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somenameformeyesterday at 3:49 PM3 repliesview on HN

Here [1] is a montage of some of the public messaging around the COVID vaccines. [1] It was quite simply dishonest. That, paired alongside the effort to force people to take the shots, completely destroyed public trust on a level that will take many decades to repair. Generalized vaccine skepticism follows naturally from that.

I'm certainly a part of that group. For instance I ended up doing extensive research on e.g. MMR before deciding to vaccinate my kids for it. If this were a decade ago, I almost certainly would have done it without a second thought, just as I took all recommended vaccines before traveling without a second thought. So I'm obviously not anti-vaccine in the least, but I no longer trust public messaging on the topic.

It was just another (of the increasingly endless) examples of governments/companies pursuing short-term interests while ignoring long-term consequences. When it comes to what people put in their bodies, trust is more important than literally anything else.

[1] - https://xcancel.com/ITGuy1959/status/1581034815700488192


Replies

biophysboyyesterday at 4:40 PM

Why is it bad for a public health communicator to say that vaccines stop spread by lowering the effective reproduction number of a pathogen? Its correct. Your extensive research didn't seem to work.

wredcollyesterday at 5:24 PM

You have your chain of logic backwards. You wanted to be skeptical and "concerned" and so forth so you went out and found reasons to justify it.

GrinningFoolyesterday at 4:07 PM

But this has been building for years ahead of COVID. COVID just gave people something to latch on to. And in spite of COVID vaccine issues, the latest numbers i saw suggest around 80% of people still support standard childhood vaccinations.

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