this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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There's always one!
I hate to break to to you, but public health policy does not and should not consider the opinion of lunatics. I legitimately cannot believe this isn't obvious.
Always one what?
Someone trying to justify allowing soft policy on vaccinations.
I don't think it's controversial to be against forced medication.
At least it never used to be.
See this is exactly why people are calling you out. We've seen this exact same bullshit so many times where it's just like "oh we are being reasonable and just asking questions and doing due diligence" but they you always end up with the loaded language of "forced vaccinations" and "product testing."
Yes, in the middle of a pandemic, where people were dropping dead and entire medical systems were on the verge of collapse, timelines might have been advanced a bit. Your incredibly privileged language manages to leave that part out somehow, and replaced these very justifiable motivations with unfounded malevolence. It's frankly insulting to those traumatized by not only the pandemic, but these selfish and toxic attitudes.
And the worst part? You were proven wrong. Again. None of your concerns were validated. The vaccines were a miracle which brought us out of an extremely dark time. There was no corporate malevolence, no serious side effects, just good science and better outcomes. But still, for some reason, you will cling to your utterly selfish positions and bullshit concern trolling, and that's why everyone is pissed off at you. Because you've clearly learned nothing, and will obviously force all of this same nonsense on us the next time there is a tragedy.
The person you are talking to isn't an anti-vaxxer though. They are pointing out that vaccine mandates are questionable at best in terms of ethics. The campaign to push vaccines was also fraught with issues that helped create more antivaxxers.
Questionable ethics? Not for collectivists. My personal freedoms do not trump the well-being of the rest of society, and it's perfectly reasonable to have rules about health and hygiene to protect the whole.
You seem to have forgotten about informed consent.
I just don't give a shit about it compared to the cost of letting people do whatever they want.
I don't know if I support collectivism. I definitely don't support current society.
We have had vaccine mandates for decades in order to do things like have kids attend school.
I'm sure familiar with this type of concern troll. They are in the first stage of their descent. Possibly the second stage, based on the loaded language they are using.
I have personally lost several family members to this exact "reasoning" so I know precisely what it looks like a few months later.
Concern troll? Are you calling me or them a concern troll? I don't think pointing out how badly run campaigns and regressive legislation lead to reduced vaccine uptake is concern trolling. Concern trolling would be pretending they were concerned for your mental or physical health as a way to make your opinion seem invalid.
My concerns? What were my concerns?
I'm talking about trying to prevent diseases coming back due to increased vaccine scepticism that started with governmental COVID responses. I wasn't sceptical of the vaccines and nowhere did I say I was.
Not widespread, but none at all is patently untrue. There will always be serious side effects in rare cases in any medication.
The anti-vaxxers are lunatics, yes. But they always were and it doesn't really matter what they think.
But you think anyone who felt a slight concern about a brand new vaccine was a "lunatic"? These people needed reassurance, not "Do as you're fucking told, idiot". The fact people can't see this baffles me.
Problem is those people didn't want to listen to doctors who had the nuanced view of "there might be issues with a vaccine which development we've had to accelerate, but the alternative of not taking it is demonstrably worse for everyone", they only wanted to listen to the people who shared their position.
My healthcare professionals: "it is mRNA, it creates the spike protein and then is gone from your system in a matter of hours. Those proteins trigger an immune response that works as an inoculation."
Vs.
Guys on the internet: "the mRNA is experimental gene therapy that will alter your DNA and make your ovaries or testes grow spikes like a chestnut. It crosses the blood/brain barrier and gives you Creutzfeldt–Jakob."
I consider any person who thinks they know better than the medical professionals a lunatic, yes.
Medical professionals also said that Thalidomide was safe for pregnant women to take, and it turns out it very much wasn't.
This is the kind of thing that leads to that concern about any new medication.
Never said professionals can't be wrong.
But they will be right a hell of a lot more than the average non-medically-schooled person. That is for sure.
Problem here is the "appeal to authority" fallacy. Your brush is simply too big.
