Comments
Rambler OP wrote
Same here. It's not that I'm anti-vax, it's just that I have no reason to get the vaccine since it:
- Is not required
- Does not make me immune from getting COVID or passing COVID to others.
- Still too new.
I may get it in a few years if it's still a thing and people aren't giving birth to three arm babies and stuff. If my life becomes inconvenienced by not having it, I'll work around it as best I can.
burnerben wrote
I'll get it if i can, ive read the white papers and looked at how these were made, i trust the science. im young and healthy and it helps contribute to herd immunity. if your not gonna take it thats your choice but i think theres not actual bad risk unless your getting some foreign chinese bullshit.
BlackWinnerYoshi wrote
I haven't got my COVID vaccination, and I'm not planning to (provided the ruling vermin won't force me...). The side effects are just too serious (tilde.club clear net mirror, Tor v3 mirror, Tor v2 mirror, Freenet mirror, I2P mirror):
BNT162b1— another mRNA-based vaccine candidate — resulted in considerable adverse events,4 including fever, which occurred in 50% of individuals who received the highest dose (100 micrograms), fatigue, headache and chills.
Especially after additional injections:
Side effects were even more common following the booster dose, after which more than 70% of participants experienced a fever at the mid-range (30 microgram) dose.
Maybe I should write a script that can automatically fill in those mirrors... Anyway, since COVID is harmless to children (clear net only), and, by the way, I'll be 15 in six days, I probably shouldn't take the vaccine anyway, since it's pointless.
And I'm not really an anti-vaxxer, it's just that this vaccine might be harmful. I mean, looking at the actual reasons, it looks like the vaccine will modify your programming:
Here’s how an RNA vaccine works: rather than injecting a pathogen’s antigen into your body, you instead give the body the genetic code needed to produce that antigen itself
So that's not really a good thing.
dontvisitmyintentions wrote
No, no, and because I can.
zab_ wrote
I've been offered it twice already and I'm not getting it. Reason is very simple - they're selling it too hard, so something must be wrong.
If I were a religious nutcase I would compare the vaccine to the mark of the beast. I've made a bet with friends that in five years one won't be able to make any financial transactions AND will have their property seized by the government unless they're vaccinated.
Wahaha wrote
From what I hear there's actually a death rate associated with the vaccine, so I think I rather take my chances with the holocough itself, which I might not even get.
Imperator wrote
Same. It is rather interesting to read how many people on the internet consider themselves to be experts on virology and pharmacy and believe that they are more knowledgeable on matters of science than the experts in the global academic community. There's been a metric fuckton of peer-reviewed research, both theoretical and practical on the various vaccines and the vast majority consider them to be safe. Only incident I've heard of recently was a small minority of people getting trombosis from the AstraZenic vaccine, but that's already being disputed.
Imperator wrote
This information was included in a briefing document published by the FDA ahead of Thursday’s meeting. As in Pfizer’s trial data, which showed that six people had died but that none of those deaths were related to the vaccine, the Moderna data also included some deaths. Thirteen people in Moderna’s 30,000-person trial died as of December 3. Seven of those people were in the placebo group and didn’t receive the vaccine, and six were in the group of people who got the vaccine. None of the deaths were deemed related to the vaccine treatment.
It’s worth noting, for context, that the deaths of over 307,000 Americans have been attributed, definitively, to Covid-19.
Imperator wrote
"They're selling it too hard, so something must be wrong."
Man, I really wonder what kind of reason they could possibly have for wanting people to get vaccinated. It's not like 2.7 million people have died because of covid-19.
zab_ wrote
So just say and leave it like that. Why enlist celebrities, heads of state, who-knows-who-else to promote the vaccine? Why is the Labour party in the UK proposing to pass laws that censor news critical of vaccines? Something smells fishy to me.
Imperator wrote (edited )
Not from the UK so can't comment on that.
Call me naive but where I come from the authorities traditionally have the interest of the public at heart. Sure, I might not like all of their methods: the lockdown sucks, mismanagement happens and wrong decisions are made from time to time. But if you, like me, share the opinion that a vaccine really is the only way out of this mess (because natural herd immunity isn't really taking off), then of course you want to encourage people to get one by using social media and influencers. It's a good strategic move. I absolutely don't think that critical news should be censored, on the contrary that's imperative for a healthy discussion. On the flip side, much of that "critical news" is unscientific populist fearmongering that does not contribute at all to an end to the situation. I certainly understand that it can be frustrating (for politicians and authorities) to see this impair genuine effort to fight the virus.
zab_ wrote
I believe that authorities genuinely have the best interest of the public in mind. I also believe they tend to be incompetent idiots.
