Hell, I always thought anti-vaxxers were looneys and was first in line for the COVID shot when it was available in March... but even I'm starting to be convinced that the anti-vaxxers might have a point because of all this effort to silence them. I'm becoming vaccine... remorseful?
Assume you are in a country where it's not, say the USA. Assume you slowly witness a rise of naziism that as usual comes with holocaust denial. Now the USA make holocaust denial illegal. Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened?
What the anti-vaxxers and their misinformation are doing has lead to the absolutely unnecessary loss of thousands of lifes. Depriving them of any platform is morally imperative.
Scientific, rational debate is ideal on these subjects ... but is that even possible anymore when people are jumping off the deep end so much. David Koresh would be envious.
I took 2 shots of Moderna and I am shareholder but I still think that banning debate is stupid. I still have doctor friends who personally don't feel the risks is in vacine favor for them personally.
IMO YT should be forced to allow filering of content by each user. I hate it so much that I am served stupid crap from time to time. This would be much better that this erosion of basic rights. There should be ability to share curation algos but that's obviously against ad driven,supply driven monipolies. Fuck em.
Keep in mind this is also true of deaths following COVID. Remember this one in particular? https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/man-who-died-in-motorcycl...
Not me, but I could easily see it making other people suspicious. It directly plays into the anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish control of communications. Pass such a law and the first thing they would do is point to its passage as proof of whatever conspiracy theory they're espousing.
The correct response to bad speech is not censorship, it's more speech: refute those arguing for bad policy, counterprotest those espousing hate. Imprisoning Hitler and his cronies didn't work in Germany, and far right groups like AfD still gain traction in the country.
Deplatforming works and helps stop disinfomration. The racist Richard Spencer and the rightwing clown Milo Yiannopoulos both say they're broke and unemployed now thanks to everyone banning their racist content. These things are fine to do and work.
And also confirms the scepticism of those who have grown diffident of dominant narratives.
Deplatforming can also stop information.
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The issue is an old epistemological issue: it is the "demarcation problem". We have been there. It's not trivial.
And "saving lives" must be put in context: it is a generic objective, not a justification for censorship.
People are allowed to make their own choices. If they belive the holocaust isn't real, fine. When they discuss it, refute them.
In the US, the only time the line is crossed is when discussion calls for immediate and specific violence, could directly cause harm, or falls into the slanderous/libel and even that can be difficult to prove. I can see no reason for the above illegality of speech to expand.
Something like making holocaust denial illegal is borderline compelled speech. Sure, you could just not talk about the holocaust, but if you want or need to talk about it you must now espouse the official position of the government. Absolutely terrifying to think about.
That is the most illogical statement I've read all month.
The result of making something like this illegal is: 1. Person is not allowed to talk OR 2. Person is allowed to talk but is now compelled to only espouse a message approved by the government.
Illegal speech in the US is speech which does harm or has a direct incitement to harm such as specifically calling for a violent action, shouting fire in a crowded theater, or lying about someone to harm their reputation and cause financial impact.
To make something like denialism illegal would require you to show that, by allowing someone to say it, they are causing direct and immediate harm. That's not the case here at all. Saying the holocaust didn't happen doesn't cause people to then go commit genocide. At worst it convinces people some horrific event didn't happen, but that horrific event is still horrific conceptually.
Denying vaccines work may convince people not to get them so maybe you'd argue direct harm there? But it's not clear to me how you can measure the harm since it's arguable that said unvaccinated person may get covid and be totally unphased. What about those people that got covid prior to the vaccine? How could you argue direct harm from them when they already have the antibodies sans the vaccine?
In Germany the problem is Nazis and a choice about how to stop them doing it again. We have seen that such people can convince nearly an entire population (so the problem is likely) and start a world war (so the problem is extreme). Why would anyone debate the need for a law that limits a freedom in a case we consider pretty unworthwhile anyhow (limiting the freedom to deny the holocaust).
As for vaccines it's again a calculation where we know the problem is extreme (huge economic losses and deaths) and the likelihood increases based on how many people don't vaccinate - or whether people in specific jobs don't vaccinate. The calculation shouldn't be that hard.
But the Germans are not more prone to becoming "nazis" (again) than any other nation.
Cody, what other reason would exist to make denial of the holocaust or anything else illegal if not to hide something?
Your terminology is confusing: there is hesitance. The hesitant want clear, trustworthy information. Lack of clarity over the clash of what is seen and what is narrated reinforces hesitance.
The censorship of those who claim the impossible easily hits those who claim the possible, and the first can be used as a strawman against the second. This is one of the practical reasons why your «moral imperative» is invalid: these months showed that you cannot set the threshold.
It would change my bayesian priors. Not enough to change my opinion entirely, but it would move me more towards the middle.
