Not saying that the sentiment wasn’t genuine, but damn that is some poor optics considering the history.

But you could say the same about most things that most people do every day.

Nobody needs to become an amateur biologist.

But everyone needs to have the self awareness to step back and realize that vaccines are one of a hundred things they do that they don't have the expertise to build or explain, and that the only reason they're hesitant about this one is because they've been drawn into a culture war about it.

Whereas the rest of life that's equally unfathomable, we do it without controversy because nobody's found the value in making us pawns over it.

I sympathize with that statement, and maybe this is just semantics, but did we ask Black people to receive the vaccine first?

Everybody has equal access.

This is the only sympathetic group out of the bunch. (Lots of people are ignorant of a lot of things for lots of reasons, sometimes at great cost. Those costs are generally theirs to carry.)

Practically, however, that sympathy has limits. Should we shut down New York again because those who refuse to get vaccinated will die? Would there be the political will to?

They shouldn’t. But there is daylight between the government having done something unfavourable to a group you identify with and it having abused the specific thing you’re being asked to do (saying you’re being vaccinated while administering a disease).

I agree the precedent exists for all Americans. That’s scary. But “the government has done bad things” isn’t a valid excuse for ignoring the other evidence. (I don’t give Black Americans a free pass on non-vaccination. I just sympathise with the hesitance.)

There's been a lot of stories and allegations about vaccination programs in Pakistan in the 21st century, in relation to attempts to find Osama Bin Laden. That they were fake, and/or covertly collecting DNA for the CIA.

Is this a valid reason for all Americans to be suspicious of vaccines or at least not to blame them?

still remains true and you didn’t present a counterpoint to that

both a) and b) have to be satisfied for me to care enough to dissect the similarities and offer an opinion

I’ve come to understand your example is a topic a lot of people care passionately about though. That’s interesting.

Come on.

In this case, too, anti-vaxxerism is due to a lack of education.

Whatever we do, we need to improve education, or we're going to continue paying for the consequences of not having enough of it.