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When I explained how the vaccine works to an antivaxxer, they asked about the thousands of people that died right after taking the vaccine. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Can you please give me a good response?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

I agree, but would go even further. Coersion in general can be dangerous in an epidemic. If everyone is forced to do the same thing (like take a vaccine or work from home or wear a mask or anything) and then it turns out there's a problem with doing that, 100% of people have that problem and your society is in big trouble. For example if working from home causes obesity in 5% of people, then you have a medical emergency coming up. And the problem could be anything, you can't predict these things. Every action has unknown unintended consequences. If there is no coercion and people all react in slightly different but mostly sensible ways, you get the same important behavioural change but without the making your society fragile.

Then, you're leaving the responsibility to individuals, not taking it on yourself. If as president you force everyone to take a vaccine and that vaccine causes 1% of people to die, you are personally responsible for those deaths. If you make it optional, and most people take it, and some of them die, they are individually responsible.

But politicians think they are smarter than most people, which they are not. Most unusually stupid people think they are unusually intelligent. That leads to politicians having this arrogance that they can, and should, make personal decisions for other people.

2 and 3. The people who say that are just ignorant. The details of vaccine risks are online. You can understand them better than the average politician. They cause heart attacks, and other stuff I forget, in some tiny fraction of people. But in the case of covid, getting vaccinated is much safer than not.

page 12 does get the summary of the math right Okay.
That's the kind of question with no real answer. You can say, evil money and power and corruption, or because of dire emergency, or because vaccines are the best most effective remedy, or because of foolish short-sighted politicians and group think. All these answers are correct. You can argue which one is more correct, you can argue than forever and never convince anyone. Some people do!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago (1 children)

While the position I expressed above pertains to vaccines, I am generally aligned with voluntaryism and hold that coersion is wrong in all matters. Being non-voluntary, after all, is the only thing that differentiates rape from sex, and scam from trade.

I feel we are both in harmony on points 1 to 4. I disagree on point 5. Real answers do exist even if we haven't agreed upon them as yet. Public debate, even social media debate, is a way to form, refine or change opinions of individuals, ideally. Let us not treat it as anything less.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

Yes great. But I still insist there's two separate problems. Firstly yes you're raping/scamming the very people who pay your salary. Or as I'd put it, stripping their civil rights (in many territories the measures which were taken are actually illegal/unconstitutional).

But the second thing is that it is counterproductive. For example in France the government first banned wearing masks, then enforced it. They first enforced all children goin to school, then enforced all children stopping school.

If they had not done that, many people would have started wearing masks and stopped going to school much earlier. Many lives would have been saved. The best government action would have been to do nothing and allow people to decide for themselves. By relying on the collective intelligence of society, you get a better outcome than relying on your own intelligence. To think otherwise is just the arrogance of the stupid.

But don't get me started on that can of worms, the credibility/competence of governance in Frenace.