Imagine flat-earthers were suddenly banned from all public fora. Currently, I'm able to see the arguments they make, and they're decisively unconvincing. If I knew a lot of people believed something that strange but didn't know why, it would absolutely be more convincing than now, when I hear the arguments. I think the same is true of any seriously badly-reasoned belief.
My assumption would be such views were banned (at least on certiain widely viewed platforms or in schools) because a sizable section of society thought they were not only obviously false but also promoted harmful views, like neo-nazism in the case of Holocaust denial.
Those views are so badly wrong that they're anti-science and anti-history. There's no reason to give them credence.
Flat-earthism is a noncontroversial and extreme example of a belief that gets less believed when its proponents have the full benefit of free speech, but I think there are many more like it.
it's pretty rare for an ordinary person to have the opportunity to directly observe the curvature of the earth. I personally don't notice it when I fly commercially. you can indirectly observe it with binoculars on the beach by watching ships (dis)appear over the horizon, but a) you have to recognize the implication, and b) this can be confounded by a mirage/shimmer effect.
it's not hard for me to imagine that some extremely skeptical people might doubt that the world isn't simply how it looks: flat.
Just goes to show how powerful the conspiracy is.
Building the tools to better censor is a slippery slope that moves quickly from silencing extremists to silencing activists.
>Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened?
Pulling the h-card out as a cudgel in every single political argument has reduced people's ability to reflect or care about it. Same as the 'think of the children' arguments. It's an emotionally manipulative and dishonest debate method.
Please protect 2nd amendment, free speach and privacy. Also would be nice to solve internet polarisation and economics of propaganda somehow.
Free speech is great if almost everyone is reasonable.
America is not nearly there. Empirically, free speech has failed, as an insane fraction of American citizens are vaccine hesitant and believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
The US should have handled this exactly like a sane country: - No lockdowns. You determine your individual risk level. Businesses are free to require masks if they want to. (I really would only be okay with a compelled wfh order, if possible.) The gov owes a lot of people a lot of money for compelling them not to work. The gov wouldn't owe money if consumers just stopped shopping places because they didn't feel comfortable not wearing a mask in a business that didn't require them. - Vaccines rollout is: take it if you want. We recommend it. It appears to be safe. Here is the data. If you don't want it, fine, but we are business as usual so you're accepting a higher risk.
Perhaps there is no way, in a liberal society, to have a silver bullet? It turns out principles matter in such situations.
This is a smear. Communities of Color are vaccine hesitant and for the most part do not believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. It's gross of you to ignore the legitimate concerns of Communities of Color and to declare them election conspiracy theorist. You're attempting to lump together diverse groups into a single "not like me" group for your own ideological convivence. This is disgusting.
Lumping all these groups of people together as was done here is a great example of the mindless zombie tribalism going on, which in large part is a result of propaganda.
There is a pretty large closure of ideas that now get you pegged as "one of the Bad People" for even stating them publicly, without strongly held support. For example, even suggesting that our election systems in the US are horribly broken or just merely flawed, a widely accepted bi-partisan position just a few short years ago, puts you into the bucket of being a "horse-paste consuming, anti-vax, insurrectionist, conspiracy monger." I wish this was a strawman, but it ain't.
The problem being that democracy, even representative democracy, also only works if almost everyone is reasonable and (tying back to speech) informed. Once you give up on the population being reasonable, it's a short step to saying that someone "reasonable" ought to control what they see and rule over what they do "for their own good, of course". Even if that happens to be true, down that road lies madness.
Hilariously it seems to be that empiricism has failed. One does not generate a meaningful framework of human morality from non-transcendent scientific conclusion other than utilitarianism which in itself is conceptually flawed because each human presents hundreds or thousands of immeasurable and constantly moving targets. This is intractable. It is also why, despite the leaps and bounds in technological advancement, people still have to put in their 40 hours. It is why a CEO can rake in ~300x that of the company's average employee. It is why a large swath of the population must undergo the risks of debt peonage. It's why people feel that populist ideology should be inflicted on everyone, despite various circumstances - by the very definition a slave master relationship, the same sort of relationship virtually everyone rails against. Which brings me to the final point, I am not your property, and I suspect neither of us wants to be the property of the government or of corporations. I will assume they neither you nor they have property rights over me and thus I will consume and defer as I so please, but do go and inflict your blind ideology on to me.
More seriously, what would be your solution to a country where two major power blocs both believe that free speech is acceptable so long as it stays inside their respective overton windows?
Why there are only likes and not option of "I think this is stupid" or "I don't think it's true".
Confirmation bias is a helluva drug. It encourages people to agree with those they like and disagree with those they don't. Sometimes those biases can be overcome with time and patient reasoning but in the hyper-connected, engagement-driven world of social media that rarely happens. In-group/out-group preference kicks in and people start defending those in their group against attacks of character, lending a false sense of legitimacy to their ideas - the ideas born of confirmation bias instead of logic. At a large enough scale, this results in a social divide perpetuated by echo chambers.
