It was the politicization of vaccines during the latter stages of the COVID pandemic that finally broke my hopes for a positive future in the near term.
I thought that something like a pandemic would have brought us all together around a base truth. However, politics + social media was stronger than R₀, this time.
morkalork · 1h ago
When deaths lagged infections by weeks it was all over. Just seeing the tsunami of people dividing today's deaths by today's infections and loudly proclaiming it was no worse than the flu was just wow. People are that dumb aren't they. After that, there was no hope for any related topics more complicated or nuanced.
tracerbulletx · 2h ago
There is not a single ideologically valid defense for being anti-vaccine. It's just anti humanity, anti science, and anti life.
woleium · 44m ago
Unless you are an American aggressor who can manipulate social media to weaken your enemy from within.
That's a dangerous mis-information. You are reporting on deaths from measles (and others), but not cases. Both went down, but cases much less than deaths.
Measles also cause other issues than death - weak immune system, blindness, and other conditions not covered in your mis-information chart.
Improved access to medication, antibiotics to fight secondary infections, better healthcare overall, have reduced death rates from measles prior to vaccines.
Less measles cases is better for EVERYONE. Those vaccinated, those unvaccinated, or those that are vaccinated, but did not get immunity.
The amount of measles cases plummets in...1964, the year after the vaccine was introduced
kcplate · 2h ago
Well…
I am not antivax but can we please stop pretending like our government and health authorities didn’t royally screw the pooch as it related to the COVID vaccine communications, mandates, etc…?
People became more anti-vax largely due to the prior administration more than RFKjr.
So there may not be a scientific defense but there damn sure is a backlash because of poor leadership.
consumer451 · 1h ago
Just to be clear as to who you are blaming, because the retconning on this topic makes me feel like I am losing my mind:
> On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced the public-private partnership. The purpose of Operation Warp Speed was to coordinate Health and Human Services-wide efforts, including the NIH ACTIV partnership for vaccine and therapeutic development, the NIH RADx initiative for diagnostic development, and work by BARDA.
Trump didn’t mandate them to federal workers and to the military. Trump didn’t get up in front of the populace and lie about their efficacy.
For what it’s worth…I am not a Trump supporter…but I am not going to make excuses for Biden and the democrats for the clusterfuck they created.
consumer451 · 1h ago
I could say that it wasn't Biden who came out anti-vax, while getting vaccinated himself, unlike Trump.
RFK made a career out of being anti-vax, while according to his congressional testimony, his own children were indeed vaccinated.
These people are political grifters, with no limits, even when it comes to other people's health.
(This comment exchange probably sucks, sorry)
kcplate · 48m ago
It doesn’t matter that Biden et al. are pro vaccination and that RFKjr is antivax. What matters is that Biden et al. influenced more antivax attitudes than RFKjr could have ever hoped to in all the time he evangelized it.
That is the real issue. RFKjr is in the position he is as a reaction to bad leadership. Whatever further damage that he manages to do, is still owned by the mismanagement caused by the prior administration.
> RFKjr is in the position he is as a reaction to bad leadership.
This seems like nonsense. Is your theory that the previous administration is perceived by some as having over-reached on COVID-19 vaccines; so the proper response is to install someone with no background in biomedical sciences to blow up vaccine research and implementation and then blame it all on the prior administration … do I have it right?
croes · 44m ago
Sure they lied about efficacy and not just a decline of efficacy because of the virus mutating?
dekhn · 1h ago
I recommend spending some time as a public health official; it helps understand the logic that PH people apply when they make policy. I also recommend reading a bunch about the history of vaccines and the challenges associated with them.
kcplate · 56m ago
Nope, they don’t get a pass for being incompetent from me just because a job is difficult. I’ll also never accept a “well their intentions were good” type of argument—-If the results suck, the results suck. Our country moved towards antivax mentality in a big way because of how our government handled that pandemic. That’s unforgivable and I am not someone who will blame the effect instead of the cause.
Marsymars · 1h ago
> I am not antivax but can we please stop pretending like our government and health authorities didn’t royally screw the pooch as it related to the COVID vaccine communications, mandates, etc…?
In what way? (Specifically re: screwing the pooch around vaccines, and not other parts of the covid response.)
kcplate · 35m ago
Lied about its efficacy primarily. Both Biden and Fauci are on record as saying basically “if you get the vaccine you won’t get Covid and can’t give Covid to another person”. People got the vaccine, vaccinated people still got Covid, vaccinated people still spread Covid.
