It's like it would just be the end of the world if one American had to think about another American's life. Very disappointing, but then again I guess getting rid of vaccines will be all the rage until the backlash and then it'll be 20 years of we need vaccines and then it'll be 20 years of no vaccines and then... Because we just can't learn anything.
somethoughts · 4h ago
Looking at this from a glass half full mindset, a decade from now we should have a pretty interesting data set from a public health policy perspective.
Prior to this, to get such a large subset of children to not take vaccines for an epidemiological study would probably be illegal or at best be considered highly unethical. Convincing parents to enroll their children in such a study in the name of science and for a small stipend would probably be next to impossible considering the potential lifetime impacts.
I posit that the challenge has been that in order to prove vaccine efficacy on a continuing/updated basis, you need access to a non-vaccinated control group that controls for developed world socio-economic conditions which didn't exist (until now). Thus there hasn't been an easy way to do large population scale studies on vaccine efficacy - so it did somewhat become a "trust us" tautology (until now).
pavel_lishin · 4h ago
I'd argue that the current situation is pretty damn unethical.
triceratops · 4h ago
Scientists have to answer to ethics boards. Politicians do not.
aredox · 4h ago
Ethics board have already discussed the topic at length, where you "argue" with a single sentence - but ok, let's admit vaccination obligations are unethical. Then you do admit infecting others is unethical as well? Now, science has advanced far enough we can retrace who I texted who through genetics; therefore, if you want to abandon compulsory vaccination, it must be compulsory that each and every infection must be investigated like a poisoning is and people who infect others be prosecuted as severely as polluters.
Dig1t · 4h ago
Please don’t flame me, this is an honest question.
Why is this unethical and for whom?
The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.
Parents who don’t trust the vaccine for whatever reason, they feel strongly that they might harm their child.
Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?
You’re basically asking parents to willfully harm (in their mind they think it’s harmful, I’m not saying it’s actually harmful) their own child, from their perspective why should they make that choice?
I just don’t see how this problem can be solved other than going back to square one and trying to educate people and convince them that vaccines are not harmful. The alternative is to force people to accept these injections even though people believe they are harmful, which just isn’t going to work well in the United States.
zippothrowaway · 4h ago
No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids. It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.
A moment's thought will tell you that it's to protect kids that are at risk from infectious diseases (e.g. immunocompromised cancer patients) that cannot be vaccinated.
So most people would agree that it's unfair that a cancer patient cannot attend a public school, through no fault of their own, because a parent wants their healthy kid to attend the school unvaccinated. We balance the rules accordingly.
SilverElfin · 2h ago
> No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids.
Yes, they are. If your kids are not allowed to attend school, then you are being forced to vaccinate them because you may not have other options. Claiming otherwise is gaslighting.
> It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.
So do those parents get a voucher for the funds pertaining to their child’s public education, if they’re prevented?
ViewTrick1002 · 2h ago
Are children the parents’ property or an individual we as a society should work to guarantee the best outcome?
Should parents be allowed to kill their property?
SilverElfin · 2h ago
Children are “property” of their parents, not society or the state. Do you have children?
anigbrowl · 1h ago
No they are not. If you abuse them you can be put in prison and unlike property you can't sell them or use them as collateral. Propertarian ideology is delusional.
fragmede · 1h ago
Of course, we just don't agree on when it is acceptable. Between the ages of -.75 and -.50, it's generally legal to. Shifting the Overton window to make it legal for ages up to, say, 15, would be one for an ultra-left wing party to throw out there, just to disrupt the national conversation.
strbean · 4h ago
Parents don't have sole discretion about their child's well-being. As pointed out by another reply, "I thought it was best for them" doesn't hold up when the wealth of evidence shows they are endangering or harming their child.
> The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.
This is false for a number of reasons.
1) Vaccines don't provide perfect protection, breakthrough infections can occur.
2) Some people can not receive vaccinations due to health conditions.
3) Immunocompromised people are not protected by vaccines.
We managed to make it illegal to beat the crap out of your kids even though there are still plenty of Americans who think not beating your kids is harmful to them.
SilverElfin · 2h ago
> Parents don't have sole discretion about their child's well-being.
In a just society they should have sole discretion. The current situation where kids aren’t even allowed to walk to school without CPS harassing parents, is because of this attitude where the state thinks it has any rights to your kids.
conception · 55m ago
Of course it does. If you abuse your children, the state enforces the rights of your children. If you put their life in danger, the state can and should take them from you. Parents do not own their children any more than the state does and their rights should be protected by both parties.
The CPS issue is because of litigation not protection. No one wants to be responsible for something bad happening.
Dig1t · 3h ago
Well I agree and understand that herd immunity exists and it protects the small number of kids who can’t get the vaccine for whatever reason. But the choice is still the same, you’re asking parents to prioritize someone else’s child over their own and if they believe that it is dangerous to do so then why would they do that?
I don’t believe there are any people who believe that NOT beating their children is dangerous. If you put yourself in these parents’ shoes, they basically see this stuff as poison. What you’re asking them to do (in their mind) is inject their children with poison and for no other reason than because the government says so. It’s just a losing battle, you need to educate these people and show them that they are safe, address their concerns directly.