The problem isn't the evidence, the details of which many people wouldn't understand or care to know, it's the credibility of the people making recommendations based on that evidence, and the way they have conveyed those recommendations.
The public-facing people championing public health have long since lost credibility but they aren't being replaced in an effort to restore public trust. That's the problem.
Well, to play devil's advocate - if it did, and anybody were to say it did, saying so out loud would also be illegal in Germany.
China is an example of platform-denying taken to the extreme,
Scientologists in Germany face specific political and economic restrictions. They are barred from membership in some major political parties, and businesses and other employers use so-called "sect filters" to expose a prospective business partner's or employee's association with the organization.
Who are you to judge what needs to be censored?
Didn't the "Alternative For Germany" get like 10% of the vote there, and they're pretty much Nazis? Doesn't seem to be working.
I think that's it exactly. It seems some (many? most?) people believe that the consequences of actions deserve more scrutiny and a higher threshold to act, than inaction and the threshold to refrain from action. Lots of people—almost instinctively, at least for some of them—think acting to kill one to save five is worse than letting the five die through your inaction.
You have to go get the vaccine. You choose to get it. Getting COVID-19 is just something that'll happen to you, eventually. You don't choose to go get it.
Whether it makes sense or not, I think that really is the difference.
I think for three reasons:
1. Long COVID isn't a definable disease. That whole ground has been badly polluted by people claiming to have "long COVID" when they haven't ever even tested positive for short COVID, there being no symptoms in common with all reports, etc. It's very hard to say what the long terms effects of COVID really are even though there are now nearly two years of experience with it, for this reason.
2. Long term effects from vaccines have happened before, e.g. early ones gave people polio, more recently there was the Pandemrix / narcolepsy affair. Drugs of any kind are put through difficult safety trials because of a long history of accidents. They are artificial chemicals designed to manipulate the bodies most powerful internal mechanisms after all, no reason why it's impossible to have long term effects.
3. The side effects of COVID vaccines are drastically worse than any normal vaccine. They routinely make people very sick, but it doesn't get treated by scientists as a possible sign of bad things happening because these are "normal" and "expected". Some side effects weren't detected by the trials, like myocarditis, and others weren't detected despite being apparently very common, like stopped periods. Not detected because all the women were on birth control. In fact information on side effects of any kind is extremely poor - you get self reported documentation at best, as there are no major large scale surveys - and the establishment is quite obviously terrified of any attempt to find out more. The trials themselves ignored all events that happened 7 days after vaccination, which doesn't seem very long. That attitude is endemic.
In a situation where all discussion of side effects is heavily penalized or outright erased (e.g. Nicki Minaj losing her Twitter account), it's inevitable that people will conclude something is being frantically swept under the carpet.
Finally, consider something important: the ambient underlying assumption behind the vaccination programme is that everyone will get COVID at some point and it will be the same for everyone regardless of when they get it. In reality it's now been nearly two years and most people either haven't got it yet, even when heavily exposed because they were self-isolating with sick people (I am in this category), or alternatively, got it in such a way that it was so mild they didn't notice at all. If you assume the modellers are wrong again, and that a 100% chance of infection is not in fact correct, or alternatively that by the time you do get it it's mutated to a form that's no worse than a cold, then the tradeoff around vaccines looks quite different even for middle aged people. After all, zero spike proteins is better than some regardless of how you get them.
I agree it's fuzzy, just like "vaccine side effects". If you believe one is worth worrying about, the other one probably is as well. But long covid probably a stronger clinical record even if fuzzy.
2. Ok so we definitely know by now that the vaccine does not give covid in the same way that some older vaccines against other diseases would've. There's been clinical trials and billions of doses given. As for events like adjuvant-induced narcolepsy, so far they're conjectures as well. Conjecture for conjecture, I worry more about the one that's been filling children's hospitals with unexplained neuro diseases...
3. Yes there have been lapses in reporting of side effects but so far they seem to have been rather benign.
> the ambient underlying assumption behind the vaccination programme is that everyone will get COVID at some point and it will be the same for everyone regardless of when they get it
No, I disagree. The ambient assumption is based on what happens in an unchecked mass epidemic: massive excess deaths. It is not this way because everyone gets it or because everyone reacts the same to it. It is this way because this virus is bad enough on average. There is absolutely an element of collective responsibility in the assumption about the vaccination campaign - that it's not just to benefit the individuals who are vaccinated, and that no matter how good you think your odds are of survival, it is socially irresponsible for people not to get vaccinated just as it is socially unacceptable not to wear your seatbelt in your car, even if you're driving by yourself on a desolate stretch of road, or to do recreational heroin which is detrimental to your own health only. It's because even though the vast majority of the people doing these things survive, left unchecked, they impose a burden on society that society rejects.