I don't buy any of the conspiracy theories floating around either. I do buy that it's physically impossible to foresee any side effects that may appear 5 years after vaccination for a vaccine that has been in development for 9 months or so.
So, everyone, please go ahead and beta-test this thing for me. I'll join you in a couple of years.
Imperator wrote
I completely agree with you that it remains to be seen what, if any, long term effects the vaccines will have. I certainly understand your reservation in this regard. So that's a fair argument.
I trust the judgement of the various medical agencies when they say that the benefits outweigh the risks, I'll send you a message when I grow an additional toe :)
burnerben wrote
I just refuse to take anything from china. But people have good reason to not want to take it, politicians just want to create narratives and now days its hard to know who you can trust.
Wahaha wrote
Unfortunately, these sources cannot be trusted.
Imperator wrote
On what basis can these sources not be trusted?
Wahaha wrote
It's some nobody writing words on the Internet. How would you be able to trust that? Media have been caught lying too often. The only way to trust this would be the ability to verify all the claims. For example by having a list of all the names of the 307.000 Americans that have died supposedly from Covid-19 with time stamps of their deaths, location etc. and then personally investigating every single one of them.
Obviously this is impossible. It's truly unfortunate that we live in a world were nothing can be trusted that isn't personally verifiable.
Imperator wrote
I applaud your skepticism, the internet is frequently full of shit after all. I agree to an extent that most stuff on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt, but some trust in our democratic governments and census bureaus is warranted, I think. Society requires some trust in order to function. The CDC estimates the amount of U.S. deaths at 532,355. I'm sure that there's some degree of error in these statistics, but it should certainly be accurate enough to give an indication to what the order of magnitude of deaths is.
It's the same matter regarding the claims of election fraud in the U.S. The vast majority of people in various branches of the U.S. federal and state governments, legislature and independent observers have come to the same conclusion that there is no evidence of large-scale fraud. The problem with conspiracy theories in most cases is the staggering amount of people who would have to be "in" on the conspiracy. And most importantly: everyone would have to keep their mouth shut. A blanket statement such as "the mainstream media lies and cannot be trusted" implies that over dozens of independent rivaling news organisations somehow collaborate to keep information hidden - all while all people in said organisations keep silent without any dissent whatsoever.
In this specific instance, however, the primary source that the article's author mentions is this 8-hour livestream from the FDA which is summarized in this FDA report. In this document, the various known and potential risks of the Modena vaccine are assessed critically. Paragraph 8.3 and 8.4 describe these in particular.
Wahaha wrote
I don't think any trust in the so called democratic government is warranted. A government that poisons it's citizens with LSD and pretends a magic bullet that curved in the air killed Kennedy cannot be trusted. Not even a little bit. And those are just on the top of my head on what everyone can agree is bullshit. Duck and cover, amirite?
Nobody needs to keep their mouth shut. As long as enough people accept bogus primary sources, like the ones retelling them through their own media outlet, it's going to be enough.
With lies it is like with projects. The bigger and grander, the easier it is to get people going along. If you want funds for a nuclear plant, nobody bothers checking everything. Try to build a bike shed and things are different.
Wikipedia has a whole long ass article about things people got wrong just because nobody bothered checking and verifying primary sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
"The government isn't spying on us, they have better things to do" and "over dozens of independent rivaling news organisations somehow collaborate to keep information hidden - all while all people in said organisations keep silent without any dissent whatsoever." Then Snowden came along.
There's precedent for the thing you try to frame as ridiculous happening in the past ten years. And after seeing how Snowden ended up, others will think twice about following his example.
Wahaha wrote
Because an appeal to authority isn't an argument and scientists have a whole replication crisis going on, so they lost lots and lots of credibility over the past decades.
Now, if you trust your government and what the high priests tell you about sacrificing virgins to appease the thunder god, that's fine, but not everyone can be naive and trusting like that.
Especially not with how weird this whole situation has been handled over the past year.
Wahaha wrote
Maybe you should check whether that trust is warranted..
https://ramble.pw/f/funny/2583/i-m-a-scientist-you-can-trust-me
Elbmar wrote (edited )
I'm suspicious of the vaccines and will probably wait and watch for at least a year and may not get it at all. I explained why in an effort-post on a different thread
Clearnet: https://ramble.pw/f/conspiracy/2792/-/comment/3666
Onion link: http://rambleeeqrhty6s5jgefdfdtc6tfgg4jj6svr4jpgk4wjtg3qshwbaad.onion/f/conspiracy/2792/-/comment/3666
If I had to choose a vaccine, maybe I would choose Sputnik V. It's not mRNA based and it has been out longer than the AstraZeneca vaccines. Sputnik will probably not be available here in the US and maybe for good reason, but if I lived in country that was importing it AND that country was friendly with Russia, I would consider it more trustworthy than the others.