I would not inject my children with mercury if the government told me to. I would need to be convinced that mercury is safe and beneficial before I allowed my kid to be injected with it. I don’t feel like equating this to physical violence is helpful at all because in this case these parents believe they are preventing harm to their children.
_DeadFred_ · 2h ago
It has been proven. It has been proven to benefit EVERYONE way more than any harm it could cause. I hope you and the others that give these 'concerns' (that if we are honest, these sorts of people will never have a bar high enough that they will say they are satisfied have been met) give generously to our country's future polio beggars in the streets. You might be too young to have experienced what happens to the victims, the suffering that you consider these 'concerns' to outway. It's is horrible to inflict on the population. Measles/mumps are going to result in a lot more deaf people like it was when I was a kid. Polio in lots more paralyzed children.
This is the suffering you are OK with because 'concerns':
I'm a vaxer But one community I hang with is strongly antivax. Many of them have been very harmed even if they didn't take the vaccines.
When something is that important to you (even for woowoo reasons or social media misinformation) then it is a fertile situation for mental health impacts.
Antivaxxers are a vulnerable population too (they have self selected into a circle by their beliefs and communities).
Disclosure: I've seen some good people severely harmed by overbearing government actions in New Zealand. I believe New Zealand did a good job of protecting everyone here from COVID, but that the collateral costs to everyone were very high (and extremely variable chronic costs to some).
Edit: apology that I've bucketed all vaccines together. E.g. Measles vaccine is quite different from covid vaccines.
lm28469 · 4h ago
Read into heard immunity, not everyone can be vaccinated, not every vaccinated person gets full immunity, more vaccinated people = safer for everyone.
This doesnt work anymore because people are more individualistic than ever, unless something will directly harm them in a very obvious way in the next hour it's as if it didn't exist in their mind
Kind of like spouse of illegal migrants who voted trump, or people surviving thanks to medicaid voting against their own interest, they're so blinded by rage/outrage that they can't even understand basic logic. I personally think we're at a breaking point in most of the west and it'll only be going downhill from now on, so just as you I don't see any solution. The education system can't fight social media, and you can't "force" people you've been brainwashing for decades into believing the be all end all of human life is their little unlimited personal freedom
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 4h ago
> Why is this unethical and for whom?
People with auto-immune disorders who can't safely take the vaccine lose the protection of herd immunity. (Edit: and the children who don't have control over their own health outcomes.)
Agreed that it's not an easy problem to solve.
SilverElfin · 2h ago
> Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?
Yes, it is unethical. The other comments don’t agree, but this is exactly the position a lot of people hold. In the end, parents should be allowed to judge the risk for their own children based on their experience. Not allowing for that is basically thought control.
The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children, don’t want to also protect their children by keeping THEM away from the public or having THEM take precautions (like wearing masks or whatever). Instead, they want the risk to be taken by other people, which is unethical.
realityfactchex · 2h ago
Gosh, please accept these remarks in the most positive spirit possible.
> Yes, it is unethical
Agreed on that.
> The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children...
Arguably, for some, the "real issue" is whether viruses have even been reasonably shown to exist at all with something other than a) appeal to authority or b) other logical fallacy.
For instance, if one reads many virology papers (just a PubMed search away) for detail and understanding, one may find that there are not actually scientifically controlled studies proving the existence and causal nature of so-called viral particles, but instead the papers are a house of cards that undo themselves. There's no science in the The Science™ -- just enough to look like it and pass muster among people just trying to get along in this hectic and challenging world.
--> The cognitive dissonance (and conditioning) is so loud on the above point, that most people will label the claim a Conspiracy Theory and become instinctively distraught or look the other way in emotion, unable to bear scrutinizing the claim.
Thus, to assume that
> they want the risk to be taken by other people
is missing the point entirely, for a quite serious and well-informed contingent of conscientious objectors to vaccination requirements.
At that point, it is moot to point out that, if people are convinced by the likes of world's greatest omnichannel marketing campaigns that they need a certain product put into their body (for fear of death and disease), nothing stops those people from doing as they please to themselves.
After all, if the product really (a) is safe and (b) works, then the customers of that product certainly have nothing to worry about. (Nobody needs to convince *other people* to take a product, if it works for them.)
I am aware of herd immunity, but the same statement applies. You are asking parents to inject their children with something they think is dangerous. They are going to prioritize their own child’s health over a small percentage of other children, especially as social trust decreases over time.
bdangubic · 3h ago
What if me, as a parent, decide that it is insane my child to wear clothes because their skin will get fucked up from fabric? OK for my kid to walk around the school naked? What if I think it is in the best interest of my boy to be tough and tell him it is OK to punch the lights out of anyone he wants in school, other kid, teacher, whatever? I am a parent after all and I only care about my child - your or other children in the school are not my concern, all this good?
zaptheimpaler · 4h ago
It's unethical because vaccines don't work 100% of the time so if the disease is allowed to spread, some vaccinated people will also get the disease and suffer the consequences. If some of these horrific diseases actually start circulating again commonly, it will mean a LOT of vulnerable people will basically not be able to go out into the public at all. Many of the diseases we vaccinate against like measles or polio have horrific lifelong consequences. It's condemning many people who didn't make that choice
This is ethical only in the extremist libertarian view where personal choice trumps all. Some parents probably believe that beating their child or otherwise abusing them is good for the child.. so should we just let them do that? There IS an end to personal liberty, it's not unlimited. "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins"
I totally get what you're saying about these people not trusting the vaccines and the education problems though, and maybe the solution will have to be to meet these people where they are and try to educate them out of the misinformation hole. Here's one small example of how that goes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o69BiOqY1Ec (it does not go well..)