Yes when a vast majority of the medical community at many levels achieves hard-debated, critically vetted consensus, awesome, we can generally make that bet, and someone who graduated from "school of hard knocks" would be a lunatic to disagree because they wouldn't have any grounds to do so.
But unfortunately what's also true and rational, is that medical professionals are highly fallible, and we have a problem of credentialism where we're inclined to trust anybody in a labcoat with a medical degree.
Turning everybody into zombies? No. (Although I love Resident Evil lmao), but I wouldn't blame someone who's gut reaction was "Wait, are we being used for free product testing?" Because the privatized medical community is rife with profiteering skullduggery and villainy, if not simply dangerous incompetence.
Yes, trust research and doctors, but also don't do so blindly.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us
Yes, medical professionals are highly fallible.
But the average non-medically-schooled individual will be even more. So you should listen even less to them.
I feel you. The psychological aspect of crisis management was a complete disaster because it was made yet another political battleground and news panic sensation. The lack of nuance in this discussion even today is proof of that.
It was so mishandled and used for politics that they were desperate and heavy-handed because it was already allowed to go wildly out of control.
I understand vaccines have worked for many years and are a wonder of medical science. I'm all caught up. I also know all the conspiracies about microchips and "5G receptors" and other ludicrous claims are obviously bunk.
But even I had to pause for a second when, in the middle of a tornado of bullshit from every direction, they're like "You better get this pharma-corporation-product injected soon as possible or else."
Like, it just automatically triggers that "You can't make me" response in everybody. I got over that, but in a country that has such abysmal education already, and a ton of people who fill that education gap with Facebook? Holy crap. Misinformation was a viral pandemic as well.
I can pity and empathize with people, not the crazy ones pushing stupid insane agendas, but the ones who were simply confused and panicked, especially with how often we're burned by megacorpos on the daily.
To people who don't understand the details, it had a feeling of beta testing. "Uh, we rushed this through. Just take it, we'll worry about potential side effects later!"
Such a mess.
Maybe it triggers that in people with like an oppositional-defiant personality disorder.
If your response to someone telling you to do something is "I don't want to because you told me" rather than assessing if the thing is a good idea, you're an idiot. Get help. See a therapist.
For real. When there's a new illness spreading across the globe and the medical community says, "we have this new vaccine, everyone should take it but we only have enough for high-risk groups right now. Everyone else continue to quarantine" my reaction was not "well now I'm not doing any of that" it was "sweet, we're almost through this."
Hindsight is great when you can distill it down so simply as a clear, coherent message coming from a reliable single point of trust! Unfortunately it wasn't so easy back then.
I didn't mind the staying home (although I was privileged enough to be paid to do so for at least the beginning, as everyone should have been.)
I concluded that the logic behind some secret plot was hilariously full of holes...
...BUT, you'd have to be willfully ignorant to not consider the possibility that maybe a rushed corporate product was contracted and pushed through normal channels way faster than usual. Why? Because Capital was losing money, and the ownership class wanted to hurry and shove everyone back into offices as quickly as possible. (The same ownership class that paid us 'essential workers' in pithy piano-tracked commercials instead of money)
We're immensely fortunate the vaccines worked like they always have, but at the time it was a series of mixed messages and uncertainty and noise, and that was just from trustworthy sources! Not even counting all the ones masquerading as such and people with cabin-fever wanting to pick fights over the Internet and crazy family members.
We agree the vaccine made sense and it was a useful tool that saved countless lives, and if we had a consistent trustworthy source of information much sooner like other countries had, instead of the crackpot reality show that is American news, many more could have been saved. So I don't get all the down votes for simply saying "It was a scary time and there was lots to be concerned about."
Maybe realizing it's impossible to be 100% right about everything scares people, idk.
All of this is absolutely right.
The last 8 years or so in the political landscape has turned everything into "us vs them". The election of Trump in the US, and the EU referendum here in the UK started it all off and it has just spread since.
It's sad, because everyone now sees someone with the opposite opinion as being the "enemy".