There is a fantastic episode of Sawbones that goes into how we discovered vitamin K and why doctors started giving it to newborns. It cut infant mortality by a significant amount. I recommend it for anyone who has doubts or who just geeks out over science.
“Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
He said nothing about the medication in question, so does your original comment mean that RFK is guilty of statistical murder and should be punished for his general vaccine skepticism? I'm not sure how else to read "another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately".
If you witness child abuse and say nothing, you bear some responsibility for its continuation.
If you’re the top health official of the country and spread doubt about numerous public health interventions, including actively suppressing research showing their safety and efficacy, yes, you’re guilty as fuck.
Because an opinion can’t rise to homicide, even if it influences policy. That’s not what homicide is. Instead, it’s simply bad policy, to be punished at the ballot box.
It means you’re deliberately killing people, but indirectly enough it can’t be prosecuted.
Fucking with vaccines kills people. Getting rid of USAID kills people. Selling cigarettes kills people. But none of these are crimes. Some of them probably should be.
It's not the same for an individual choice vs government choice.
Individual different is real. Law of large number is true only for large number. Until you can claim omniscience, I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
> I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
Why not? We know tobacco execs lied about the dangers, even in Congressional testimony, and suppressed evidence. It's documented; no omniscience required.
Musk's DOGE cuts killed, at minimum, hundreds of thousands. It's highly likely he was aware of that likelihood.
There is no way to have enough nuance for this to actually mean anything. If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence? Or driving at all, very likely the most dangerous thing people do daily. What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal. But many people accept that death is inevitable and minimizing the chance of it isn’t worth doing. Society also speaks out both sides of its mouth — why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
The world has a lot of things it needs to figure out with all this stuff. Blanket statements just aren’t very valuable IMO.
> What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal.
If you don't maintain your trees and they kill your neighbor or damage their house, you'll often be on the hook for it, yes. Insurance won't cover you if it was negligence.
> why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
Virtually zero abortions happen 11 days before term. When they do, they're medical emergencies, not voluntary.
Speaking as someone with kids, many people I know rejected all of these. The eye ointment that they gloss over is to protect from gonorrhea. Which presumes that everyone having a kid has it in the first place. This is easy to test for before the baby comes though - what about Vitamin K?
Per the article: "All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts." Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding. The open question in the medical community is not which newborns lack vitamin K (they all do), but why some vitamin K deficient newborns develop bleeding while others don't.
I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
It's absolutely fascinating how much of these comments have to do with vaccines when the article is very clearly about a vitamin shot. Wellness culture and influencers have truly broken how we think and talk about medicine.
I got in a series of debates over the Covid vaccine on Facebook with a guy I like and respect, who hosts sound baths, promotes psychedelic therapy, and does a bunch of other wellness-related stuff along with his wife. The idea was maybe we could civilly come to some kind of understanding.
We kept it civil. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that being anti-vaxx was a core part of his identity as part of the wellness community, and I was never going to change that.
> This is probably going to be unpopular but i'll point out the US administers far more shots then any other country.
Ok? Give me all the vaccines. Being able to train our immune systems to recognize and attack harmful or even deadly pathogens is like a super power that we all have access to.
> Another point is the conspicuous lack of honesty surrounding the COVID vaccine,
You'd have to help me out here; the vaccines worked well, and are safe for the vast majority of people. I don't think there was any lack of honesty surrounding them except from the people who are anti-vaccine.
>Ok? Give me all the vaccines. Being able to train our immune systems to recognize and attack harmful or even deadly pathogens is like a super power that we all have access to.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I’d caution you to treat vaccines as a binary and imply they’re all good and always worth taking. There are numerous examples in history where vaccines were rolled out and had to be recalled due to unintended negative effects (Pandemrix is one example). Not all vaccines are a net positive.
No, the mistake is to make spreading misinformation profitable. We then have a vicious cycle where profits feed into politics, and so nothing is done to stop it.
Anyone who spreads opinions that aren't actually the views they hold should be required to have onscreen disclosures that 'the views expressed are not those held by the person expressing them'. You shouldn't be able to just grift off of things you do not believe yourself. You should be able to say those things still (free speech) you should just be compelled to have a disclaimer you do not actually believe them.
Let's hope humanity develops defenses against the easy (even forced) spread of disinformation, hate, ignorance, and mass manipulation if general. Social networks, and the drivers of their owners, caught the world by surprise.
