Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway22032 | Hacker News Reader

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I personally think that a lot of vaccine scepticism comes from the perceived force involved. For example, via passports and mandates.

I think once you get into the situation in which people think "I'm being forced to do X", you've created an impossible catch-22 and you've basically ensured that some % double down.

It's hard for me to explain because it just seems intuitively obvious. I really enjoy a beer after work. But if you forced me to drink one, and made me document the fact in order to go on holiday or whatever, I would feel less inclined to do so because I'd instinctively think that something fishy must be going on.

I've personally had the generally recommended number of vaccines at the right times etc, but when it comes to stuff like showing barcodes to get into places, I've faked it on principle, I think it's a dystopian horror and it doesn't surprise me at all that a lot of people have responded by just tuning out and refusing everything.

> I personally think that a lot of vaccine scepticism comes from the perceived force involved. For example, via passports and mandates.

You would think that, and they promote that, but it does not. It is obvious when you consider that all the vaccine skeptics were also vaccine skeptics before there was any hint of force involved.

I guess it depends on what you define as "scepticism".

I know a lot of people who took the first or second vaccine but are refusing further due to the coercion involved.

Or more generally, they behaved "carefully" in the early days of the pandemic but then switched off over time as they tired of being given legal commandments from God rather than sensible advice.

I agree that the same set of people think crackpot stuff like "5g causes corona" or the vaccines have microchips, I don't think those people are really relevant to the discussion.

Yeah, it's not nice but what should be done after the "natural" vaccination rate had been reached by rational argument alone?

I mean, the only reason for me to care if someone else is vaccinated is to the extent that I care for their wellbeing.

To me it's analogous to like, telling one of my overweight friends to go on a diet so that I can pay less for the NHS or something. They don't want the advice, it feels rude more than anything else (even explaining this feels a bit ick!)

If it was shown that we could eliminate sars-cov-2 via herd immunity I'd probably be a bit more keen to encourage it but I still don't think I'd support mandates unless we had some crazy ebola mutation and people started dying in massive numbers.

> If it was shown that we could eliminate sars-cov-2 via herd immunity I'd probably be a bit more keen to encourage it but I still don't think I'd support mandates unless we had some crazy ebola mutation and people started dying in massive numbers.

Triple vaccinated and completely in agreement.

An argument can always be made that they fill up hospitals, but that same argument can be made against parachuting, being overweight, racing (or driving in general), all alcohol etc.

If choice is to meaningful it includes bad choices.

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