It's very very hard to change these people's minds and we genuinely don't have any answers to how to do that. It's a very hard problem because all of us take an experts word for it at some level of reasoning, the anti-vaxxers just believe in different "experts". You can't go deep enough into the science and papers and experiments to really undeniably show everyone the truth, so how does anyone prove anything? Not to mention these positions often aren't reasoned into, and can't be reasoned out of. Most of us have some experience in trying to change someone's mind on one of these issues and know it fails. A lot of the time some visceral experience has to hit them or something internal has to shift within them and we don't know how to do that.
aredox · 4h ago
>Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?
Then isn't it unethical of these parents to force the other parents - the rest of society - who think illnesses are dangerous to cohabitate with their kids who could be highly contagious, and breed and mutate viruses?
It goes both ways. "Society" is made of humans too.
fzeroracer · 4h ago
> Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?
Is it unethical to say parents should feed their kids if they believe food to be dangerous? Is it unethical to stop them from giving their kids bleach if they believe it to be a cure?
The answer is that as a society we have limits around what a parent can or cannot do for the sake of the overall well-being of their children. If a parent refuses to vaccinate their child without a very good reason why (such as other exacerbating health issues or allergic reactions), it should be treated as child abuse. Because it is.
bluesounddirect · 2h ago
The better question is why announce this message? was there some sort of push for some contradictory vaccine policy from the federal government? This is another thinly veiled attempt to distract from the fact Trump is connected to Epistein. The children of Florida are going to pay, again for Trump meddling with their lives.
treetalker · 4h ago
Steel-man it: Perhaps DeSantis and the other geniuses in Tallahassee are simply incentivizing the Florida population to develop herd immunity to polio, measles, and meningitis.
dwattttt · 4h ago
Yes, most of the survivors will have developed immunities. There's a catch in that sentence if you read it carefully.
triceratops · 4h ago
> incentivizing the Florida population to develop herd immunity
I thought these "freedom" type people didn't like being sheep.
_DeadFred_ · 2h ago
This is what they have used their political authority/power to bring back into our every day lives:
Unfortunately, one of the lesser-known facts about measles is that it causes your immune system to forget how it previously fought other diseases. So if it suddenly flares up in a community, everyone who catches it is now vulnerable to a second round of other diseases.
aredox · 3h ago
Like the herd immunity that made polio measles and meningitis extinct in the millenia before the invention of vaccines...
I really wish sometimes RFK jr went through with his idea to let avian flu "rip through" poultry farms. The complete collapse of chicken farming would have made things clear.
krapp · 4h ago
People aren't going to "develop herd immunity to polio, measles, and meningitis," they're just going to get sick and die en masse. Herd immunity at the scale of modern societies requires mandatory widespread vaccinations.
treetalker · 3h ago
I agree with this and the other responses I have seen so far. I was simply trying to make the Florida argument as strong as I could — which is not very strong, because once again Florida government is being hare-brained.
xnx · 2h ago
The beauty/tragedy of the modern world is we're so far removed from all he painful lessons that got us here that we don't think about them at all.
jerlam · 3h ago
When would we see actual effects from ending vaccine requirements immediately, seeing as a large number of children are already vaccinated? What would it look like?
bdhe · 5h ago
How are others processing this horrific backsliding in scientific trust, literacy, and straight up lack of compassion for the most vulnerable in the US?
Folks can surely see the connection between dropping vaccination rates and the rise of measles in Texas for example. Why aren't more people outraged and how are they allowing unprincipled politicians to impact their lives so drastically in pursuit of power?
dogleash · 5h ago
> How are others processing this horrific backsliding in scientific trust
Tragic, but we sleepwalked into this state of affairs by downplaying the severity of epistemic failures in academia and science communication.
Oh it's just a little publish or perish here, replication crisis there. Nobody really believes the clickbait headline. Overall we're on a solid foundation. Science means rigor, right? So the word science means rigor was done. Getting mad at someone for over-correcting won't make them feel more righteous.
We have failed our fellow countrymen.
krapp · 5h ago
This seems like a bit of a retrofiction. People weren't pushing the anti-vaccine narratives because of the replication crisis, rather they used the replication crisis to justify their pre-existing mistrust of vaccines.
The science around vaccines is actually sound, there's was no "replication crisis" or failure of rigor in that regard. Yes, even the covid vaccine was tested and went through clinical trials.
No comments yet
watwut · 4h ago
No, this is result of intentionally and well paid propaganda. It has nothing to do with failure of science or academy. Even less with publish or perish.
