alt Hacker NewsI got the covid shot and every booster. I have no qualms about mRNA messing me up, and I think it was a tremendous life saver. As stated, there was also a ton of misinformation floating around, and people believed that misinformation.
The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information. They didn't see it as being anti social as they thought the drug was a boondoggle, untested, and that covid wasn't serious. I disagree with all of it, but it is important to understand why they objected, and not just saying they are selfish or antisocial.
> The thing is most of those people made rational objections. The problem is their reasoning was based on false information.
This is how Typhoid Mary understood her status:
> It did not take Mary long to react to this suggestion. She seized a carving fork and advanced in my direction. ... Mallon's refusal was based on her belief that she was not infected. ... To stop her struggles, he had to sit on her chest for the journey.
And yet, locking her up over her objections her was itself a rational decision. This is the debate.
I'm not saying that this kind of intervention is appropriate today, just that her "rational objections" were not be-all and end-all of the situation.
Why is it more "important to understand why she objected"? Isn't it far more important to understand that she infected? The thing is, a virus doesn't care what you believe, or your political stripe. To a pathogen, you're a mass of warm cells, nothing more. Human beliefs are irrelevant to a virus, so why centre them?
Stopping the spread of e.g. measles depends on vaccinating just about everybody, that's statistics and epidemiology. At the end, that is what determines if there will be an outbreak. Cutting people slack on that because they choose to believe nonsense is not helpful and will not work. Actions matter more than beliefs, voluntary or not.