The pandemic until very recently has been entirely unchecked yet there was not 'massive excess deaths' in many places that did relatively little, like Sweden. So you're asserting this with vague emotional terms like 'massive', but this is the exact assumption that I'm talking about.
Maybe Sweden was lucky.
If people really cares about the others, they should have had stayed home and eradicated the virus.
I would argue that having full scale lock-down and mass testing would be a lot less intrusive to one's liberty than using their jobs to coerce the injection of hastily made vaccine using novel technologies. But one isn't supposed to be following China's eradication strategy, or it would be undemocratic, right?
Not to mention the additional selection pressure due to leaky vaccines, but that's another story.
Disclaimer: I'm fully vaccinated.
Nicki Minaj got kicked off twitter for making an absurdly stupid and false claim because she didn't want to bother with getting vaccinated.
As for Minaj's claim: you believe it's absurd and stupidly false, because you haven't heard anything else like it. But this topic is about censorship of anything that can be perceived as anti-vaccine. VAERS has quite a lot of reports of swollen testicles and/or testicular pain, so who is to say that her report was really false? It can't be proven by either of us one way or another; just assigned probabilities based on prior expectations. Expectations partly controlled by the type of act this thread is about.
But your doctor might have told you to not do sport for a day. I never had any adverse effects before and consequently ignored that advice after a tetanus vaccination. Completely knocked me down the next 2 days.
This vaccination has been administered on a very large scale, so it shouldn't necessarily discourage anyone if there are some adverse effects. Maybe the advice against doing sports must be extended to wanking, but side effects can be a result of circumstances.
If you believe vaccines have no potential negative effect beyond 1 week, you'll have to give a serious thought as to why you believe Covid can have long term effects.
Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before.
I mean, covid can kill you, which is kind of a long-term negative effect? Surely you're not arguing that the vaccine is equally likely to have that particularly long-term effect, so then I'd ask why you think it's equally likely to have other long-term effects?
> Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before.
Really? I mean, do you...generally avoid bridges where you live?
It seems to me that if bridges don't collapse frequently, that would indeed be evidence that whoever is building / designing / approving them is doing something right, and that "the next" bridge is also unlikely to collapse?
...because they are different? A localized, single dose mRNA vaccine that transiently produces spike protein will have a completely different effect than systemic infection with a virus.
The person you responded to quite clearly suggests it's illogical to ignore long-term effects of COVID in comparing the outcomes. Particularly in light of the actual evidence of neurological effects of COVID, and some evidence of long COVID being more than phantom effect.
If you assume a weighted value X for long-term vaccination impacts, but assume a 0 or anything materially less than X for the same for COVID it's just not a consistent evaluation.
It does not mean nothing. Yes just because previous vaccines were safe does not mean the next one will be safe. However success of previous vaccines mean we have the technology to create and evaluate future safe vaccines.
Similarly, because we have a history of building bridges we know what it entails to make future safe bridges -- however the bridge could still fall if make a mistake.
Because viruses do cause long term effects in the form of just straight up irreparable damage to your organs or long last presence that re-emerges later. They are actively hurting you, and despite the popular phrase, what doesn't kill you tends to just make you weaker.
> Also past vaccine history means absolutely nothing. You can't assume the next bridge is built safely just because you have never seen a bridge fall before.
Are you suggesting you feel you're risking death every time you step on a bridge? Because that would have to be the case if past engineering precedents meant "absolutely nothing".
The reality is that medical precedent means a lot. We understand the mechanisms of vaccines pretty well. Our estimates on the efficacy of bridges tends to be pretty good. One can assess a bridge design and affirm that it's likely to stay up under X pressure for N years. If a problem were to occur, we would know the typical failure modes.
Vaccines aren't a black box. We know how they work and we can anticipate the failure modes. There aren't really any paths for "long term effects".
HPV was 'just' genital warts, until we found out that it causes cancer. Other animal species have cancer-causing viruses as well. Or take Chicken Pox: basic kid's illness in the past (and yes, it was worth getting it when younger before a vaccine was available to avoid late-life illness) but if you've ever known anyone with a severe case of shingles you'll know that it's not 'just' a virus that causes itchy rashes in grade-schoolers. Shingles can ruin people's lives.
Assuming you won't have any long-term issues from exposure to a dangerous virus is just rolling dice.
The idea of letting my kids get a known neurologically-affecting virus without even the option of vaccination (yet) and just hoping that it won't cause them issues in the long-term fills me with dread.
I've given up reddit after arguing with all these fools. A simple risk analysis will tell you it was the right thing to do. If you're wrong about the vaccine, you took a shot you may not have needed, if you're wrong about COVID, you're betting your life on it (and other people's as well).
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/574284-natural-covid-...
It appears that you too have been a victim of the misinformation that youtube is attempting to mitigate!
That's really where I'm most concerned. We vaccinated both of our teenagers - after all, we get the flu shots every year, right? Now I really worry that there will be side effects from this rushed vaccine that we won't know about for decades.
