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Comment by fknorangesite | Hacker News Reader

> the common anti vax sentiments I hear on this web site (ugh).

Seeing this stuff so prevalent on HN really disappointed me.

Try to understand why this viewpoint exists. We are all logical people. The difference is in the trust of public media and government. Both sides of the argument are mostly right in what they believe given the information they are consuming. My suggestion - read sources from both sides before deciding that anyone slightly against Covid hysteria is misinformed and is an anti-vaxxer. Second suggestion, anti-vaxxer is a really misleading and extremely divisive term.

The anti-vax movement is in the uncanny valley of media trust. If they had more trust, they'd follow traditional institutional recommendations as most had done for decades. If they had less trust, they'd realize that Faceboot et al are just more media sources hijacking their sense of social proof. The path to actually rejecting "the media" isn't to just follow substitute media that promotes opposite viewpoints - you have to reason from first principles and look to falsify every single thing you read.

> We are all logical people

That's a bold claim. In my experience the vast majority of people hardly try to think logically or apply critical thinking skills in most opportunities, and no human does so anywhere close to all the time. Humans are deeply irrational creatures, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.

> My suggestion - read sources from both sides

I assure you I have; only one of those sides has any intellectual merit.

Please show intellectual merit in the government mandate for vaccine which:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

" A person who was fully vaccinated and then had a ‘breakthrough’ Delta infection was almost twice as likely to pass on the virus as someone who was infected with Alpha." ( and i was saying that months ago just based on obvious arithmetic on public data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28081982 and was labeled as anti-vaxxer, i guess now it is me, the journal Nature and the study authors are all anti-vaxxers)

"Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus."

There is nothing wrong or unique about a vaccine being not effective in reducing transmission and spread. We have for example that with a flu vaccine each year. What unique and wrong is the vaccine mandate and enforcement of those failed Covid vaccines which plays right into the hands of the opposition to the vaccines in general which i think would result in a lot of damage down the road.

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