It seems to me the people here don't live in malaria infested countries. I think the victims would be gladly bitten by a vaccine than a deadly virus.
The countries they live in are malaria free because they eradicated the disease-carrying mosquitos and developed their healthcare system.
Developing the healthcare system of a country helps with more diseases and keeps consent. It also doesn't open you up for a potential biological weapon if some entity decided to misuse it (Russia, CIA, etc.)
There's a few types of malaria, not all are deadly, but none are fun.
But in the Climate Change Sweepstakes, Malaria has the winning ticket...
Not to worry: the scientists at lab promised the two events were totally unrelated.
If this were a virus created using gain of function research we would call it a biological weapon. But because the intent is different we're supposed to be excited and accepting of it?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Except it's the literal opposite of gain of function: it's the subtraction of function from a pathogen which already exists in the environment and already infects people on a regular basis in the environment, turning it from a deadly killer into something that dies quickly and without reproducing when it meets the human immune system.
HN is having a real hard time here with the concept that mass death is actually bad and something that’s nice to prevent.
> But because the intent is different we're supposed to be excited and accepting of it?
One could say that it's the intent which varies between a heart transplant and an Azrec blood sacrifice.
Heart transplants are from consenting donors that have recently diseased, not living victims murdered solely for their organs. Blood sacrifices do not involve taking the heart and saving a live either. So no intent is not the variance there.
Which is why I gave that exact example.
I would say that consent is the key distinguishing factor and intent follows afterwards.
I am terrified of them but I'm fairly certain it's rationalized. The medical community decided it's more important to bully their patients into compliance than to listen to their concerns and work with them. The vaccine absolutely had side effects for some individuals and they were treated very poorly, in particular at the beginning of the pandemic, due to this attitude of "fighting misinformation." Our medical institutions were put to propaganda purposes rather than healthcare purposes and the results were absolutely horrific.
> to cause more death and suffering
This is predicated on the belief that "herd immunity" is valid and universal to all vaccines and that, again, bullying people who are afraid into choices they're not comfortable with is somehow justifiable due to it. As if letting a for profit institution inject random goop into me is a natural thing to _not_ be generally wary or afraid of.
Just because you think you have "the science" doesn't mean you get a free pass on "patient rights."
I’m really not looking forward to the return of measles and polio as common first-world diseases, but that seems to be the trajectory we’re on.
Which is all bad enough, but for people with your sort of "rational" to then decide that vaccines are _all_ uncritically "good," and any questions or any sort of reservations that I've just covered were thus uncritically "bad" and those having them deserved to have their civil rights stripped from them, is what made this a horror.
Finally, we have sanitized water and sewers and we live in first world conditions, the precursors to the diseases you mention are almost entirely absent from our living conditions, and those vaccinations use time tested and proven technologies which haven't ever been in question. Perhaps some of the popular adjuvants are worthy of concern, but in your version of rationality, this is apparently an evil thing to even consider out loud in the presence of the vaunted "technophiles."
You completely fail to maintain rationality in the face of a very narrow and specific critique.
Complete horseshit.
This sort of nonsense is what I’m talking about. It’s not that you’re not allowed to criticize. It’s that the critics are full of shit and we’re expected to take it seriously.
Wonderful brand of rationality you have on display here.
> This sort of nonsense is what I’m talking about.
https://www.newsweek.com/science-fact-check-definition-vacci...
> and we’re expected to take it seriously
You have refused to take any of this seriously. You have a preconceived idea of the world and you are absolutely unwilling to accept any debate or challenge over it. You are acting as a bully and not as a scientist. No wonder you constantly appeal to authority.
Definitions are always imprecise anyway. The CDC’s pre-2015 definition of a vaccine wouldn’t have covered the tetanus vaccine, even though it’s a century old and there’s no dispute over whether or not it should qualify as a “vaccine” or not.
I’ve seen two somewhat different complaints around this definition nonsense.
First, there’s the complaint that the original definition used to require that a vaccine contain a dead or inactivated infectious organism, and it was changed because mRNA stuff is the first time something didn’t work that way, and thus it’s not really a vaccine. This is of course completely false. Tetanus doesn’t work this way and there are others from well before the mRNA era.