We’ve had 9 months with the vaccine and everyone who gets it is doing great, but you think some problem is going to crop up in 20+ years?
Except for the ones who get sick or die of COVID you mean.
This isn't accurate - there's nothing indicating that the immunity from vaccine + exposure is worse than the immunity from exposure alone.
Vaccination isn't just about preventing COVID symptoms, but also slowing the spread.
> and would reach a better immunity they will never get with the vaccine.
Do you have an article about this, preferably one written recently that takes the Delta variant into account? The CDC doesn't really have information about COVID re-infection rates [0], so I'm not sure how much immunity is really given by getting infected compared to getting vaccinated.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfe...
I lost all faith in mass media years ago, haven't watched CNN/etc in years, and now I've lost any faith I had in our institutions such as the CDC and FDA. Censoring any opposition and using full on physical coercion, forcing people to do what they say or else they'll take your job away from you, or else you won't be able to provide for your family, ruins any remaining trust I had in them and now I'm questioning everything that I just blindly trusted was true.
I don't know how many years it'll be before I ever trust them again. You may think I'm completely wrong and misled, and that's fine. But the actions these groups are taking are completely undermining themselves, they're completely screwing over their credibility. Not just for this issue, but for every issue into the future, and that is a serious issue. I no longer assume that what the FDA approves is good for use. I no longer assume what the CDC says we should do is what's best for me. The trust is gone. This dystopian situation of removing the voice of anyone who dares question them only further entrenches my doubt.
My opinion: this isn't actually a feasible solution. There are not enough doctors for all millions of Americans, let alone all billions of humans, to consult with their doctor. It's also largely unnecessary. I did not consult my doctor. I looked at the situation, assessed my values, did my own cost-benefit analysis, and mediated all of this with a healthy amount of dialogue between my confidantes. As most people do.
I think this almost necessarily has to be litigated largely through public engagement. You know your situation, your risks, and you know if a serious consultation is prudential for you.
Even still, if the position is "don't make decisions based on biased media," why is the pro-vaxx media more valuable than anti-vaxx or vaxx-hesitant? I believe it resolves entirely to your individual values.
The argument should be: why is it profitable to the individual to value one over the other? I can only make this argument from my previously-established values, and I'm already pro-vaxx.
Almost two years of "two more weeks and we'll be out of this! just do your duty and we'll be free of this pandemic!"
I was very vaccine hesitant and would say I was coerced by government, private businesses (and the governments mandates handed to them), and by my peers. I ended up getting the vaccine recently but I am very scared of the potential consequences.
We need the world to rip off the bandaid and open up instead of our leaders prolonging this pandemic to gain more and more power.
I guess Youtube would supress reports of that now until it became official news ...
Any particular reason?
I'm someone who was told to be cautious about some vaccines by medical professionals due to a past condition, and so when the covid vaccines started to come available, I both consulted a doctor and did some of my own investigation of things other professionals have published before determining to get vaccinated as soon as possible. Also I've been following VAERS reports since, just to keep a heads up.
As far as I can tell, adverse events from vaccination of any kind are orders of magnitude rarer than corresponding adverse effects from infection.
And nobody who is saying anything about "long term effects" that might show up later has been able to advance any plausible model for how that would happen considering that's vanishingly rare from vaccination in general.
No they shouldn't be removed from the modern public forum because of that.
Don't let the two get confused. Just because someone is silencing people with stupid opinions doesn't somehow make those opinions less stupid.
They see money, time, and effort being expended by groups they already feel are against them to silence certain views. Of course they're then going to more prone to associate themselves with those views: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
"Johnson & Johnson: Children Don’t Need the ‘F*cking’ COVID Vaccine Because There Are ‘Unknown Repercussions Down the Road’ …"
https://www.projectveritas.com/news/johnson-and-johnson-chil...
"Antifa indoctrination in the classroom"
"Covid-19 Vaccine Exposed"
"FDA Official: ‘Blow Dart’ African Americans with COVID Vaccine is ‘Where We’re Going"
I think I can live without "engaging in discussion" with you.
If I see a video of a US President saying no Generals recommended that US troops should stay in Afghanistan, and days later, I see the top US General saying he did recommended to the president to leave 2500 to 3500 troops on the ground...If you happen to watch it on Fox News, it does not make it untrue...
In the case of some of the videos I suggested, they relate to Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Lets review, for example, some of the current Lawsuits, including number of claimants they are currently engaged in...
