There is no honest way to claim that this vaccine is more dangerous than a smallpox vaccine was in 1809 (first compulsory vaccination in the US).

This is far from the most dangerous vaccine ever to be required.

Obviously some of the details are different, they're different for every contagion, but the principle is the same: the interest in public health overrides the normal interest in preserving individual bodily autonomy, just like with vaccinations and schooling.

The details are the important part here. If you understand why people are against the vaccine, it is because they are not convinced that the vaccine results in the greatest public health. Whether this is right or wrong, trying to gloss over the differences in the details doesn't work here since the conflict is at the level of details.

And no I don't agree with your point about vaccines being "different for every contagion". That is patently untrue, most vaccines developed in the recent past have either been recombinant, attenuated/inactivated viruses or adenovirus vectored vaccines that have undergone extensive FDA approval by now.

This is especially true for the vaccines required for schooling.

> most vaccines developed in the recent past have either been recombinant, attenuated/inactivated viruses or adenovirus vectored vaccines

If you list every other type of vaccine other than mRNA, then yes the majority of vaccines are one of those. I mean, you even listed adenovirus which is extremely new and only used in covid & ebola vaccines, which makes me suspect you don't actually care about the underlying technology or know much about it.

> This is especially true for the vaccines required for schooling.

The start of that movement was with the smallpox vaccine, which was quite a dangerous vaccine as far as vaccines go. Seems a weird comparison to make.

> "adenovirus which is extremely new and only used in covid & ebola vaccines"

So you are agreeing with me that there is prior evidence that adenovirus vector vaccines are safe and efficacious? Because that is exactly what I am trying to say. If you feel that there isn't enough evidence, feel free to omit that from the list and the point still stands. Perhaps even more so for OP's point about school-mandated vaccines.

> The start of that movement was with the smallpox vaccine, which was quite a dangerous vaccine as far as vaccines go. Seems a weird comparison to make.

You completely lost me here. No one is making the claim that the covid vaccines are net bad nor that it will always be so. From what I understand the vaccine hesitant population includes medical professionals and many well informed people who are simply waiting for more evidence about its safety. The smallpox vaccine today is understood to be both safe and efficacious and has been approved by many advisory administrations including the FDA. So if you are trying to make the point that vaccines can initially start off being unsafe and further developments can make them safer over time, you are basically voicing the perspective of those who would rather wait it out than rush to take the vaccine.

> So you are agreeing with me that there is prior evidence that adenovirus vector vaccines are safe and efficacious

I mean, the evidence isn't as strong as it is with mRNA vaccines, but nonetheless they are effective and reasonably safe.

I just think your division of categories is totally arbitrary and not grounded in any evidence.

> From what I understand the vaccine hesitant population includes medical professionals and many well informed people who are simply waiting for more evidence about its safety

You could describe the flat earth movement the same way. The world has a lot of people in it, the set of beliefs contained within run the gamuet. Some people think X is true for all X. I don't think that says much about the answer to the question one way or another.

> I just think your division of categories is totally arbitrary and not grounded in any evidence.

You just agreed that adenoviruses are proven to be safe and effective at scale. I don't think anyone can argue conclusively that mRNA vaccines are, though there is mounting evidence that the incidence of short-time side effects is low. If you follow that rule, it should be obvious what rule the division of categories take and why they are grounded in evidence.

> You could describe the flat earth movement the same way.

Now that is a strawman if I've ever heard one, not sure if you actually intend to be taken seriously with that. There are provable ways to show that the earth is round based on physical laws. There is not enough evidence that the covid mRNA vaccine is safe and effective. One could argue about what would constitute evidence for safe and effective, but pick any reasonable metric (e.g. full FDA approval, long term studies). In fact, I would argue that to think that the COVID vaccines are completely safe without enough evidence to conclusively prove that falls under the kind of beliefs that you describe.

There are always going to be people who are non-rigorous and choose to believe what they want to but I hazard a guess that a large portion of the vaccine hesitant crowd falls under the category of people who want to see a rigorous analysis of the long term side effects of the vaccine before taking it.