There's too much financial incentive to spread disinformation, if you can make money by posting on social media and attracting a following on your disinformation there's always going to be someone ignorant/innocent enough to fall for it.
I can't see what else humanity would need to develop as defenses, we can access nearly all information that exists, almost instantly, from the convenience of almost anywhere. The problem is to knowing how to parse so much information, even more when there's conflicting information where nuance and critical thinking are required.
Accepting that there's very few absolute right answers, that the real world is much more "depends" than "for certain", and stil being able to navigate it all to reach a conclusion that aligns with the best probable answer demands quite a lot more quality education than the vast majority of humanity has access to.
Regardless of where you fall on the vaccine “debate”, it’s pretty obvious leadership across the board (government agencies, international bodies, etc.) completely bungled the messaging around COVID and the efficacy of the vaccine (stating you will not catch COVID if you get the vaccine, which is not true at all).
Between that and going back and forth on the efficacy of masks amongst other things, a lot of faith in these kinds of institutions was eroded.
I don't remember every hearing from a reputable source that the vaccine would be 100% effective. And masking was a good idea at the time regardless of effectiveness. At least to me, it was preferable to err on the side of being over cautious than risking a really, really bad outcome.
I feel that the water was muddied by many "influencers" just trying to get views and people lack common sense to understand the subtleties on the messaging and as soon as they see some contradiction they declare that you cannot trust doctors.
The CDC director said so herself: “Our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Walensky said on MSNBC last weekend, adding “that is not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data.”
> Dr. Walensky spoke broadly ... “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others.”
Seems like they arn't saying you cannot get it, but that you are LESS LIKELY to spread it. Which, if Covid was spread via coughing/sneezing, and the vaccine reduces those symptoms, would be a logical next step. She also hedged multiple times, stating that this is just what the initial data is saying, and not a full-throated promise.
"You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations": Biden made this statement during a CNN town hall on July 21, 2021 He also stated that vaccinated people would not be hospitalized, end up in intensive care, or die. In December 2021, he suggested that vaccinated people "do not spread the disease to anyone else."
Now please do not claim that the US president is not a reputable source.
The covid shot was a medical miracle. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives. There is a very small risk of myocarditis, which was always known and out in the open. Other than that every attack on the covid vaccines is just a bunch of nonsense FUD by wellness charlatans who make money off clicks and peddling snake oil.
The problem is that the leaders told us that if you got the vaccine you would be immune and not get COVID. The performances of the politicians and medical professionals mandating masking and then seeing them only putting them on right before they went on stage, and continuing to do all of the things the "common" folk weren't allowed to do ruined all of the their credibility. Of course people are going to question all of the recommendations from experts after that.
> The problem is that the leaders told us that if you got the vaccine you would be immune and not get COVID.
That's a straw man. Nobody in authority said this once the vaccine was out and it was obvious that immunity wasn't 100% or permanent. All vaccines are different. No one knew until it came out what category this vaccine would fall into. You can still get measles after getting the measles vaccine. But you're much much less likely to die from it.
What the vaccine did do is greatly reduce the severity of the disease, which saved countless lives. See Wuhan, Northern Italy or NYC before lockdown. If the vaccine didn't work, as soon as lockdown ended, the hospitals would have filled to over capacity like they were in those places in the early days.
I do recall some politicians being, at the very least, imprecise on that issue.
But I note that the "a politician was wrong once, therefore vaccines can't be trusted" folks don't tend to extend that theory to things like "tax cuts cause economic booms" or "abstinence only sex ed is super effective" sort of statements that have repeatedly flopped in tests.
Yeah okay she spoke out of turn very early after the vaccine was out for a short time. The CDC sucked a lot through this, especially when they refused to recommend masks. But you notice pretty much all of her own underlings are immediately refuting her. To cling to "They told us you wouldn't get covid" when 99% of the people in authority were not saying that, and the few who might have said it were quickly corrected, is disingenuous imo.
The CDC kind of sucks to be honest, and it sure isn't better with the current leadership. But it doesn't mean they're wrong on everything. And the CDC's suckiness is a flimsy excuse to just believe anyone on youtube, regardless of scientific evidence.
“Our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Walensky said on MSNBC last weekend, adding “that is not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data.”
There's two categories of people here, though. Politicians advocating for one thing and then doing another are not medical professionals advocating for people to get a COVID vaccine. You shouldn't look at what politicians are doing and then decide you trust doctors less.