Pending Lawsuits Against J&J as of February 2021
=================================================
DePuy ASR XL Acetabular System and DePuy ASR Hip Resurfacing System
Number of Lawsuits - 550 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries
Pinnacle Acetabular Cup
Number of Lawsuits - 7,056 Injuries - dislocation, loosening, metallosis (metal poisoning), revision surgeries
Xarelto
Number of Lawsuits - 13,511 Injuries - severe, sometimes deadly bleeding events, blood clots, wound leaks, infection
Johnson’s Talcum Powder
Number of Lawsuits - 27,168 Injuries - ovarian cancer, mesothelioma cancer
"The company is facing smaller, emerging litigations for the interstitial cystitis (IC) drug Elmiron and DePuy’s Attune knee implants. Elmiron litigation is in the beginning stages with a handful of cases filed in state courts, but lawyers expect hundreds more. People who filed lawsuits say Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals unit failed to warn them that the drug could cause vision problems, particularly a condition called pigmentary maculopathy."
=================================================
Does it sound like you want to get a vaccine from them?
According to the CDC, and most of this thread...you are a nutter and vaccine denier if you dont.
You posted a video/article of some people making some claims. What is the argument you want to support by posting that? I want you to state your argument as clear as possible so that we are not strawmannig eachother. Debate me!
I will not even go into the value of that article because it immediately raises all kinds of red flags which if you are incapable of seeing, there is no point arguing about the article. Issues related to jurnalistic integrity (revealing your supposed whistleblower), deliberate cutscene use for manipulation, deliberate tangling of source material in order to string a narative , tainted entity (as GP said, which can not be ignored), and many more. These people are clearly shitty hacks.
BTW, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill And in this case, it did already get translated in several languages and spread everywhere in the span of at most 2 days.
1) Even some technical employees of Vaccine producers are skeptical of their products, particularly vaccination of children. Watch the videos as they are secret recordings of some of these employees. I am not claiming all at J&J have the same position. But its a position that currently gets you banned on YouTube and downvoted here.
2) My other argument is that this whole thread is full of claims of "vaccines safe", ignoring the error implied by the generalization that comes with it. The examples I posted of the J&J medical lawsuits show the appalling record of this company. But if you refuse a vaccine from them you are apparently somebody you should not even debate.
And please dont mention the FDA...
"The story of "probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history"
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/26/politics/alzheimers-drug-...
1.2 That person (BS) is the only one actually claiming you don't need to vaccinate kids. He is not even claiming you should not vaccinate kids, just claiming as a personal oppinion that it is not necessary for kids.
1.3 The other one (JD) says to not vaccinate BABIES but to actually vaccinate kids once they are socialized.
1.4 JD in the video is actually pro-vaccine. The only sentence they managed to take out of context ("Don’t get the Johnson & Johnson [COVID vaccine], I didn’t tell you though,"), was in the context that he actually did get vaccinated and he got the Moderna vaccine because he believes that one is better.
1.5 So for the first point, the actual people interviewed do not even support your point. Even if the people editing the video did their best to make you believe that. Maybe you are the one who didn't watch the video. The people who made the video are so obviously selling a narative and so obviously lying through the power of video editing.
1.6 You never even claimed that all of J&J employees shared the same position. Do not get sidetracked.
1.7 You absolutely deserve to get downvoted for posting manipulative misinformation that is not even supported by the people being interviewed. You deserve to be downvoted for posting shit. This is the kind of material that does not belong on HN. And while I am against banning, it is YouTubes right to ban people/content from their platform.
2.1 Yes the claim is that vaccines in general are mostly (but not perfectly) safe. And that vaccines in general are a lot safer than the disease they prevent. And that the COVID vaccines follow the same trend and are mostly safe and definitely safer than the disease. (Note: In countries that managed to actually eliminate the disease through lockdowns, the risk calculation is different for obvious reasons) This, claim is not refuted by the link you posted. This claim has so far proven to be true.
2.2 The record of the company does not change whether the J&J vaccine is safe or not. (Is has so far proven - by third parties - to be mostly safe like the other COVID vaccines, and certainly safer than COVID.) You are however justified to be suspicios of the claims the company makes.
2.3 Even if you don't trust J&J, there is still Pfizer and Moderna. And if you don't trust mRNA technology, there is AstraZeneca. And if you don't trust the US and UK government, there is Sputnik V and some others. Your link, besides not actually supporting your point, is not relevant to all the other options.
3.1 Do not get the discussion sidetracked. The FDA/Alzheimers debate is a separate debate.
3.2 Please respect this structure when countering my arguments
P.S.: I need to rant!! While writting this rebuttal was not a waste of time, watching that video definitely was. It was so unbelievably cringe. I do not know who these (your original link) conspiracy peddlers are, but they are with certainty shit. The most shit they can be. They are shit from a human pov, shit from a professional pov, shit from a integrity pov, shit from a communication pov. just shit. shit faced pieces of shit. It is unbelievably frustrating that trolling has actually become a profession. Trolling was many things pre-2010 but it was not this.
Posting stuff like this is actually something you should apologize for. You should apologize to @pg, to @dang, to the rest of HN and to me for posting shit on HN. It is the kind of thing that is bound to get someone, who does not immediately dismiss you as a troll, nerd sniped in an (easy but ultimately useless and pointless) attempt to demolish such content.
Some of these are Technical employees some of them Managers familiar with the internal company processes. Some you decided to disclaim their opinion as personal opinion. Others because they are not high enough in the hierarchy of the company. That is an acceptable attitude. However ignores the reasons why they fundamentally would be making those statements.
These claims are just data points, but its bit like saying: A Volkswagen sales person or Company car mechanic says their cars are crap. I am going to ignore those data points because what do they know about car engineering...I will listen instead to the Chief Company Engineer...
Maybe, its because they are not that high in the hierarchy, that they allowed themselves to make those statements.
Your argument seems to be that they dont know what they are talking about. You ignore the fact,that one of them is clearly stating not to take their vaccine. And you are the one misstating facts. JD says the older kids should only taking as their "civic duty", does not say the vaccine is really required.( for kids)
> 1.6
I wont. I was reminding you upfront that I did not make the statement.
>1.7
If that is true or not the readers of this thread are welcome to decide by watching the videos themselves and do further research. I would like to remind you, that many facts now accepted, used to get people banned from Facebook and YouTube months ago.
You are claiming I am posting something that does not belong to HN and I deserve to be downvoted, as I am posting shit. If its all shit, dont worry, the downvotes will come. :-)
But you went further than that. I take your comment, that although you dont endorse banning, you think YouTube is entitled to ban who they want from their platform, as a veiled threat, that for some shit post here, you would also like to engage in a similar type of scientific and political arbitrage.
The problem with that attitude is that it tends to backfire.
>2.1
You seem to forget or ignore that in many countries millions of people are facing vaccine mandates, with no exceptions accepted, that include threat of job loss unless they comply.
You ignore that vaccines used to have 5 to 7 years experimental trial periods. You make a blank statement that vaccines have been shown to be safe based on what were "warp" speed operations, on the face of unprecedented pandemic. And you make that statement you forget or ignore the fact that all safety studies exclude the immunocompromised.
Compared to your somewhat blank statement of vaccine safety, lets see what the WHO says on their website, for example about AstraZeneca. These are partial quotes but I think they support my argument that you cannot make the statement you just made:
=====================================================================
"The Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine: what you need to know"
"Should pregnant women be vaccinated?"
While pregnancy puts women at higher risk of severe COVID-19, very little data are available to assess vaccine safety in pregnancy.
"Who is the vaccine not recommended for?"
"People with a history of severe allergic reaction to any component of the vaccine should not take it."
"The vaccine is not recommended for persons younger than 18 years of age pending the results of further studies."
"Does it prevent infection and transmission? No substantive data are available related to impact of AZD1222 on transmission or viral shedding."
https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-oxf...
=====================================================================
>2.2
Thank you for agreeing with me concerning the company claims. About Pfizer, yes I trust them even less, as until the pandemic they had a toxic reputation:
> 2.3
About Pfizer, yes indeed, I trust them even less. Until the pandemic they had the most toxic of the toxic reputations.
======================================================================
"Pfizer: Six Scandals to Remember"
"Pfizer is likely to make huge profits from its COVID-19 vaccine but the greatest long-term benefit to the company may well be the positive PR it has received as a result. That PR was much-needed: before COVID-19, Pfizer had a toxic reputation even compared to other pharma companies. "
"1986: Pfizer had to withdraw an artificial heart valve from the market after defects led to it being implicated in over 300 deaths."
"2003: Pfizer has long been condemned for profiteering from AIDS drugs."
"2011: Pfizer was forced to pay compensation to families of children killed in the controversial Trovan drug trial. During the worst meningitis epidemic seen in Africa, in 1996, Pfizer ran a trial in Nigeria their new drug Trovan. Five of the 100 children who took Trovan died and it caused liver damage, while it caused lifelong disabilities in those who survived"
"2012: Pfizer had to pay around $1billion to settle lawsuits claiming its Prempro drug caused breast cancer."
"2013: Pfizer paid out $273 million to settle over 2,000 cases in the US that accused its smoking treatment drug Chantix of provoking suicidal and homicidal thoughts, self harm and severe psychological disorders. Pfizer was also accused of improperly excluding patients with a history of depression or other mental disturbances from trials for the drug."
"2020: Pfizer reached an agreement with thousands of customers of its depo-testosterone drug in 2018 after they sued it for increasing the likelihood of numerous issues, including heart attacks."
https://corporatewatch.org/pfizer-six-scandals-to-remember/
======================================================================
I agree that for some, the risks of vaccine might be smaller than the risks caused by COVID-19.
But governments and health organizations implementing obligatory legal mandates, are also responsible for fatal outcomes like these Pfizer related examples:
"Young people’s deaths after Pfizer vaccines are new worry"
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2021/08/24/national/soc...
"Twenty-three elderly Norwegians died within days of receiving the first dose of the COVID vaccine, local health officials say."
