alt Hacker News> He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination.
It’s interesting how prevalent lies and claims without evidence have become. And one lie gives another one the space to be accepted. At risk of making a claim without evidence myself, I feel like there is some link between claiming Haitians are eating dogs and claiming that athletes are dying after vaccination.
Another aspect is some lies have a small truth. Like maybe the claim that an athlete died after vaccination has one example. But that doesn’t mean it is true in general or that the athlete didn’t have some special situation. I see a lot of generalizations casually tossed around these days, especially in American politics.
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What's happening is that politicians are slowly realizing that they no longer get punished for lying. At some point people got so worn down by more sophisticated half-truths that a large portion of the voter base just don't care about how true rhetoric is anymore. That plus the veil of civility that seems to prevent effective counter messaging mean lying blatantly is actually an effective strategy.
For some of the replies here: EVERY vaccine licensed for use in the united states has clinical review documents (100+ pages) detailing the reactogenicity/immunogenicity of the vaccine in question. These findings result from excellent experimental design
"The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."
Everyone who has died in America in the past 75 years has "died after vaccination".
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Yes, there was an athlete or small number of athletes who died. It happens sometimes, it happened before COVID also. A seemingly very healthy person just drops dead. But it was seized upon and made big news, at least where it suited the agenda being pushed.