Let's play devil's advocate: How do you defend anti-vaxxer?

[Guest]

5 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Wait, these are actual conflicting statements. You don't win people over by breaking your own argument. XD

Perfectly safe =/= some symptoms. It's like saying "seatbelts are perfectly safe". The critical thinker may say "oh, but can crack ribs". Some people get exemption from seat belts, because of other injuries/disabilities. Due to the risk of the belt being greater than the accident.

 

But that's a different argument, as it involves self more so than a contagious disease. The real problem is we live in a world wear neither ability to accept (practically or emotionally) others as making different decisions (say choosing quarantine or natural immune system over vaccine) or the ability (again, with practical or emotional reach to others) to educate those who are making a factually/logically inconsistent choice.

There’s a difference between getting a few symptoms and a vaccine being safe. Being safe in this context means you will not be affected in a life-threatening way, or any degree close to the pathogen being immunized by. 

 

Synptoms are are usually just flu-like and can easily be felt with by a little bit of ibuprofen or just toughen up. Nothing to be concerned about.

 

Some anti-Vaccines poo-poo the idea that Vaccines cause autism, which is not correct at all.

[TechyBen]

13 hours ago, floofer said:

 Being safe in this context means you will not be affected in a life-threatening way

Yes. This is what needs to be discussed. Same with seatbelts. Telling people "it's perfectly safe" does not win them over. Or teach them anything.

 

Quote

usually 

Again. You need to be honest with people, or they notice you are not being honest, and pull back (double down on the antivaxer mentality).

 

"It's perfectly safe, but few symptoms, not life threatening, usually"... and you've lost them. Much better to "It has side effect, these are not life threatening, but a few days of flu symptoms, it has risks as all medical procedures do, but we carefully go through the process, and can tall you about it".

 

I also respect peoples ability to decline treatment/types of treatment. But understand that education can help them make he best decision for themselves.

[captain_to_fire]

19 hours ago, Finwillwin said:

Hand them a bottle of Alex Jones pills (bottle of bleach), and tell them that will fix their measles.

I didn’t knew that his supplement “Super Male Vitality” and protein shakes with pulverized chicken carcass can cure measles.  

[Guest]

Anti-biotics

[THraShArD]

On 3/9/2019 at 8:55 AM, Dash Lambda said:

There is a good argument. Let's take the perspective of a random parent considering whether or not to vaccinate their child:

• I don't know what the vaccine actually does.
• I heard it has mercury in it.
• There are other parents claiming it harmed their children.
• Nobody gets these diseases anymore, this shouldn't be necessary.
• I don't know if my child is allergic.
• I don't want to make a choice that harms my child.

Being weary of something you don't understand, especially in medicine, is absolutely reasonable. There is nothing wrong with saying "I don't want to get vaccinated until I understand the risks," because that means they're trying to make informed decisions. The way to help them is to provide information.

 

The problem arises when people start believing chain emails and talk-show hosts more than doctors and other trained professionals. I don't know how to help those people.

 

Nobody knows what the hell is in that crap.  You really trust these companies ?   No government should be trusted too.  They are all hiding the truth about human history and origin.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Yes. This is what needs to be discussed. Same with seatbelts. Telling people "it's perfectly safe" does not win them over. Or teach them anything.

 

Again. You need to be honest with people, or they notice you are not being honest, and pull back (double down on the antivaxer mentality).

 

"It's perfectly safe, but few symptoms, not life threatening, usually"... and you've lost them. Much better to "It has side effect, these are not life threatening, but a few days of flu symptoms, it has risks as all medical procedures do, but we carefully go through the process, and can tall you about it".

 

I also respect peoples ability to decline treatment/types of treatment. But understand that education can help them make he best decision for themselves.

To be honest I don’t really care if I lose them, if they are against Vaccines they are probably not going to be convinced by anyone anyway. All nutjobs. 

 

You’ve also twisted my words there. The symptoms are never life threatening but simply flu-like symptoms. It’s just your bodies natural response to any pathogen. 

 

Seatbelts are also another story. It’s the law to wear them. 

[Dash Lambda]

1 hour ago, THraShArD said:

Nobody knows what the hell is in that crap.