Imperator wrote
Many of the examples that are in that meme stem from a time when regulation was minimal and the scientific community relatively small. To get a new product approved in the EU nowadays, a company has to navigate a labyrinth of red tape before it hits the market.
Imperator wrote
I concur that the U.S. government has pulled some shady shit the last century and has a poor track record. So I certainly understand your skepticism regarding your government. I'm from Europe (in the case you hadn't figured that out) and I really feel that the average European citizen has a different relation to the average European government than the average U.S. citizen has to the U.S. government, if that makes sense. Generally speaking, social democracy, liberalism and christian centrism are the prevailing ideologies here and this is reflected in our government policies. Most European countries have a reasonable welfare state and collective labor's rights. To many of us, this government is not a big baddie that must be kept to a minimum, but instead ought to occasionally intervene to protect the weaker in society. European response to the coronacrisis has been largely economically Keynesian. So yeah, different relationship dynamic. Our media landscape is generally diverse and broad with relatively little polarisation. Some media outlets have a slight bias in columnists and opinions but overall I cannot think of a concrete example where two news agencies report stuff in seriously different ways, unlike the CNN/Fox situation. Perhaps that makes us a bit naive and trusting but it does appear to work well for us thus far.
And about Snowden: if I recall correctly his revelations were mostly about the intelligence agencies overstepping their legal authority and getting cooperation from the upper echelons of the tech giants. I don't think that is wholly applicable in this discussion about the reliability of government in general. But I could be wrong here.
Imperator wrote
Oh man, I'm a bit ashamed of myself that throughout our entire discussion I hadn't once thought of the replication crisis in contemporary science. I had a course that covered that last semester quite thoroughly, including p-value-hacking to get statistically significant results. Well, so much for my university education.
Thank you for reminding me of it, you are absolutely correct that many research findings nowadays cannot be replicated when reproduced! If anything, it makes the need for a truly independently funded scientific agency more imperative. The publish-or-perish mentality nowadays is absolutely destructive for scientific integrity and makes researchers susceptible to publishing inherently biased findings.
Anyway, regarding your claim that I make an appeal to authority: although I agree with you in principle that:
Claim B is true, because Authority A says so
is a logical fallacy, some subjects (including medical science and pharmacy) are expert topics that require multiple years of dedicated study to get a good grasp of. It is idiotic to think that any layman can make the same informed judgements that a researcher can. The best we have is peers of said researcher checking the validity of their methods before and after publication. Hence peer-review (but as you pointed out, replication crisis throws that in the dirt)
Plato himself pointed that out when he asked someone if they'd rather vote on how a ship is steered or let the helmsman handle it.
Closely related is the argument from ignorance: because you don't understand how something works, doesn't mean that it is false. Or in this case, because a layman (including myself, I'm in the field of AI and CS, not biology) doesn't completely understand how mRNA vaccines work, doesn't mean that they're therefore dangerous.
Wahaha wrote
The way I see it Socrates was right. I know that I know nothing.
Wahaha wrote
I don't know every European country good enough, but for Germany: "Nobody plans to erect a wall!" and for Great Britain: September Dossier
No government has the best of their citizens in mind, that's just how it is. European countries have more social features because they are rather homogeneous. Handing out some benefits to people you have a positive attitude for is easier than handing out benefits to your arch nemesis. The major reason the USA isn't like that is because people from the US hate each other. And the reason for that is that the USA is a melting pot of many different people. The more you increase that type of diversity the worse things will get.
It's also why people in the US can feel the need to arm themselves. I was on vacation in Norway once and saw a car in the middle of nowhere. Open door, key in the ignition. It was a non-issue. People were just all nice to each other. Do that in the US and that car will be gone fast. Americans actually have a valid reason to arm themselves for defense. Not necessarily everywhere in the US, but in enough places. People hate each other. There are gangs in the streets fighting to death. That's just the kind of place you get when mixing people together that actually hate each other.
Wahaha wrote (edited )
Nobody has to check plastics, though. Bisphenol A can still be sold without repercussions. There's also this whole thing about cell phone towers they place on school roofs maybe causing health issues and scientists assuring everyone that 5G is safe. Like they did 100 years ago that tobacco was safe.
It's just so incredibly hard to trust what scientists say.
takeheart wrote
looks like the vaccine will modify your programming
No, what are you, a fucking robot? It will simply murder you in a horrible way https://imgur.com/a/SnNqBGu
Wahaha wrote (edited )
Nope, too many side effects.