[teslademigod1]

"If someone is pointing out a case where a vaccine caused harm or that they're worried about it — you know, that's a difficult thing to say from my perspective that you shouldn't be allowed to express at all."

Where I'm from, we call that misinformation.

[kryogen1c]

then you are misinformed.

vaccines cause harm all the time. its why the us has a mechanism to settle damages from vaccines.

that doesn't mean vaccines arent one of the cheapest, effective, and most life-saving instruments in human history, but it also doesnt mean you get to ignore the part of reality where vaccines can and do have a negative impact.

[undergrowth54]

This is a _much_ harder epistemology problem than you are giving it credit for.

Do you know of a way to ensure that a newly-developed effective vaccine has a non-figuratively literally 0% chance that it could cause anti-dependent enhancement or other harms. If so, I'd love to also hear your technique for writing software with absolutely 0 bugs.

Otherwise, we are dependent on trusting institutions to

1. Gather data about the statistical prevalence of harms.

2. Analyse that data and confer with their peers.

3. Broadcast judicious conclusions to the general population.

[igorstellar]

Someone’s opinion is misinformation?

[teslademigod1]

When it's an all-caps, MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE

I mean, that's misinformation. When you know that no medical literature supports the idea that autism is caused by vaccine, and you still spread it...

[igorstellar]

I mean, don’t they have a right to say if not “A because of B” but “B happened right after A”, which could be an observation? At what point we should do thought police? I do agree it sounds not very well educated but that could be a good start to get this education from someone in the comments. If it’s only echo chamber of like-minded people, I doubt thought policing helps in this situation as well and nothing will change their minds at this moment. If anything, blocking people’s posts strengthen conspiracy theorist ideas about invisible forces controlling information.

[ghostpepper]

If the post literally reads "MY DAUGHTER HAS AUTISM BECAUSE OF [X] VACCINE" then it's not that hard to refute with scientific literate.

What is much harder to police with a coherent set of guidelines is a facebook page where thousands of moms have each written "I got my child vaccinated and then they developed autism". When a new mom, with little sleep and little background in biological science, who is still on the fence about vaccines, see those thousand posts all together it paints a compelling narrative without ever really having contradicted science.

[tarr11]

The front page of the NYT today is about AstraZeneca halting their trials because of a patient’s adverse reaction to the vaccine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/09/world/covid-19-coronaviru...

[ceejayoz]

Pausing, and that's why we have trials.

[ForHackernews]

You are misrepresenting that story (deliberately, to make a point?). One person on a vaccine trial has reported adverse symptoms -- it is not yet known whether the patient's symptoms are a reaction to the vaccine or not. They could be sick with some completely unrelated issue.

The trial has been paused in order to investigate the cause of this person's symptoms.

> “At this stage, we don’t know if the events that triggered the hold are related to vaccination,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, who oversaw public health preparedness for the National Security Council under Mr. Trump and who was acting chief scientist at the F.D.A. under former President Barack Obama. “But it is important for them to be thoroughly investigated.”

If anything, this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.

[undergrowth54]

> this should make you more confident, not less, in the safety of a well-tested vaccine.

Indeed it should! The fact that people are about to communicate messages such as "I am worried that this vaccine caused harm" means that it is more likely that this risk of harm is being appropriately managed.

A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.

[ceejayoz]

> A broken fire alarm is a risk to fire safety.

So is one that issues false alarms every 5 minutes, which is generally a better analogy for anti-vaxxers.

[afarrell]

That is also correct.

Epistemology is hard.

[ljm]

This article is practically misinformation in itself, and the body of the text confirms it:

“The event is being investigated by an independent committee, and it is too early to conclude the specific diagnosis.”

Here is an article from another newspaper, about the same thing: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/09/oxford-univers...

The headline is: "Oxford University Covid vaccine trial put on hold due to possible adverse reaction in participant"

Compared to NYT's "Covid-19 Live Updates: Vaccine Trial Is Halted After Patient’s Adverse Reaction"

Notice the difference between the two of them?

[dekhn]

I'm struggling to understand what you are saying here. Can you... sort of... unpack your point rather than indirectly alluding to it? (I'm an ex-biologist and read the Times article and don't see it as misinformation. It is almost entirely factual and lays out all the critical information an educated reader would need to understand the current situation).

[ghostpepper]

Which word do you have an issue with in the NYT headline, 'reaction'? As in, the 'adversity' faced by this patient may not in fact be a 'reaction' to the vaccine?

[pnw_hazor]

The use of "on hold" in the guardian headline clearly conveys a temporary pause or an interruption.

The use of "halted" in the NYT headline commonly means stop or end.

halted; halting; halts Definition of halt

(Entry 1 of 4)

intransitive verb

1 : to cease marching or journeying

2 : discontinue, terminate the project halted for lack of funds

transitive verb

1 : to bring to a stop the strike halted subways and buses

2 : to cause the discontinuance of : end halt hostilities

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/halt

on hold in American English

1. in a period or state of interruption or delay the countdown was on hold

2. in a state of interruption in a telephone call, as during a transfer to another line I was on hold for five minutes

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/on-h...

[ljm]

The NYT makes the headline about an adverse reaction and the study is paused because of it. To my mind 'adverse reaction' means that they've established the cause and effect, and the study was halted because someone reacted badly to the vaccine.

My issue is that it's not clear whether the patient's illness is due to the vaccine or something else, so headlining with 'adverse reaction to the vaccine' is jumping to a conclusion. They don't say 'possible', which is the truth.

[undergrowth54]

yes. But they both still fall under the category of "someone is worried about the harms of a vaccine"

So are they both misinformation, or are you painting with too broad of a brush?