12 People are behind most of the anti-vaxxer disinformation on social media | Hacker News Reader

12 People are behind most of the anti-vaxxer disinformation on social media

mashable.com

22 pointsdoener8 comments

"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

Brandolini's Law[1] aka the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle really has a new dimension to it given how cheaply & effectively bullshitters can broadcast out their shit. It's no longer just about production of bs that's easy, it's the ease of publication of that bs too, ease of blasting it out on countless fronts.

That said, I think the remedy is more sunlight, more speech. Not strong systems of trust, not regressing, not locking down things. I'd like to see loose, decentralized means of building reputations, build views of the world where each of us grow a circle (or n-dimensional hyper-object whatever) of trust & distrust. Tim Wu, coiner of the term Net Neutrality & generally someone who I find myself aligned well with, got interestingly written up for by Matt Taibbi for some rather pointed statements about information control, about scaling back speech freedoms, and reshaping of media systems. It was a little distressing to read for me, from someone I have trusted, and told a story of mixed-together the challenges are of trying to combat radical destabilization while also deal with the now-well-established tech monopoloies. I don't (yet) think sacrifices of speech are necessary; our social & media systems can be made more resilient, more able to highlight who/what is presenting information, voluntarily, for better, to remedy many of the ills that these cost-free disinformation super-spreaders bring about. But I'm not sure that we can leave it to each platform to do it; I keep having this suspicion that a real social defense requires new social layers to organically emerge. Which is a challenge given the platforms' iron grip on the experiences within their verticals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

[2] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-biden-appointees-troubling-v...

The recent master stroke of big pharma is making you think that being anti this vaccine, makes you guilty by association with all anti-vaxers.

I've done my research and understand risk profile, I don't need a beta version of vaccine for a disease that I have essentially zero chance of having any trouble recovering from.

If you think you need it and are below 40, you don't understand the risks.

EDIT: For the record, if I have kids they will be vaccinated. With vaccines that have been proven through multi year trials.

This is like saying that you will never buy a new car because you don't have years of data to prove the car was built correct and is safe.

There is a risk that a new car has a problem that only shows up after 20k miles, but the people who approved the new car have a lot of experience approving cars and a track record of not missing major safety issues.

Good car analogy. Though it slightly breaks down in that some cars have turned out to have problems (hence lemon laws), whereas as far as I know no vaccines have ever had any bad long term side effects.

How many anti-(this vax) people do you think truly understand the risk reward balance?

Anyway, younger people have started being more affected, perhaps by new strains.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/24/americas/brazil-youth-covid-1...

And the vaccine do reduce transmission, although we don't know by how much yet, so if you're younger than 40 and getting vaccinated then you're protecting folks that are vulnerable.

There are multiple factors going into the decision to get the vaccine or not, but "If you think you need it and are below 40, you don't understand the risks." is patently false. A large reason to get the vaccine is to massively lower your chance of giving it to someone else, family member or stranger, who might not be as prepared to fight it as you are. There's also a significant population under 40 with risk factors like heart conditions, asthma, and obesity. Additionally, I've heard there's some evidence that even if you are younger and recover, it might do longer term damage, though we'll see how that plays out. At least seems extremely likely to me that the vaccine is safer than the virus, and I'd be interested in how you came to the opposite conclusion.

As a late 20s man with asthma and vulnerable family members, I jumped at the chance get the vaccine.

I'd like to add just one more point. Getting the vaccine and reducing your personal communicability helps the people who are vulnerable and unable to get the vaccine. There will be a small percentage but large number of people that are unable to take the vaccine due to allergies or being immuno-compromised. Getting the vaccine helps them, too.

>a disease that I have essentially zero chance of having any trouble recovering from.

You sure about that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID

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