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Comment by void_mint | Hacker News Reader

Those that believe the vaccines are dangerous aren't swayed by rational thinking.

I was told I wasn't supposed to use rational thinking?

>"Research both sides and make up your own mind." It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, it can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-...

My mother falls into this category and lives in a very high infection area. Won't wear a mask, won't social distance, and won't get the "Satan vaccine". She's convinced it will kill her despite the rest of the family having got the vaccine with no ill effects. It's definitely strained the relationship. I told them they could visit me and their grandkids as soon as they got vaccinated. Apparently "sticking it to the libs" is more important than visiting family. I'm not as concerned for myself at this point, but am for my child as there are no ICU beds for kids anymore who are too young to be vaccinated.

This strikes at the core issue, it’s become a mark of tribal identity for some people. You can’t rationally talk someone out of a position like that, because it’s not fundamentally a position they’ve rationalized their way into.

About 3 months after 0+ are eligible for a vaccine that works I will stop giving a crap about others. I will still wear a mask for myself just as an added layer of protection, but I'll cease caring about saving those who do not want to be saved.

You will leave the unvaccinated alone once everyone who wants to get it can? You will let them in restaurants and on planes?

- Citation needed, I'm not so sure you can make this off-hand remark and we should all accept it as an axiom and continue from here. Many people will be reasonable given reasonable arguments, especially if you make the time to answer questions and concerns they have. I've noticed people don't do research on their own, almost never aside from a very small share of my friends and family, so individual conversations seem essential to me when they aren't clear on something.

- For the sake of argument perhaps, even if that were true, what do you propose then? Let them be, force them, make irrational arguments (i.e. lie), something else?

The anti-vax crowd is currently taking horse deworming paste rather than get vaccinated. Saying that they won’t listen rational arguments about vaccine safety isn’t a huge leap. At this point it’s basically self evident.

One can always find extreme examples in the media (or online, if only enough people read this one of them will know someone). What percentage of the people not yet vaccinated is actually that kind of crazy?

Enough to be the majority of the calls to poison control.

Why does nobody ever reply with numbers while making claims that it's so obvious. Maybe I'm not American enough here in Europe but to me this isn't self-evident and unless my family suddenly turns anti vax (bit late for that now) it won't be so I'm going to need numbers to understand how big this is. How even would I know how many poison control calls there are in the first place? I know roughly you have like 30% (give or take 10%.) unvaccinated and some 320 million people there, so you'd need some 5 million calls to poison control before you're at a majority if only 10% actually gets poisoned from what they take and call poison control. Typing this out, there's like a dozen unknowns here (like how many people overdose, how many call this specific agency, etc.) so it seems like an extremely poor proxy anyway, but if you're still game, please enlighten me with the real number of calls to poison control. 5M is the number to beat.

Edit: as one data point, the only person I know that doesn't want the vaccine is worried about fertility. They had covid 5 months ago and are currently having long covid, so they're not entirely unprotected even if imo it's still solidly anti-vax to refuse a recommended booster dose. So they're not trusting the official stuff, and most definitely they'll not be taking random garbage that's supposed to kill animals. That's insanity, so I can't believe the majority of those left unvaxxinated in your country is that sort out crazy. It makes no sense, the furthest thing from self-evident.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.news4jax.com/health/2021/08...

Honestly, I think the issue here is that you’re not American, so you don’t understand the current situation here. Vaccines have been free and readily available for a long time, and those who are holding out have an unusually high percentage of cray in them. Last I checked, polling indicated that about half of the people unvaccinated indicated that would never accept the vaccine, as compared to being in more of a “wait and see” mode.

Meanwhile some states are starting to hit their highest death rates ever, and Covid is killing anti-vax politicians and celebrities at a constant rate. If rational arguments persuaded these people, they would have already been vaccinated.

Nice number, nice amp link. But ok I'll waste some more of my time checking your source for you. (edit: the comment was only a link at first.)

> So far, they’ve treated 27 patients in the month of August.

> The Alabama Poison Information Center at Children’s of Alabama has fielded 24 ivermectin exposure cases so far this year, of which 15 were related to COVID-19 prevention and treatment. It says there have been five other calls seeking information about ivermectin.

Lol, yeah clearly a majority of the millions unvaccinated.

Keep reading.

> At least 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers, Mississippi Department of Health officials said.

Again, these are people literally taking horse dewormer. We can debate the precise number, but you cannot reason with someone who decides that they trust tractor supply more than they trust their doctor and any relevant medical authority.

70% of how many?

Keep reading, it said iirc somewhere "for comparison, last year there were 6 calls".

I have been repeating the oft hear line: "you can't change someone's mind with rationality if rationality didn't inform their belief."

But many actually think they are being rational! My anecdote of the day:

I had a friend tell me that some official brit study claims that "vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated. How can anyone believe MSNBC's bullshit when they ignore real science??"

WTF? (I say to myself.) So, I actually get online and try to search for some recent viral load study. I find this link on some ridiculous site: https://adarapress.com/2021/08/26/study-fully-vaccinated-hea...

That lame site says his line verbatim, but when you look at the actual abstract of the study that is linked: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3897733 It says: "Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people. Physical distancing measures remain critical to reduce SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant transmission." That is a totally different conclusion!

This friend is totally convinced that the government and media is trying to trick him into getting this vaccine. This is someone who actually has a BS in Science and built a MM$ business in a highly scientific field. He's read Demon Haunted World. I've always considered him to be one of my more intelligent and knowledgeable friends. And now I just do my best to avoid topics like this with him.

I am really coming to the opinion that the internet is yet another technology that our species has the intelligence to build, but lacks the wisdom to use without causing more harm than good.

