RFK Jr. could further deter childhood vaccinations as rates fall in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

RFK Jr. could further deter childhood vaccinations as rates fall in the U.S.

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16 pointsdonsupreme10 comments

The "elites" (public health officials, FDA officials, vaccine makers, university researchers, media reporters) need to take a look in the mirror on this. For many years, the official line has been that vaccines are safe, effective, and nothing goes wrong. People who suffer side-effects of vaccines are now able to find other people similarly suffering in internet forums, where they couldn't in the pre-internet era. With time it becomes exposed that the elites are not being fully truthful, and are lying or telling half-truths in service of their objectives. It should be no surprise if the elites are willing to lie, then the general population start to question how much of what they are told is a lie.

As a result of the COVID debacle, there is wider spread knowledge that not all vaccines are the same. We were promised vaccines that carried no risk, and would prevent transmission of COVID. We all watched as the narrative changed, while never having it be acknowledged by officials that they were wrong (or perhaps lied in what they considered service to the "greater good").

If anything RFK Jr's popularity stems from the elites squandering the trust of the people by lying. It's on them to pursue honesty if they want to regain a position of trust.

but the people demanding "honesty" get their medical advice from people like Jenny McCarthy, so it's hard to say that they would listen to facts to begin with.

Step 1 would be for the medical establishment to acknowledge that there are risks and potential problems with vaccines. Jenny McCarthy is a symptom of the decline in trust of the medical establishment, not the cause. The medical establishment's response to vaccine hesitancy is to discount potential harms, and refuse to honestly engage with the potential draw backs. Any hint of skepticism is met with articles like this one. That isn't the way to build trust. Also implying anyone questioning whether they're being told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is a dummy, is not the way to build trust.

Why, specifically, do you think a bunch of people with no medical training and no ability to understand medical literature should be “listened to” about things they absolutely do not, at all, understand?

Sorry that it makes you feel bad to be told you don’t know what you’re talking about, but the fact, ultimately, remains.

That attitude isn't going to build any trust in the system.

You've made a number of errors in your presentation and internal biases: 1) You assume all people with questions have no medical training, which is untrue. 2) You assume people are too stupid to see when they are having problems and getting answers from their doctors that don't make sense. If a plane crashes in a field, a lay person can see the twisted metal on the ground and see the plane crashed. It may take a metallurgist to find the origin of the initial failure that lead to the crash, but not to see there was a crash. If the answer from the expert is just that planes never crash, it doesn't take too much intelligence to realize you're being lied to. 3) Telling people who don't trust you that they are too stupid to realize how right you are is going to do nothing to improve the rate of people following your advice or instructions.

> 1) You assume all people with questions have no medical training, which is untrue.

They, as a rule, have no relevant medical training. I get that you think a random RN having a take on vaccines is worth listening to, but they aren’t.

> 2) You assume people are too stupid to see when they are having problems and getting answers from their doctors that don't make sense.

I assume that people who make stupid analogies because they don’t understand the baseline issues are too stupid to reach relevant conclusions. This isn’t, in any way, shape, or form, like seeing thousands of crashed planes and being told planes don’t crash. It’s seeing crashed planes, deciding that aliens did it, and then refusing to listen to experts when they tell you that that plane was pilot error, this one was an unsecured load, and the one over there hit some birds. Because you saw a YouTube that said it was aliens.

You’ve started from an erroneous, bad conclusion, and instead of listening to the people telling you what actually happened, you’ve doubled down and now you’re plugging your fingers in your ears and screaming.

That’s why no one cares what you think, or wants to listen to you. It’s because you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, and you’re not apparently, capable of even having a rational conversation about it.

> 3) Telling people who don't trust you that they are too stupid to realize how right you are is going to do nothing to improve the rate of people following your advice or instructions.

Nothing is. The only acceptable conclusion to you is being told you’re right. There is no amount of evidence or expertise anyone could ever provide that would lead you to conclude that you were wrong. It’s your personal dogma.

Hopefully your kids don’t get polio because you thought reading some Facebook posts made you an unassailable expert.

Just keep right on with that black and white thinking. It will take you everywhere you need to go.

Yeah, no, great point. Very responsive. Clearly you’re a savant. Good luck feeling perpetually aggrieved.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was signed into federal law in 1986 and established a program to compensate individuals who were harmed by vaccines because it was known that there were vaccine injuries.

Vaccination rates embody the core political problem right now.

There are two different realities people are living in, but only one of them is grounded in reality.

What is the system that creates this schism and how do you resolve it?

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