It's less the details of the covid shot, and more the willingness of the public health authorities to lie and to manipulate policies for their political ends, even if detrimental to health.
The masks thing is 100% accurate. The CDC and WHO kept insisting Covid was being spread by fomites on surfaces long after it was obvious the virus was airborne.
They did this because there was already a mask shortage and whatever other political reasons. It was wrong and it eroded confidence. Personally I'll never put a lot of stock in anything they come out with again w/o getting it verified by other sources I trust who know how to interpret medical literature.
The ironic thing is the anti-vaxx wellness community never jumps on the CDC being wrong on masks, because they don't believe in masks either.
>I'm not free to take it, anymore. As you said, it's been taken off the market for most people.
Well, I meant that you should be free to take it if there is a reasonable argument that taking it is better than not taking it. There are multiple reasons why it isn't offered anymore.
>No, I like shunning people who are wrong and dumb.
People who refused the vaccine are not wrong or dumb. It is too laborious to explain it to you though. I think no matter how much I explain or provide contrary evidence, your mind is made up. What happened to "My body, my choice"? Do you seriously think that people would refuse the vaccine if the benefits were so overwhelming? If the virus and the vaccine were what they said, you wouldn't need to try to mandate shit. You'd have to break up fights as people fell all over each other to get the damn vaccine.
> Well, I meant that you should be free to take it if there is a reasonable argument that taking it is better than not taking it.
Yeah, limiting the impact and effects of a COVID infection is a compelling and reasonable argument to me. I'd like my booster shot, please.
> What happened to "My body, my choice"?
It is your choice. I can and will mock you for your choice if your reasoning doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
> Do you seriously think that people would refuse the vaccine if the benefits were so overwhelming?
Yes, anti-vaxers are inherently irrational. Overwhelming benefits do not change their opinion because being anti-vaccine is a core part of their identity.
>Yes, anti-vaxers are inherently irrational. Overwhelming benefits do not change their opinion because being anti-vaccine is a core part of their identity.
There are people like this but you can say the same about anything. Pro-pharma vax promoters definitely make "trust the science, don't do research or question anything from authorities" part of their identity too.
And whom do we hold responsible for the severe reactions and deaths of babies that get the shots you seem to so desperate for the government to enforce? The reality you want is government overreach and a removal of individual choice.
Perhaps you can show the statistics for harm and death caused by the shots?
>The reality you want is government overreach and a removal of individual choice.
Have you not met the general public? The infants are incapable of advocating for themselves and they risk death all because an incredulous new mother has been influenced by some lunatic on TikTok (or, indeed, in Government).
> All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. That puts babies who are exclusively breastfed at a higher risk for vitamin K deficiency bleeding. Formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree, babies should still get the shot.
Did you not read the article, or are you refuting it?
Who did you learn this from? Because they're dangerously wrong.
Per the article: "All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts."
All of our pediatric policy has become iatrogenic in the US. There's a reason our maternal mortality rates are worse than the third world.
Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
Vitamin K is supposed to stabilize after a week, but we push booster shots.
Some parents believed the advocacy of actors, and withheld boosters and vaccines-- while feeding their children chemical slop that makes the news every so often after being found contaminated with toxins or deficient in some vital nutrient or mineral, leading to headlines like this.
For maximum hilarity we're putting infants' underdeveloped clotting mechanisms to the test with a battery of injections and performing cosmetic circumcisions just hours after birth.
If the assignment was "come up with a way to maim or kill as many children as possible while maintaining plausible deniability," these are the sorts of subversive pediatric policies I'd suggest. They'll bleed out days or months later, I feign ignorance and avoid attribution, mission accomplished.
Every step of this is handled in the dumbest way conceivable, and if you speak out about it you get blackballed. (Not that this is anything new; they did the same to Semmelweiss, committing him to a mental hospital and beating him to death for suggesting that doctors should wash their hands between surgeries.)
Babylonians/Jews wait until day 8--no sooner, no later--for reasons they could only have discovered through trial-and-error. They perform the same operations and get all the same vaccines we do but Israel's autism rate is 50% lower than the US. Maternal and infant mortality rates are also significantly lower for them. We trade in equipment and cross-train the same practitioners. The only differences are keeping infant nutrition organic/kosher and delaying ritual infant trauma just long enough so that they don't bleed to death in the absence of Vitamin K boosters.
> Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
This is literally nonsense.
From the article:
> All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. That puts babies who are exclusively breastfed at a higher risk for vitamin K deficiency bleeding. Formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree, babies should still get the shot.
There is a fantastic episode of Sawbones that goes into how we discovered vitamin K and why doctors started giving it to newborns. It cut infant mortality by a significant amount. I recommend it for anyone who has doubts or who just geeks out over science.
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-vitamin-k/
Another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately.
What does 'statistical murder' mean in this case?
It means making an informed choice that you know raises fatality rates.
Who did that in this case? The parents? Isn't it more likely that they don't believe it raises fatality rates (however incorrectly)?
> Who did that in this case?
Anti-vax activists like RFK Jr. https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy...
by not saying anything about it, he committed statistical murder?
Yes.
He's rather infamous for his part in the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak.
See: https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-kennedy-vacc...
See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-va...
See: https://www.newsweek.com/rfk-jr-denies-samoa-visit-was-vacci...
The changes he's made upon taking over HHS are almost certain to have far-reaching affects which eclipse that.
Don't be disingenuous.
He's actively suppressing publication of studies showing vaccine safety as a government official.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/fda-covid-vac...
He said nothing about the medication in question, so does your original comment mean that RFK is guilty of statistical murder and should be punished for his general vaccine skepticism? I'm not sure how else to read "another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately".
That would be an extraordinary claim.
If you witness child abuse and say nothing, you bear some responsibility for its continuation.
If you’re the top health official of the country and spread doubt about numerous public health interventions, including actively suppressing research showing their safety and efficacy, yes, you’re guilty as fuck.
Hope this helps clarify things.
Of course he’s probably wrong about much of that. Punishing him for it in a court, if that’s what you mean, would be illiberal and grotesque.
Why? It’s negligent homicide.
It’s just so diffuse that it doesn’t fit in our crime model. Like polluters who shave years off an entire neighborhood’s lives via health impacts.
Because an opinion can’t rise to homicide, even if it influences policy. That’s not what homicide is. Instead, it’s simply bad policy, to be punished at the ballot box.
Bad policy that needlessly kills thousands of people should be punishable outside the ballot box.
If your policy of letting kindergarteners play with grenades goes bad, you go to jail.
It means you’re deliberately killing people, but indirectly enough it can’t be prosecuted.
Fucking with vaccines kills people. Getting rid of USAID kills people. Selling cigarettes kills people. But none of these are crimes. Some of them probably should be.
It's not the same for an individual choice vs government choice.
Individual different is real. Law of large number is true only for large number. Until you can claim omniscience, I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
Government policy, on the other hand, ...
> I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
Why not? We know tobacco execs lied about the dangers, even in Congressional testimony, and suppressed evidence. It's documented; no omniscience required.
Musk's DOGE cuts killed, at minimum, hundreds of thousands. It's highly likely he was aware of that likelihood.
There is no way to have enough nuance for this to actually mean anything. If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence? Or driving at all, very likely the most dangerous thing people do daily. What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal. But many people accept that death is inevitable and minimizing the chance of it isn’t worth doing. Society also speaks out both sides of its mouth — why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
The world has a lot of things it needs to figure out with all this stuff. Blanket statements just aren’t very valuable IMO.
> If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence?
No, I'd say the responsibility there lies on the car company execs making F-250s ever-bigger to the point they have worse forward visibility than a M1 Abrams tank. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
> What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal.
If you don't maintain your trees and they kill your neighbor or damage their house, you'll often be on the hook for it, yes. Insurance won't cover you if it was negligence.
> why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
Virtually zero abortions happen 11 days before term. When they do, they're medical emergencies, not voluntary.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_abortion_by_gesta...
Speaking as someone with kids, many people I know rejected all of these. The eye ointment that they gloss over is to protect from gonorrhea. Which presumes that everyone having a kid has it in the first place. This is easy to test for before the baby comes though - what about Vitamin K?
The people who won’t let a kid get ointment aren’t gonna consent to a mandatory STD test either.
(The ointment is also primarily for chlamydia these days.)
Per the article: "All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts." Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding. The open question in the medical community is not which newborns lack vitamin K (they all do), but why some vitamin K deficient newborns develop bleeding while others don't.
