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It’s sad to see this kind of nonsense in a place that so prides itself on rationality. If a bunch of technophiles can’t even accept the idea that vaccination is the first or second most effective medical technology in history (sewers potentially taking the #1 spot) then the whole thing seems completely hopeless.

I’m really not looking forward to the return of measles and polio as common first-world diseases, but that seems to be the trajectory we’re on.

You appeal to rationality then immediately abandon it. The COVID vaccine was not a traditional vaccine and the definitions were changed after it's release to match it. It relied on an entirely novel technology and novel delivery technique that was a part of a military strategy goal for a decade for no practical reason. The goalposts were constantly changed and "boosters" added to measurably diminished returns.

Which is all bad enough, but for people with your sort of "rational" to then decide that vaccines are _all_ uncritically "good," and any questions or any sort of reservations that I've just covered were thus uncritically "bad" and those having them deserved to have their civil rights stripped from them, is what made this a horror.

Finally, we have sanitized water and sewers and we live in first world conditions, the precursors to the diseases you mention are almost entirely absent from our living conditions, and those vaccinations use time tested and proven technologies which haven't ever been in question. Perhaps some of the popular adjuvants are worthy of concern, but in your version of rationality, this is apparently an evil thing to even consider out loud in the presence of the vaunted "technophiles."

You completely fail to maintain rationality in the face of a very narrow and specific critique.

“the definitions were changed after it's release to match it”

Complete horseshit.

This sort of nonsense is what I’m talking about. It’s not that you’re not allowed to criticize. It’s that the critics are full of shit and we’re expected to take it seriously.

https://www.newsweek.com/science-fact-check-definition-vacci...

> Complete horseshit.

Wonderful brand of rationality you have on display here.

> This sort of nonsense is what I’m talking about.

> and we’re expected to take it seriously

You have refused to take any of this seriously. You have a preconceived idea of the world and you are absolutely unwilling to accept any debate or challenge over it. You are acting as a bully and not as a scientist. No wonder you constantly appeal to authority.

Did you not notice that your Newsweek article rates this claim as false?

Definitions are always imprecise anyway. The CDC’s pre-2015 definition of a vaccine wouldn’t have covered the tetanus vaccine, even though it’s a century old and there’s no dispute over whether or not it should qualify as a “vaccine” or not.

I’ve seen two somewhat different complaints around this definition nonsense.

First, there’s the complaint that the original definition used to require that a vaccine contain a dead or inactivated infectious organism, and it was changed because mRNA stuff is the first time something didn’t work that way, and thus it’s not really a vaccine. This is of course completely false. Tetanus doesn’t work this way and there are others from well before the mRNA era.

The other is that the definition used to require a “vaccine” to provide total immunity from infection and now it doesn’t, and this is because the covid vaccines don’t provide total immunity. This is obviously wrong because no vaccine provides total immunity. There are vaccines that provide a lot better immunity than the covid vaccines do, but none that are 100%.

So yes, horseshit. This doesn’t come from preconceived notions of the world, it comes from knowing basic facts about the world. When you read that “they” changed “the” definition in order to push something, your first thought should be to look up what the old one said and see if it was actually an accurate definition. And you should have the basic knowledge to be able to understand when it was clearly deficient.

> Did you not notice that your Newsweek article rates this claim as false?

Yes.

> Definitions are always imprecise anyway.

That's the same conclusion the article arrives at in order to claim it as false, when in fact, it has to admit, the definition _was_ actually changed. You're happy they're waving their hands the same as you happen to be. "Complete horseshit" is really absurd thing to say in the face of this reduction of yours, isn't it?

> and it was changed because mRNA stuff is the first time something didn’t work that way

It was the first time something didn't work that way and was additionally being mandated. The concern was raised that mandating something which fails to meet the previous definition of vaccine was a flaw in policy and so the definition was, in fact, changed. You ironically seem to notice that it was changed as a result of public policy and not due to any other obvious reason.

> This is obviously wrong because no vaccine provides total immunity.

Most vaccines provide total immunity. That's because the disease they target is not a flu that has rapid genetic mutations and where the introduction of a leaky "vaccine" does not create evolutionary pressure on the target disease.

You can move the goalposts to debating weather a Tetanus "vaccine" meets the definition, but Tetanus is caused by a bacteria, so almost no definition of "vaccine" will apply to it anyways. Other than this oddity do you have even one other example?

> your first thought should be to look up what the old one said and see if it was actually an accurate definition

So it changed, but it was to make it "more accurate," so my claim that it was changed is somehow actually wrong? You've fallen into a tautological trap. You see why I consider you to be ideologically possessed?

> And you should have the basic knowledge to be able to understand when it was clearly deficient.

Yet they felt the need to change at the same time they introduced an entirely new vaccine and also decided that people needed to take this new vaccine or have their civil rights removed. That seems to be the "deficiency" they were trying to correct and were not at all suddenly concerned with improving accuracy at just a really unfortunate time.

So are there any other goal post distractions you'd like to hyper focus on in an effort to ignore the original point?

OCASMv2 565 days ago

"Vaccine" is a category of products, each one is unique and the safety and efficacy of one has no bearing on any other. The reason they have such good standing is selection bias. Before COVID, only vaccines that passed years of rigourous testing were used and those are the only ones people know to exist, giving the impression that anything called "vaccine" is safe. That's wrong.

Which currently or previously widely available vaccines are not safe? I can think of one, but I doubt it’s the one you’re thinking of.

“Vaccines” have such good standing because the general idea of improving immunity by exposing the immune system to non-infectious material that closely matches some part of the infectious agent works really well. There’s not much room for things to go wrong unless the material actually turns out to be infectious, as was the case with the dangerous vaccine I mentioned above.

OCASMv2 565 days ago

> Which currently or previously widely available vaccines are not safe?

If they were detected as unsafe during testing they wouldn't be available. That's the point. You only know of vaccines that passed the tests, not those that didn't.

> “Vaccines” have such good standing because the general idea of improving immunity by exposing the immune system to non-infectious material that closely matches some part of the infectious agent works really well. There’s not much room for things to go wrong unless the material actually turns out to be infectious, as was the case with the dangerous vaccine I mentioned above.

Infectiousness is not the only risk. Look at polio vaccines causing polio.