RFK Jr tells US families to vaccinate children against measles amid outbreak
17 days ago by green_goglin to c/nottheonion
As a parent myself it's quite the dilemma :
- Will I risk to inflict minor side effets such as fever for a few days AND imaginary side effects like autism to my children ?
- Or should I put my kids in danger of dying or suffer brain dammage because I obviously know better than decades of research and use of the vaccine with my two degrees in french and english litterature.
Fuck life is hard
As a parent, the bit dilema i face is different diagnostics by different doctors, or different treatments for the same one.
The dilemma I don't have is about vaccinations. They all agree vaccination is the right thing to do following the official schedule.
I'm among the most thoroughly vaccinated people around, after living in both SE Asia and South America. I'm also relatively well versed in statistics and am well aware that if your goal is to optimise for a good and healthy life, getting vaccinated is a no-brainier.
Finally, I think that if we want to convince people that are sceptical of vaccines to get them, or give them to their children, we should start by
- Acknowledging that plenty of common vaccines have extremely rare, but nonetheless potentially severe side effects.
- There is an actual ethical/philosophical dilemma that has been discussed for thousands of years regarding the morality of harm caused be action vs. inaction.
The dilemma that has shown up in countless philosophical debates throughout history is basically the trolley problem: "If you press this button, there's a 1/1000 chance that someone (e.g. your child) dies. If you don't, there's a 1/100 chance that they die." To me personally, the choice is easy (I press the button), but I recognise that people see this as a dilemma. There's plenty of research on how we humans tend to prefer inaction over actions that could cause damage, even when that choice is statistically unreasonable.
Based on this, I think the most productive way to engage with people that are sceptical of vaccines due to this very human mode of decision failure, is to engage with the philosophical question above, and trying to convince them that inaction (not taking the vaccine) is, in fact, also a choice that they are responsible for. I think brushing the dilemma off as trivial is a bit reductionist, considering that the trolley problem is one that has been so widely discussed through the ages (even though I personally think it's an easy choice).
Of course, if people are just blatantly ignoring or refuting established scientific results, there's not much you can do...
The numbers you're using are nowhere even close. You need to severely increase the ratio by 2 or 3 orders or magnitude.
Mortality rate for some diseases is close to 1 in 3 (measles in infants with co-morbodities) to 1 in 100. With vaccines, we have changed that to 1 in 10k or better (with co-morbodities).
For the live virus polio vaccine, 3 out of a million kids would get polio DUE to the vaccine itself. That is peanuts compared to 50k kids (per million) who get polio despite the vaccine. That's also peanuts when we see that reported polio cases fell from 350k around 1990 to 30 around 2010 despite a huge increase in population.
Of course, if people are just blatantly ignoring or refuting established scientific results, there’s not much you can do…
Well... there you are, unfortunately. That will happen pretty much literally every time, no matter what you do, because it was never about the science. It will never be about the science, because we already know they're completely wrong about everything and therefore they need to make science irrelevant.
Conspiracy theories sell people the idea that they're seeing through "the bullshit" (sum total of human expertise, generally) which is a powerful feeling, that the dull world of undeniable facts and logic can't quite measure up to. Too easy to deny them anyway, you see. The package tends to come with a bunch of rationalizations for why, the instant you seem like you're not buying it, they no longer have to listen to anything you say.
Acknowledging that plenty of common vaccines have extremely rare, but nonetheless potentially severe side effects.
Unfortunately, if you don't also want to acknowledge the ones that are blatant lies, you are instantly The Enemy. Given stuff like belief perseverance and the backlash effect it's understandable to want to try, though.
Being "supportive" when arguing against known bullshit is not my forte, so I wouldn't be the one to get good results out of the supposed strat of... agreeing them out of their position(?), but I am damn curious about what it'd look like.
To me personally, the choice is easy (I press the button), but I recognise that people see this as a dilemma.
A false one, to belabor the point, but it's not relevant anyway. The reality is that if you get within light years of the concrete thought experiment, they'll be real suspicious. If any part of it is remotely realistic, you'll lose them instantly: "do you want a thousand times higher risk of death, and also help spread a potentially lethal and disfiguring infection?" cannot be made to sound all that reasonable.
By all means, please list the supposed side effects. Are the side effects in the room with you right now?
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@lemmy.world
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
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Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
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which is it, vaccinate or not to vacicnate. anti-vaxxers are unlikely to vacciante.
save