In your mind, what's the specific difference between anti-vax propaganda and legitimate arguments for an individual to avoid being vaccinated?
Differently stated, what is the difference in mindset between a well-informed unvaxed person and an ill-informed one?
Some people pre-existing illnesses, have suffered after the coronavirus vaccination. I have ME/CFS, and hang out on ME/CFS forums, where there are many people whose health is very poor (eg bedbound their entire life and fed by intravenous nutrition because their digestive system is too weak to digest food).
Some of these ME/CFS patients have got worse after the coronavirus vaccine. So for ME/CFS patients, and anyone else in a similar position, it is a difficult decision on whether to vaccinate. They want the protection of the vaccine, but are justifiably fearful of possible negative effects of a vaccine (that worry applies to all vaccines, incidentally, not just the COVID vaccine).
I have moderate ME/CFS (I am housebound but not bedbound like the severe patients), and had the AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, and was thankfully fine afterwards (I had a bit of mild fever for a day or two, but no other side effects).
So we should be sensitive to the fact that the coronavirus vaccine can be bad for some people, and it should be an individual decision to vaccinate — a decision based on hopefully rational information.
However, the organized anti-vax movements (which existed long before the pandemic, but have seized on the pandemic as an opportunity to spread their message), are not letting people make rational decisions, because they are using fear tactics and appealing to people's emotions. My gripe is with these organizations, who are clouding rationality by their emotional scare tactics, rather than bringing light and sensible logic to the issue.
The anti-vax movements are also a multi-million dollar business: Joseph Mercola (who himself is worth over $100 million) has donated around $4 million to the anti-vax movements.
I am not suggesting that vaccines are always safe. Even existing vaccines which have taken 15 years to go through the development cycle can produce bad side effects (but usually in less that 1 in 50,000 people). I know many ME/CFS patients whose illness was actually triggered by a regular vaccination, like a hepatitis B vaccine.
So I would like to see research into safer vaccines.
However, I would also like the general public to become aware of how dozens of viral and bacteria pathogens in common human circulation are the likely culprits in most of cancers and chronic diseases. Please look up the work of Prof Paul Ewald, and read his views on how it is pathogens which are the likely cause of most diseases, and most early deaths due to disease.
Sadly, the Longevity community seems to have almost no awareness that its pathogens which are likely going to kill them eventually, through cancer, chronic disease, or sudden death via an infection. I have tried to raise awareness of this on this forum, but nobody seems interested.
Edited by Hip, 04 August 2021 - 02:13 PM.
