[baron_harkonnen]

> It's not the wackos we should be worrying about.

It's really amazing to me how easily the "left" was able to be tricked in the same death of critical thinking as the "right".

The "stick to the libs!" angle is far more responsible for the rise in support of Trump leading up to the election. People on the "right" were manipulated for decades into reducing their political beliefs to defending themselves from a fictitious adversary (this is why I put quotes around these terms). If you listen to any radical Trump supporter you'll quickly see that a large part of their logic is based on a deeply held belief that roughly half the country is mind washed, irrational liberals that seek to destroy their way of life.

This rewriting of people skeptical of the vaccines as "wackos" serves the same purpose for the "left" and mainstream progressives have gobbled it up without hesitation. They now see roughly half the country as a bunch mind washed, irrational "wackos" that are a threat to the foundations of our society.

Both the "left" and "right" (terms which honestly don't make any political sense any more, evidence by exactly this irrational support for corporate suppression of voices on the "left" and it's dissent on the "right") are currently structured so that any real, meaningful political discourse about the future of the country is dissolved into two insane groups of people throwing rocks at each other.

If you find yourself defined by either of these major narratives, then you are being played.

[Guvante]

What angle about vaccine skepticism isn't summarized as "it might negatively impact you so maybe don't get it".

The vaccine is totally the tragedy of the commons. If everybody gets it you are just making your life worse by also getting it.

If nobody gets it it is bad for everybody.

The reality is sometimes everybody collectively deciding to take one for the team is exactly what we need. Vaccination is one of those situations.

There are exceptions, I don't mean to imply otherwise, but those are not what is being talked about.

"Maybe we shouldn't vaccinate those who have been infected to vaccinate someone else" is being used to justify those who were presumed infected to not get vaccinated. The nuance is getting lost in a painful way.

[jawarner]

I don't think that's a complete characterization of the anti-vaccine "movement" or "meme." It's also rooted in distrust of the government science institutions. For instance, many people are taking ivermectin at some risk to themselves, since prolonged human consumption of ivermectin may have adverse effects.

[joe_the_user]

You're sketching a number of false equivalences. Left-of-center-in-the-US and Right-of-center-in-the-US each have their problems but that's bad argument for those being the same problems.

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say a substantial portion of anti-vaccine arguments have come from profit-driven fraud. That's pretty well document. That was the point of origin of the original study and various fraudsters have ridden that 'till today. Of course, there are those with nuance positions on the vaccines this will hurt them and hurt informed. Oppositely, the liars have effectively killed many people at this point.

There are a few actual fraudsters on the left but most active health-craze fraud is concentrated on the right in New Age circles (which can generally no longer be considered left).

Which is to say, the left-of-center has a number of problem (absurdist moralistic posturing, say) but straight-up-lying isn't equally divided here, among the politically respectable, it's concentrated on the right.