Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffhuys | Hacker News Reader

Mostly because of them not being totally honest to the public from the start with the COVID vaccines, stating that it would be 100% safe (something that's _never_ true about vaccines) and would prevent spreading.

It made me distrust my government, something I've never done before, only to be fueled by backlash people received for asking questions, including having 0 TV time. If they would've taken it seriously and were able to answer some simple critical questions, even repeatedly (because it's their goddamn job), then I would not think like this. But they STILL don't want to really talk about it in any "real" media, and in my country you get called a "Wappie" for even asking some questions. They tried (effectively) to turn the general population against critical thinkers, which is something you never do, right? So a big no from me, they messed it up.

See my other comment for a bit more info.

View on HN

Respectfully, i'm not sure you can both claim to be a critical thinker and make a falacious argumentum ad logicam argument at the same time. You kind of have to choose one.

Sure, you're right. Maybe I should've asked more questions, even though I was being vilified, unfriended, and hated for it. It's just so incredibly weird to me that even in the Tweede Kamer (I guess the Dutch House of Representatives?) they just wouldn't seriously answer questions some people had. I watched every debate, every new item, everything (in the Netherlands). They have NEVER done this as bad as this before.

Either we were being lied to, or they chose the path of "let's make them sound crazy so nobody will think like this" for actual good. I'm not sure, and leaning more to the first (for the first time in my life, mind you), and it has served me well this time. Will keep betting on my own body's ability.

In my experience, if you give the conspiracists a foot they take a mile.

If we're all being a little more honest, I think many of those "just asking questions" types aren't just asking questions. They're working in bad faith and already have an anti-vax position, and so they're prodding hoping for a "yes, but..." so they can say "aha! Exactly!"

Is it the right thing to assume all those asking questions are of this variety? No. Is it the right thing to just lie to these people? Also no. But will they respond well to honesty? no. Does being honest pose a danger in the context of these people that will manifest as real lives lost? I think, yes.

So I think that's how this sort of thing came to be. It's a legitimately hard problem because of the stakes.

"Many of those asking questions" is using a weasel word: many. What is many? It allows hand wavy arguments.

Pre covid, I knew about half a dozen anti vax "it causes autism" people; esp my cousin/neighbors as they blame vaccines for their son's autism despite the information available. Post covid, I knew only a couple more similar people. I also know probably closer to 150 people who are/were "this is a new thing being too aggressively pushed" who otherwise take vaccines. Nearly 10x in my circles.

It is fallacious to group these two together. A common question was, "if I already caught it and developed immunity, why would I want to additionally vaccinate?" And people shut them down as nutcases. Nobody was asking that question in bad faith and even if they were it was a fair question. However, when you are told to shut up and take what we are telling you, it is a normal human reaction to be skeptical. People were actively pushed to the fringe as those were the only people willing to even entertain "these evil thought crimes of not blindly towing party lines."

> What is many? It allows hand wavy arguments

I don't know because I actually can't read minds. However anecdotally, most (almost all) the people I knew who didn't take the Jab did so because they listened to some alex jones type podcast with a quack talking about crazy conspiracies. This INCLUDES my family, so I am being generous with my descriptions. No I'm not misrepresenting them.

> It is fallacious to group these two together.

They are separate, but it is fallacious to claim they share no commonalities. The entire reason the Covid vaccine was under any skepticism is because the idea of vaccine skepticism had already broken the mainstream. It was, 25 years ago, accepted as a position people could have.

Some of the people you describe here: > this is a new thing being too aggressively pushed Are now FULLY 100% anti-vax. Is that a coincidence? No, it's not, and you know that.

Humans are mushy and can hold opposing views at the same time. They say they lost trust. I would say that even a critical thinker should be suspicious when a liar says even obviously true things.

Of course, losing trust is a completely human thing. Like most emotional reasoning, its a heurstic that works pretty well in most cases. Nothing wrong with that.

My only objection is to the term "critical thinker". It literally means the opposite of what you are talking about. To quote the dictionary: "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.". If you allow emotions to cloud your judgement, than you're not thinking critically, by definition. That would be true if you got the covid vaccine primarily because you thought the gov PR person was pretty. Its just as true if you don't because you don't think the PR person is trustworthy. Either way you are jumping to conclusions based on your personal opinions about some random gov employee who had nothing to do with the vaccine and is reading a statement that they probably didn't even write themselves. Like maybe it would be different if the gov is the one making the vaccine, but they basically have nothing to do with the actual manufacture of it. You can get much more relavent data by actually going closer to the source.

