• Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    It’s coming back thanks to those vaccine mandates that were brought in.

    You don’t put people at ease about a new vaccine by saying “you must have it otherwise you can’t participate in society”. That has the opposite effect and makes people even more reluctant and sceptical. It also gives anti-vaxxers more ammo for their nonsense that they can spread online.

    All that combined has led to a big increase in vaccine hesitancy and scepticism, and the worst thing is that it’s now harming kids as a result.

    • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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      8 months ago

      It’s coming back thanks to those vaccine mandates that were brought in.

      Nah, it’s because the US is full of whiny babies who don’t want to recognize other people’s authority and expertise over their whims, and rather have disease and mass murders than let other people say to them there is a better course of action.

        • richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one
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          8 months ago

          No, but the attitude where the opinion of ignoramuses should be sacrosanct and considered over the opinion of experts and authorities is mainly USian.

          Hell, USians invented the idiotic notion of “sovereign citizen”, which is predicated in the insane importance they assign to their own opinions and the notion that their beliefs override reality.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      There’s always one!

      I hate to break to to you, but public health policy does not and should not consider the opinion of lunatics. I legitimately cannot believe this isn’t obvious.

      • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The anti-vaxxers are lunatics, yes. But they always were and it doesn’t really matter what they think.

        But you think anyone who felt a slight concern about a brand new vaccine was a “lunatic”? These people needed reassurance, not “Do as you’re fucking told, idiot”. The fact people can’t see this baffles me.

        • SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          Problem is those people didn’t want to listen to doctors who had the nuanced view of “there might be issues with a vaccine which development we’ve had to accelerate, but the alternative of not taking it is demonstrably worse for everyone”, they only wanted to listen to the people who shared their position.

          • jkrtn@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            My healthcare professionals: “it is mRNA, it creates the spike protein and then is gone from your system in a matter of hours. Those proteins trigger an immune response that works as an inoculation.”

            Vs.

            Guys on the internet: “the mRNA is experimental gene therapy that will alter your DNA and make your ovaries or testes grow spikes like a chestnut. It crosses the blood/brain barrier and gives you Creutzfeldt–Jakob.”

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          I consider any person who thinks they know better than the medical professionals a lunatic, yes.

          • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Medical professionals also said that Thalidomide was safe for pregnant women to take, and it turns out it very much wasn’t.

            This is the kind of thing that leads to that concern about any new medication.

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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              8 months ago

              Never said professionals can’t be wrong.

              But they will be right a hell of a lot more than the average non-medically-schooled person. That is for sure.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            Problem here is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Your brush is simply too big.

            Yes when a vast majority of the medical community at many levels achieves hard-debated, critically vetted consensus, awesome, we can generally make that bet, and someone who graduated from “school of hard knocks” would be a lunatic to disagree because they wouldn’t have any grounds to do so.

            But unfortunately what’s also true and rational, is that medical professionals are highly fallible, and we have a problem of credentialism where we’re inclined to trust anybody in a labcoat with a medical degree.

            Turning everybody into zombies? No. (Although I love Resident Evil lmao), but I wouldn’t blame someone who’s gut reaction was “Wait, are we being used for free product testing?” Because the privatized medical community is rife with profiteering skullduggery and villainy, if not simply dangerous incompetence.

            Yes, trust research and doctors, but also don’t do so blindly.

            https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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              8 months ago

              Yes, medical professionals are highly fallible.

              But the average non-medically-schooled individual will be even more. So you should listen even less to them.

        • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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          8 months ago

          I feel you. The psychological aspect of crisis management was a complete disaster because it was made yet another political battleground and news panic sensation. The lack of nuance in this discussion even today is proof of that.

          It was so mishandled and used for politics that they were desperate and heavy-handed because it was already allowed to go wildly out of control.

          I understand vaccines have worked for many years and are a wonder of medical science. I’m all caught up. I also know all the conspiracies about microchips and “5G receptors” and other ludicrous claims are obviously bunk.

          But even I had to pause for a second when, in the middle of a tornado of bullshit from every direction, they’re like “You better get this pharma-corporation-product injected soon as possible or else.”

          Like, it just automatically triggers that “You can’t make me” response in everybody. I got over that, but in a country that has such abysmal education already, and a ton of people who fill that education gap with Facebook? Holy crap. Misinformation was a viral pandemic as well.

          I can pity and empathize with people, not the crazy ones pushing stupid insane agendas, but the ones who were simply confused and panicked, especially with how often we’re burned by megacorpos on the daily.

          To people who don’t understand the details, it had a feeling of beta testing. “Uh, we rushed this through. Just take it, we’ll worry about potential side effects later!”

          Such a mess.

          • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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            8 months ago

            Like, it just automatically triggers that “You can’t make me” response in everybody.

            Maybe it triggers that in people with like an oppositional-defiant personality disorder.

            If your response to someone telling you to do something is “I don’t want to because you told me” rather than assessing if the thing is a good idea, you’re an idiot. Get help. See a therapist.

            • Soggy@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              For real. When there’s a new illness spreading across the globe and the medical community says, “we have this new vaccine, everyone should take it but we only have enough for high-risk groups right now. Everyone else continue to quarantine” my reaction was not “well now I’m not doing any of that” it was “sweet, we’re almost through this.”

              • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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                8 months ago

                Hindsight is great when you can distill it down so simply as a clear, coherent message coming from a reliable single point of trust! Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy back then.

                I didn’t mind the staying home (although I was privileged enough to be paid to do so for at least the beginning, as everyone should have been.)

                I concluded that the logic behind some secret plot was hilariously full of holes…

                …BUT, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not consider the possibility that maybe a rushed corporate product was contracted and pushed through normal channels way faster than usual. Why? Because Capital was losing money, and the ownership class wanted to hurry and shove everyone back into offices as quickly as possible. (The same ownership class that paid us ‘essential workers’ in pithy piano-tracked commercials instead of money)

                We’re immensely fortunate the vaccines worked like they always have, but at the time it was a series of mixed messages and uncertainty and noise, and that was just from trustworthy sources! Not even counting all the ones masquerading as such and people with cabin-fever wanting to pick fights over the Internet and crazy family members.

                We agree the vaccine made sense and it was a useful tool that saved countless lives, and if we had a consistent trustworthy source of information much sooner like other countries had, instead of the crackpot reality show that is American news, many more could have been saved. So I don’t get all the down votes for simply saying “It was a scary time and there was lots to be concerned about.”

                Maybe realizing it’s impossible to be 100% right about everything scares people, idk.

          • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            All of this is absolutely right.

            The last 8 years or so in the political landscape has turned everything into “us vs them”. The election of Trump in the US, and the EU referendum here in the UK started it all off and it has just spread since.

            It’s sad, because everyone now sees someone with the opposite opinion as being the “enemy”.

          • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I don’t think it’s controversial to be against forced medication.

            At least it never used to be.

            • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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              8 months ago

              See this is exactly why people are calling you out. We’ve seen this exact same bullshit so many times where it’s just like “oh we are being reasonable and just asking questions and doing due diligence” but they you always end up with the loaded language of “forced vaccinations” and “product testing.”

              Yes, in the middle of a pandemic, where people were dropping dead and entire medical systems were on the verge of collapse, timelines might have been advanced a bit. Your incredibly privileged language manages to leave that part out somehow, and replaced these very justifiable motivations with unfounded malevolence. It’s frankly insulting to those traumatized by not only the pandemic, but these selfish and toxic attitudes.

              And the worst part? You were proven wrong. Again. None of your concerns were validated. The vaccines were a miracle which brought us out of an extremely dark time. There was no corporate malevolence, no serious side effects, just good science and better outcomes. But still, for some reason, you will cling to your utterly selfish positions and bullshit concern trolling, and that’s why everyone is pissed off at you. Because you’ve clearly learned nothing, and will obviously force all of this same nonsense on us the next time there is a tragedy.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                The person you are talking to isn’t an anti-vaxxer though. They are pointing out that vaccine mandates are questionable at best in terms of ethics. The campaign to push vaccines was also fraught with issues that helped create more antivaxxers.

                • Soggy@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Questionable ethics? Not for collectivists. My personal freedoms do not trump the well-being of the rest of society, and it’s perfectly reasonable to have rules about health and hygiene to protect the whole.

                • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  We have had vaccine mandates for decades in order to do things like have kids attend school.

                • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m sure familiar with this type of concern troll. They are in the first stage of their descent. Possibly the second stage, based on the loaded language they are using.

                  I have personally lost several family members to this exact “reasoning” so I know precisely what it looks like a few months later.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                    8 months ago

                    Concern troll? Are you calling me or them a concern troll? I don’t think pointing out how badly run campaigns and regressive legislation lead to reduced vaccine uptake is concern trolling. Concern trolling would be pretending they were concerned for your mental or physical health as a way to make your opinion seem invalid.

              • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                My concerns? What were my concerns?

                I’m talking about trying to prevent diseases coming back due to increased vaccine scepticism that started with governmental COVID responses. I wasn’t sceptical of the vaccines and nowhere did I say I was.

                no serious side effects

                Not widespread, but none at all is patently untrue. There will always be serious side effects in rare cases in any medication.

    • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      No. It’s called people aren’t scientists and they are NOT qualified to make decisions regarding public health. Shut the fuck up and do what you are told. If you can’t find peace in knowing that someone is smarter in the field of biology and sociology, get a therapist and talk to them.

      • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Shut the fuck up and do what you are told. If you can’t find peace in knowing that someone is smarter in the field of biology and sociology, get a therapist and talk to them.

        People say this and seriously don’t see how this messaging might not be all that encouraging to people.

        I want more people to get vaccinated for diseases. This is not how to go about it, as society is now demonstrating.

        • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Hey, if people don’t want to get their kids vaccinated, that should absolutely be their decision. It’s a shitty decision, but I do believe that parents should have the authority to decline.

          That being said, if they choose not to vaccinate, their children should absolutely be banned from any public school or community rec league sports, or anyone else publicly funded.

          And the private institutions that focus on children (day cares, private schools, etc.) should have a requirement in their license agreement where all children they serve must be vaccinated as well or else they lose their licensing.

          Basically going non-vax should be handled in a way similar to how they should handle these idiot sovereign citizens: sure, you don’t have to have your vehicle registered or interacted or even plated…but if you choose not to do that, you better keep it on your own property. The minute you turn onto a public road we’re gonna throw the book at you.

          • Jackthelad@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            I get what you’re saying, but what you’ve described isn’t really giving people a choice. Even if that choice they’re making in not vaccinating their kids is a bad one.

            • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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              8 months ago

              If you want to participate in society, follow the social contract. If you don’t want to follow the social contract, you don’t get to participate as fully in society. This applies as much to actively violating the social contract via theft and violence as it does in negligence. You have no right to risk my kids’ health for the sake of your beliefs.

            • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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              8 months ago

              Well, those unvaccinated germfactories don’t give the people with actual allergic reactions to the vaccine a choice if they come near, so there is that.

            • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Wrong.

              It’s absolutely a choice. It’s just a choice with consequences.

              Anti-vaxxers always seem to want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to enjoy the benefits of herd immunity and participation in society without doing the things that society agrees upon to keep everyone safe and healthy.

              Decisions have consequences, and those who would make decisions that put others at risk should be the ones to bear the burden of the consequences of their decisions.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                8 months ago

                How is it a choice when you can get fired for not having a vaccine? You live in a society that requires people to be employed in order to survive. If you need a vaccine to be employed, then it is not a real a choice at all.

                • hydrospanner@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Turn that on its head: how is it fair to every other employee who does get vaccinated, that you’re putting them all at risk with your selfish and uninformed opinion?

                  It’s still your choice, that’s a possible consequence.

                  If it really means that much to you, I guess it’d be in your best interests to find an employer that is willing to accommodate that.

                  The people around you shouldn’t be forced to deal with the consequences of your decisions.

                  Again, this is just wanting the best of both worlds and feeling entitled to get one’s way.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                    8 months ago

                    Wanting to survive and not end up homeless isn’t about wanting “the best of both worlds”.

                    I am triple Vaccinated. Stop talking as if I am an antivaxxer just for suggesting people’s livelihoods should be dependent on a medical procedure.

                • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
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                  8 months ago

                  You could choose to get vaccinated and be able to work there. If you choose to not get vaccinated, having limited employment (etc.) options is a consequence. You can choose to put yourself at risk, but your choice does not grant you the right to put others at risk.

                  • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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                    8 months ago

                    Yes because becoming homeless is totally a valid choice. Jesus christ, I bet you are even one of the haters of capitalism elsewhere, but can’t accept basic economic consequences here.

        • GladiusB@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I’m not trying to encourage anyone. There are rules to society and people are having full on temper tantrums rather than accepting the rules. I’m just sick of fighting over things they are not qualified to assess. It is insulting to everyone that goes to school for a decade to save their life, do the research, come up with a solution and then “dO yOu KnOw WhAt’S rEaLlY iN iT?!”

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      Measles cases were on a steady rise before COVID. They just got a bump from the anti-vax crowd being given further ammunition, coupled with one group deciding public health during a pandemic should be made into a political football. In fact, the year with the highest number of cases in recent times was 2019, the year before COVID was on most people’s radar. It also saw a major drop the next year, likely due to all the physical distancing.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      8 months ago

      Idiots will have stupid responses to anything.

      “You must get vaccinated to control the spread of this dangerous disease” -> “how dare you tell me what to do. I won’t do it”

      "This vaccine is optional, but please get it to control the spread of this dangerous disease " -> “well if it’s optional I won’t get it. Sounds risky.”

      That’s not even touching the like “the UN logo shows Antarctica at the center therefore the worst is flat” level insanity.

    • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I AGREE! Even though before Covid we also couldn’t participate in things like travel or schooling or sometimes even workout with the Right Vaccine!