Why vaccine misinformation is winning the information war | Hacker News Reader

Why vaccine misinformation is winning the information war

weaponizedspaces.substack.com

5 pointsrbanffy9 comments

Because of the absolute shit show of misconduct, and of taking marketing claims by vaccine companies at face value during Covid and basically forcing them to age and risk groups that didn't need them?

If you want to battle mistrust for vaccines, start by not cooking up numbers, making BS claims, and so on, for quick bucks, when there's an emergecy.

> If you want to battle mistrust for vaccines, start by not cooking up numbers, making BS claims, and so on, for quick bucks, when there's an emergecy.

There is an interesting paper, pointed by the article, that addresses the issue of mistrust.

It's not the issue of cooking numbers, but the perception of it.

Also because science for the public these days is no more about facts, but opinions.

I think that the emotional nature of health-related topics also contribute to the challenge of debunking misinformation effectively... In a period of pandemic and facing the unknown

I have been observing anti-intellectual attitudes pervading society, what seems like resentment for trusting others to make decisions because they are better informed/trained.

And who gets to decide what is misinformation and what is not?

Observable, provable, objective reality? Consensus of the scientific community?

The problem wasn't the consensus of the scientific community. The problem was that we needed answers now, and there wasn't time for the scientific community to arrive at a consensus. So the Powers That Be(TM) grabbed onto an opinion from the scientific community, and labeled everyone who didn't agree as "unscientific". That's not how science works, and it gave a black eye to everything that calls itself scientific.

Note that it was primarily non-scientists who did this.

They could have said "while scientists have not yet arrived at certainty, the best answer we have at the moment is..." - but they didn't. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten any more buy-in down that road than they did on the "trust the science" road, but they wouldn't have destroyed the public's trust in science in the process.

Because we can't trust our politicians and "experts" and "professionals"

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