I might be proving Poe's law here, but either way...

 

Lots of people know exactly what's in vaccines. A lot of work goes into developing, understanding, and improving them. It generally does require specialized expertise to fully understand though, which is why it's hard to convince people. What I know is that a vaccine contains a sample of inactivated (killed or rendered harmless) bacteria or virus along with a collection of stabilizers, fillers, and assisting medications. For the rest of it, I trust my doctor -Not some government or company.

[TechyBen]

33 minutes ago, floofer said:

To be honest I don’t really care if I lose them, if they are against Vaccines they are probably not going to be convinced by anyone anyway. All nutjobs. 

 

You’ve also twisted my words there. The symptoms are never life threatening but simply flu-like symptoms. It’s just your bodies natural response to any pathogen. 

 

Seatbelts are also another story. It’s the law to wear them. 

Hope you never have children then. XD They have strange ideas all day, you'd lose them at 3 years old.

 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Hope you never have children then. XD They have strange ideas all day, you'd lose them at 3 years old.

 

Imagination is important for children and promotes development. Can be rest assured they will have all the standard vaccinations. 

[TechyBen]

28 minutes ago, floofer said:

Imagination is important for children and promotes development. Can be rest assured they will have all the standard vaccinations. 

Yes. But people may have legitimate concerns. In Australia, someone was putting pins in strawberries, causing the risk of death from choking. In other countries, some medical professionals contaminate procedures to "rescue" or "mercy kill" the patients. So this causes irrational fear else where, when people are unable to check or confirm trust to avoid these other real problems.

 

Similar with flat earthers and anti vaccers. They have legitimate concerns, and sometimes legitimate choices. But need help expressing themselves. Or best left to discuss later, when they have come to a better understanding.

 

I've had friends who thought dinosaurs were fake. Later they understood it better. What they really saw back then, was that archaeologists made up a *lot* of stories with no real grounds to (literally, there it ranges from total fabrications, to guess work, to generally good deduction, to precise data). If I'd been nasty, I don't think they'd ever look into it properly. I just let them figure it out in their own time, and see which stories were made up (99% of Jurassic park is bending the truth on dinos, but people believe it) and which were correct (the actual physical fossils, and the limited data we have on them).

[Kawaii Koneko]

For anyone who seems to think it is worth rolling the dice and not vaccinating, just watch this. I bet this guy would slap any non-vaxxers in the face if he could.

 

It's a pretty heart breaking story. The Polio vaccine was discovered months after he fell ill.

 

On 3/9/2019 at 12:45 AM, Volbet said:

I guess at the root there is a libertarian argument to be made. Neither the government nor the medical experts can (or at least shouldn't) force anyone to do anything...

As a libertarian, I actually have a hard time supporting the right to not vaccinate. Being allowed to make your own decisions and not be forced by the government should stop at the threshold of causing harm to others without their consent. Not vaccinating your child puts others at risk and your own friggin' children. Even as a libertarian, I'm leaning more toward the side of vaccinations being mandatory. That said, I'm not completely to that point. It is something I wrestle with and have yet to reach a moral decision.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Yes. But people may have legitimate concerns.

Then they should talk to a doctor. It’s what they do.

4 hours ago, TechyBen said:

 

In Australia, someone was putting pins in strawberries, causing the risk of death from choking. In other countries, some medical professionals contaminate procedures to "rescue" or "mercy kill" the patients. So this causes irrational fear else where, when people are unable to check or confirm trust to avoid these other real problems.

Just cut up the strawberries and live in a first world country. 

4 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Similar with flat earthers and anti vaccers. They have legitimate concerns,

They don’t. The earth is quite clearly not flat and Vaccines are quite obviously beneficial. 

4 hours ago, TechyBen said:

and sometimes legitimate choices. But need help expressing themselves. Or best left to discuss later, when they have come to a better understanding.

Probably when they graduate high school.