I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
It's absolutely fascinating how much of these comments have to do with vaccines when the article is very clearly about a vitamin shot. Wellness culture and influencers have truly broken how we think and talk about medicine.
It’s the same core phenomenon, and the same activists pushing it.
I got in a series of debates over the Covid vaccine on Facebook with a guy I like and respect, who hosts sound baths, promotes psychedelic therapy, and does a bunch of other wellness-related stuff along with his wife. The idea was maybe we could civilly come to some kind of understanding.
We kept it civil. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that being anti-vaxx was a core part of his identity as part of the wellness community, and I was never going to change that.
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> This is probably going to be unpopular but i'll point out the US administers far more shots then any other country.
Ok? Give me all the vaccines. Being able to train our immune systems to recognize and attack harmful or even deadly pathogens is like a super power that we all have access to.
> Another point is the conspicuous lack of honesty surrounding the COVID vaccine,
You'd have to help me out here; the vaccines worked well, and are safe for the vast majority of people. I don't think there was any lack of honesty surrounding them except from the people who are anti-vaccine.
>Ok? Give me all the vaccines. Being able to train our immune systems to recognize and attack harmful or even deadly pathogens is like a super power that we all have access to.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but I’d caution you to treat vaccines as a binary and imply they’re all good and always worth taking. There are numerous examples in history where vaccines were rolled out and had to be recalled due to unintended negative effects (Pandemrix is one example). Not all vaccines are a net positive.
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No, the mistake is to make spreading misinformation profitable. We then have a vicious cycle where profits feed into politics, and so nothing is done to stop it.
I don't think it will end well.
Anyone who spreads opinions that aren't actually the views they hold should be required to have onscreen disclosures that 'the views expressed are not those held by the person expressing them'. You shouldn't be able to just grift off of things you do not believe yourself. You should be able to say those things still (free speech) you should just be compelled to have a disclaimer you do not actually believe them.
Let's hope humanity develops defenses against the easy (even forced) spread of disinformation, hate, ignorance, and mass manipulation if general. Social networks, and the drivers of their owners, caught the world by surprise.
There's too much financial incentive to spread disinformation, if you can make money by posting on social media and attracting a following on your disinformation there's always going to be someone ignorant/innocent enough to fall for it.
I can't see what else humanity would need to develop as defenses, we can access nearly all information that exists, almost instantly, from the convenience of almost anywhere. The problem is to knowing how to parse so much information, even more when there's conflicting information where nuance and critical thinking are required.
Accepting that there's very few absolute right answers, that the real world is much more "depends" than "for certain", and stil being able to navigate it all to reach a conclusion that aligns with the best probable answer demands quite a lot more quality education than the vast majority of humanity has access to.
I don't think humans will ever have a defense for "trigger my amygdala and tell me what I want to hear."
Before that, giving a pocket computer to everyone was the biggest mistake
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What changed after covid ?
Regardless of where you fall on the vaccine “debate”, it’s pretty obvious leadership across the board (government agencies, international bodies, etc.) completely bungled the messaging around COVID and the efficacy of the vaccine (stating you will not catch COVID if you get the vaccine, which is not true at all).
Between that and going back and forth on the efficacy of masks amongst other things, a lot of faith in these kinds of institutions was eroded.
I don't remember every hearing from a reputable source that the vaccine would be 100% effective. And masking was a good idea at the time regardless of effectiveness. At least to me, it was preferable to err on the side of being over cautious than risking a really, really bad outcome.
I feel that the water was muddied by many "influencers" just trying to get views and people lack common sense to understand the subtleties on the messaging and as soon as they see some contradiction they declare that you cannot trust doctors.
The CDC director said so herself: “Our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Walensky said on MSNBC last weekend, adding “that is not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data.”
Source: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/backlash-and-reversal-af...
Literally two paragraphs before your quoted text:
> Dr. Walensky spoke broadly ... “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get COVID-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others.”
Seems like they arn't saying you cannot get it, but that you are LESS LIKELY to spread it. Which, if Covid was spread via coughing/sneezing, and the vaccine reduces those symptoms, would be a logical next step. She also hedged multiple times, stating that this is just what the initial data is saying, and not a full-throated promise.
"You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations": Biden made this statement during a CNN town hall on July 21, 2021 He also stated that vaccinated people would not be hospitalized, end up in intensive care, or die. In December 2021, he suggested that vaccinated people "do not spread the disease to anyone else."
