crash or a vaccine side effect) and then think that it will surely happen to them or their children. The only difference is just that when someone who's afraid of flying doesn't take a plane, it only affects very few people (if that), whereas lowering herd immunity affects us all. The difference between yesteryear, when everyone ignored the nutter ranting about lizardmen in the town square, and today is that the nutters can now find company and reinforcement for their beliefs thanks to the Internet. And ultimately it leads to people like Elon Musk getting high on their own supply of toxic disinformation and causing the death of thousands of people by shutting down USAID because they believe some far-right nutter on X more than what "the establishment" has been saying for decades...

qsera 7mo ago
> a fear of flying.. Flying is safe, but I think it is not because some rules/regulations or due to "science". A plane falling out of sky is a pretty big event and cannot be suppressed or silenced. It affects a large number of people at once. If planes starts to fall out of sky often, then the commercial aviation will come to a halt in a month. Given this eventuality, if you want to make money by flying people, it in imperative that there is no other way than to * do everything possible to make sure* planes don't fall from the sky. If planes could fall out of sky without everyone knowing about it (For example, imagine that when a plane crashes, instead of killing the passengers right away, they only get hit after a month or so, and it is hard to link the deaths with the flight they took a month before), and affecting their business, then I bet that flying will no longer be very safe as companies will start cutting expenses with maintenance etc and paying off regulators/inspectors..
- rob74 7mo ago
  A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. The sad truth is that people (and companies) are greedy and will gladly cut corners with safety if it means making more money. So regulations (and enforcement of those regulations) are needed to prevent a race to the bottom that will eventually lead to a crash. Coming back to aviation, you only have to look at countries like Nepal (https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/11/10/nepali-sky-remains-unsafe-as-reforms-stall-report-warns https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/11/10/nepali-sky-remain...) to see what happens when there are no regulations, or regulations are not enforced.
  - qsera 7mo ago
    >A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. I don't see the connection. Are you implying that it should have stopped people from investing?
lithocarpus 7mo ago
This is not a good analogy. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines have a lot at stake if they let any risks slip through. If anyone dies it will be big news and visible to everyone, with real consequences for the companies responsible. (I'm in the US so this may only be relevant there) Childhood vaccines could cause a serious chronic disease in 1% of kids and we would have no way to know because: 1) Many vaccine clinical trials only monitor outcomes for a few days to a couple weeks. 2) Most vaccine clinical trials have no placebo control. If they have do have a control group in most cases the control group gets a different vaccine. 3) Most kids in vaccine clinical trials are also getting 10-30 other vaccine injections during their first two years of life during the period that they're being monitored for the one vaccine in their trial. So the only way this could even produce a signal would be if the one vaccine under trial was the only one that caused harm and all other vaccines did not. I am not saying that vaccines do cause chronic disease in 1% of kids - just that it seems to me we don't have a good way to know. Furthermore, even if it was proved that vaccines caused harm, vaccine manufacturers are not liable for harms from vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule. It's a very different situation from flying.
- duskdozer 7mo ago
  I'd be much more inclined to believe they were holding genuine, consistent opinions of that if they applied the same concern to the other end: unstudied long-term problems from measles infections. But they don't. It's the same for COVID/vaccines. Endless concern over spike protein or long-term risk in the vaccine, but happy to get the spike protein or long-term risk from the viral infection.
  - api 7mo ago
    But that’s “natural.” This is the underlying idea, that nature absent human influence is inherently more pure and good. I used to associate antivax with the loony left and with primitivism, which is the idea that if we abandon technology and civilization we will get to LARP as the Na’vi in Avatar. Then this stuff jumped across the horseshoe gap to the far right. Or… maybe the new age and certain types of greens always were far right. If you dig into the origins of the new age you run into figures like William Dudley Pelley and Savitri Devi. Disease, disability, pain, and death are also natural.

by rob74 7mo ago

qsera 7mo ago

> a fear of flying.. Flying is safe, but I think it is not because some rules/regulations or due to "science". A plane falling out of sky is a pretty big event and cannot be suppressed or silenced. It affects a large number of people at once. If planes starts to fall out of sky often, then the commercial aviation will come to a halt in a month. Given this eventuality, if you want to make money by flying people, it in imperative that there is no other way than to * do everything possible to make sure* planes don't fall from the sky. If planes could fall out of sky without everyone knowing about it (For example, imagine that when a plane crashes, instead of killing the passengers right away, they only get hit after a month or so, and it is hard to link the deaths with the flight they took a month before), and affecting their business, then I bet that flying will no longer be very safe as companies will start cutting expenses with maintenance etc and paying off regulators/inspectors..

rob74 7mo ago
A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. The sad truth is that people (and companies) are greedy and will gladly cut corners with safety if it means making more money. So regulations (and enforcement of those regulations) are needed to prevent a race to the bottom that will eventually lead to a crash. Coming back to aviation, you only have to look at countries like Nepal (https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/11/10/nepali-sky-remains-unsafe-as-reforms-stall-report-warns https://kathmandupost.com/money/2025/11/10/nepali-sky-remain...) to see what happens when there are no regulations, or regulations are not enforced.
- qsera 7mo ago
  >A stock market crash is also a pretty big event that cannot be suppressed or silenced, but they still happen regularly. I don't see the connection. Are you implying that it should have stopped people from investing?

lithocarpus 7mo ago

This is not a good analogy. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines have a lot at stake if they let any risks slip through. If anyone dies it will be big news and visible to everyone, with real consequences for the companies responsible. (I'm in the US so this may only be relevant there) Childhood vaccines could cause a serious chronic disease in 1% of kids and we would have no way to know because: 1) Many vaccine clinical trials only monitor outcomes for a few days to a couple weeks. 2) Most vaccine clinical trials have no placebo control. If they have do have a control group in most cases the control group gets a different vaccine. 3) Most kids in vaccine clinical trials are also getting 10-30 other vaccine injections during their first two years of life during the period that they're being monitored for the one vaccine in their trial. So the only way this could even produce a signal would be if the one vaccine under trial was the only one that caused harm and all other vaccines did not. I am not saying that vaccines do cause chronic disease in 1% of kids - just that it seems to me we don't have a good way to know. Furthermore, even if it was proved that vaccines caused harm, vaccine manufacturers are not liable for harms from vaccines on the childhood vaccine schedule. It's a very different situation from flying.

duskdozer 7mo ago
I'd be much more inclined to believe they were holding genuine, consistent opinions of that if they applied the same concern to the other end: unstudied long-term problems from measles infections. But they don't. It's the same for COVID/vaccines. Endless concern over spike protein or long-term risk in the vaccine, but happy to get the spike protein or long-term risk from the viral infection.
- api 7mo ago
  But that’s “natural.” This is the underlying idea, that nature absent human influence is inherently more pure and good. I used to associate antivax with the loony left and with primitivism, which is the idea that if we abandon technology and civilization we will get to LARP as the Na’vi in Avatar. Then this stuff jumped across the horseshoe gap to the far right. Or… maybe the new age and certain types of greens always were far right. If you dig into the origins of the new age you run into figures like William Dudley Pelley and Savitri Devi. Disease, disability, pain, and death are also natural.