All of their beliefs are based on whether someone they care about had something happen to them.
To me that's a much more emotional take on life than anti Vax lunatics because they at least "live their life" as it has always been. Which might be a bad thing in this case, but to me it is much less insane than becoming a hermit over something that is objectively not an actual danger to them anymore, unless they believe their 5 boosters don't help. So I'm not sure that reducing it to caring or not is actually helpful. You can care about something but disagree about the method.
I guess my point is that I don't think antivaxxers don't believe in vaccines because they just want people to die, they don't believe in vaccines because they think it doesn't help people from dying. They actually believe vaccines don't work, it's not just pretend play. It's very very dumb, but I don't think that framing as is just not caring until stuff happens to them is helpful.
If you didn't believe that for example, homeopathy works, you won't suddenly think that it should be used if someone close to you dies. Maybe in desperation, but that's different from believing it. Obviously the difference is that homeopathy doesn't work, and vaccines absolutely do. But remember, that's literally what antivaxxers disagree with!
I have a few friends like this, though to a lesser degree as their worries have disappeared by now.
> I guess my point is that I don't think antivaxxers don't believe in vaccines because they just want people to die, they don't believe in vaccines because they think it doesn't help people from dying. They actually believe vaccines don't work, it's not just pretend play. It's very very dumb, but I don't think that framing as is just not caring until stuff happens to them is helpful.
I wasn't trying to frame it as "all covid deniers just don't care unless it impacts their family" or something similar. It more subtle than that. And what I said was not supposed to be a generalization at all. It was specifically about my family members.
I do think some portion of all people fall into this group though. Yes, they might truly believe the covid vaccines do more harm than good. But also yes, they would immediately line-up for a covid vaccine if a close family member became hospitalized and visually looked bad. Nothing about the dangers of the vaccine changes in this scenario, and covid didn't suddenly become more dangerous to them. It just became more emotionally visceral. That's not desperation. It's straightforward emotional persuasion, and is the "feeling the pain" as originally commented about.
I do think there is many more social dynamics at play, but I don't feel confident in articulating my scattered thoughts on them well. How people adjust how they act based on social groups, or with very little information people form very strong opinions, how information bubbles impact what topics you see or how they're presented, etc.
When it hits your loved ones, you start to take it more seriously. Wearing a mask and socially distancing doesn’t matter if it means not losing another family member. Conversely, if you experience just a minor cold, you start questioning all the media you’ve seen about the death rates and this and that which can definitely lead you to thinking everyone’s exaggerating the whole thing for a reason unknown to you.
I’m not anti vax at all (studied biomedical science) but I do see how people can be pushed towards having those views, even subconsciously, through highly manipulated algorithms that can use emotions to extract content in the form of comments, reaction videos, memes etc from real people. Come to think of it, AI has been milking humans for content for years.
Again, you’re portraying people as “dumb and emotional” without addressing the substance of their concerns or reasons. You’re also refusing to ponder if that’s how you reached your conclusions.
But the director of the NIH during COVID now admits those people were right the whole time — COVID policy failed to weigh its costs, and as such, didn’t strike the right balance for public health.
Those people for sure aren't the anti-vaxers and anti maskers.
It's about the consequences of the lockdown, school closings and operation postponings and it's pretty easy to point at that consequences if you can't compare them to the consequences without these measures.
In Sweden they had similar admissions that their initial measures were wrong and they didn't have lockdowns.
And obviously the people you’re stereotyping were just “anti-vax” and “anti-mask”, not people who objected based on principle and were right.
You’re a crank who can’t admit he was wrong.
An despite claiming otherwise, masks work as long as you and the people around wear them. The Cochrane study only showed that you can't escape the virus if it's everywhere because as soon you ket your guards down you get infected
And guess what helped to spread it everywhere.
Masks aren't dangerous and the benefit of the vaccines outweighs the risks compared to a corona infection.
And yes, the loudest ones about it in the family are dumb and emotional. That tends to be the case for most people who do less thinking and more repeating their point louder and louder.
Look what happened in Sweden, they say the same about their intial measures and lost more people in the first year of the pandemic than any other scandinavian country.
Less excess mortality than countries with lower vaccination rates.
The ones vaccinated and masked didn't run, they stayed especially in the health sector.
Also what happened to "Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”?