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Comment by Manjuuu | Hacker News Reader

I'm hoping that in a decade or so, people will stop using "vaccines never prevented transmission" as an argument since it has been said at least a billion of times since the beginning, VACCINES PREVENTED SERIOUS ILLNESS. Same thing about the imaginary widespread side-effects or the mask being useless.

Depressing.

Personally I'm more worried about the people that went full retard about covid alternative views and conspiracies, I've lost a few friends to that. Sometime I wonder if you will be able to integrate into society ever again.

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It’s depressing that public institutions mishandled this so badly that a huge segment of the population has lost trust in them.

I can agree that the messaging I got was that the vaccine was meant to prevent serious illness. Regardless, the absurd policies, suppression of information and discussion on vaccine side effects was unforgivable.

People went full retard because the institutions meant to provide them with good information instead treated them like children and suppressed detailed debate. The only alternative was to go online and risk the lunacy that is internet research, so people did so.

Now more people are anti-vaxers than ever before, and not just for mRNA vaccines but old-school shots like measles.

At a minimum many institutions need change of leadership after this fiasco, and maybe complete reform of others.

Yeah, the handling was not great but sadly I'm not really sure if the population was ready for detailed debate, considering that a good chunk of it ended up misunderstanding most of the official notices and falling for the most stupid conspiracy theories.

We need to improve education, by A LOT. And it's everyone responsibility.

That attitude is what got us into this low-trust mess. It should not be up to the government to determine what debate the public is ready for.

The debate will occur anyway, so if you try to suppress it, you just push it into the depths of the internet with all the associated downside.

the issue is that the conversation is so polarized and religious its literally impossible to discuss any of these issues. the poster you are responding to states some things which are reasonable and others which are complete nonsense. Its like people cant help themselves once picking a side to just wholesale accept every position all the way to "covid isnt real" on one end and "no one should ever leave their house again" on the other end.

The initial batch of vaccines were explicitly marketed as having a 95% effectiveness against transmission for the original strain. This was the entire basis of the herd immunity narrative and it was true for about 3 months until delta happened and the medical community did an egregiously bad job of communicating that.

Cloth masks are objectively useless for personal protection.

> as having a 95% effectiveness against transmission for the original strain.

95% reduction of serious illness. The objective of the mass vaccination was having as much people as possible survive the pandemic. Herd immunity was just noise. There were a lot of noise and nonsense.

> Cloth masks are objectively useless for personal protection.

Proper masks are effective as measured multiple times, tons of statistics on it.

> I'm hoping that in a decade or so, people will stop using "vaccines never prevented transmission" as an argument since it has been said at least a billion of times since the beginning, VACCINES PREVENTED SERIOUS ILLNESS.

No. They said vaccines prevent transmission. Over and over.

You may have forgotten what was said at the time, but we won't:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1665770269418614784

It's the reason I was prevented from entering the US until just a couple of weeks ago. It's the reason why my mother-in-law lost her job as a nurse. People who refused this medical treatment, were treated as dangerous because officials claimed that we presented a transmission hazard.

This was a lie, which you are further compounding with more lies.

I don't forget anything. As I can't forget all the times that I had to explain, since the beginning, that the only statistics available where about reducing to 0 the risk of serious illness. Don't try to change history, please.

And don't link me some random idiot's tweet as proof, we are better than this.

Just stop now and accept reality, it's a good thing that they got rid of your mother in law, I wonder in how much more pseudo science she believes in.

Where I live, people that refused the vaccine were treated as utter idiots but still welcome in hospitals, most of the famous local covid denier died there too.

> And don't link me some random idiot's tweet as proof, we are better than this.

Watch the video clip in the tweet. It shows a montage of officials and talking heads claiming that the COVID vaccines would prevent you from getting COVID and transmitting it.

Here's another one if you prefer:

https://twitter.com/alliemarie777/status/1667561378398318592

> Just stop now and accept reality, it's a good thing that they got rid of your mother in law, I wonder in how much more pseudo science she believes in.

No it isn't. The NHS now has chronic shortage of nurses.

If there were a problem with pseudoscience, then they should have fired her for that, not some vague proxy.

You're rather proving my point. So many people are just not ready to have a rational conversation about these narratives. It's all just tribalism and dogma, and we will have to wait years for people like you to calm down to the point where you are able to have reasonably conversations on these topics again.

> The NHS now has chronic shortage of nurses.

Why? Because it's not an attractive profession nowadays. Not for the few hundreds of deniers that were fired.

> You're rather proving my point. So many people are just not ready to have a rational conversation about these narratives. It's all just tribalism and dogma, and we will have to wait years for people like you to calm down to the point where you are able to have reasonably conversations on these topics again.

I haven't seen any rational or unique point in everything you have written, only spitting the usual covid deniers nonsense.

You know what my real fear is? The fear that people that have this kind of opinions regarding the pandemic will apply the same reasoning to the next one or to the next crisis. I have a different opinion of preppers now.

So did you watch the montage?

If so, please admit that you were wrong when you made this comment:

My montage showed you (if you had watched it), many talking heads and officials at the time accusing the unvaccinated of increasing transmission.

The rest of your remarks about "covid deniers" are irrelevant to the point.

Nope, I don't plan to watch anything, feel free to indulge in your beliefs.

Yes - this is my point.

So many of you people have become so emotionally invested in the false narratives that you have believed, that you can't cope with any evidence that threatens your narrative even slightly.

At least we can talk about the "lab leak theory" now. This was the original point I made: it will take years for people to climb down these positions they have taken, but at least we are making small steps in the right direction.

Man, you are talking about yourself, you literally started this subthread with the basic set of round of the mill covid contrarians BS that have 0 ground in reality and survive only thanks to the emotional attachment of people like you.

When asked for evidence you post the usual cherrypicked random stuff that aligns with what you believe (the only valid sources).

My recommendation is to just stop with this imaginary fight for the truth, when everyone is moving on and no one even cares anymore about these creative reinterpretations of reality. You lost any credibility with the first message of this chain, too much BS. Free yourself.

I've presented plenty of sources and factual information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36295718

You've presented none whatsoever.

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