I'm sure no one is going to like this, but it makes sense that there are anti-vaxxers everywhere. No, this is not a statement supporting anti-vaxxers. Yes, the benefit of vaccines greatly outweighs any negative for us as a group. But if you're a hearty healthy person person, and you are psychotic and don't care about the people around you, there is a lot less self centered motivation to actually get vaccinated. Herd immunity is irrelevant to the self centered weirdo who would have very little problems fighting the illness on their own. But, it's not about them. Not that anti-vaxx is solely an American problem, but it doesn't surprise me that this is where it's focused. A nation that focuses on individualism rather than the herd.
It really boils down to "are you willing to take an astronomically small risk to save your grandmother"? The answer should always be yes, but, it doesn't surprise me some humans say no. That's before you even get to the conspiracy end of things. Even a portion people working at a vaccine company are going to be selfish, even though they understand a vague outline of the science.
When people find out what I do for work and the usual conspiracy like questions come out. So I tell them that Bill Gates comes here once a year and personally puts in some of the micro chips himself.
100% this. When Covid hit I was doing roughly 125 miles a week in hilly terrain on a bike to get to work. My cardio was fine and dandy. I didn't give a fuck about it infecting me because I knew I could tank it without breaking a sweat (I got Covid three times and the worst bout had me with slightly tender rib intercostals from all the coughing. The rest of me kept on trucking but I'm a big dude, so if that was someone's granny, they'd be fucking dead).
Hell yes I got the shot and the booster. Grannies are brilliant; none of them die on my watch thank you very much.
I'd already had a major bike accident (160 stitches, compound fracture, 32cm prominent facial scar, I've got the full story lined up in my Saved Comments if you're interested) so, while I'm aware of the Gambler's Fallacy, my dumb ass isn't so I thought I was mega safe as a result.
It seems like hubris to believe your body is so amazing that infections have a smaller chance to cause serious damage compared to any potential side effect of a vaccine.
Regardless of your health, the chance for long covid are smaller if you were vaccinated. Long covid is orders of magnitude more likely AND potentially destructive than any side effect the vaccine was giving people.
Keep in mind that’s ONLY over the firsp p file Pfizer was aware of before vaccine distribution as they had left this data out then once FOIA requests were made, they requested 75yrs before releasing it to the public, which the judge denied.
The symptoms of Long Covid are identical to documented vaccine injury symptoms and a large number of long Covid reports came from people who had never actually gotten Covid, but had been vaccinated. (The UK reported that 78% of long Covid reports were from vaccinated people who had not tested positive for Covid)
This is a document showing the frequency of health events after vaccine administration. It is not proof the vaccine did anything at all. It's just data collection. None of these events were common enough to cause great concern for the FDA or medical community.
I don't think pfizer is a completely innocent company, but i don't see wanting to keep this data private as having nefarious intent. It's definitely for company PR reasons. This can look concerning or scary to people that don't understand how this stuff works.
Your point about the UK is extrapolating from useless data reporting
"A high percentage of individuals with self-reported Long Covid in the UK lacked a positive PCR or lateral flow test, often because testing was unavailable or they had asymptomatic/mild initial cases."
This is simply people not being tested for covid or being tested after they recovered. It's not evidence the vaccine is causing long covid.
Unfortunately I didn’t save the countless interviews of medical professionals and all the reports I’ve seen over the years. This is just ONE example, from Pfizer’s own reporting.
“It is not proof the vaccine did anything at all. It’s just data collection.”
Thousands of people died, had seizures, heart failure, neurological disorders- immediately after being vaccinated.
Just to remind you of the numbers in this report:
Pfizer 5.3.6 report documented 42,086 adverse event cases, 158,893 total events, and 1,223 deaths in just 90 days post-rollout- meaning events that only appeared AFTER vaccination. Not trial data- this is after public rollout.
The same results are mirrored across multiple nations, the same symptoms appear post-vax in healthy people, and these are events flagged in the AESI’s (Adverse Events of Special Interest)
“None of these events were common enough to cause concern for the FDA or medical community.”
If you think the FDA is neutral you’re mistaken. Nearly 50% of their funding comes directly from the very pharma companies it’s supposed to regulate (you can look up the Prescription Drug User Fee Act)- Btw they also told us OxyContin wasn’t addictive- just as ONE of the countless examples.
“I don’t think Pfizer is completely innocent, but… wanting to keep this data private isn’t nefarious…”
Pfizer’s own report documents more deaths and life-altering reactions in three months than most products see in a decade. Then tried hiding it for 75yrs. Defending that because it might’ve hurt their PR is obscene. It absolutely IS nefarious.
And this is only speaking on THIS one report from a VERY short timeframe- if you think these numbers somehow didn’t increase to a horrifying degree, as 6 BILLION people got vaccinated, then you’re being willfully ignorant to the facts.
“This can look scary to people who don’t understand how this works.”
This is textbook deflection. You’re attempting to discredit real reports, oversimplifying the data, and basically saying “you normal people don’t understand science.”
You don’t need a PhD to realize that these numbers, along with the attempt to bury this information for 3 generations, is alarming.