This is happening because some rich people radical right on republican side wanted to happen. Smart conservatives worked for this for years. They knew they are lying, but it did not mattered to them.
Blaming others is just another round of enabling. Blame shifting away from who intentionally caused this wont help anyone and does not reflect the truth.
Also, publish or perish thing is literally something the same people actively worked for.
Dig1t · 4h ago
I am surrounded by people in my daily life who are celebrating this change, I can tell you exactly why.
The establishment has done very little to try and address concerns from vaccine skeptics. Their response is mostly one of condescension and derision. Rather than using kindness and education, many establishment folks simply refuse to meet these people where they are and instead continue to act as though it’s completely insane to question the things that are being injected into their children.
There are completely valid questions for normal people to ask that don’t receive much of a response often, things like “why are vaccines immune from lawsuits?” and “why has the standard vaccine schedule increased so much?”.
Instead of providing good clear answers to these questions, skeptics are marginalized. How can this behavior not create distrust in scientific experts? The more you talk down to people, the less likely they are to trust you.
Note: I myself am not a vaccine skeptic, but I know many and I hear their reasoning often.
LexiMax · 2h ago
I am also friends with a fair few anti-vaxers and have attempted the reasonable and kind approach based on the facts. After many, many attempts, the conclusion I finally came to is that there isn't truly a gap in communication, but in culture.
This can take many forms, be it religious, political, or just whatever social groups they are a part of, but I believe that this form of motivated reasoning isn't necessarily something you can reason someone out of. To that effect, I don't believe trying to inform them is productive, but rather asking probing questions that attempt to reveal _why_ they believe what they believe.
In my own personal experience, I've found that nearly all of the anti-vaxxers I've talked to root their dismissal for vaccinations in religious reasons or in grievance politics.
aredox · 3h ago
>There are completely valid questions for normal people to ask that don’t receive much of a response often
Wrong, wrong, wrong. These perfectly valid answers have received again and again perfectly valid answers, and vaccine "sceptics" refuse to engage with the answers.
It is all FUD as a way of life.
Your repeated use of "the establishment" shows perfectly well that they don't want to hear the answer anyway. It's "us against them". Any official data - even from the CDC, or the media - that may show vaccines cause harm is blindly trusted and paraded. Any official data - from the same sources - that shows vaccines don't cause harm is manipulated, fake, censored by everyone: doctors, scientists, statisticians, officials, the Media...
fzeroracer · 4h ago
> The establishment has done very little to try and address concerns from vaccine skeptics.
For decades, the argument against anti-vaccination skeptics was to try and educate them. We've put them on TV, thrown our most well-reasoned arguments against them, showed them the data and proved to them multiple times over that their arguments are wrong. We argued over and over and over again that Andrew Wakefield, a literal fraudster who kicked off a large part of things and who aimed to profit from the anti-vaccine sentiment, was wrong.
Frankly the only argument and patience I have now for anti-vaccine skeptics is extreme derision and insults. They deserve nothing and should receive zero respect.
Dig1t · 4h ago
I can tell you that whatever education you think has been put out there, it’s absolutely not reaching its intended audience, and much of what does land is actually doing the opposite of what it intends to do. Example: Colbert’s “The vax scene” episode did more to damage the reputation of vaccines than I think anyone realizes.
Yes discrediting Andrew Wakefield helps, but you have to fight the incorrect ideas about the vaccines themselves not just one of the people who pushed these ideas.
One example: many skeptics ask the question “if vaccines are so safe then why are they immune to lawsuits?”. This is a very reasonable question for people to ask! And honestly, responding to this common sense question with derision and insults hurts your cause. The establishment needs good responses to questions like this and they need to be repeated in a non-hateful way.
99% of media and online conversation is just condescending. Like look at the comments in this HN post, most people are extremely unkind.
“Extreme derision and insults” is going to make the problem so much worse.
mr-wendel · 3h ago
Let's also recall that almost nobody changes their mind when engaged in these types of conversations, and the more confrontational the more likely you cement existing biases.
Where you do stand to make a difference is with more casual observers and people on the fence. A show of patience and respect bolsters a good argument better than perhaps even the argument itself.
What does tend to change people's minds is forming good relationships with people who hold differing opinions and their desire to make the relationship work. Logic and rationality are secondary considerations. Hopefully they will accept better conclusions for these reasons, but it's quite unlikely without adopting the kind of approach espoused by Dig1t.
ryandrake · 3h ago
All of these questions get answered over and over and over, with good answers, often backed by decades of medical research, delivered by everyone from the Surgeon General to contagious disease experts, all the way down to individual people's family doctors. If the evidence and research is not getting to people, it's because they are deliberately blocking it out. You can't bop people on the head and force them to get educated. And you can't "meet these people where they are" because where they are is a fortress that is specifically built to repel knowledge and expertise.
And, of course, when you point that out, it's attacked as condescending and derision. I, too, live in a community surrounded by these people. There is no reaching them, sadly.
bdhe · 42m ago
> One example: many skeptics ask the question “if vaccines are so safe then why are they immune to lawsuits?”. This is a very reasonable question for people to ask!
Seems like a reasonable answer to me! The question is, why don't vaccine skeptics just look things up and try to educate themselves?
===
Why are vaccine manufacturers shielded from liability?
A 1982 TV news report entitled Vaccine Roulette suggested that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine was the cause of permanent brain injury. Subsequent studies indicated that while the whole-cell vaccine was associated with febrile seizures, it was not associated with long-term brain damage. However, those studies took at least 10 years to exonerate the vaccine.
In the meantime, as vaccine manufacturers were flooded with lawsuits, some decided to stop making vaccines rather than face continued legal pressures. Consequently, production dropped, leading to concerns about vaccine supply and subsequent vaccination rates.
By shielding vaccine manufacturers from liability, Congress assured that future generations would be protected from devastating diseases. A common misconception is that this process completely shields vaccine makers. However, a plaintiff may file a civil court claim against vaccine companies after filing a claim in the VICP if they reject the vaccine court's decision.
aredox · 3h ago
>Colbert’s “The vax scene” episode did more to damage the reputation of vaccines than I think anyone realizes.
Oh yeah, perfectly rational to make health decisions based on a mediocre skit by a comedian you don't like and almost never watch... The people around you are perfectly sane people who are not trying to find any excuse to justify their tribal, cultish beliefs.
The solution is easy: vaccine proponents, whoever they are must be absolutely perfect in every way, shape and form.
Otherwise vaccine sceptics will instead prefer to believe the rich son of a political dynasty (who is certainly not a member of the establishment!) who had a brain worm and dumped a dead bear in central park and who has been proven a liar dozens and dozens of times.
Really wonder why vaccine "sceptics" apply a double standard... What could be the motivation behind this inconsistency? Truly a mystery. We should engage them in debate, we could certainly convince them (if we, and everyone and anyone who could be linked to vaccines, are perfect).
fzeroracer · 3h ago
I don't care. I've spent likely far more time than you trying to argue against and correct these anti-vaccine behaviors and ideas. They always start with 'reasonable questions' that lead into insane nonsense and there is no correcting that stance no matter how much evidence you give to the contrary. People are extremely unkind because they're matching the same level of vitriol and shit spewed out by the anti-vaccine nuts and frankly most people are tired of it.
riahi · 3h ago
Because they are disingenuous in their “just asking questions”.
They don’t want to vaccinate due to literal decades of propaganda campaigns turning anti vaccination into a tribal identity.
They just want some “reason” to blame others for the way they want to behave. It reminds me of the Matt Bors comic
It's quicksand. The more you tell people RFK is a quack, they more they'll believe him and that you are working for 'them'.
nerdjon · 5h ago
Lies... I think it ultimately comes down to just straight up lies.
They are being manipulated with false information, the science is twisted to fit their narrative (if we can even call it Science at this point...), and then they vote out of fear instead of being properly informed. How much positive talk did we really see from these people recently, it is all fear mongering about vaccines, trans people, etc etc. Throw in destroying our education system, defunding PBS, and they are purposefully keeping people uneducated so they can continue to manipulate them.
On the politician side, we are also facing a situation where even if your republican you don't dare get on Trumps bad side or you may be risking that base turning their back on you (after trump urged it of course) come the next election.
pstuart · 5h ago
This will be a classic case of FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out). It's a pity that innocent children will likely bear the brunt of the finding out.
throwawayqqq11 · 5h ago
The problem is, "they" will not find out. Vax is just a meta-factual symbol a tribe as gathered around. This social formation is going on for quite some time now, and unless a big event, too big to ignore, like a measles plague or the nazis loosing the war, hits, they will just move on, rally around the next symbol and ignore the previous one.
I feel like we should regard cognitive inflexibity or ignorance as a mental disability.
atomicnumber3 · 5h ago
Decades of disinformation and partisan politics being brought to its ultimate conclusion.
throwawayqqq11 · 5h ago
I wonder if the less manipulated have lasting moments of "what if they called us dipshits for a reason". We only see the extremes here. I wish those more reasonably right leaning internet victims would speak up as loud and as long as they could.
iLoveOncall · 5h ago
Because for a lot, being dead is better than being wrong. Literally.
I remember reading an article about a kid who had died of measles and the father literally said he still stood by his decision to not vaccinate the kid.
JohnFen · 5h ago
> being dead is better than being wrong. Literally.
Yes. The real tragedy isn't that, though, it's that endangering and killing others is better than being wrong for them. It's pure sociopathy.
Like that father.
fzeroracer · 4h ago
A remarkably stupid decision made by remarkably stupid people that won't face the consequences of their actions, because it'll primarily be the vulnerable that have to deal with the fallout of disease resurgence.
AIorNot · 5h ago
WTF - how insane is this country.
Also the tech world Google, Facebook(Meta) in particular deserves part of the blame for this state of the world, by creating social media platforms that create willful ignorance bubbles around their users which allowed our stupidest people to feed themselves politically motivated conspiracy and lies over scientifically validated truths
cosmicgadget · 4h ago
It's terrible that kids have to suffer because their parents are terminally online.
burnt-resistor · 5h ago
Being ignorant, unreasonable, a billionaire, or a pedophile should be uniformly punished severely socially if judicial, legislative, and executive bureaucrats won't.
Prior to this, to get such a large subset of children to not take vaccines for an epidemiological study would probably be illegal or at best be considered highly unethical. Convincing parents to enroll their children in such a study in the name of science and for a small stipend would probably be next to impossible considering the potential lifetime impacts.
I posit that the challenge has been that in order to prove vaccine efficacy on a continuing/updated basis, you need access to a non-vaccinated control group that controls for developed world socio-economic conditions which didn't exist (until now). Thus there hasn't been an easy way to do large population scale studies on vaccine efficacy - so it did somewhat become a "trust us" tautology (until now).
Why is this unethical and for whom?
The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.
Parents who don’t trust the vaccine for whatever reason, they feel strongly that they might harm their child.
Isn’t it sort of unethical to force parents to inject their child with something they think is dangerous?
You’re basically asking parents to willfully harm (in their mind they think it’s harmful, I’m not saying it’s actually harmful) their own child, from their perspective why should they make that choice?
I just don’t see how this problem can be solved other than going back to square one and trying to educate people and convince them that vaccines are not harmful. The alternative is to force people to accept these injections even though people believe they are harmful, which just isn’t going to work well in the United States.
A moment's thought will tell you that it's to protect kids that are at risk from infectious diseases (e.g. immunocompromised cancer patients) that cannot be vaccinated.
So most people would agree that it's unfair that a cancer patient cannot attend a public school, through no fault of their own, because a parent wants their healthy kid to attend the school unvaccinated. We balance the rules accordingly.
Yes, they are. If your kids are not allowed to attend school, then you are being forced to vaccinate them because you may not have other options. Claiming otherwise is gaslighting.
> It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.
So do those parents get a voucher for the funds pertaining to their child’s public education, if they’re prevented?
Should parents be allowed to kill their property?
> The vaccines work, so parents who choose to vaccinate their kids will be protected.
This is false for a number of reasons.
1) Vaccines don't provide perfect protection, breakthrough infections can occur.
2) Some people can not receive vaccinations due to health conditions.
3) Immunocompromised people are not protected by vaccines.
We managed to make it illegal to beat the crap out of your kids even though there are still plenty of Americans who think not beating your kids is harmful to them.
In a just society they should have sole discretion. The current situation where kids aren’t even allowed to walk to school without CPS harassing parents, is because of this attitude where the state thinks it has any rights to your kids.
The CPS issue is because of litigation not protection. No one wants to be responsible for something bad happening.
I don’t believe there are any people who believe that NOT beating their children is dangerous. If you put yourself in these parents’ shoes, they basically see this stuff as poison. What you’re asking them to do (in their mind) is inject their children with poison and for no other reason than because the government says so. It’s just a losing battle, you need to educate these people and show them that they are safe, address their concerns directly.
I would not inject my children with mercury if the government told me to. I would need to be convinced that mercury is safe and beneficial before I allowed my kid to be injected with it. I don’t feel like equating this to physical violence is helpful at all because in this case these parents believe they are preventing harm to their children.
This is the suffering you are OK with because 'concerns':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfoxqghXxEs
I'm a vaxer But one community I hang with is strongly antivax. Many of them have been very harmed even if they didn't take the vaccines.
When something is that important to you (even for woowoo reasons or social media misinformation) then it is a fertile situation for mental health impacts.
Antivaxxers are a vulnerable population too (they have self selected into a circle by their beliefs and communities).
Disclosure: I've seen some good people severely harmed by overbearing government actions in New Zealand. I believe New Zealand did a good job of protecting everyone here from COVID, but that the collateral costs to everyone were very high (and extremely variable chronic costs to some).
Edit: apology that I've bucketed all vaccines together. E.g. Measles vaccine is quite different from covid vaccines.
This doesnt work anymore because people are more individualistic than ever, unless something will directly harm them in a very obvious way in the next hour it's as if it didn't exist in their mind
Kind of like spouse of illegal migrants who voted trump, or people surviving thanks to medicaid voting against their own interest, they're so blinded by rage/outrage that they can't even understand basic logic. I personally think we're at a breaking point in most of the west and it'll only be going downhill from now on, so just as you I don't see any solution. The education system can't fight social media, and you can't "force" people you've been brainwashing for decades into believing the be all end all of human life is their little unlimited personal freedom
People with auto-immune disorders who can't safely take the vaccine lose the protection of herd immunity. (Edit: and the children who don't have control over their own health outcomes.)
Agreed that it's not an easy problem to solve.
Yes, it is unethical. The other comments don’t agree, but this is exactly the position a lot of people hold. In the end, parents should be allowed to judge the risk for their own children based on their experience. Not allowing for that is basically thought control.
The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children, don’t want to also protect their children by keeping THEM away from the public or having THEM take precautions (like wearing masks or whatever). Instead, they want the risk to be taken by other people, which is unethical.
> Yes, it is unethical
Agreed on that.
> The real issue is that parents who want herd immunity to protect their own children...
Arguably, for some, the "real issue" is whether viruses have even been reasonably shown to exist at all with something other than a) appeal to authority or b) other logical fallacy.