Then, even after it was apparent that the vaccine did not have the advertised benefit, they continued to press its use including mandates for federal employees and the military, encouraged censorship of social media conversation about the vaccine and its efficacy, as well as pressed covid vaccination of healthy children (who were among the least likely in the population to either get or spread the disease).
cosmicgadget · 12m ago
Weird, my recollection is that they said you could still get covid but it would be extremely mild due to the presence of antibodies.
mcphage · 1h ago
> People became more anti-vax largely due to the prior administration more than RFKjr.
People became more anti-vax because of the large contingent pushing anti-vax conspiracies to a credulous audience.
The previous administration’s policies were a significant success. Any idea they were a failure or a mistake is wrong.
kcplate · 28m ago
Luke: “I don’t believe it…”
Yoda: “And that is why you fail…”
const_cast · 1h ago
Right, I don't understand why these people are constructing these elaborate and convoluted mechanism for which anti-vax rhetoric increased.
It's very simple: if you push more anti-vax talking points and conspiracies, then naturally those ideas will be more popular in the zeitgeist. And, well, the right in general has been doing just that. Two plus two, now there's a lot more anti-vax people.
kcplate · 18m ago
And…exactly why were people talking about it more? I wonder what possible thing happened that caused people to start discussing the notion that a specific vaccine was not as effective as it was advertised to be?
What might have happened was a president and a famous public health official went around broadcasting that a certain vaccine was very effective …when it wasn’t.. Then it comes out the that same president and health official starts trying to squash conversation about the vaccine’s ineffectiveness. Yeah, that won’t perk more interest, will it?
Is it really a great leap in the minds of those people discussing that vaccine’s ineffectiveness after having been lied to about one vaccine, to wonder about others?
A zeitgeist gets its appetite from somewhere.
defrost · 16m ago
The twelve people responsible for the bulk of those alternate theories were motivated by the profits to be made from alternative cures (see link in my peer commet and other similar reports).
defrost · 20m ago
Not so much a large contingent pushing that stuff out, rather a small number that directly profited from "alternative cures" pushed hard and marketed well, which was picked up and echoed by many.
Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows
Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts.
kcplate · 4m ago
No offense, but that article is way way way out of date (2021) and it basically attacks RFKjrs other whackadoo theories instead of just focusing on what we now know was actual vaccine disinformation provided directly from Biden and Fauci.
sys13 · 3h ago
This is a step back for science in the service of public health - I'm sad for the many children that will die needless deaths
No comments yet
dacox · 3h ago
Was this a new committee? there is a quote about this being a coup, but it is also noted that the previous administration selected the entire existing committee
m-watson · 3h ago
From the way it is written it feels more like "Under Biden enough openings occurred that he selected the entire existing committee," where as under Trump they are being pushed out "“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. “A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science. ”"
bjourne · 3h ago
If one goes by the ACIP Membership Rooster this seem to be the case: https://www.cdc.gov/acip/membership/roster.html Likely, the compensation scientists receive for being a committee member is not great so the committee has to be constantly refilled. Appointees to such committees are de facto apolitical because there aren't enough world-class specialists available for the executive to choose between. So the Trump team will have to choose, actual experts in immunology or loyal MAGA goons...
No comments yet
dacox · 3h ago
yeah, I see that.
Apparently ACIP is very much not new. I am curious to the specifics of the prevous mass appointment, however.
miltonlost · 3h ago
What are you curious about? What does that curiousity have to do with the current mass firings? Are you just asking questions to smokescreen for this executive power grab?
dacox · 2h ago
I think it should fairly clear why I'm curious, as the article mentions
> Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee.
After some degree of googling the history of ACIP I had not found any explanation and thought maybe someone here(who is actually American and maybe follows this kind of thing more closely?) would just know
Looks like there are actually some comments now that are more clarifying.
> Are you just asking questions to smokescreen for this executive power grab?
I’m just trying to understand the background. I get that this is a sensitive topic, but I’d ask that we keep things civil and give people the benefit of the doubt when they’re asking honest questions.
vkou · 3h ago
A clean sweep of RFK and his ilk out of power and the media is the bare minimum of what is necessary to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.
That trust was undermined by habitual liars in an effort to score political points at the expense of public health. None of the batshit-insane things they claimed were just around the corner have actually materialized.
Unfortunately, this isn't even the top five most egregious thing these people are doing this week.
But the basic work of ACIP had been done for 25+ years before the committee was created. The American Academy of Pediatrics made recommendations, etc.