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/health-wellbeing/covid-vaccin...
"Lisa Shaw: Presenter's death due to complications of Covid vaccine"
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-58330796
"New Zealand woman dies after receiving Pfizer vaccine"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-58380867
"Michigan boy dies 3 days after getting Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, CDC is investigating"
https://eu.freep.com/story/news/2021/07/02/jacob-clynick-pfi...
> 3.1
I wont get sidetracked. I tried to prevent you, mentioning things like organizations like the FDA are watching out for the health of consumers. You implied that other 3rd parties are watching out for vaccine safety. In reality they review material presented by the vaccine producers. Its a very similar process to Boeing and the FAA reviews.
> 3.2
I tried to respect it as you made the effort to reply to my comments.
PS...rant...shit shit..rant...rant.. :-)
The problem with rants is that they can come to bite you in a few months.But now its here for posterity.
Hopefully these virus mutations will fade to progressively less threatening flavors. My money however is on that they wont. Infections will be back.
As everybody agreed vaccines are "safe", and it will be politically and scientifically difficult to contradict what was stated until now, you wont escape a mandated 4th, 5th and 6th dose.
You will be mandated to take it, as the principle is accepted in spirit and in law. When the side effects start, I am sure the argument then will be: "Oh we never said vaccines were absolutely safe, they were always risks..."
I tried to focus on your 2 points and how the initial link did not actually support either of them and it was mere video editing trickery. You have instead brought a good chunk of your world view on the subject into the discussion and even some accusations.
I will first reiterate my points to encapsulate them in an even more concise form and then address your response:
1.1 BS is Regional Deliver Operations. His opinion about vaccination is irrelevant.
1.2 Although BS's opinion is irrelevant, your point is not supported by what he says. He is sceptical that kids need them, not that they are safe and effective.
1.3 JD says kids should get vaccinated. This contradicts the narative of the article. Why kids should get vaccinated is offtopic.
1.4 JD did't get J&J because he got Moderna. JD does NOT recommend staying unvaccinated instead of getting J&J. JD actually recommends people to get Moderna instead of J&J. The video is edited to make it appear that he is against vaccines in general.
1.5 is just summarizing 1.1 - 1.4
-------------------------------------------------
As for your response:
> Some of these are Technical employees
FTFY: 1 of 2 is
> some of them Managers
FTFY: also 1 of 2, maybe a manager but irrelevant due to department
> familiar with the internal company processes.
maybe, but most probably irrelevant due to department. Also irrelevant because the debate is about the safety and efficacy of the J&J vaccine, not about the crimes of J&J the company.
> Some you decided to disclaim their opinion as personal opinion.
FTFY: 1 namely BS. Due to being in an irrelevant department.
> Others because they are not high enough in the hierarchy of the company.
Bullshit. I did not disclaim JD's answers. I said they do not support your point.
> That is an acceptable attitude.
Offtopic
> However ignores the reasons why they fundamentally would be making those statements.
Are you claiming they made declarations under duress?
> These claims are just data points
They do not support your point. One out of two is irrelevant the other actually says kids should get vaccinated
> , but its bit like saying: A Volkswagen sales person or Company car mechanic says their cars are crap.
Your analogy is not even an analogy. The correct analogy is: one is the delivery man and the mechanic says Porsche is better.
> I am going to ignore those data points because what do they know about car engineering...
I ignored the delivery man
> I will listen instead to the Chief Company Engineer...
Bullshit. I did no such thing. You are strawmanning me.
> Maybe, its because
Why they answerd the interview is irrelevant. You seem to think they are the Snowden of J&J. They are not.
> they are not that high in the hierarchy, that they allowed themselves to make those statements.
Bullshit. I never once mentioned hierarchy.
> Your argument seems to be that they dont know what they are talking about.
Bullshit. my argument is that regardless of knowledge, the oppinion of the delivery man is irrelevant. It was an interview with his oppinion. BS did not reveal anything, he just gave his oppinion and speculated. He is not a whisleblower. He is irellevant.
And JD says kids should get vaccinated. The reason is offtopic
> You ignore the fact,that one of them is clearly stating not to take their vaccine.
Yes, because BS is in a irrelevant department.
> And you are the one misstating facts.
Which one? The one bellow? I am not, he litteraly said: "Once you go out and you've got to go to preschool, ....., that's when you need to vaccinate"
> JD says the older kids should only taking as their "civic duty", does not say the vaccine is really required.( for kids)
Irelevant. I will not try to explain to you why that is important because it is offtopic and we do not start from the same base assumptions.
--------------
Also, with regards to 1.7, I made no veiled threats. You claiming I did is a nasty accusation and it is bullshit I will not accept. But 1.7 is actually offtopic from 1.x
I think it's fair for anyone in this case to dismiss the information as pure noise, given the source.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Failed_attempt...
That is independent from your own research if those claims are true or not.