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by ganzuul 1831 days ago
Call me stupid for waiting to get vaccinated... But I'm not stupid enough to base that decision on a Twitter thread.

The problem I have is that inclusive discussion is being suppressed, and I can't make a decision based on clearly biased information. ref. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_NNTVJzqtY

2 comments

You should not make your decisions based on social media AT ALL.

if you have questions, talk to a physician.

Umm, no. I wouldn’t expect an honest answer from them unless you know one personally.

They have no incentive to give you advice that even they feel is correct or safe. It isn’t their fault, however, as physicians are limited to providing you with the generally accepted standard of care. Anything that deviates from this opens them up to a malpractice lawsuit.

You literally contradicted yourself. They are legally AND morally obligated to provide you with the best care society can provide.

Not only can they be sued for malpractice, but they could lose their license entirely. Losing their only means of making money sounds like strong incentive, not to mention it would require violating an oath that doctors take VERY seriously.

And for what motive?

And yes, you should know your personal/family physician well. That's the whole point. They should be able to offer you personalized, cohesive care with continuity. They should be able to advise you on your own specific condition.

If you choose to neglect their advice, do not disparage them. If your views do not reflect the best practice of medicine, that's on you. They have no incentive to injure you, and implying otherwise is extremely disingenuous.

Note, I'm not saying you can't have these views, don't just attack others baselessly in order to defend those views.

Preventable medical errors are the third greatest cause of death in the United States.

Sure, the legal and moral obligation to provide care exists but it did not prevent the opioid epidemic. It turned out that systemic controls and criminal penalties were needed to prevent doctors from overprescribing certain drugs.

Doctors are generally great and don’t deserve to be disparaged, but they are humans and as fallible as the rest of us. Choosing not to trust all doctors is not rational, and adopting a “trust, but verify” approach to medical advice is rational.

I don't think you're making the case you think you're making.

Not giving people a vaccine that is known to work with very high efficacy is what we would call a "preventable medical error."

Even if something WERE to happen later down the road, it would not be called a "preventable medical error" because it's the best tool we have right now.

This is like letting your teeth rot because having a dentist drill out the cavity would "definitely remove some healthy bits," and that "we don't know where dentistry will be in 10-15 years."

I am pro-vaccines but let’s be honest, no physician has any clue how these things work or are put together, the manufacturing and QA processes involved, and so on. The lipid delivery mechanism alone is a trade secret based on cutting edge technology which has yet to be replicated outside the United States and Europe.

Asking your doctor specifics about this is like asking Geek Squad how to do kernel development. They operate in completely different knowledge domains.

Physicians should be able to explain in more detail than necessary to the average person, not only how vaccines work, but how mrna vaccines work.

i say talk to a physician because on an internet forum, it's your word vs mine. physicians have: knowledge, a credential, and society-granted authority on the matter. what they say holds weight—a lot more weight than some stranger in passing. NOT because physicians are infallible (which would be a ridiculous claim to make for any human).

The video you linked is removed.for violating guidelines, which I'm guessing means it had a conspiratorial slant. Discussion does not have to include unsupported or crackpot claims to be "inclusive".
I am pro vaccine, but youtube moderators are not subject matter experts, they are unskilled volunteers with very simple guidelines such as (made up rule by me, I don't fully know): "remove any video discouraging people from getting vaccinated". Therefore youtube removing a specific video doesn't say anything about the quality of its content, just that some random guy thought it violated the guidelines he was given. For example, for a long while youtube banned every video talking about covid no matter the stance.
YouTube is removing things for liability reasons, that's it, because if some event that caused people to die or have long lasting health effects, would be linked to them and they would be proven they knew and did nothing they would be open to lawsuits.
Instead of looking up the original video (e.g. by using the watch id), you immediately write it off as "crackpot claims" because some unknown authority at YouTube removed it, citing broad community guidelines.

Maybe we should stick to your words from 4 days ago:

"Science reporting is terrible and the general education system doesn't teach rational skepticism, it teaches unconditional trust of intellectual authority."

Is this really a skeptical, discussion-friendly behaviour or an unconditional trust in some kind of authority?

In my experience on forums, when someone makes a grand contrarian claim (“vaccines are risky”) and then cites a video without explaining why it is relevant or summing it up, the claims indeed have extremely high odds of being crackpot claims.
Where do you see the "crackpot claims" in this situation? He/she just stated that "inclusive discussion is being suppressed", showing a recently removed YT video.

For anyone who can't take 30s to look it up: It is a discussion between 3 individuals (2 of them already fully vaccinated with Moderna) regarding the pandemic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XkRq4PaHqo

They said they’re waiting to get vaccinated. That’s what I was referring to. Then they linked a 3 hour long video without bother to write a short summary of why it might be worth our time. It diverts attention away from an argument within thread and appeals to an indigestible authority which can’t be argued against without spending three hours.

And right away there are signs of bad faith. The comment below you bills Robert Malone as “the inventor of mRNA tech”. I’m sure he had some role but there’s no wikipedia on him, and the title of inventor of mrna usually goes to Katalin Kariko.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karikó

So either everything is a lie, or Malone’s claims are exaggerated. It seems easier to believe the latter. I searched and I cannot find a single piece evaluating Dr. Malone’s claims. Just conspiracy comments that accept him as inventor with no analysis.

I’ll admit the situation is odd. Malone is clearly real and has many old highly cited papers. What the heck happened between now and the early 2000s, and why is the press devoid of mentions?

https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=Jf1bApYAAAAJ&hl=en&...

You're right, they should have written a short summary of the content and not make us research it ourselves.

I wouldn't use "there's no Wikipedia on him" as an argument. Karikó's entry is only 1 year old [1].

Additionally, it seems that Karikó's work acknowledges contributions from Malone [2].

Whether he's the original inventor or not, whether his claims are true or false, should be up for debate. But isn't that enough to at least tolerate his opinion on YouTube?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Katalin_Karikó&of...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000527369...

And one of them is Robert Malone, who invented the mRNA tech that was used to develop the vaccines.

All they are trying to do is have a rational, inclusive discussion based on the data they have gathered, but they are not being allowed to do so.

Malone seems a curious case. He clearly has many highly cited papers. But I couldn’t find a single mention of him outside anti-vaccine conspiracy sites.

Do you have any link to any coverage or him and his career? Not from himself or such sources.

All those videos are repeating the same thing over and over, with some changes (some that are even contradicting themselves).

People who are into it they hear it so many times that it seem so obvious to them, but whenever they try to explain it to someone else themselves they are realizing they have difficulty, because everything is falling apart. They think it's because they aren't the experts so they link to videos instead. They don't realize that they have problem explaining it, because the argument is very weak, and if you think about it, it doesn't make much sense.

Not in this case. But the censors don't care.
Statistically speaking, it is crackpot nonsense if it's removed. But if you'd like to make a specific claim I'm sure we can all tell you how wrong it is, using rational skepticism ;)
I don't usually downvote people here at all, but that was such shoddy reasoning that I think you deserve it.

The panel had three experts on the subject, including the inventor of the mRNA technology that was used to develop these vaccines, Robert Malone.

You really fell on your sword, mister.

Quite the opposite - it seems you are just ready to suspend critical thinking and believe any conspiracy. No, he is not "the inventor" of "the technology". Hundreds of scientists contributed to the development and implementation of this research and the tech that made it possible. Now, please point to the RCT that shows widespread issues among vaccinated people? Hint: there aren't any. The evidence shows they are safe and effective. That's WHY we did the RCTs in the first place!