_elf · 3h ago
Everyone in the VC community who helped elect President Trump is partially responsible for each child that suffers and dies from a vaccine-preventable disease due to this action.
bigfatkitten · 3h ago
You don’t become a VC by being the sort of person who cares about these things.
vrosas · 3h ago
VC: “I pretended to be a good person because that’s what I thought would make me successful and people love me.”
Everyone: “we can tell you’re an entitled dbag.”
VC: “well now I’m going to act like an entitled dbag and it’s your fault.”
- Me paraphrasing his actual interview. You know who I’m talking about.
hn_throwaway_99 · 2h ago
> Me paraphrasing his actual interview. You know who I’m talking <about>.
No, we don't, because not all of us watch the same media or follow the same threads.
0_____0 · 1h ago
same boat as you but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess Thiel
mcphage · 1h ago
> You know who I’m talking about.
All of them?
GLdRH · 2h ago
I don't know what a VC is and at this point I'm afraid to ask
thelastgallon · 19m ago
Probably Vulture Capitalist?
sanswork · 1h ago
How did you find yourself on HN and not know what VC means?
King-Aaron · 1h ago
I'm sure if someone came to a site called 'hacker news' and didn't delve deeper past the main content board, then it would be easy to not organically discover what a VC might be.
sanswork · 1h ago
It's just weird I guess as someone thats been here a while that there are users that don't know the word VC given its history in the VC/tech startup community.
Context matters though. If you're in a place that has always been about baseball and you say "I have to admit I don't know what a pitcher is" it's going to be a bit weird for the regulars.
In this case though I guess it's just hard for me to recognise how much the focus of this site has shifted and that people can come here that seemingly have no interest in startups/tech/vc.
viraptor · 39m ago
It's not a baseball place. It's equivalent to a sports place and one person won't know what a pitcher is and another won't know what a quarterback is. The scope of HN is quite large and diverse. Then again, even on baseball forums there will be a new person from time to time. It's ok.
jowea · 56m ago
It has been a long time since this place was mainly about startup culture IMHO.
drivingmenuts · 2h ago
Venture Capitalist
cyanydeez · 2h ago
You do, however, put on your sheep in wolves clothing.
ethbr1 · 2h ago
Or in this case, dead bear clothing.
overfeed · 46m ago
I hope everyone remembers the deluge of gloating blog posts and podcast appearances by the SV tech (thought-)leadership from early February 2025, before the wheels predictably fell off.
add-sub-mul-div · 3h ago
You need to frame this in terms of quantifiable material loss to them in order for there to be a chance that they'd care.
lbrito · 3h ago
That won't help much because the quantifiable material loss in that scenario wouldn't be much.
normalaccess · 3h ago
And if he is right the gain will far outweigh the loss.
magicalist · 2h ago
> And if he is right the gain will far outweigh the loss
So is your suggestion that medical policy based on balancing humours is actually effective altruism?
consumer451 · 2h ago
You should post this as a market on Polymarket.
flanked-evergl · 3h ago
Trump was elected by Americans, not the VC community.
pier25 · 2h ago
The proportion of people who donated significant money is probably higher in vcs than the general population.
flanked-evergl · 2h ago
Probably? Like do you have the actual probability?
I don’t see what this has to do with Trump receiving the most votes. The public had ample access to evidence that Trump is a traitor, among other things.
consumer451 · 1h ago
The sad truth is that we are all easily programmed meat machines, myself included.
The Citizens United decision allowed capital to have a much larger influence on the programming of our political media.
Obama, many faults and all, has a great quote on this topic: ~"If I watched Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me either!"
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 2h ago
Wow this is unpopular, but you're right!
ethbr1 · 2h ago
I think what gets people's goat is the VC community crowing about being farsighted futurists... and then acting just as human and shortsighted as everyone else.
Hence the schadenfreude.
It's one thing to be wrong with everyone. It's another to be wrong after a ton of people said "This is a dumb idea."
sershe · 1h ago
So, does that mean that everybody who helped elect everybody who shaped FDA is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths? I mean I sympathize, but seems a little extreme
Oh and to be clear my attitude towards antivaxxers is burn by /slow/ fire, but still.
basisword · 3h ago
As long as they're making money they do not care.
potato3732842 · 2h ago
Going down this whole group blame road is gonna turn out way worse for you thank you think.
But hey, what do I know, maybe you're 80yo and working on a short time horizon.