With “emotion” do you mean trust?

It’s not “some random gov employee” btw. It’s our Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge. He was on stage weekly (sometimes multiple times a week) to inform the population. What I’m saying is that he didn’t do that correctly, knowingly or unknowingly. And for that, I lost trust in him (and Mark Rutte, who was always next to him).

I would expect the Minister of Health of my country would at least know that no vaccine is 100% safe. But alas.

Now Rutte is Sec. General of NATO, as a side note.

>> falacious argumentum ad logicam argument

Respectfully, I'm not sure that you can both press enter after putting together this string of words and be taken seriously as somebody that isn't full of themselves or in the "I am very smart" camp.

I actually think i can be both full of myself and be right (or wrong) at the same time!

Where is the logical fallacy? Actually, where’s the argument? His post is just a few reasons he doesn’t trust his government; he’s not trying to argue that you shouldn’t trust your government (you probably shouldn’t, though, for reasons I won’t go into).

It was not a formal argument that could be easily dismissed due to a logical fallacy, it is a critique of communication and trust. There is no logical fallacy in the OP's comment. Do you trust the Government with your life? If you do, great, but do not silence ("cancel") people who ask fair questions (i.e. have critical thinking).

> and would prevent spreading.

It was _never_ claimed that it would "prevent" the spread of the disease or that it would even prevent _you_ from catching it. If you thought that, you weren't reading anything. It was always claimed that it lowered the likelihood of catching it and _most importantly_ reduced the severity of the disease if you did catch it.

If anything, what you should mistrust is your own ability to read and comprehend.

I wasn't talking about what I read, I was talking about what they said on TV. I'm going to find the original clips soon (at work at the moment), but I clearly remember Hugo de Jonge telling us all, on national television, that we would be protected by the vaccine, and would stop the spreading of it. I'm not the only one that heard it.

I'm SPECIFICALLY talking about the Dutch news coverage here - I have no experience with others.

So this:

> It was _never_ claimed that it would "prevent" the spread of the disease or that it would even prevent _you_ from catching it.

Is just not true; they told our entire country on television.

>It was _never_ claimed that it would "prevent" the spread of the disease or that it would even prevent _you_ from catching it.

This is an easily disprovable statement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKf8dVxOy0s

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1139513946631676

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/05/16/sotu-walensky...

There's plenty more, just google "covid vaccine prevents spread"

Ah, I see that it wasn't just the Netherlands, then; even the CDC director.

Do you think these politicians and administrators knew they were lying when they said that?

They weren't lying, they just weren't being pedantic. It does limit the spread, it just doesn't prevent it "completely". Only someone looking for a reason to be upset would interpret what they said literally.

I’m sorry, but a press conference televised to everyone in a country that disrupts the default programming, every week, when most people were watching, by a government official about a novel virus that’s spreading around the world and the medication for it… and I shouldn’t take it literally?

What moment in the world would be a better moment to be as clear and pedantic as possible, with as little reason to doubt as possible? And when is it better to keep the talking point open to even the most “dumb” questions, even if it’s over and over again?

To be clear again, I’m Dutch and was watching the Dutch news.

Whichever of the many sides you believe, they dropped the ball there. They should’ve been informed and should’ve informed us correctly. They didn’t.

You're right. They should have spoken more directly, and with greater attention to the words literal meanings. The issue was too important to be imprecise with the language.

Still, in English when someone says "seatbelts prevent automobile accident related deaths" it doesn't mean that ALL automobiles will magically cease to crash once you've buckled up, nor does it mean that your odds of death fall to zero. It only means that SOME deaths will be prevented.

I really don’t care; they should have known the truth. And if they didn’t, they should have informed us on that, too.

The whole issue to me is that they acted like the authoritative figure who you could trust. Turns out, we could not. So why should I trust them from now on? They damaged it, and didn’t try to “fix” it. They just called everyone that asked questions conspiracy theorists, combining everyone into one word “wappie”. The officials did. They actually used that word multiple times on TV.

So I don’t know if they knew, but it’s besides the point.

Very clever of you to post videos so that people won't actually check what they said.

The scientists never claimed that, but a lot of government officials and politicians did.

And, the government officials and politicians got a lot more press with their dogmatic-but-false claims than the scientists did with their hedged-but-more-true ones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com