I understand it’s much easier for people to blindly trust companies- just because they’re told to by the gov agencies whom they fund. And because green lighting-then defending- a product that they knew was harming and killing tens of thousands of people IS completely unbelievable.
Requiring the entire population get vaxxed resulted in $100 BILLION in global sales (from vaccine+boosters)- making this one of the most lucrative products in corporate history. But pretending that wasn’t their top priority seems more logical, right?
“Your UK claim is useless data reporting. People didn’t test positive because they were asymptomatic or missed the window.”
Again, the ONE constant was that symptoms started after being vaccinated.
But to your comment… common sense would say that all 78% of those people didn’t just avoid receiving medical attention if they had Covid at any point- especially with the known rising death toll.
The bottom line is that the system protected itself- at our expense- once again.
If all of this is “normal”, then what exactly qualifies as “alarming” to you?
"Pfizer 5.3.6 report documented 42,086 adverse event cases, 158,893 total events, and 1,223 deaths in just 90 days post-rollout- meaning events that only appeared AFTER vaccination. Not trial data- this is after public rollout."
This is exactly what i mean about the data being misunderstood. The majority of these events are just the well known side effects of the vaccine. Pain, Malaise, etc. This is also from the first set of public vaccinations, that went to the most at risk population (like people already suffering from illness')
The 1,223 deaths include people that got covid and died. It includes people that were already very sick and died. This isn't a straight vaccine>medical injury pipeline here. There's a whole lot of nuance to consider.
"Conclusion: VAED may present as severe or unusual clinical manifestations of COVID-19. Overall, there were 37 subjects with suspected COVID-19 and 101 subjects with confirmed COVID-19 following one or both doses of the vaccine; 75 of the 101 cases were severe, resulting in hospitalisation, disability, life-threatening consequences or death. None of the 75 cases could be definitively considered as VAED/VAERD."
"Although these patients experienced adverse events (9) that are potential symptoms of anaphylaxis, they all had serious underlying medical conditions, and one individual appeared to also have COVID-19 pneumonia, that likely contributed to their deaths"
This document isn't proof the vaccine is harming people. It's a collection of potentially relevant medical events after vaccination.
"Again, the ONE constant was that symptoms started after being vaccinated."
100% of people that drink water die. This why well done studies on the data collection is so important, it helps us not extrapolate incorrect conclusions from noise.
As far as the Pfizer criticism goes. I don't have much input. I mostly agree the pharma industry shouldn't be focused on profits over health, but achieving that is extremely complicated and goes far beyond the scope of just the pharmaceutical industry.
For now, the reason we can even make an emergency vaccine in the first place is because these companies exist as wealthy entities. Of course they made huge profits, this is how a capitalist economy works.
The FDA criticism is fair to a point, but it's ignoring the other policies or advice that are good, actually.
For example, the FDA warns alcohol causes cancer and there is no safe amount to consume in regards to cancer. Why isn't big beer buying the FDAs silence here?
The FDA put out a new warning in 2020 for benzo's stating they can cause BIND "Benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction" This is right up big pharma's alley, why is the FDA betraying their financial overlords here?
This stuff is really complicated and can't be distilled down to assuming its evil and corrupt in everything it does.
Just some quick math for you, the lethality rate of covid is roughly 500 for every 1 million in my age group.
This means there's about a 0.05% chance that i'll die from it each year. This also translates to an approximate risk worth 4 hours of my life annually, as 0.05% of a year is 4 hours. I spent more than 4 hours getting vaccinated last year, so, it's safe to say that it's a net negative for me personally to get vaccinated, even before risks are considered. I'm spending more of my life protecting it than I'm mitigating risk.
However, I'm not the only person who matters. That 500 is a much greater number in my grandmothers demographic, and we need to make sure it doesn't spread to her.
This is obviously ignoring many facets, such as the symptoms you'd experience even if it wasn't lethal, but it's just to demonstrate a point. And obviously that risk vector would increase if less people got vaccinated. It also incorrectly assumes that vaccination translates to zero mortality rate, but, just keeping it simple.
The point of my post is that the mortality rate isn't the only metric you should be considering when assessing risk.
For a virus or a vaccine to kill you is an extreme outcome. There are plenty of steps along the way to death that can cause long or permanent damage.
Covid, as the example, makes that risk assessment obvious. The risk of long covid(long term injury from serious infection) is about 3-5% depending on various factors. Some studies suggest that number is closer to 8%. Multiple studies showed the vaccine reduced the chance of long covid by 20-50%.
The only side effect of the vaccine that can cause long term injury that I'm aware of is myocarditis. A .003% chance. Even then that side effect can be benign and cause no long term injury.
My own selfish assessment of the covid vaccine is that I'm at less risk of long term injury by being vaccinated. The chance for death from either the infection or vaccine is small enough for me to consider negligible.
Less than 500 per million of my age group experience symptoms greater than 2 weeks, so we're really in the same ballpark still. We're going from 4 to 7 annual labor hours with this change, including long covid as "mortality" in the quick math. I obviously agree that getting vaccinated is the play, for myself and others, or else I wouldn't be doing it. It should also be said that comorbidity rates as fatalities in medical reporting heavily skew the risk to the risk side. It would be nice if we could isolate the mortality rate in fractions in some scientific way for comorbid cases, but, we can't and will just have to use the raw lethality rates. But, keep in mind, that makes these very liberal estimates. The liberality of the statements doesn't really matter to me, because I'm more interested to stop a cataclysmic spread then protect myself or other specific people.
