[blueyoda]

> "“We’re not crackpots or conspiracy theorists, we’re husbands and wives and family members who have lost somebody – that’s all it is."

The fact that they have to say this to begin with is upsetting. I have come across posts of some unfortunate people who have experienced adverse effects from these vaccines, only to see replies accusing them of being "liars" and "far-righters" (even though their post isn't even political). I even recall a meme where they took a video of someone's vaccination side effects and put comedic music over it.

This isn't just exclusive to vaccines. As a person who knows several people who have suffered serious side effects from medical treatments, I have seen way too many incidents of "it's all in your head." and "we can't quantify it, so it's not there". The result? These people lose trust in the health care system.

Sometimes giving someone the benefit of the doubt can go a long way.

[Nextgrid]

The problem is that at the time if you took every social media "report" of adverse effects seriously you'd have expected half the population to die of those vaccines. That clearly hasn't happened so there was definitely a bullshit/misinformation problem, and a healthy dose of skepticism was warranted. Sucks for the single-digit percentages of real cases though.

[VagueMag]

The skepticism was waaaaayyyyyy off from a "healthy dose," for most of 2021 the standard line was something like "a billion doses of this vaccine have been administered and there have been absolutely zero deaths." Almost every patient who suffered side effects in the first year or so has a story to tell about their doctors insisting that--if it wasn't all in their head to begin with--it must have been caused by anything but the pristine COVID vaccines.

And that's without getting into the manufacturers rigging the safety results of the trials by e.g. yanking Maddie de Garay from the adolescent cohort after she was paralyzed.

[mjbeswick]

Many more people die from taking over the counter pain killers ever year, but few people take any notice the death is a potential side-effect of paracetamol or Ibuprofen!

[mjbeswick]

The problem is that side effects are massively over reported. I don't have the original source, but I came across a report on a double blind test of one of the COVID vaccines where 50% of the participants received the vaccine verses 50% who received a placebo (saline). I that particular study more than two thirds of the participants reported side effects. Unfortunately most of the time that people do report side effects they aren't real; which creates bias in society and the medical community.

Administering a vaccine to a large population is rather like the trolly problem, as to protect a large number of people you will have to risk a small number of casualties and deaths.

[dent9876543]

Except that, once it had become clear that population immunity was not going to happen through vaccination, what happened? Yep... they ignored it, and continued to insist on vaccination.

They could have opened up. At least the risk taker would then have been able to make an informed choice for themselves.

But no. That would have meant a climb down. Better to continue with those casualties and deaths — its was only a small number after all.