For instance, if one reads many virology papers (just a PubMed search away) for detail and understanding, one may find that there are not actually scientifically controlled studies proving the existence and causal nature of so-called viral particles, but instead the papers are a house of cards that undo themselves. There's no science in the The Science™ -- just enough to look like it and pass muster among people just trying to get along in this hectic and challenging world.
--> The cognitive dissonance (and conditioning) is so loud on the above point, that most people will label the claim a Conspiracy Theory and become instinctively distraught or look the other way in emotion, unable to bear scrutinizing the claim.
Thus, to assume that
> they want the risk to be taken by other people
is missing the point entirely, for a quite serious and well-informed contingent of conscientious objectors to vaccination requirements.
At that point, it is moot to point out that, if people are convinced by the likes of world's greatest omnichannel marketing campaigns that they need a certain product put into their body (for fear of death and disease), nothing stops those people from doing as they please to themselves.
After all, if the product really (a) is safe and (b) works, then the customers of that product certainly have nothing to worry about. (Nobody needs to convince *other people* to take a product, if it works for them.)
This is ethical only in the extremist libertarian view where personal choice trumps all. Some parents probably believe that beating their child or otherwise abusing them is good for the child.. so should we just let them do that? There IS an end to personal liberty, it's not unlimited. "Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins"
I totally get what you're saying about these people not trusting the vaccines and the education problems though, and maybe the solution will have to be to meet these people where they are and try to educate them out of the misinformation hole. Here's one small example of how that goes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o69BiOqY1Ec (it does not go well..)
It's very very hard to change these people's minds and we genuinely don't have any answers to how to do that. It's a very hard problem because all of us take an experts word for it at some level of reasoning, the anti-vaxxers just believe in different "experts". You can't go deep enough into the science and papers and experiments to really undeniably show everyone the truth, so how does anyone prove anything? Not to mention these positions often aren't reasoned into, and can't be reasoned out of. Most of us have some experience in trying to change someone's mind on one of these issues and know it fails. A lot of the time some visceral experience has to hit them or something internal has to shift within them and we don't know how to do that.
Then isn't it unethical of these parents to force the other parents - the rest of society - who think illnesses are dangerous to cohabitate with their kids who could be highly contagious, and breed and mutate viruses?
It goes both ways. "Society" is made of humans too.
Is it unethical to say parents should feed their kids if they believe food to be dangerous? Is it unethical to stop them from giving their kids bleach if they believe it to be a cure?
The answer is that as a society we have limits around what a parent can or cannot do for the sake of the overall well-being of their children. If a parent refuses to vaccinate their child without a very good reason why (such as other exacerbating health issues or allergic reactions), it should be treated as child abuse. Because it is.
I thought these "freedom" type people didn't like being sheep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfoxqghXxEs
I really wish sometimes RFK jr went through with his idea to let avian flu "rip through" poultry farms. The complete collapse of chicken farming would have made things clear.
Folks can surely see the connection between dropping vaccination rates and the rise of measles in Texas for example. Why aren't more people outraged and how are they allowing unprincipled politicians to impact their lives so drastically in pursuit of power?
Tragic, but we sleepwalked into this state of affairs by downplaying the severity of epistemic failures in academia and science communication.
Oh it's just a little publish or perish here, replication crisis there. Nobody really believes the clickbait headline. Overall we're on a solid foundation. Science means rigor, right? So the word science means rigor was done. Getting mad at someone for over-correcting won't make them feel more righteous.
We have failed our fellow countrymen.
The science around vaccines is actually sound, there's was no "replication crisis" or failure of rigor in that regard. Yes, even the covid vaccine was tested and went through clinical trials.
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This is happening because some rich people radical right on republican side wanted to happen. Smart conservatives worked for this for years. They knew they are lying, but it did not mattered to them.
Blaming others is just another round of enabling. Blame shifting away from who intentionally caused this wont help anyone and does not reflect the truth.
Also, publish or perish thing is literally something the same people actively worked for.
The establishment has done very little to try and address concerns from vaccine skeptics. Their response is mostly one of condescension and derision. Rather than using kindness and education, many establishment folks simply refuse to meet these people where they are and instead continue to act as though it’s completely insane to question the things that are being injected into their children.
There are completely valid questions for normal people to ask that don’t receive much of a response often, things like “why are vaccines immune from lawsuits?” and “why has the standard vaccine schedule increased so much?”.
Instead of providing good clear answers to these questions, skeptics are marginalized. How can this behavior not create distrust in scientific experts? The more you talk down to people, the less likely they are to trust you.
Note: I myself am not a vaccine skeptic, but I know many and I hear their reasoning often.
This can take many forms, be it religious, political, or just whatever social groups they are a part of, but I believe that this form of motivated reasoning isn't necessarily something you can reason someone out of. To that effect, I don't believe trying to inform them is productive, but rather asking probing questions that attempt to reveal _why_ they believe what they believe.
In my own personal experience, I've found that nearly all of the anti-vaxxers I've talked to root their dismissal for vaccinations in religious reasons or in grievance politics.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. These perfectly valid answers have received again and again perfectly valid answers, and vaccine "sceptics" refuse to engage with the answers.
