"anti-vax" is a bad faith phrase that is intended to suggest that a person is against a vast range of science based medicine.

That is your opinion stated as if it were a fact.

Here are facts:

Anti-vax is a shortening of the term anti-vaccination, and it is not a surprise to find that people who are 'anti-vax' are against vaccinations, and many of them actively try to recruit people to their cause of avoiding vaccines. Anti-vaccination is a highly accurate term.

I and many others who are pro-vax don't think that anti-vax people are against a vast range of science-based medicines. To the contrary, I am amazed at how many anti-vax people will smoke cigarettes (DNA poisons) and drink alcohol (DNA poison) and take antibiotics and blood pressure medicines and see a dentist and see a regular doctor. Not to mention that many who are against a covid vaccine have had many other vaccines. This selective position against vaccines and not other treatments only makes their anti-vax attitude appear even more irrational.

But if you want different word, then vaccine hysteria would be a good choice. Because that's what anti-vax attitudes have caused, and now a few hundred thousand people have died from it. Think of the damage all those avoidable deaths will cause for millions of people.

I haven't seen a single comment in this thread that alluded to "I am against any/all vaccinations", which is why "anti-vax" is a bad faith term.

What is a neutral term?

I have been dealing with them in person in a clinical setting for a while now and struggle to see a non-negative side to the behaviour directed at myself and colleagues.

Anti-vaxxer here. While their negative behavior directed you/your colleges is reprehensible, I can tell you how I feel towards (most) 'vaxxers'. It's almost exactly the way me, an atheist feel toward religious believers. For course atheists come in all forms...

I wish I could tell if it was trolls, idiots, or villains - it's hard to respond appropriately if unsure. regardless, this is very sad to see on HN.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that it was not a metaphysical impossibility that some unknown issue with the novel technology applied in these vaccines was missed in the severely abbreviated clinical trials. The control groups were all vaccinated the second the EUAs were granted, so we have no controls against which we can check our hypotheses. In the (I know, completely impossible) hypothetical I am putting forth, wouldn't the first hints of the problem be something like unexplained excess deaths coinciding with vaccine rollout?

As I posted a few times here in this area so far, vaccine fear isn't rational. It's also amazing to me that so many people who are against vaccines really think that people who are getting vaccinated have been manipulated to do so, but that their decision to avoid a vaccine is well-reasoned and not the result of manipulation by people with anti-vaccine sentiment who profit from spreading misinformation in society.

Here is a link that I have shared now with many people, including people I know who were against vaccines. It nudged a few people to get a covid vaccine.

https://historyofvaccines.org/

Why?

There is a very strong anti-vax contingent on this website. It’s unfortunate given that you’d think appreciation for science and healthy, well reasoned skepticism would come naturally for technical professionals. Guess not.

>well reasoned skepticism would come naturally for technical professionals.

It's not well-reasoned skepticism to question the safety of a vaccine for which every vaccine adverse event reporting database reports two orders of magnitude more adverse events than previous vaccines? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z would you call Nature an anti-vax journal?

That is one comparison that should be made. The more important one is to compare having covid versus having the vaccine, the outcomes and the outcomes of you get covid while vaccinated.

The "having COVID versus having the vaccine" comparison doesn't make sense because the vaccines do little to prevent infection (and may even be increasing the odds with more recent strains). So the risks are cumulative, not mutually exclusive.

Healthy well reasoned skepticism is exactly what leads to "anti-(COVID)-vax sentiment", because the data is not good.

If you doubt that, just browse this thread with showdead turned on. The people pointing out that the vaccines could be causing this are all being killed. Probably this comment will be gone within minutes. Yet those comments are also providing evidence and citations. Meanwhile, the "pro-vax" comments are all like yours: merely wishing away people who disagree with no arguments or evidence.

So which side is truly the one with the appreciation for science and reason?

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead from vaccine refusal in the US and meanwhile on you talk about an appreciation for science and reason.

You really don't know that at all. Public health makes claims like that, but they distort data and lie with wild abandon, nothing they say can be taken at face value. Even if it were true, exchanging hundreds of thousands of deaths for millions of injuries so severe people can't work anymore is by no means an obvious trade, let alone one that should be forced on people.