Before you strawman this argument again by saying that you can apply this logic to anything, do some research about the history of mRNA vaccines and its associated risks (autoimmune disorders, myocardial inflammation, all the anecdotal reports of persistent side effects, etc.).

The point is not that mRNA vaccines produce these side effects with high probability but that there is high uncertainty as to whether they do or not because of the lack of long term studies.

> You just agreed that adenoviruses are proven to be safe and effective at scale. I don't think anyone can argue conclusively that mRNA vaccines are, though there is mounting evidence that the incidence of short-time side effects is low. If you follow that rule, it should be obvious what rule the division of categories take and why they are grounded in evidence.

I have trouble following your line of argument.

You think that adenovirus based vaccines are proven to be safe and effective at scale. You don't think that mRNA has. But covid was the first time adenovirus vaccines have been used at scale. They're probably a reasonable risk tradeoff for people during a pandemic, but they have rare side effect causing blood clots that are fatal if not immediately treated, so i wouldn't say they have the ideal safety profile.

I think it would be logically consistent (even if i disagreed) to say neither mRNA nor adenovirus had enough testing. It would also be consistent to say both are ok or even mrna is ok but adeno isn't. However it makes no sense to me to say, of two vaccine types that have had the same amount of testing, the one that has worse safety & efficacy is great, the one with the better safety results needs more testing.

Like, is their something i'm missing about your argument? What basis are you making this judgement on?

> Now that is a strawman if I've ever heard one,

How so? I'm pretty sure its not. A straw man is a specific type of invalid argument.

To recap, you said

> From what I understand the vaccine hesitant population includes medical professionals and many well informed people who are simply waiting for more evidence about its safety.

And i said (ad absurdum) that the same could be said of flat earth. Flat earth is nuts, so if your argument applies equally to them, it must be incorrect. Therefore that line of reasoning should be discarded.

> There are provable ways to show that the earth is round based on physical laws

Indeed that was my point: flat earth is nuts. If your argument could be used to support a patently false position than there is almost certainly a mistake in your logic

> Before you strawman this argument again by saying that you can apply this logic to anything

Again that's very literally the opposite of what a straw man argument is. Wikipedia has an article on the topic if you are curious.

> The smallpox vaccine today is understood to be both safe and efficacious

This is kind of besides the point. But no that's not true. The smallpox vaccine is understood to be high risk and is not reccomended for most people. Risk is cost vs reward, so it was a very different story in the 1800s.

My main argument here is not that its safe or not safe (even though i believe it is). I'm claiming that you're evaluating its safety irrationally and inconsistently (or perhaps without researching the underlying topic), and i guess more generally if you're not going to be consistent in your own evaluation you should just listen to experts.

Either you don't understand what a strawman argument is or just lack the understanding of it and I need to spell it out for you. A strawman argument is when you misrepresent someone's argument and attack it in a misguided attempt to refute the original one.

In this case, you are misrepresenting the argument I'm trying to convey by comparing it to something that is proven without a shadow of a doubt (the earth is round). You misrepresented the initial claim as being a statement on the "proven safety (or lack thereof) of covid mRNA vaccines" whereas it was merely about the "uncertainty of the safety of covid mRNA vaccines".

Also to address your other leaky arguments.

> However it makes no sense to me to say, of two vaccine types that have had the same amount of testing

One of the vaccine types (hint: adenovirus vectored) has an instance that has approval for use by EMA. Now if you want to raise questions about the rigor of the EMA compared to that of the FDA and as a result their relative safety compared to the other vaccine types, you are free to do so. Like I mentioned, even if you want to omit that specific type of vaccine, my point still stands. It makes 0 difference to the argument I'm making. If you don't understand this basic point and are unable to progress beyond a single technicality, there is no use having a discussion because you don't get the point that is being made.

> Indeed that was my point: flat earth is nuts. If your argument could be used to support a patently false position than there is almost certainly a mistake in your logic

What is this patently false position you speak of? The only patently false argument I can think of is your insistence that there is enough evidence to conclude that the covid vaccines are conclusively safe over the long term.