Now please do not claim that the US president is not a reputable source.
The covid shot was a medical miracle. It saved hundreds of thousands of lives. There is a very small risk of myocarditis, which was always known and out in the open. Other than that every attack on the covid vaccines is just a bunch of nonsense FUD by wellness charlatans who make money off clicks and peddling snake oil.
"always known and out in the open" ? I was banned sitewide from Reddit and Twitter for claiming that.
The problem is that the leaders told us that if you got the vaccine you would be immune and not get COVID. The performances of the politicians and medical professionals mandating masking and then seeing them only putting them on right before they went on stage, and continuing to do all of the things the "common" folk weren't allowed to do ruined all of the their credibility. Of course people are going to question all of the recommendations from experts after that.
> The problem is that the leaders told us that if you got the vaccine you would be immune and not get COVID.
That's a straw man. Nobody in authority said this once the vaccine was out and it was obvious that immunity wasn't 100% or permanent. All vaccines are different. No one knew until it came out what category this vaccine would fall into. You can still get measles after getting the measles vaccine. But you're much much less likely to die from it.
What the vaccine did do is greatly reduce the severity of the disease, which saved countless lives. See Wuhan, Northern Italy or NYC before lockdown. If the vaccine didn't work, as soon as lockdown ended, the hospitals would have filled to over capacity like they were in those places in the early days.
I do recall some politicians being, at the very least, imprecise on that issue.
But I note that the "a politician was wrong once, therefore vaccines can't be trusted" folks don't tend to extend that theory to things like "tax cuts cause economic booms" or "abstinence only sex ed is super effective" sort of statements that have repeatedly flopped in tests.
Here's a compilation of repeated talking points during COVID. https://x.com/Martyupnorth_/status/1471694954002980866?s=20
No one's going to watch your dubiously-sourced video. Send some links of people in authority claiming the vaccine offers 100% immunity to covid.
(Responding to the reply below)
Yeah okay she spoke out of turn very early after the vaccine was out for a short time. The CDC sucked a lot through this, especially when they refused to recommend masks. But you notice pretty much all of her own underlings are immediately refuting her. To cling to "They told us you wouldn't get covid" when 99% of the people in authority were not saying that, and the few who might have said it were quickly corrected, is disingenuous imo.
The CDC kind of sucks to be honest, and it sure isn't better with the current leadership. But it doesn't mean they're wrong on everything. And the CDC's suckiness is a flimsy excuse to just believe anyone on youtube, regardless of scientific evidence.
“Our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick,” Walensky said on MSNBC last weekend, adding “that is not just in the clinical trials, but it’s also in real world data.”
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/backlash-and-reversal-af...
There's two categories of people here, though. Politicians advocating for one thing and then doing another are not medical professionals advocating for people to get a COVID vaccine. You shouldn't look at what politicians are doing and then decide you trust doctors less.
It's less the details of the covid shot, and more the willingness of the public health authorities to lie and to manipulate policies for their political ends, even if detrimental to health.
Exactly what lies from public health authorities are you talking about?
One prominent example would be Surgeon General Jerome Adams's public comments that masks don't work early on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/health/coronavirus-n95-fa...
(Which apparently stemmed from concern of shortages, but was a seriously bad way to address that.)
The masks thing is 100% accurate. The CDC and WHO kept insisting Covid was being spread by fomites on surfaces long after it was obvious the virus was airborne.
They did this because there was already a mask shortage and whatever other political reasons. It was wrong and it eroded confidence. Personally I'll never put a lot of stock in anything they come out with again w/o getting it verified by other sources I trust who know how to interpret medical literature.
The ironic thing is the anti-vaxx wellness community never jumps on the CDC being wrong on masks, because they don't believe in masks either.
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> Look, if you think you need a vaccine and trust the people who made it, then you should be free to take it.
I'm not free to take it, anymore. As you said, it's been taken off the market for most people.
> Fuck shunning people for not doing something to their bodies because they don't consider the benefits "obvious" or sufficient.
No, I like shunning people who are wrong and dumb.
>I'm not free to take it, anymore. As you said, it's been taken off the market for most people.
Well, I meant that you should be free to take it if there is a reasonable argument that taking it is better than not taking it. There are multiple reasons why it isn't offered anymore.
>No, I like shunning people who are wrong and dumb.
