Every antivaxxer I know is skeptical because it ties into their existing beliefs of some hidden overarching power-system trying to control them.
Censorship and hiding criticism (informed or not) ‘for the greater good’ is like throwing gasoline on the fire. I have a family member who was merely just a lightweight New Age/holistic type of…skeptic. But the whole COVID response made it way worse. She doesn’t watch videos about why vaccines are bad, 90% of them are how the virus government/billionaires/big tech did x shady thing, so therefore don’t trust the vacinnes.
It’s really easy to spin that sort of thing into “they must have something to hide”.
I highly doubt all of the effort Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc put into silencing dissent really did anything to promote better science or quell the fringes.
I don’t think anyone even cares if it did or
not after-the-fact.
I'm a relatively well educated and informed person about STEM topics, but I grew up in a family full of modern medicine skeptics, and living in TX am surrounded by many more. You have it exactly right, trying to censor the COVID misinformation(problem: do you trust who defines that) made it these people FAR more paranoid than they were before. I've actually had quite a bit of success listening to these people and addressing their concerns point by point with citations to studies. They may be less educated and informed, but they're not blithering idiots and will come around if you engage in a good faith discussion with them.
The other problem is resorting to force. If you mandate something to a Texan, you better believe they're resist the hell out of it, even if they know it's in their best interest otherwise. I have several friends that knew it was in their best interest to get the vaccine, but their libertarian values/morals drove them to take a stand against their companies who tried to compel them to take it. Medical freedom, which I largely agree with, but I was first in line to get the shot voluntarily.
> The other problem is resorting to force. If you mandate something to a Texan, you better believe they're resist the hell out of it, even if they know it's in their best interest otherwise. I have several friends that knew it was in their best interest to get the vaccine, but their libertarian values/morals drove them to take a stand against their companies who tried to compel them to take it.
It is immensely satisfying to see people finally, finally saying this on here.
Somewhere around a year ago in one of the covid vaccine posts, the top post was something along the lines of "Fine, I don't care anymore, I'm done trying to help these people" in reference to mandating/coercing people to take the shots. I responded with "And their response will be 'Finally! That's all we've wanted this entire time!'. People on here [HN] don't seem to realize just how much 'these people' value freedom over safety."
My comment did get a lot of upvotes, but the large thread that generated had so many people who just didn't understand the sentiment at all, it was an amazing demonstration of the bubble HN exists in.
That's the primary reason I did not get the shots. After so long of the government exerting force they had no right to use, I was not going to give into something they said doesn't take away that force, and would lead to a vaccine passport "show me your papers" society.
In Arabic we have the saying "just to spite you, toilet, I decided to shit in my pants". Your comment reminded me a lot of it. My grandma use to use it a lot on me when I was a teen because I had a contrarian phase.
I made the right choice. That's a terrible analogy to use in regards to standing up for freedom. Especially when the shots actually did turn out to be less than worthless
If you are young and healthy and not in contact with elderly or severly sick, there was never any point to take a government mandated vaccine with dubious upbacking, surrounded by lying, and the contents of which have been deemed a military secret.
It was not good for me though. The shots were harmful and the risk was not worth it. I'm also more than willing to take a bigger risk even if there was one to stand up for freedom, which is important
My relative is super anti-vaccine but she still got vaccinated because she would have lost her job otherwise. She's already low income, so that was never an option.
That's a poor stat for measuring ideological adherence when anyone who travelled over 1.5yrs+, worked a job with people, worked in gov, etc or lived in a place with mandates and wanted to go to retail stores or any public event was forced to take it.
We aren't debating their reasoning to get the vaccine? Or whether forcing people to get the vaccine works or not? Of course threatening people's jobs works.
If the overreaction to dissent ultimately played a bigger role in fueling - rather than preventing it - then it's not a worthy 'greater good' (Streisand effect en masse). Playing a central part in turning millions of people from harmless 'alternative health' skeptics to hardcore anti-gov is something that will have long term consequences.
If we're gonna assume vaccinated/not vaccinated defines their viewpoint, then around 1 in 3 people is a pretty massive group to flippantly dismiss like that.
Around 80% have received one dose at least, that leaves 20% who at this point seem to be making an ideological stand. 20% of the any population can have absolutely fringe views that shouldn't be given ideological affirmative action for their views.
>I've actually had quite a bit of success listening to these people and addressing their concerns point by point with citations to studies. They may be less educated and informed, but they're not blithering idiots and will come around if you engage in a good faith discussion with them
Would they have been so receptive if it was a stranger rather than a family member feeding them the same information?
The example I was thinking of wasn't a blithering idiot. He was an engineer who was afraid of needles. That kind of turned him into an idiot with respect to vaccines.
Friends, family, and acquaintances, basically anyone with some basis for trust, it works. With strangers there is much less success, but Socratic questioning often leads them closer than they were. It's a much longet long whittling down process in the latter case.
Every anti-vaxxer I know has a totally different reason for ignoring their own self interest but they all seem to have one thing in common, they are absolutely not thinking for themselves. To the last one, they all regurgitated to me something they heard from one of the various celebrities they worship. They are all sheep following one or more of the dozens of victimization cults that have become so popular over the last two decades. "We're being repressed and misled and we're fed up. We're gonna stick it to the consensus by contracting preventable diseases!"
I'd actually be OK with letting Darwin run his train on those populations, if they weren't also recklessly causing the illness, disability, and death of their innocent neighbors who for age, health, or other legitimate reasons cannot get a particular vaccine. Should a child that's allergic to the MMR vaccine experience encephalitis and face possible lifelong disability or even death because his schoolmate's mom or dad worships a blathering radio host or a washed up model peddling conspiracies for profit?
I suspect most of you grew up in clean western neighborhoods. I grew up with a schoolmate and a member of my household, each severely disabled by polio. They drew a short straw and weren't lucky enough to have well functioning healthcare apparatuses in their birth countries. And for that crime, they were robbed of significant bodily mobility forever. That so many in the US would have us move toward that awful state of affairs instead of away from that is disappointing but I suppose not terribly surprising.
When I was younger, I thought only the simple minded were so easily conned and steered by hacks and hucksters but the last 20 years or so have demonstrated that many intelligent and educated Americans are just acutely gullible.
You're exactly right, and all the propaganda efforts just made it worse. Now I'm even more convinced that it's all about people seeking to exert more control over others.
I do however, consume lot's of media on how the vaccines are bad, and I'm skeptical of media that glosses over the science aspect and focuses on far fetched control conspiracies only. Limited hangouts and poisoning the well are misinformation tactics fwiw.
I know a bunch of anti-vaxxers in New Zealand, and they notably each had a different stated reason for being antivax. Perhaps because we don’t have the same political partisanship in this country (although partisanship was still a factor: it was interesting hearing right leaning people here reproduce sound-bites that I thought were American Republican political cliches).
Political issues being global is not a new phenomenon. Hyper-partisans and fringe groups have always sought out a broader set of sources when they don't find it in their immediate local range.
Which is why local censorship is becoming dumber than ever with a global internet, something I saw often here in Canada.
Although I guess some people hope their views become a part of some global cohesive overton window. Maybe with some super-efficient global media/internet moderation system it will finally stop people like my conspiracy relatives. But so far they've only made it worse.
Antivaxxers aren't exactly scientifically inclined skeptics who will change their minds if fed more objective, impartial evidence.
They probably can be reached but I'm certain this isnt the way.