You do not need any additional evidence to prove that the earth is not flat. You absolutely do need more evidence to conclude with high probability that the covid vaccines are safe long-term for the obvious fact that there has not been sufficient time since a large group has been vaccinated to know. Not to mention the various variants which the vaccines don't seem to be effective against.

> Again that's very literally the opposite of what a straw man argument is. Wikipedia has an article on the topic if you are curious.

You should definitely go read up on what a strawman argument is. I am not surprised that you use such arguments given that your understanding of them is incomplete. To clarify, I'm referring to the fact that based on your previous responses, I can guess that you are prone to misunderstanding what I am saying as "covid vaccines are especially prone to having horrendous side effects" as opposed to "there is uncertainty about its long-term safety, for good reason".

> I'm claiming that you're evaluating its safety irrationally and inconsistently (or perhaps without researching the underlying topic)

I clearly just outlined several reasons to be skeptical of mRNA vaccines. I have many friends who are immunologists and pharmaceutical scientists who know about the history of mRNA vaccines and their associated risks. If you have no clue about this, you're the pot calling the kettle black and you should do more reading instead of wasting my time. Your deference to "experts" in the public eye clearly supersedes your ability for critical thinking, making sound logical arguments and reading primary literature.

> In this case, you are misrepresenting the argument I'm trying to convey by comparing it to something

Ah, i see where the confusion came in. You don't know what misrepresent means.

Misrepresent means to say someone said X when they really said Y.

To compare something is to say, someone said X (when they really truly did), and I think that X is similar or equivalent to Y due to reason Z.

The key difference is I'm not saying the other person said Y, I'm saying that i think its equivalent. I'm not making claims about the other person's beliefs, i'm making claims about my own beliefs about what they said. An on looker can clearly distinguish what are my beliefs and what the original person's beliefs are, and judge for themselves. In a misrepresentation they can't honestly tell where the original person's belief end and the new person's beliefs start. See the difference?

> by comparing it to something that is proven without a shadow of a doubt

That is generally how argument ad absurdum works (well usually the negation of something proven beyond a shadow of a doubt). Which is very different from a strawman.

If the conclusion wasn't proven false beyond a shadow of a doubt, it would hardly be fitting to call it absurd

> You absolutely do need more evidence to conclude with high probability that the covid vaccines are safe long-term

Yes, i was dismissing your evidence as stupid (i.e. the existence of some unnamed person somewhere believing a proposition having any bearing on the truth of the proposition), not the need for evidence in general.

> What is this patently false position you speak of?

The absurd concludion that the earth is flat. (Its more clear in context)

> You should definitely go read up on what a strawman argument is

You just quoted it at me. I stand by my statement. A priori, "saying that you can apply this logic to anything" cannot be a strawman since there is no misrepresentation involved which is a neccesary condition for it to be a strawman, according to the definition you just quoted.

> I have many friends who are immunologists and pharmaceutical scientists who know about the history of mRNA vaccines...

Really now? Its basically a meme at this point to use a line like this when talking about race relations (e.g. "i'm not racist, i have black friends!"). I'm not sure why you think this would be anymore compelling in a different context.

> One of the vaccine types (hint: adenovirus vectored) has an instance that has approval for use by EMA

Which one? The covid adenovirus ones are emergency approval, which to be clear, is still an approval, but i thought the bar you had was approval without caveats. The ebola one also has caveats - "Zabdeno has been authorised under ‘exceptional circumstances’. This is because it has not been possible to obtain complete information about Zabdeno for scientific and ethical reasons." - https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/zabdeno

Is there an adenovirus based vaccine i don't know about that has full approval?

Re: the strawman argument, I already clearly stated where you misrepresented my argument so if you're still unclear about it read it several times. Your point about ad absurdum is wrong because you're not making a statement on my initial argument about the amount of evidence required to make a high confidence decision on long term safety.