4 hours ago, TechyBen said:

I've had friends who thought dinosaurs were fake. Later they understood it better. What they really saw back then, was that archaeologists made up a *lot* of stories with no real grounds to (literally, there it ranges from total fabrications, to guess work, to generally good deduction, to precise data). If I'd been nasty, I don't think they'd ever look into it properly. I just let them figure it out in their own time, and see which stories were made up (99% of Jurassic park is bending the truth on dinos, but people believe it) and which were correct (the actual physical fossils, and the limited data we have on them).

Quite frankly it’s simply not an issue with education or research, it is an issue with the persons attitude on the topic. You can’t argue with someone who’s made up their mind.

 

The best way forward is to have vaccinations available at schools, without parental consent. If you can’t solve the problem, go around it.

[Dash Lambda]

1 hour ago, floofer said:

The best way forward is to have vaccinations available at schools, without parental consent. If you can’t solve the problem, go around it.

That would cause an unrelenting storm. You do not make a medical decision the responsibility of the child to usurp the parent's authority, no matter what you're doing.

 

You may be right, but all the righteousness in the world can't clean up a dirty trick.

[BuckGup]

On 3/9/2019 at 7:22 AM, Drak3 said:

At the end of the day, the only people put at risk if someone makes the personal choice of not getting vaccinated, the only people they're putting at risk are themself and those that share in that personal decision.

 

If there ever becomes enough of them that herd immunity fails, that's the failing of those that actually know and study vaccination for not actually pushing the information to the masses (right now, they just let go and shrug their shouldiers).

 

And tyrannical/dictatorial government intervention in personal decisions is worse than a minority of people not keeping up with vaccines.

That's false. Vaccines don't work 100% but heard immunity makes that not an issue. Well now with that not being true you could die from something you were vaccinated for.

[mr moose]

On 3/10/2019 at 2:54 AM, veldora said:

A good one is "it's their children" but still, if they aren't vaccinated they shouldn't be in public schools causing sickness to others because of someone's ignorance. 

Many places don't acknowledge ownership of children.  Even in the US there are many instances where a child's safety (through mandatory vaccinations) legally trump parents "beliefs".

 

https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/parents-children-loss-custody-immunization/

 

 

From my personal experience I always play devils advocate, there is no better way to understand the argument and find true flaws than to try and prove yourself wrong.  I have yet to find any rational reason not to vaccinate outside of clearly understood (and actual) medical condition.   Just to put this in perspective:

 

Odds of dying in a plane crash are 1 in 5.3Million.  Odds of dying from a vaccine can't be calculated because  even though vaccine records are better kept than flying records, so few people have died the figure is so small it can't be presenting in any plausible way.      This means if there was any plausible link between vaccines and anything we'd have irrefutable evidence that was repeatable across most studies from any part of the world.   The only way to dispute the validity of that is to argue that every doctor and medical practitioner (along with the all the major journals and their peer review network) are paid off.  So as I said, not in any rational way.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Dash Lambda said:

That would cause an unrelenting storm. You do not make a medical decision the responsibility of the child to usurp the parent's authority, no matter what you're doing.

 

You may be right, but all the righteousness in the world can't clean up a dirty trick.

Someone has to take care of them if the parents are incompetent. The children should not suffer from bad parenting.

[Stefan Payne]

I don't support the Anti-vaxxers, but I see where they are coming from (hint: not entirely honest media).

 

What we really want/need is an education in fact finding and changing your point of view when you're wrong.

[Jtalk4456]

On 3/9/2019 at 9:10 AM, zassou said:

well this thread gone off rail quickly. i know they are stupid and refusing vaccination makes no sense.

pitchforking  doesnt help, i want to know what are their points.

 

i want to "get it", like i dont get how my luddite relatives think, that dark, bitter brew of twigs and leaves somehow can make their pains go away.

i want to know why do they think some fomulae written nearly a thousand years ago can somehow treat their modern illnesses.

i want to know why do anti-vaxxer think they are somehow better than the other 2/3 of europeans died to the black death, knowing that without modern medicine, a simple flu can be deadly, let alone modern mutated one.

