Most people think that "vaccine" has a specific meaning. It is dishonest to use that label for something that doesn't conform to that meaning when communicating with those people.
> Most people think that `vaccine` has a specific meaning. It is dishonest to use that label for something that doesn't conform to that meaning when communicating with those people.
I disagree that it’s dishonest, it’s the correct term.
I agree that if most people have a misunderstanding of what constitutes a vaccine, then failing to address that is going to lead to suboptimal public health communication.
It's dishonest because they think that you're promising something that they're not going to get AND you know it.
Like I said, maybe it’s not the optimal term to use in public health communications, and that could be because of dishonesty, but it could also be due to ineptitude or just failure to appreciate a widespread misunderstanding
It's hard to find a public health organization that doesn't say that communicating with the public is a key goal and core competency.
So, are they: [1] Incompetent [2] Using a different definition of "goal", "communicating", "core competency", etc? [3] ????
Note that communications isn't the only problem.
One of the arguments for [1] is that the public health folk have long said "hey, we're necessary to avoid a repeat of the Spanish Flu." yet they were largely unprepared. (Then again, flu kills 30-80k Americans every year and most of the good transmission research was done in the late 40s...)
You also haven’t offered any substantive counterpoint to my main point, which is that the widely accepted definition of vaccines is broadly consistent with the current coronavirus vaccines. The scare quotes aren’t necessary and detract from a reasonable discussion of their actual utility and tradeoffs