Anti-vaccine groups embrace pseudoscience “detox” treatments to undo vaccination

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/covid-vaccine-mandates-push-holdouts-get-shot-detox-rcna4859

by Geekette • 5 years ago

9 17 5 years ago

sircastor• 5 years ago

I have a family member who has rejected COVID vaccinations and I have a difficult time dealing with the lack of rationality on their part. Every explanation or assertion is countered with increasingly extreme ideas, and I’m in an awkward position of figuring out how my young child can spend time with them in a safe manner.

I had previously not understood how people could get themselves so deep into conspiracy theories. Now it’s obvious.

The next step with this sort of thing is of course that someone starts selling a “cure” for the vaccine that is harmless, but is fraudulent and scamming people.

jimmygrapes• 5 years ago

I had previously not understood how people could get themselves so deep into conspiracy theories.

To put it simply, it is contrarianism at the core. The more someone pushes the more you push back. The only fix for such a mindset is for the push to stop, but since the push works for the majority of non-contrarians it's worth the pushing. You can apply this to just about anything controversial in society/politics: gun rights, abortion, sexuality, religion, taxation, medication, etc.

The best thing you can do at an individual level is pull -- that is, agree with them as much as you can, be compassionate and empathetic with their views, but be firm in your own beliefs and highlight the overlap, then draw them closer to that overlap.

smt885• 5 years ago

I think you need citations for everything you wrote there. We do have a lot of research into how people come to believe conspiracy theories and (to a lesser extent) how to break them out of it.

Most of what I've read agrees that pushing those people and/or treating them without empathy is the wrong approach. But the cause is not always contrarianism, and vaccine skepticism is not a perfect analog for the other controversial issues you mentioned. Tellingly, vaccination wasn't a political or controversial issue for many decades in the US.

xil3• 5 years ago

Why not accept their decision not to take the vaccine? I think this is a choice - it shouldn't be mandated by the government. These vaccines are at best experimental - I'm not saying they don't work, but I am not confident enough in them to take the shot. After they've been used for a few years, and I see that there are no adverse effects, I'm fine taking it (if needed).

I'm not about the conspiracy theories, but I don't just jump on every bandwagon that comes along. I don't care how many have already taken it. Time will tell if it's safe.

If your counter argument is that they have been tested and doctors and other professionals have stated that there is no way of adverse effects in the future, then why is everyone signing a release before taking the shot, freeing all parties of legal action? Nobody will take responsibility if something happens to you from this shot, but they want to mandate it. Interesting.

smt885• 5 years ago

These vaccines are at best experimental - I'm not saying they don't work, but I am not confident enough in them to take the shot.

A drug that has been given 7.5 billion times is not experimental.

Crucially, the mRNA vaccines have a very similar effect on the body to previous vaccines. The fundamental mechanism is the same: stimulate an immune response to a particular pathogen without actually giving someone the pathogen.

If your counter argument is that they have been tested and doctors and other professionals have stated that there is no way of adverse effects in the future, then why is everyone signing a release before taking the shot, freeing all parties of legal action?

I got my vaccine in the US and didn't sign a release to free anyone of legal action.

Also, the way we know that it won't have adverse effects in the future is that the vaccine doesn't persist in your system. If it's going to harm you, the harm will be in the short term. It can't just pop up again in 6 months.

You shouldn't take my word for it. Do your own research[1], as they say.

1. https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2021/06/will-kids-h...

version_five2• 5 years ago

I’m in an awkward position of figuring out how my young child can spend time with them in a safe manner

I'm assuming this person doesn't actually have covid, they just didn't get the vaccine which makes them slightly less likely to transmit covid if they get it, and much less likely to have a bad case of covid. And I'm assuming your young child doesn't normally need special accommodation and so has an incomprehensibly small chance of having any complications from covid. Yet you look down on this family member as having a "lack of rationality".

I don't mean to say people shouldn't be encouraged to get vaccinated, but healthy, vaccinated people treating unvaccinated people as some kind of plague carrying monsters is at least as irrational as having questions about vaccination.

tzs• 5 years ago

It sounds like he has gone through an iterative process with them: they offer some objection to vaccination, he provides a refutation of that objection, they switch to a different objection, repeat. And it sounds like as this loop repeats they are turning to increasingly bogus conspiracy theories for new objections.

Based on what I've seen from social media that kind of person usually doesn't just reject COVID vaccination. They usually seem to also reject masking, social distancing, avoiding crowds, and often just assume that it must just be a cold when they do get sick and so don't get tested and don't take much care to not expose others.

If he's dealing with that kind of family member, keeping his kid away from them until the pandemic is over is not unreasonable.

ergot_vacation2• 5 years ago

By the same measure, I don't want to spend much time around people who:

1. Blindly accept what the government, the media, and "experts" tell them, despite all three repeatedly demonstrating they're not trustworthy.

2. Continually parrot false claims about the vaccine's efficacy, and dismiss any study, doctor, nurse or academic that disagrees with the Official Narrative as wonks or Russian Operatives (has that one fallen out of style yet?)

3. CUT PEOPLE OUT OF THE LABOR MARKET, out of jobs they need, in the middle of a LABOR SHORTAGE, because they refuse to take highly suspicious medication the government is forcing on them.

The whole vaccine situation handling by the government has been nothing short of tyrannical. If the government can force you to take an unknown injection whenever they like, on penalty of being cut off from society, do any of your other rights even matter? You're probably the type that constantly cried "Fascist!" during the Trump years, and yet you're cheering on an authoritarian take-over of the US, by both government and Big Tech.

Anti-vaccine groups embrace pseudoscience “detox” treatments to undo vaccination

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