Comment by Frieren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Frieren | Hacker News Reader

> HPV vaccine hesitancy in Europe: side effects, uncertainty, and mistrust > When individuals mistrust those communicating about vaccines, perceiving, for instance, that they are not being fully transparent about the potential side effects of the vaccine, it can affect their confidence in the HPV vaccine even if they have received information confirming that the vaccine is safe and effective > This was seen with the rapid spread of You-Tube videos of young girls believing to have been affected by HPV vaccination in Denmark, Japan, Colombia, Ireland and the UK.

Governments around the world are losing citizens trust. And that has terrible consequences. Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. And the rise of far-right contrarian governments that use fear to destroy trust in institutions and gain votes are the main cause. Billionaires financing far-right governments end costing the lives of their citizens that will have poorer physical health.

We may know how to reduce the risk of cancer. We may have vaccines for that infections. But if governments care more about power than serving citizens all that knowledge is for nothing.

- https://www.hpvworld.com/articles/hpv-vaccine-hesitancy-in-e...

This gets things exactly backwards. The trust was eroding well before the re-emergence of "far-right contrarian governments" and that is what enabled them to emerge. It has eroded because of greater access to information: people see things that they disapprove of but otherwise could have ignored because it doesn't affect them personally.

Suspect this is caused by demographic shift, don't know any people who have even the remotest HPV vaccine hesitation over the past twenty plus years.

Know that it is common among certain demographics though.

About ten years ago I was at a party and an Australian coworker and I were talking. I casually mentioned the HPV vaccine since his daughter was entering her teens. He declared, “I’m not going to turn my daughter into a whore.”

You may be right that the demographics are shifting but not necessarily in a good way.

Which brings to mind a horrifying and inappropriate counterarguement to such twisted puritianical logic - who says she is consenting if she gets infected? Is it worth adding cancer to a rape victim?

Even without that, the position implies they haven't understood that she's an individual and so her future is her own to determine, at least to a much greater extent than this acknowledges.

What ever happened to parents who just wanted their children to be happy? Maybe she wants to be a whore. The more figuratively you're happy to deploy that term the more likely her choices overlap.

That sort of thinking isn't recent, it's a mindset still kicking around from the days of old. If one were to guess why there's been no serious attempt to make vaccines for common STDs - any idea was killed off. It's a wonder that HPV vaccine escaped this odd mindset.

I last noted this backwards thinking when an early vaccine for covid at the University of Queensland was developed using a protein portion of HIV ... did this old cabal flex its power. Quite sad, despite the reasons given not to use the developed vaccine, didn't pass the pub test.

I absolutely agree that getting the vaccine is obviously the correct thing to do, but:

>"I casually mentioned the HPV vaccine since his daughter was entering her teens."

Is a little weird to do, and seems like it might be downplaying some provocative or nosy behavior.

what kind of demographics? I don't think HPV vaccine is a subject I've ever heard about in the social circles I've been in (whatever the opinion on the vaccine).

Two in particular, those with a distrust of or ignorance to authority, and those with a paternal expectation of abstinence (with extreme punitive consequences for defiance) and therefore no need for such a vaccine.

The former of course is (uncomfortably) why we have seen a resurgence in smallpox, measles, and scabies.

that's not really clear... Like if I knew enough those those two groups to identify them with those descriptors, I would have already understood who they were from the fact they tend to refuse HPV vaccines

perhaps just stick to subjects you're more informed on

> And the rise of far-right contrarian governments that use fear to destroy trust in institutions and gain votes are the main cause. Billionaires financing far-right governments end costing the lives of their citizens that will have poorer physical health.

I'm old enough to remember when Trump was recommending the Covid vaccine and democrats were fear mongering about it. Trump was even booed at his own rallies for promoting the vaccine.

Was it the dems who booed Trump at his own rally ?

The 2020 Democratic skepticism was about possible political pressure to approve a vaccine before the election, it wasn't about vaccines themselves

Harris explicitly said she'd take it if Fauci and public health experts endorsed it

Once the vaccines approved, Dems went all in on vaccination and Trump didn't promote them (still took credit for it when he could) OTOH he spent a looot of time dissing health officials

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