In the very first paragraph, the doctor gives a reason why people aren't getting vaccinated, and it's because they've heard of bad outcomes and are simply avoiding something they know to be a potential immediate risk. That is not irrational thinking.

"I often ask them why, after the devastation we’ve seen this year, they’ve chosen not to get vaccinated. Sometimes their answers are weird or conspiratorial. But most people say that they’re concerned about something real: adverse effects. They’ve heard about blood clots in women, or about myocarditis in young men, and the prospect of developing one of these frightening conditions has kept them away from the vaccination clinic."

Here is an interesting story from the news[1]:

> A 17-year-old ... was rushed to The Grange University Hospital earlier this month after testing positive for the virus - just three days after receiving her first jab.

> The schoolgirl, who is a member of the Welsh Youth Parliament, was soon diagnosed with a Covid-related blood clot in her lung following numerous blood tests, X-rays and CT scans.

Curious how the causal attribution works here.

[1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9938121/Schoolgirl-...

It can be considered irrational thinking given the scientifically documented rarity of adverse reactions to the vaccines thus far.

It is lottery-ticket thinking but with a negative outcome imagined in place of a positive one.

Just like with lottery tickets, you have to be in to win. But it is overwhelmingly unlikely that you will win, and it is overwhelmingly unlikely you will have an adverse reaction to the vaccine.

It's weird to see someone argue that this is "not irrational thinking" on numerically literate HN.

Could you please expand on the «scientifically documented rarity»? Do you have specific data in mind?

I have little. The best I have is

Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine ... for the C4591001 Clinical Trial Group

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577

«The incidence of serious adverse events was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups (0.6% and 0.5%, respectively). // This trial and its preliminary report have several limitations. With approximately 19,000 participants per group in the subset of participants with a median follow-up time of 2 months after the second dose, the study has more than 83% probability of detecting at least one adverse event, if the true incidence is 0.01%, but it is not large enough to detect less common adverse events reliably»

For the rest, I hoped to find active monitoring for severe adverse events, but I found only passive monitoring.

Perhaps a better label would be innumerate thinking rather than irrational thinking? Our public educational system generally does a terrible job of teaching students statistics.

Being dishonest isn't a hallmark of rational thinking either. The Covid-19 vaccines are observably dangerous to some persons[1], however rare that danger may be. The rational thing to do is to weigh the risk versus the benefit. If you really want hesitant persons to get vaccinated, you're going to get a lot farther by being honest about the risks of the vaccines, the risks of Covid-19, and showing why, for their circumstances, getting the vaccine is the correct risk management strategy. And frankly, for young persons with acquired natural immunity, the risk of myocarditis and other adverse effects isn't worth it for a disease they are already immune to.

And I'm going to annoy people by saying that. I'm baffled why the existence of natural immunity, which is completely settled science, has somehow become controversial. If the mechanism for natural immunity didn't work, then the mechanism for vaccinated immunity also wouldn't be able to work. Believing that the vaccines can work but the immune system response to the live virus doesn't is some serious irrationality.

Edit: And the response is a wonderful demonstration of Aristotle's ancient observation that those in the grips of fear cannot be persuaded by facts or reason.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/va...

> The Covid-19 vaccines are observably dangerous

Generally when people refer to something as "dangerous", they don't mean "To a very very small subset of people, and in very very specific and rare circumstances".

They probably have reasons to believe that the subset is not so small, and would like to obtain credible studies determining the specificity of those circumstances ( = under which conditions adverse events are more likely to appear. Similarly to the circulating "Females under 60 / Males under 30", but with more detail).

The risk of myocarditis and other adverse effects from getting COVID itself is multiple orders of magnitude higher than anything related to the vaccine. This should be a no-brainer if there ever was one. You do not want to be wihout vaccine immunity, even if you have been infected in the past.

> You do not want to be wihout vaccine immunity, even if you have been infected in the past.

Why? I don't understand how that claim can be true unless somehow being exposed to the spike protein from the virus will fail to produce immunity while at the same time being exposed to the spike protein from having the mRNA make your cells synthesize it will. I'm genuinely curious so if there is some new science you can point me to I'd be grateful.

Edit: The Covid-19 vaccine is by far the most dangerous prescribed vaccine, accounting for 80.53% of reported vaccine deaths[1], so if natural acquired immunity is a real thing then how is it irrational for those who are already immune to decline to take it?

And what's with the hostility to curiosity?

[1] https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8;jsessionid=...

In case that link dies when the session expires, here's the top 10:

  COVID19 VACCINE (COVID19) 5,595 80.53%
  PNEUMOCOCCAL, 13-VALENT VACCINE (PREVNAR) (PNC13) 322 4.63%
  HAEMOPHILUS B CONJUGATE VACCINE (HIBV) 255 3.67%
  ROTAVIRUS VACCINE, LIVE, ORAL, PENTAVALENT (RV5) 251 3.61%
  INFLUENZA VIRUS VACCINE, TRIVALENT (INJECTED) (FLU3(SEASONAL)) 210 3.02%
  DIPHTHERIA AND TETANUS TOXOIDS AND ACELLULAR PERTUSSIS VACCINE + HEPATITIS B + INACTIVATED POLIOVIRUS VACCINE (DTAPHEPBIP) 201 2.89%
  INFLUENZA VIRUS VACCINE, NO BRAND NAME (FLUX(SEASONAL)) 186 2.68%
  ZOSTER VACCINE (VARZOS) 184 2.65%
  HEPATITIS B VACCINE (HEP) 173 2.49%
  PNEUMOCOCCAL, 7-VALENT VACCINE (PREVNAR) (PNC) 171 2.46%

Linking to a page to report adverse effects is not an adequate citation that they happen with any reasonable consistency to be opposed to getting a vaccine.

Amen

Since that’s impossible for you to back up, I question why you would say it. Rationally speaking

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