 

you're trying to find logic in an illogical argument. This can only lead to bad things

[RejZoR]

I mean, when penicillin was invented, the amount of deaths from trivial things became almost a thing of the past. That one is after you're sick already and it was rather quickly proven to work for bacterial infections. Vaccines work as prevention, before you get sick. Also proven effective given that some trivial but lethal diseases basically vanished after we used them systematically. You literally didn't need a "peer reviewed" documentation, you just looked at a fellow kid, because he probably survived because of the vaccines.

 

And I always defend things with the following statement:

Even if vaccines aren't 100% effective, would you rather give your child 95% chance of being immune to a disease or give him only 5% to survive it (assuming it does and doesn't end up with life changing consequences or scars because of the disease). Helmets, seat belts, airbags, none of it is 100% effective. But dramatically improves chances of surviving. Vaccines are no different. Expecting anything to always be 100% is idiotic. There is far larger chance of child dying or having scars from a disease than becoming autistic. Given the odds, I'd go with vaccines. As simple as that.

[TechyBen]

8 hours ago, floofer said:

They don’t. The earth is quite clearly not flat and Vaccines are quite obviously beneficial. 

Point [your head] Whoosh!

 

They are worried about people in control lying and harming them. They are worried about systematic corruption or error. Help them in those areas see who *is* a con car mechanic, but that cars also are real, and good car mechanics exist.

[edit]

PS, things like Penicillin allergy exist (have a few friends/family with it). While this is not the case with Vaccines, helping people understand that is better than shouting at them.

 

If you can show that a local/national vaccine authority is trustworthy (no contaminated samples) and that the type of vaccine is safe, then that's the majority of the argument.

 

I can also see times when *no* vaccines is preferable. For example "we are vaccinating the 8 years olds against STDs" would get me *very* worried about the social structure of a school/country if it requires that for children! (with the exemption of STDs not related to sexual transmission only). Fix the route of the problem, don't let the harm happen then put a plaster on it!

 

So yeah, I can understand some people wanting to get into a reasonable discussion (setting timescales etc different from others), then getting internally broken when no one wants to hear them out.

[GoldenLag]

Vaccines were at one point cutting edge. But years of study were put in before it was put into action.

 

People had themselves cut wounds and then apply the germs to attempt to make themselves immune. Something that was common practise before vaccines. And that was vastly worse than a needle. 

 

Cathrine the great of Russia put this into action to help against diseases plaguing their country. 

 

While vaccines are newer, the practise of applying germs has been going on for centuaries. 

 

 

People are sceptic to new things, but lots of studies are put into anything that hits the medical market. Studies that delay them from being used, but enshure they are safe before use.

[TechyBen]

PS. People are allowed to drive a motorcycle into a wall, and end up in an iron lung. They are allowed to drive a motorcycle and put other people at risk of harm.

 

I'm all for the "we should force people to do X or Y", but I am for consistency and fairness. If we want to go down the route of "force vaccines on people because they are obviously wrong" route, then we need to think really hard on what we are suggesting, and the harm that can itself cause.

 

If we force medical treatment, why are we not also forcing every other decision?

[Radioactive Snowman]

We wont have a population issue for long because all of the anti vaxxers will be killed by the common cold

[Dash Lambda]

10 hours ago, floofer said:

Someone has to take care of them if the parents are incompetent. The children should not suffer from bad parenting.

If you want to circumvent the parents' authority, you remove the parents. You don't play passive-aggressive games behind their backs. That's what CPS is for.

 

And personally, I think taking their children away is a bit extreme. They're putting their children (and others' children) in unnecessary risk, yes, but they're neither malicious nor showing the same sort of negligence as parents who let their kids starve to death or die of heat stroke in a car.

 

I don't know how we should deal with them, but I believe there are certain things you absolutely should not do.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

If you want to circumvent the parents' authority, you remove the parents. You don't play passive-aggressive games behind their backs. That's what CPS is for.

 

And personally, I think taking their children away is a bit extreme. They're putting their children (and others' children) in unnecessary risk, yes, but they're neither malicious nor showing the same sort of negligence as parents who let their kids starve to death or die of heat stroke in a car.

 

I don't know how we should deal with them, but I believe there are certain things you absolutely should not do.

It’s not taking away, it’s simply not having parental consent, in the otherwise standard practice of school vaccinations.