@earl said in [WOULD YOU VACCINATE TO BE ABLE TO WATCH SPORTS](/post/1435548) said:
@jirskyr said in [WOULD YOU VACCINATE TO BE ABLE TO WATCH SPORTS](/post/1435531) said:
A strong position, a strong argument is easy to state, easy to defend, easy to back up with facts.
Exactly. This is a one sided beat down as well. The facts are overwhelming.
The thing is Earl, I have avoided anti-vaxers basically forever, because I didn't like the idea of trying to lobby these people. And it didn't used to matter that much - we had enough vaccine coverage in Australia, amongst the ordinary folk, that we weren't having bad outbreaks of diseases like measles. Anti-vaxers could be their own weirdo fringe group and keep their conspiracy theories to themselves.
And that's despite the outrageous ironies, for example the community of Mullumbimby is a hotbed of anti-vax, only about 50% kids vaccinated (compared to 90% in the state), whilst also being a hotbed of recreational drug use. So they'll take drugs, which are proven to cause damage, but won't take vaccines, which are proven to be safe. Weird, right?
COVID is different. COVID poses the same risks to everyone because it is novel. Nobody before ~2019 had ever had COVID. It's just like how the early colonists introduced all their diseases to the new world and basically devastated indigenous populations - the human immune system is good, but a significant number of people will die under a novel aggressive disease.
I think everyone now knows what I do for a living - I am in drug development. So I speak from experience, I didn't just learn these things about drugs since COVID started. It doesn't make me THE expert on everything, it just increases my expertise compared to the average person, something I gained from 20 years in the industry and 4 years at university.
So the mind boggles why anyone would realise we are in the grip of a very serious pandemic - not just deaths but serious socio-economic outcomes as well, but refuse to take the medicines that are proven to protect us and be safe. They'd rather do nothing, try and go back to normal. But the old normal is gone, we all know that, there is only the new COVID-normal.
I thought I might be able to provide some counter-arguments to anti-vax in a small space - say, rugby league supporters. Maybe this forum where I have contributed for 17 years. I had a bit of a go here and a bit of a go on a Facebook page, but that's a bit of a cesspit, as I expected. Turns out it is a bit of a challenge with rugby league supporters, because a lot of QLDers follow rugby league, and QLD has the biggest vaccine-hesitant cohort in the country, even before COVID (estimated at 30%).
But pleading with anti-vaxers it's basically pointless. Anyone that was truly on the fence about vaccination will do the sensible thing - talk to their doctor, consider the advice of experts and probably get vaccinated, if for nothing else than to help get out of lockdowns faster.
The ones that post stuff against vaccination, rally against vaccination - their minds are already made up. Their minds were made up before they even joined the debate. It's a belief system, like religion, rather than a position based on scientific principle. All the mumbo-jumbo about Dr McCullough or Ivermectin (a drug which the clinical evidence shows is not statistically effective) or mRNA fear-mongering is just a mechanism to prop up their belief system. They are desperate for any sliver of an argument to bear the weight of their contradictory beliefs - even when it means they latch onto fringe arguments.
Belief systems are tenuous: they require constant propping-up, repetition, faith-based adherence and a central dogma. They are inflexible and they don't tolerate new ideas. They are built to self-replicate in spite of contrary evidence.
It is of course highly illogical to take the opinion of 1 person against the consensus amongst tens of thousands of experts, but logic isn't part of the assessment. If it was based on logic you could only conclude to take the vaccine.
You will then, of course, discover that many vaccine sceptics also tend to be government sceptics or anti-corporation, climate-change deniers. It's part of the same belief system - "someone is out to get you", and the more "they" try to explain themselves, the more their scepticism grows.
It's Trumpianism writ-large - "the government / big pharma / illuminati is out to get you and you need to take matters into your own hands to control your own destiny". You need a hero of the cause, some quack doctor or failed businessman, who in spite of staggering personal failures and fraud becomes your figurehead. Of course we all know that Donald Trump, who is a convicted Rapist and Felon would be the first person to screw you over at the first available opportunity, and yet there are people who think he, and others like him, will save them from the very thing Trump, who is a convicted Rapist and Felon embodies - self-interest.
And of course the irony with that position is that most of the people championing the anti-government position are in fact trying to make themselves a buck. These folks are suspicious of large heavily-regulated public corporations trying to sell them something, but don't have an issue with the unregulated snake oil salesman.
Old mate philgood unsurprisingly referred to the group "America's Frontline Doctors", who are a right-wing anti-COVID group headed by a woman who has been arrested for participation in the Capitol Hill riots. He's referencing a group that was founded by a lady who wanted to try and install a dictator in the United States. So the mind boggles how someone could be anti-establishment or anti-corporation, pro-freedom, yet simultaneously support a person who wants to install a "benevolent dictator". I can't think of a dictatorship in history where the citizens had more freedoms than under a democracy. As if the dictator is just going to leave you alone once he or she consolidates power.
Cognitive dissonance 101.
So they aren't looking for a reasoned debate, they don't care about your volumes of evidence, your overwhelming expert testimony, the crushing logic of it. They aren't interested. They made up their minds before they even joined the discussion. It's the opposite of the scientific principle. And that's not me being condescending, that's just the sad truth of it. More sad, even I think, that there aren't as few of them as I would have hoped.
