The irony with your comment is that it's the tobacco industry which started (and is still significantly funding) the whole anti science/evidence campaigns. In fact the whole antivax movement is part of a big FUD campaign. So historically these campaigns have almost always come from a certain direction to discredit established scientific evidence. The current antilockdown campaigns come from the same corner/often the same people so yes people are sceptical about them, I'm sorry that you got banned for your "well reasoned" post.

Maybe the solution is a law that if someone posts/airs clearly wrong facts. Or if someone's theories/facts... Get later disproven they need to post/air a correction at the same time at least as long (maybe better twice as long) and give it as much prominence. Maybe then outlets would be more careful about posting obvious untruths.

Huh. I didn't know that, and I'd appreciate references.

I am aware that the ad agency behind the "tobacco doesn't cause cancer" campaign got into the "lead paint is safe" and other pro-industry campaigns, including the climate change contrarians. And the Tea Party. Funded by folks like the Koch brothers.

> Maybe then outlets would be more careful about posting obvious untruths.

That's a very slippery slope. As I've said before, you may be surprised when you become the pariah.

I would absolutely agree that those who are harmed need adequate remedies under the law. I also know that vaccines provide an immense public benefit. If the specifics of the tort system were causing companies to exit the vaccine business (and they were) , that's certainly something the government ought to step in to fix. However, that doesn't mean there were "issues with safety" as you claim. The implications in your comment are actively harmful to the public health.

If you read the background for that law, you'll find that people were in fact being injured by vaccines. And some still are. Just as virtually all medicines injure some people. Because there's great variability in responses.

The law didn't get enacted just to prevent lawsuits, but also to compensate those who were injured.

> The implications in your comment are actively harmful to the public health.

That way lies totalitarianism.

For example, there's considerable pressure in many countries to outlaw secure end-to-end encryption. To protect against terrorists, child abusers, and other criminals.

So how would we feel if support for secure end-to-end encryption were censored in social media?

Yes, vaccines have side effects, just as any other medication or treatment does. Nobody has claimed otherwise.

The reason your comment is harmful is because you make implications that have no basis in evidence, but which serve to advance dubious claims accepted by a small but growing and very vocal group of antivaxxers that have had a clear negative impact on our society.

If you have some new evidence or analysis to add, please add it. If all you have is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, please don't throw gasoline on this fire.

Well, I think that you're overreacting. Considering risks is important. We've suffered too much from denial. Pollution of groundwater. Fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Toxic chemicals in food packaging. And I could easily come up with another dozen examples.

> The reason your comment is harmful is because you make implications that have no basis in evidence, ...

That's exactly what attorneys for polluters always say. There's this thing called the precautionary principle. So you act when damage is possible, long before there's conclusive evidence.

Edit: If you like, I can probably find defendants' briefs and expert reports from landmark cases, asserting that plaintiffs have provided insufficient evidence of causation to support their claims.

Here's the thing: either you're simply naive to the tactics of anti-vaxxers and unaware that your comments play into their hand, or you're actively advancing their interests.

Yes, it's important to consider the risks of any medical treatment. Your comments make it seem like that hasn't been done, as if doctors and public health officials are just pretending that side effects don't exist. That's simply untrue -- rigorous clinical trials and careful reporting mean that modern vaccines are really quite safe. When you lucidly compare the incidence of side effects against the impact of contracting illnesses that vaccines prevent, there is only one reasonable position to take.

Your initial comments about thiomersal are pure FUD. You acknowledge that there's not real medical concern there, but choose to bring it up anyway? What could your motivation possibly be? If you'd like to discuss it objectively, here's how to do it: Someone with a financial interest who is no longer allowed to practice medicine falsified data in an effort to mislead the public about a supposed danger of a preservative in vaccines. Many people siezed onto that lie, despite the clear evidence that it was flawed, and continue to espouse it, causing lasting damage to society.

> So you act when damage is possible, long before there's conclusive evidence.

The damage that's real here is the damage caused by anti-vaxxers. That's actual damage that's caused harm to real people in the real world. Your comments help advance that agenda, which is why they are harmful.