I'm amazed at the bristling when the possibility that vaccines are dangerous is brought up. As it relates to your car analogy - can you imagine someone reacting similarly to the claim that cars are dangerous, car manufacturers know this and downplay it, and they could possibly be made safer?
Despite this, we are faced with this incredible resistance to them. People want to take this stuff away from us. This would kill millions. There is no legitimate reason to bring up the possibility that vaccines are dangerous anymore. Anyone who does so is either ignorant or malicious. Either way, doing your helps the people who would kill millions if they got their way.
Is it really a surprise that people bristle when you take the side of megadeaths?
This is where you're confused.
I'm not here making some big claims, adding to the body of human knowledge about how vaccines are actually bad.
I've mentioned many times that I think vaccines are a net positive, and don't want them discontinued. I myself am 3x vaccinated against covid (all mRNA), and will continue to get vaccinated in the future.
By simply mentioning skepticism in pharmaceutical companies' claims that vaccines are safe, even though we all acknowledge the dire financial incentives by which they propagate such claims, I have induced zealous attacks rivaled only by the most fundamentalist theologians.
I guess I have answered my own initial question (flagged into a memory hole) - people have adopted these beliefs in the same way that others adopt religion, and any attack on the belief is interpreted as a personal attack. The amount of ad hominems levied against me on this post here are incredible - childish, bad faith, burner account, and so on.
I remain curious and intellectually honest, I don't fault you or anyone else for their beliefs - only the way you treat others when they dare question them.
“By simply mentioning skepticism” in the face of massive evidence to the contrary, you are supporting people who want to get millions killed.
You don’t have to believe Big Pharma. There’s plenty of independent evidence that vaccines are safe.
Frankly you just come off as a self righteous asshole. Telling me my questioning isn't valid and I'm doing some shtick, I'm just here to shitpost and support RFK and want people to die. None of that is true. And you haven't done one bit of good in convincing me to not be skeptical.
Best of luck to you. My advice is: work on the way you interact with people, with a good smattering of luck you might be able to effect positive change in the world.
If you meet an asshole, they’re an asshole. If everyone you meet is an asshole, it might be you.
You are mentioning your skepticism without any evidence or any valid reason to question the existing mountain of evidence in favor of their safety and efficacy. This makes it very hard to take your claims of sincerity seriously. Yours is a ploy that is often used to call into question established facts.
For example, the oil industry loves to prop up puppets who, in bad faith, "just ask questions" of the type: "How do we know that fossil fuels really contribute to global warming? Did you know that carbon dioxide is actually really good for plants? Don't you want the weather to be a little bit warmer? Why are you believing all of the anti-oil propaganda created by big-budget climate scientists?" All of these points are easily debunked, of course, and the fact that the speaker pretends to not already know their answers is evidence that their questions are not sincere, but rather an attempt to spread misinformation.
As the other poster has already said: if you have a sincere question about vaccines, great. But in practice, the questions you're asking have already been answered. The only plausible explanation for your continued pretenses of skepticism is that you have some other agenda.
How do you think people should respond when presented with opposition to widely used, safe, effective, life-saving medications, when that opposition is completely unfounded on evidence? "Bristling" seem an appropriate response.
People would probably respond similarly if you proposed, say, to ban plumbing systems.
Beautiful strawman, bravo.
Fyi, that's not a strawman. A strawman fallacy is when I refute an argument that you didn't make. The line you responded to is an analogy.
Funny how it's always new accounts coming along with postures of extreme worldly wisdom about corporate malfeasance or misaligned incentives, but displaying complete cluelessness about the manifold institutional responses and copious public health statistics that are equally relevant. Why should I take you seriously when you only apply your critical faculties to one side of the picture and studiously ignore the other half?
It's very easy to believe that pharmaceutical companies employ scientists to disclaim danger. But that fact alone doesn't mean that pharmaceuticals are dangerous. We use research and evidence to make decisions about how dangerous a given product is, and we weight that against its benefits.
The same is true for any industry. I would add to your list of examples cars and social media. You will note that we continue to use cars, despite the fact that a world without cars would be safer.