Comment by unclad5968
4 days ago
Ignoring the strawman at the end, you're making their point for them.
Anti-vax is actually a horrible example of this because it can never be proven that vaccines don't harm us. Any non-infinite evidence will never reduce the probability to zero. You even allude to this point. If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines. Just because the evidence is enough for you doesnt make anyone who disagrees irrational. That line of thinking just makes you irrational.
I say this as a fully vaccinated (including COVID) vaccine enjoyer.
> If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines
The problem is that humans are really unsuited to statistical thinking, especially about risk, and what it means to "be cautious" about something. In this context, "being cautious" about vaccines means "being reckless" about disease, because you're rejecting the mitigation measures. It is not a good bet to roll the dice for your children against measles.
We have to recognize that there have been both incidents of vaccine contamination and of individuals who have had unexpected negative reactions to vaccines. You get advised about this every time you have one!
Perhaps the diagrams should include "one sided scale" as an argument.
> Ignoring the strawman at the end
Oh, no. You don't get to ignore my actual experience with people and Covid vaccines. I watched 3 different anti-vaxxers in my family die begging for a vaccine while doctors struggled to save their dumb asses (yeah, mass spreading event).
> it can never be proven that vaccines don't harm us.
That's your job to prove, Mr. Skeptical. Not mine.
I very much can prove that not getting a vaccine does harm you. I've got a handful of measles deaths to point to right now. We've got step function decreases in reproductive cancers due to HPV vaccination. We've got shingles vaccines showing decreases in dementia and Alzheimers. I can go on and on.
It's up to YOU to show the contrary that the harm a vaccine does outweighs it's benefits.
People don't seem to get that "being skeptical" is simply the first step. After that, you are required to begin the hard work of massing factual evidence as well as cause/effect relationships for your argument.
Otherwise you are simply "obviously irrational and can't be reasoned with".
> I say this as a fully vaccinated (including COVID) vaccine enjoyer.
"I'm not racist, but ..."
Sorry. Statement gives you no credibility or authority.
It’s impossible to argue with the biased framing you’ve setup: any single good outcome due to vaccines is sufficient to declare victory for your argument while opponents face defeat unless they show that all harms outweigh all benefits based on your evaluation methodology.
Anyway, for everyone else, the J&J COVID vaccine is known to cause heart problems in certain men and boys. Here’s an article about the issue from the pre-RFK HHS era:
https://health.mountsinai.org/blog/wynk-heart-inflammation-m...
>J&J COVID vaccine is known to cause heart problems in certain men and boys
And what is the risk if you get COVID and are unvaccinated? I can't say there is no risk to drinking water, but I can say that there is a huge risk of dying of dehydration from not drinking water.
How is your framing any better? Who claimed vaccines are 100% harmless and have zero chance of injury? The claim was that the chances are vanishingly small.
> If there is a single case of a harmful vaccine, or even a reasonable probability of one, then it isn't irrational to be cautious of vaccines. Just because the evidence is enough for you doesnt make anyone who disagrees irrational. That line of thinking just makes you irrational.
There's a difference between "(ir)rational" and "(ab)normal human thinking". What you describe is both irrational and also very normal for humans.
To illustrate what I mean, I'll put the probabilities into terms of dice rolls:
Before vaccines:
Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, once. If it's even, you died. (Pre-industrial society, half of us died young of what are now easily preventable illnesses).
With vaccines, at current safety thresholds for fatal reactions:
Roll a normal, fair, six-sided dice, seven times. Even for borderline cases where the vaccines are covering serious illnesses, you'd need to roll 1-2-3-4-5-6-1 in that order to see a fatal adverse reaction, otherwise the vaccine is withdrawn from the market. (~1 per quarter million cases).
But, just like people don't really have a rational intuition for how a "billionaire" is a thousand times richer than a "millionaire", people don't really have rational intuition for probabilities like these. I suspect our intuition on probability is more like "here's 8 bushes, a deer is hiding behind one, which one?", because of how often people act as though being unlucky for long enough means they're due for a win. And I really do mean eight bushes, because of how badly we handle probabilities even in the 5% range.