And this is coming from someone who abhors that business model and everyone in it.
directevolve · 2h ago
It’s not “group blame” - it’s accurately naming the specific wealthy people who put this kleptocrat in office for a tax break.
almosthere · 3h ago
I'll accept that in exchange for making it so people can sue pharma companies for VI.
chris_wot · 3h ago
Dear god, there are mechanisms in place for this already, and they are so loose they are farcical.
It’s incredible when I read this sort of comment, and then I realise that the comment is so badly ill informed that I need to respond. But it does make me wonder what sources of information the other person is reading…
jbritton · 2h ago
Well then what are you reading. It’s well known that Pfizer and Moderna required immunity from lawsuits in order to provide the vaccine and every country gave them that immunity. Here it is from CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effec...
Perhaps you were thinking about compensation from the government, but the original poster was talking about actually holding Pfizer and Moderna liable.
ethbr1 · 2h ago
Okay, work it out for me: how was that a bad trade for world governments and society?
People still have an avenue to sue for harm -- they can sue the government.
The government took on that liability in exchange for preventing the spread of a highly pathogenic, novel pandemic with moderate mortality, thereby allowing return to normal life, with fewer deaths, faster.
I heard that PG was talking about possibly allowing us to vouch [flagged] posts, prior to them being [dead]. We really need this now. The world has changed since the original thinking on that feature.
These days, it appears that a certain group of people, who are not reflected in the body of comments just click flag en-masse when it's not going their way.
anigbrowl · 19m ago
We already have this. I don't remember what the karma threshold for it is though, HN isn't very transparent about that to discourage gaming the karma score. I have vouched for many posts, going back at least 2-3 years.
consumer451 · 8m ago
I had a recent comment exchange about this, and I learned the facts.
I have the karma points required for all that and a bag of chips, however, I only see a vouch button when the post has gone from [flagged] to [dead]. So, I can only vouch for a dead post.
There is no way for users to "fight back" against a flagged post. I assume that it was the "fight" part that made them make that decision back in the day, which I understand.
But, things have really changed in social media since then, and this a social media website.
josu · 3h ago
"Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee."
mudetroit · 3h ago
They typically serve four year terms. When any president begins their term the entire board will have been appointed by the previous administration. Now if games were played to make most of the terms expire at the end of the term that's also not okay under any means.
Qem · 3h ago
> Now if games were played to make most of the terms expire at the end of the term that's also not okay under any means.
I think terms in boards like this should be filled under a different periodicity from the presidential term, preferentially with a period coprime to it, just like cicadas do. This way it would be harder to pull the trick of letting both cycles sync.
I thought that something like a pandemic would have brought us all together around a base truth. However, politics + social media was stronger than R₀, this time.
Measles also cause other issues than death - weak immune system, blindness, and other conditions not covered in your mis-information chart.
Improved access to medication, antibiotics to fight secondary infections, better healthcare overall, have reduced death rates from measles prior to vaccines.
Less measles cases is better for EVERYONE. Those vaccinated, those unvaccinated, or those that are vaccinated, but did not get immunity.
The amount of measles cases plummets in...1964, the year after the vaccine was introduced
I am not antivax but can we please stop pretending like our government and health authorities didn’t royally screw the pooch as it related to the COVID vaccine communications, mandates, etc…?
People became more anti-vax largely due to the prior administration more than RFKjr.
So there may not be a scientific defense but there damn sure is a backlash because of poor leadership.
> On May 15, 2020, President Donald Trump officially announced the public-private partnership. The purpose of Operation Warp Speed was to coordinate Health and Human Services-wide efforts, including the NIH ACTIV partnership for vaccine and therapeutic development, the NIH RADx initiative for diagnostic development, and work by BARDA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
For what it’s worth…I am not a Trump supporter…but I am not going to make excuses for Biden and the democrats for the clusterfuck they created.
RFK made a career out of being anti-vax, while according to his congressional testimony, his own children were indeed vaccinated.
These people are political grifters, with no limits, even when it comes to other people's health.
(This comment exchange probably sucks, sorry)
That is the real issue. RFKjr is in the position he is as a reaction to bad leadership. Whatever further damage that he manages to do, is still owned by the mismanagement caused by the prior administration.
This seems like nonsense. Is your theory that the previous administration is perceived by some as having over-reached on COVID-19 vaccines; so the proper response is to install someone with no background in biomedical sciences to blow up vaccine research and implementation and then blame it all on the prior administration … do I have it right?
In what way? (Specifically re: screwing the pooch around vaccines, and not other parts of the covid response.)