The other is that the definition used to require a “vaccine” to provide total immunity from infection and now it doesn’t, and this is because the covid vaccines don’t provide total immunity. This is obviously wrong because no vaccine provides total immunity. There are vaccines that provide a lot better immunity than the covid vaccines do, but none that are 100%.
So yes, horseshit. This doesn’t come from preconceived notions of the world, it comes from knowing basic facts about the world. When you read that “they” changed “the” definition in order to push something, your first thought should be to look up what the old one said and see if it was actually an accurate definition. And you should have the basic knowledge to be able to understand when it was clearly deficient.
Yes.
> Definitions are always imprecise anyway.
That's the same conclusion the article arrives at in order to claim it as false, when in fact, it has to admit, the definition _was_ actually changed. You're happy they're waving their hands the same as you happen to be. "Complete horseshit" is really absurd thing to say in the face of this reduction of yours, isn't it?
> and it was changed because mRNA stuff is the first time something didn’t work that way
It was the first time something didn't work that way and was additionally being mandated. The concern was raised that mandating something which fails to meet the previous definition of vaccine was a flaw in policy and so the definition was, in fact, changed. You ironically seem to notice that it was changed as a result of public policy and not due to any other obvious reason.
> This is obviously wrong because no vaccine provides total immunity.
Most vaccines provide total immunity. That's because the disease they target is not a flu that has rapid genetic mutations and where the introduction of a leaky "vaccine" does not create evolutionary pressure on the target disease.
You can move the goalposts to debating weather a Tetanus "vaccine" meets the definition, but Tetanus is caused by a bacteria, so almost no definition of "vaccine" will apply to it anyways. Other than this oddity do you have even one other example?
> your first thought should be to look up what the old one said and see if it was actually an accurate definition
So it changed, but it was to make it "more accurate," so my claim that it was changed is somehow actually wrong? You've fallen into a tautological trap. You see why I consider you to be ideologically possessed?
> And you should have the basic knowledge to be able to understand when it was clearly deficient.
Yet they felt the need to change at the same time they introduced an entirely new vaccine and also decided that people needed to take this new vaccine or have their civil rights removed. That seems to be the "deficiency" they were trying to correct and were not at all suddenly concerned with improving accuracy at just a really unfortunate time.
So are there any other goal post distractions you'd like to hyper focus on in an effort to ignore the original point?
There’s also a serious problem with the phrase “the definition.” There are many definitions. There isn’t a single authority which decides what a word means.
“It was the first time something didn't work that way and was additionally being mandated.”
Come on, seriously? The tetanus vaccine is required for school in many places. Why are you saying something so obviously incorrect, and with an example that disproves it already being part of the conversation? You accuse me of not accepting debate and you do this kind of thing? I can’t even.
No, it isn't. You're describing the _combined_ Tdap vaccine. Why are you saying something so obviously incorrect, and even worse, _intentionally_ misleading?
Tetanus is not communicable. You see the problem with your focus on this one point? You're clinging to it as a defense when it's _entirely_ invalid to do so.
> I can’t even.
Then why try? All you've done is inject emotion and falsehoods into this discussion in order to defend your ego and ideology. Just stop. It's okay that people have a different opinion than you. Running around like a psychopath and labeling things as "complete horseshit" is an absurd response. You are doing this to yourself.
I'm minimizing and ignoring this thread now. Have a nice Thanksgiving!
“Vaccines” have such good standing because the general idea of improving immunity by exposing the immune system to non-infectious material that closely matches some part of the infectious agent works really well. There’s not much room for things to go wrong unless the material actually turns out to be infectious, as was the case with the dangerous vaccine I mentioned above.
If they were detected as unsafe during testing they wouldn't be available. That's the point. You only know of vaccines that passed the tests, not those that didn't.
> “Vaccines” have such good standing because the general idea of improving immunity by exposing the immune system to non-infectious material that closely matches some part of the infectious agent works really well. There’s not much room for things to go wrong unless the material actually turns out to be infectious, as was the case with the dangerous vaccine I mentioned above.
Infectiousness is not the only risk. Look at polio vaccines causing polio.