Re: "existence of some unnamed person somewhere believing a proposition having any bearing on the truth of the proposition"

You seem to be making things up now, if you make absurd claims, back it up with evidence. Where did I say such a thing? My point has always been about the amount of evidence, if you understood otherwise you misinterpreted what I said. At least now, you are starting to agree with my point about the need for evidence, so we are making some progress here.

> Really now? Its basically a meme at this point to use a line like this when talking about race relations

This is such a dumb thing to say with no relevance to the point at all. If you feel the need to resort to such analogies to strawman (yes, read what it means if you don't get the use of the term here and keep re-reading till you understand) my argument, it is clear you have nothing of substance to say. The reason I brought this up is not to virtue-signal as you seem to have misrepresented but rather to inform you about the sources I'm getting my information from. All of my friends who work in these fields agree with these risks and advise against getting the vaccine until there is more data unless its unavoidable.

Re: Zabdeno - The fact that it is an exceptional use authorization is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it is approved and has been in use for over a year. That reduces the uncertainty about long-term effects. If you don't trust the rigor of the EMA and doubt that it is safe despite being in use for over a year, it is up to you to discount the evidence. Irrelevant to the point.

In any case, I have not heard anything convincing from your end as to why the people who are holding off of getting the vaccine because of the lack of long term safety data are wrong. And instead, it is increasingly clear that you have not done your research or thought about this matter deeply enough. I know it is not representative of all the people who are pro-vaccine so I would like to allocate my time hearing from those who have actually thought about this and have substantial things to say. Good day.

> Re: the strawman argument, I already clearly stated where you misrepresented my argument

And i disagreed that making a comparison from one thing to another is a misrepresentation provided that one accurately describes the initial thing. As far as i can tell you haven't disputed my counterargument as to what the words misrepresent and comparison mean, as of yet. My evidence is the dictionary. > Re: "existence of some unnamed person somewhere believing a proposition having any bearing on the truth of the proposition" > You seem to be making things up now, if you make absurd claims, back it up with evidence. Where did I say such a thing?

I'm responding to "From what I understand the vaccine hesitant population includes medical professionals and many well informed people who are simply waiting for more evidence about its safety"

To be fair, you did qualify that with weasel words about medical professional & well informed people. They were unnamed though. I should have used the same qualification. I don't think changing it to be "existence of some unnamed medical professional or person somebody deems to be well informed somewhere believing a proposition having any bearing on the truth of the proposition" has any material impact on my argument.

> The fact that it is an exceptional use authorization is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it is approved and has been in use for over a year. That reduces the uncertainty about long-term effects.

Look at those goal posts shift.

> I brought this up is not to virtue-signal as you seem to have misrepresented but rather to inform you about the sources I'm getting my information from.

Yes, indeed, that's why i compared it to the racism context, since that's how that argument is used in that context too - as an appeal to authority that cannot be assailed because the authority is hidden (or potentially made up) making it very difficult to criticize the authority. Maybe its a bit of an obnoxious comparison since its borderline ad hominem to compare to that subject matter. Nonetheless all the reasons that's an unreasonable argument in that context apply here too.

> In any case, I have not heard anything convincing from your end as to why the people who are holding off of getting the vaccine because of the lack of long term safety data are wrong.

Indeed, the primary point i was arguing is that your position is irrational and inconsistent. This has nothing to do with vaccines. I can't actually tell if you are pro or against it, since you seem to be pro adenovirus vaccines, and most covid vaccines other than moderna or pfizer are adenovirus based. Regardless, you'd be wrong if you were pro, you'd be wrong if you were anti, you'd be wrong if we were talking about what type of shoes to wear. The reasons you're wrong for the most part have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Google and Facebook are primarily platforms for user generated conent.

When content is something that's monetizable, people of all kinds are going to use this chaotic opportunity to make a quick buck. The more attention grabbing the title the greater the likelihood people will click on the link.

So its entirely unsurprising that a corp marketing team within google or facebook would be entirely powerless in creating a repo that cuts through the noise. Certainly they could censor all information except their official statement, however people would be highly mistrustful of that and will take any change in narrative as a signal of incompetence.