It is all FUD as a way of life.
Your repeated use of "the establishment" shows perfectly well that they don't want to hear the answer anyway. It's "us against them". Any official data - even from the CDC, or the media - that may show vaccines cause harm is blindly trusted and paraded. Any official data - from the same sources - that shows vaccines don't cause harm is manipulated, fake, censored by everyone: doctors, scientists, statisticians, officials, the Media...
For decades, the argument against anti-vaccination skeptics was to try and educate them. We've put them on TV, thrown our most well-reasoned arguments against them, showed them the data and proved to them multiple times over that their arguments are wrong. We argued over and over and over again that Andrew Wakefield, a literal fraudster who kicked off a large part of things and who aimed to profit from the anti-vaccine sentiment, was wrong.
Frankly the only argument and patience I have now for anti-vaccine skeptics is extreme derision and insults. They deserve nothing and should receive zero respect.
Yes discrediting Andrew Wakefield helps, but you have to fight the incorrect ideas about the vaccines themselves not just one of the people who pushed these ideas.
One example: many skeptics ask the question “if vaccines are so safe then why are they immune to lawsuits?”. This is a very reasonable question for people to ask! And honestly, responding to this common sense question with derision and insults hurts your cause. The establishment needs good responses to questions like this and they need to be repeated in a non-hateful way.
99% of media and online conversation is just condescending. Like look at the comments in this HN post, most people are extremely unkind.
“Extreme derision and insults” is going to make the problem so much worse.
Where you do stand to make a difference is with more casual observers and people on the fence. A show of patience and respect bolsters a good argument better than perhaps even the argument itself.
What does tend to change people's minds is forming good relationships with people who hold differing opinions and their desire to make the relationship work. Logic and rationality are secondary considerations. Hopefully they will accept better conclusions for these reasons, but it's quite unlikely without adopting the kind of approach espoused by Dig1t.
And, of course, when you point that out, it's attacked as condescending and derision. I, too, live in a community surrounded by these people. There is no reaching them, sadly.
I hear this point cited and I googled it and it took me like 3 seconds to get this answer: https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/science-histor...
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
Seems like a reasonable answer to me! The question is, why don't vaccine skeptics just look things up and try to educate themselves?
===
Why are vaccine manufacturers shielded from liability? A 1982 TV news report entitled Vaccine Roulette suggested that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine was the cause of permanent brain injury. Subsequent studies indicated that while the whole-cell vaccine was associated with febrile seizures, it was not associated with long-term brain damage. However, those studies took at least 10 years to exonerate the vaccine.
In the meantime, as vaccine manufacturers were flooded with lawsuits, some decided to stop making vaccines rather than face continued legal pressures. Consequently, production dropped, leading to concerns about vaccine supply and subsequent vaccination rates.
By shielding vaccine manufacturers from liability, Congress assured that future generations would be protected from devastating diseases. A common misconception is that this process completely shields vaccine makers. However, a plaintiff may file a civil court claim against vaccine companies after filing a claim in the VICP if they reject the vaccine court's decision.
Oh yeah, perfectly rational to make health decisions based on a mediocre skit by a comedian you don't like and almost never watch... The people around you are perfectly sane people who are not trying to find any excuse to justify their tribal, cultish beliefs.
The solution is easy: vaccine proponents, whoever they are must be absolutely perfect in every way, shape and form.
Otherwise vaccine sceptics will instead prefer to believe the rich son of a political dynasty (who is certainly not a member of the establishment!) who had a brain worm and dumped a dead bear in central park and who has been proven a liar dozens and dozens of times.
Really wonder why vaccine "sceptics" apply a double standard... What could be the motivation behind this inconsistency? Truly a mystery. We should engage them in debate, we could certainly convince them (if we, and everyone and anyone who could be linked to vaccines, are perfect).
They don’t want to vaccinate due to literal decades of propaganda campaigns turning anti vaccination into a tribal identity.
They just want some “reason” to blame others for the way they want to behave. It reminds me of the Matt Bors comic
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/30/1981821/-Cartoon-...
They are being manipulated with false information, the science is twisted to fit their narrative (if we can even call it Science at this point...), and then they vote out of fear instead of being properly informed. How much positive talk did we really see from these people recently, it is all fear mongering about vaccines, trans people, etc etc. Throw in destroying our education system, defunding PBS, and they are purposefully keeping people uneducated so they can continue to manipulate them.
On the politician side, we are also facing a situation where even if your republican you don't dare get on Trumps bad side or you may be risking that base turning their back on you (after trump urged it of course) come the next election.
I feel like we should regard cognitive inflexibity or ignorance as a mental disability.
I remember reading an article about a kid who had died of measles and the father literally said he still stood by his decision to not vaccinate the kid.
Yes. The real tragedy isn't that, though, it's that endangering and killing others is better than being wrong for them. It's pure sociopathy.
Like that father.
Also the tech world Google, Facebook(Meta) in particular deserves part of the blame for this state of the world, by creating social media platforms that create willful ignorance bubbles around their users which allowed our stupidest people to feed themselves politically motivated conspiracy and lies over scientifically validated truths