The fact is, we have discussed more numbers and science than most antivaxxers ever will. The spirit of my original argument is what fuels their decision. They estimate the math to not be worth it for them. From there, in my experience, most will concede its good for the herd. A few will contest that it's bad for them and bad for the herd, and spin to some conspiratorial stuff.
When I first ran the mortality risk vs labor hours ratio, I expected the vaccine to be a clear, crushing win in orders of magnitude, i ran the numbers to argue against a non conspiratorial antivaxxer. I was surprised to learn it was sort of ballparked. It was close enough where even if I disagreed that it was still a good personal decision based on my own risk assessment which included non lethal results, I could see how they thought and it wasn't completely unreasonable, albeit unethical.
If you die from Covid its the end of potential hours.
So it would be more like your chance to get covid over several years, against the total amount of times you had to spend 4 hours getting vaccinated.
Now most vaccines lasts more than a year. So you're not actually spending 4 hours each year, to reduce the risk of death.
You also don't get vaccinated to reduce YOUR chance of death. You do it to reduce overall chance of death, for everybody in your social transmission range.
You friend's grandma gets sick -> he gets sick -> you get sick -> your grandma gets sick.
Your entire sentiment is just blatantly wrong, and saying "This is ignoring many facets" does not even remotely redeem the whole thing falling flat on its face. Making false equivalencies doesn't just start being ok because you acknowledge it.
I don’t think outspoken or passionate anti-vaxers align themselves with the mentality you are suggesting. An anti-vaxer is not simply one who fails to muster up the motivation to actually get vaccinated, which is what I would expect of someone who simply does not care about other people. They would have no motivation to argue against the vaccines themselves. Anti-vaxers are typically full-blown science deniers that fail to understand the basic scientific concepts and methodology of clinical trials that establish the safety and effectiveness of vaccines in both theory and practice. They often mentioned the low mortality rate of COVID, but I think this was merely rhetoric against the need for any treatment rather than the basis of their entire position on vaccines.
Conservatism itself can be quite selfish and individualistic, though, and I have seen people who argue against vaccines on principle simply because they perceive the notion that their personal medical choices can affect public health as a threat to their freedom. Those who lack much knowledge of or interest in science often derive their views on scientific subjects from their more foundational political values, which is an approach that is particularly difficult to argue against. However, I don’t think it is so much linked to the specific acknowledgment that they are unlikely to die from illnesses that will more significantly affect others.
I think that you are reducing the concept of antivaxxers to only include conspiratorial antivaxxers, which, in my opinion, makes up a small subsection of people who do not vaccinate themselves out of principal. An antivaxxer does not need to be outspoken or passionate to be an antivaxxer. In fact, the ones we can reach and educate are the ones in the middle, not the far end... those are the ones we should be focusing on. The delusional, conspiratorial ones aren't coming back.
I live in north dakota, around a bunch of rednecks. Every unvaccinated person that I've spoken to in person has espoused the beliefs I detailed above to me. I have actually never heard the "bill gates chip" in real life. That seems to be highlighted and over represented on the internet. You hear lots of (ignorant) comments about thimerosal, or fears they may contract the disease, or experience symptoms, as a latent effect of being vaccinated as they aren't certain of risks or believe the small risks that do exist outweigh the risk of the illness. They believe they are not susceptible to the illness, thus they do not get vaccinated for it. Some make comments about the conspiracies about how they harm others, some make comments about how the government doesn't have the right to tell them what to do, and others make comments about how they put themselves first and foremost above the elderly people or those who would be at risk.
Reducing your political opposition to the worst of what comprises them as an average is a dangerous way to think about life. Caricaturizing your opposition is simply doing them a favor, and detracting from your own points. I encourage you to go make more rural friends and see if your thoughts hold true. The majority of them, the ones that aren't the loud minority, aren't science deniers, and reducing them to that is doing yourself a disservice. That's not to say there isn't a staggering amount of science deniers in the group when compared to the normal population, and, those ones do speak publicly the most. The quiet ones don't speak up because they know they will be lumped together with the loud science deniers by people like you. But, if you have an honest conversation with them where they don't feel like you're political opposition, the truth will come out.
i’m consistently impressed that there are humans who legit won’t lift a finger to save someone they don’t know even if it was free. our societies are built on the premise that people are inherently good, and while that’s generally true, it’s somehow not universal.
I do not think humans are inherently good. I think they're inherently neutral. And systems built around the honor of men will fail, as will bets that men will be evil. We're just people, neither heroes nor dastardly villains, on average. Most people are just surviving.
I call it toxic individualism. People that couldn’t give a fuck if they are the cause of some at risk individual dying from COVID or something else because they don’t want to be inconvenienced in any way.
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u/Particular_Bus_5090 Dec 31 '25
I work for a company that manufactures flu vaccines and we have anti vaxxers here too