People who refused the vaccine are not wrong or dumb. It is too laborious to explain it to you though. I think no matter how much I explain or provide contrary evidence, your mind is made up. What happened to "My body, my choice"? Do you seriously think that people would refuse the vaccine if the benefits were so overwhelming? If the virus and the vaccine were what they said, you wouldn't need to try to mandate shit. You'd have to break up fights as people fell all over each other to get the damn vaccine.
> Well, I meant that you should be free to take it if there is a reasonable argument that taking it is better than not taking it.
Yeah, limiting the impact and effects of a COVID infection is a compelling and reasonable argument to me. I'd like my booster shot, please.
> What happened to "My body, my choice"?
It is your choice. I can and will mock you for your choice if your reasoning doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
> Do you seriously think that people would refuse the vaccine if the benefits were so overwhelming?
Yes, anti-vaxers are inherently irrational. Overwhelming benefits do not change their opinion because being anti-vaccine is a core part of their identity.
>Yes, anti-vaxers are inherently irrational. Overwhelming benefits do not change their opinion because being anti-vaccine is a core part of their identity.
There are people like this but you can say the same about anything. Pro-pharma vax promoters definitely make "trust the science, don't do research or question anything from authorities" part of their identity too.
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> Adequate supply is easily addressed by the mother eating Vitamin K-rich foods, like spinach, during pregnancy.
Sure, and murders are easily addressed by not murdering people. Unfortunately, we live in reality.
> Sufficient levels can be confirmed at birth by an inexpensive blood screening…
"We'd like to do a blood draw. To see if they need the shot you're terrified of." "No!"
And whom do we hold responsible for the severe reactions and deaths of babies that get the shots you seem to so desperate for the government to enforce? The reality you want is government overreach and a removal of individual choice.
> removal of individual choice
Yeah, I'd rather you not be able to choose to kill your kid.
> severe reactions and deaths of babies that get the shots
Are we gonna sue peanut farmers for making peanuts, too?
Perhaps you can show the statistics for harm and death caused by the shots?
>The reality you want is government overreach and a removal of individual choice.
Have you not met the general public? The infants are incapable of advocating for themselves and they risk death all because an incredulous new mother has been influenced by some lunatic on TikTok (or, indeed, in Government).
> All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. That puts babies who are exclusively breastfed at a higher risk for vitamin K deficiency bleeding. Formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree, babies should still get the shot.
Did you not read the article, or are you refuting it?
Who did you learn this from? Because they're dangerously wrong.
Per the article: "All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts."
All of our pediatric policy has become iatrogenic in the US. There's a reason our maternal mortality rates are worse than the third world.
Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
Vitamin K is supposed to stabilize after a week, but we push booster shots.
Some parents believed the advocacy of actors, and withheld boosters and vaccines-- while feeding their children chemical slop that makes the news every so often after being found contaminated with toxins or deficient in some vital nutrient or mineral, leading to headlines like this.
For maximum hilarity we're putting infants' underdeveloped clotting mechanisms to the test with a battery of injections and performing cosmetic circumcisions just hours after birth.
If the assignment was "come up with a way to maim or kill as many children as possible while maintaining plausible deniability," these are the sorts of subversive pediatric policies I'd suggest. They'll bleed out days or months later, I feign ignorance and avoid attribution, mission accomplished.
Every step of this is handled in the dumbest way conceivable, and if you speak out about it you get blackballed. (Not that this is anything new; they did the same to Semmelweiss, committing him to a mental hospital and beating him to death for suggesting that doctors should wash their hands between surgeries.)
Babylonians/Jews wait until day 8--no sooner, no later--for reasons they could only have discovered through trial-and-error. They perform the same operations and get all the same vaccines we do but Israel's autism rate is 50% lower than the US. Maternal and infant mortality rates are also significantly lower for them. We trade in equipment and cross-train the same practitioners. The only differences are keeping infant nutrition organic/kosher and delaying ritual infant trauma just long enough so that they don't bleed to death in the absence of Vitamin K boosters.
> but Israel's autism rate is 50% lower than the US
Did you just pull out of this out of the air?
Increased diagnosis and awareness, which is something Israel has caught up on recently, has brought the rate to effectively equal. Not 50% lower.
Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't make it actually not exist.
> Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
This is literally nonsense.
From the article:
> All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. That puts babies who are exclusively breastfed at a higher risk for vitamin K deficiency bleeding. Formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree, babies should still get the shot.