Then, even after it was apparent that the vaccine did not have the advertised benefit, they continued to press its use including mandates for federal employees and the military, encouraged censorship of social media conversation about the vaccine and its efficacy, as well as pressed covid vaccination of healthy children (who were among the least likely in the population to either get or spread the disease).
People became more anti-vax because of the large contingent pushing anti-vax conspiracies to a credulous audience.
The previous administration’s policies were a significant success. Any idea they were a failure or a mistake is wrong.
Yoda: “And that is why you fail…”
It's very simple: if you push more anti-vax talking points and conspiracies, then naturally those ideas will be more popular in the zeitgeist. And, well, the right in general has been doing just that. Two plus two, now there's a lot more anti-vax people.
What might have happened was a president and a famous public health official went around broadcasting that a certain vaccine was very effective …when it wasn’t.. Then it comes out the that same president and health official starts trying to squash conversation about the vaccine’s ineffectiveness. Yeah, that won’t perk more interest, will it?
Is it really a great leap in the minds of those people discussing that vaccine’s ineffectiveness after having been lied to about one vaccine, to wonder about others?
A zeitgeist gets its appetite from somewhere.
Just 12 People Are Behind Most Vaccine Hoaxes On Social Media, Research Shows
- https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-doze...
No comments yet
No comments yet
Apparently ACIP is very much not new. I am curious to the specifics of the prevous mass appointment, however.
> Although it’s typically not viewed as a partisan board, the Biden administration had installed the entire committee.
After some degree of googling the history of ACIP I had not found any explanation and thought maybe someone here(who is actually American and maybe follows this kind of thing more closely?) would just know
Looks like there are actually some comments now that are more clarifying.
> Are you just asking questions to smokescreen for this executive power grab?
I’m just trying to understand the background. I get that this is a sensitive topic, but I’d ask that we keep things civil and give people the benefit of the doubt when they’re asking honest questions.
That trust was undermined by habitual liars in an effort to score political points at the expense of public health. None of the batshit-insane things they claimed were just around the corner have actually materialized.
Unfortunately, this isn't even the top five most egregious thing these people are doing this week.
But the basic work of ACIP had been done for 25+ years before the committee was created. The American Academy of Pediatrics made recommendations, etc.
Everyone: “we can tell you’re an entitled dbag.”
VC: “well now I’m going to act like an entitled dbag and it’s your fault.”
- Me paraphrasing his actual interview. You know who I’m talking about.
No, we don't, because not all of us watch the same media or follow the same threads.
All of them?
In this case though I guess it's just hard for me to recognise how much the focus of this site has shifted and that people can come here that seemingly have no interest in startups/tech/vc.
So is your suggestion that medical policy based on balancing humours is actually effective altruism?
The Citizens United decision allowed capital to have a much larger influence on the programming of our political media.
Obama, many faults and all, has a great quote on this topic: ~"If I watched Fox News, I wouldn't vote for me either!"
Hence the schadenfreude.
It's one thing to be wrong with everyone. It's another to be wrong after a ton of people said "This is a dumb idea."
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/08/is...
Oh and to be clear my attitude towards antivaxxers is burn by /slow/ fire, but still.
But hey, what do I know, maybe you're 80yo and working on a short time horizon.
And this is coming from someone who abhors that business model and everyone in it.
It’s incredible when I read this sort of comment, and then I realise that the comment is so badly ill informed that I need to respond. But it does make me wonder what sources of information the other person is reading…
Perhaps you were thinking about compensation from the government, but the original poster was talking about actually holding Pfizer and Moderna liable.
People still have an avenue to sue for harm -- they can sue the government.
The government took on that liability in exchange for preventing the spread of a highly pathogenic, novel pandemic with moderate mortality, thereby allowing return to normal life, with fewer deaths, faster.
Which part of that was a bad idea?
These days, it appears that a certain group of people, who are not reflected in the body of comments just click flag en-masse when it's not going their way.
I have the karma points required for all that and a bag of chips, however, I only see a vouch button when the post has gone from [flagged] to [dead]. So, I can only vouch for a dead post.
There is no way for users to "fight back" against a flagged post. I assume that it was the "fight" part that made them make that decision back in the day, which I understand.
But, things have really changed in social media since then, and this a social media website.
I think terms in boards like this should be filled under a different periodicity from the presidential term, preferentially with a period coprime to it, just like cicadas do. This way it would be harder to pull the trick of letting both cycles sync.