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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>I sleep in a tent in the wilderness and I have minimal contact with people. I am not harming anyone and no one is catching my germs. (I also have not had the flu in many years.)

You're an outlier. You, in your tent out in the woods are not the problem. Thousands or tens of thousands of people sending their non-vaccinated children to schools and living in the same cities as everyone else weakening herd immunity is the problem.

It's not an issue of bodily autonomy versus freedom, it's an issue of bodily autonomy versus the likelihood of mass death.

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So I think vaccines are pretty useful, but against the flu? Seems like an overkill to me. I don't sleep in a tent in the wilderness, I live a medium sized city in Europe and I'd wager there's more people who don't get any sort of seasonal shots than people who do. Everything works just fine.

We have a lot of mystery diseases currently that are occurring in large numbers. Autism is just one widespread issue of the modern world. Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines.

Given that we don't really know what is causing them, pro vaxxers are not really in a position to argue that vaccines are not part of the problem. But, they do it anyway and are at least as closed minded as they accuse anti vaxxers of being.

>Anti vaxxers believe at least some of these problems are being caused by the widespread use of vaccines.

Great, but people believe a lot of things, so show me some evidence. Believing some vaccines to be harmful is, at least, a defensible (and scientifically testable) position. But that's not the same as believing vaccination as a whole should be avoided. Vaccines do work, and herd immunity is a thing. Even if we didn't truly understand the long-term ramifications of vaccines, we do already understand what happens in their absence.

Pro-vaxxers aren't being closed minded, we just don't want our children to have to worry about whooping cough and polio.

Your argument could use some work. You are basically saying that since we don't know everything, we should just behave as if we knew nothing.

No, that isn't what I am saying at all.

People here are talking to me as if I am an antivaxxer when I have said I am not. Pro vaxxers are just as blind, unthinking and extremist as anti vaxxers.

Both sides disregard valid points on the other side. This is the crux of the problem.

Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it. The world is not going to solve this conflict as long as it frames it in extremist either/or terms. The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

>Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.

Appeal to authority. Also, Einstein wasn't an epidemiologist.

>The efforts to ramp up the pressure on anti vaxxers to conform merely deepens the conflict. It does not help the matter.

This is a serious claim, do you have any evidence to support it? I'd expect countries with culture that emphasizes the collective over the individual to have much lower rates of anti vaxxers, as compared e.g. to the US.

Most of anti vaxxer material I see here in Europe is poorly translated and almost universally originally intended for the anglophone market. The 'higher end products' are written by locals, but still heavily leaning on anglophone sources.

It is not an appeal to authority. It is citing my source.

I don't know what your beef is with me. As far as I can tell, both my comments make the same point: That pro vaxxers are just as extremist and close minded as anti vaxxers.

There are lots of people who have bad reactions to vaccines, who take some vaccines but not others, etc. who are not ideologues on the subject. The medical community has processes for dealing with the reality that some people react badly to vaccines and judgement calls need to be made. Pro vaxxers act like this is not a reality. Both camps are very all or nothing.

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

An appeal to authority is a type of fallacious argument; in attributing the quote to Einstein, your subtext is that his endorsement is your argument. But, of course, context-free quotes from Einstein aren't sufficient evidence of anything.

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