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Comment by kresten | Hacker News Reader

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> I have pretty much zero sympathy for adult antivaxxers who get infected.

Why? Some of them will have been lied to by people who have considerable amounts of money to spend on disinformation, and we (who support vaccination) have done a poor job of explaining that vaccination is safe and effective.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/13/majority-...

https://khn.org/morning-breakout/important-donor-to-anti-vax...

We know that many people struggle to understand health information. In England we see:

https://beta.nhs.uk/service-manual/content/health-literacy

> More than 4 in 10 adults struggle with health content for the public and more than 6 in 10 adults struggle with health content that includes numbers and statistics.

Attacking people with anti-vaccination views does not work to change their minds.

Adults are responsible.

I’m not trying to change their minds.

Most adults are just grown up children and should be treated with compassion even when they make idiotic decisions.

That would be a reasonable outlook but antivaxxers spread cult like anti scientific beliefs that endanger the lives of many people beyind the individual antivaxxers.

This cult like behaviors isn’t deserving of ordinary empathy it needs to be seen for what it is and stopped. Fortunate many countries are doing this.

Absolutely it needs to be stopped - all I'm saying is that those unfortunate bumpkins who have fallen for it don't deserve to die (or have "evolution take its course") simply because they are naive and gullible.

Not everyone is smart, some are easily manipulated or prone to irrational anxieties. They are still deserving of life and happiness.

why would you have no sympathy for children who can't (as in, both aren't allowed to and aren't intellectually equipped to) make that decision themselves is beyond me.

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