It's been apparent for months (years?) that discussing vaccines with anti-vaxxers is a complete waste of time. You will not change their minds and will only end up sending a vast amount of time into a place where you can never get it back
As has been mentioned elsewhere: "You can't use reason and logic to change the position of someone who didn't use reason and logic to get there."
It's more fun to just copy random comments and see how they stack up to facts from reputable sources.
One of my more recent exchanges yielded these nuggets:
Dorothy Diana
Dave McCormick There have been no vaccines approved if you go by the definition of vaccine as it has been until it was changed in the dictionary in late 2019. That alone should make you raise an eyebrow.
And while we’re on the topic, can you let me know the “vaccines” you believe have been approved outside of emergency use?
I wasn't aware that a dictionary definition was the sole arbiter of how we decided whether something was a vaccine or not. In any case, the general description of a vaccine is just something that we introduce into our bodies in order to stimulate an immune response.
There are, in fact, many slightly different definitions of the word "vaccine". This site covers 9 of them.
What this person seems to misunderstand is that definitions change, often in response to a better understanding of how the things they describe work. At one time, there wasn't any definition of vaccine, because they didn't exist. Does this mean that we can never have a new word or a definition for that new word?
The claim that the definition has changed is missing context, as this article explains. The article also has a number of good sources where one can find additional information.
The other part of "Dorothy's" comment reflects a long-held belief of anti-vaxxers, that "emergency use authorization" is not the same as "authorized for use". This article from Wikipedia explains how EUAs work and why they were brought in. This site from Nationwide Children's has a short explanation useful for parents.
Pfizer, of course, has recently been granted full approval, although I doubt it will reassure the anti-vaxx crowd.
Dorothy Diana
Dave McCormick you have to rely on reading the safety studies to know if something “sensible”. Would you buy a car if they just told you it was safe? What if they showed you safety studies and you looked at them but didn’t notice the car manufacturer had performed them, and no one independent had reviewed them and they were done very quickly? Are you that gullible?
Helmets have been shown up for many years to prevent serious head injury when bike accidents happen. There are no side effects to wesring a helmet like permanent neurological injury and cardiac death.
There have never been long term or good short term studies on these injections. Pfizer documents reveal an alarming amount of injury or death in the first month they distributed these. Only you believe marketing, while Pfizer has made 30 billion +.
If you’re just watching the TV and not reading for yourself you’re just a victim of dangerous marketing. As are your children.
First, I don't generally ever look at safety data when buying a vehicle. I doubt many do. As extensions of our personalities, as objects of social status and as fun equipment that we like to play with, I'm pretty sure that most people spend far more time considering color, options, power, style and all those other matters than they EVER spend thinking about or researching vehicle safety. Most people also know that government imposes certain safety standards on vehicle manufacturers. Most of us know none of those standards guarantees 100% safety from our vehicles. And yet, we continue to buy them, based on color, style, power, fancy options, brand loyalty....
It is true that safety is more important when considering a treatment administered to someone who isn't ill, compared to, say, a bike helmet. I will add, though, that vaccines have to go through a far more rigorous testing regime than any car goes though. It's possible that no vehicles would ever be approved for use if they did.
While it's true that the drug companies run the trials, there most certainly is independent review of ALL their data. That's what the FDA does. That's what Health Canada does. That what the European Medicines Agency does. And each of those has separate, independent committees made up of experts in these things to evaluate and make recommendations. And it's worth pointing our that these vaccines have been in development for a long time.
There is no evidence of any "alarming amounts of injury or death" from any of the vaccines administered, and that that is now over the 8 billion mark around the world.
Recent vaccine trials involved tens of thousands of people. Some adverse reactions can be so rare that they might not have showed up at all in that group. That's why careful surveillance is imposed on all vaccines (or any new drug) once it's rolled out to the general public, expressly to find those rare 1 in a million cases.
Dorothy Diana
So, logic lacks in these analogies, but they might work for the weak minded. I am a nurse – let me explain. Driving after drinking puts someone else at risk. Allowing a population to have an injection with no safety studies that is “leaky“ drives the virus variants. Thank you for Delta, it was preventable.
Don’t believe me though- how about Nobel prize winning virologist Luc Montagnier, as well as Dr Geert Vanden Bossch who has the ear of many world leaders due to his accomplishments, abd used to work for the injection developers, as well as thousands of other scientists who are not getting paid. As predicted the vaccinated are the sick and are driving the variants. The TV abd pharm companies have told you yeh injections do not work -what don’t you believe them? The boosters will never end. Please wake up.
So where do virus variants come from? This recent article from Tufts University explains what viruses are and how they mutate. Anyone with high school Biology should be able to understand it. Basically, the more any virus replicates, the more chance there are for mutations. It's a random thing, so viruses aren't "taking advantage of vaccines" to avoid them. It's just natural selection. Some mutations are successful, some are not.
It's fascinating to watch anti-vaxxers search diligently for the one or two experts out there who happen to say things that they agree with. Unfortunately, they tend to fall into the category of Appeal to Authority - if someone important says it's so, it must be. Well, even experts can be wrong, and in this case, there is NO evidence so support Dr Montagnier's assertions, as this article points out.
The fact remains, unfortunately, despite "Dorothy's" claims, there will be more chances of mutations anywhere the virus is replicating more often, and that is primarily in large populations of unvaccinated people. This article from Healthline explains it quite well.
So the problem really is this:
