Hey. I did have some posts in this thread before, but wanted to just summarize a few things.
I do not wish to deal with the facts surrounding the specific COVID vaccines, whether they work or not etc. . The OP does a good job at that and, of course, on the internet/media there is a cornucopia of articles supporting the vaccines. Truth be told, in my opinion no one claim 100% that they work or don't. I think most people in this thread have also made this point clear. The question I am interested in is "is it sensible to be skeptical of the developed vaccines?". And in my opinion it is. Here are some scattered thoughts of mine on this issue. Maybe someone will find it helpful.
1. On vaccine efficacy and dangers.
Most people don't work in the medical field and neither do they develop vaccines. However, they do have jobs the majority of which deal with the real world, machines, with situations that have causes and effects. So do I. And if I look back at my job, the projects I had, I know how nearly impossible it is to develop a complex new product in just 1 year. No matter how much money you throw at people, some things just take time. This is mainly due to the presence of "unknown unknowns" - things that you didn't even consider when working on your project and, also, due to the stupid mistakes that people make. Anyone who has a job knows and has seen this. One would hope that the people in "high IQ jobs" don't make silly missteps, but I can't stress enough how many times I've heard and seen people do the dumbest possible mistakes in the most sophisticated projects (a classic one is spending half a year/year designing something just to realize in the end that it doesn't work or fit together, because some retard mixed up the metric and imperial systems).
Hence, there is no real need to discuss any conspiracy or evil plan by the elites to depopulate the planet. Everything can go south just due to money interests, silly mistakes and just things that people didn't know they should take into account (Thalidomide comes to mind). Trying to debate and prove that this is not possible, that the best minds of humanity have developed the vaccines, no mistake can possibly happen etc. just ends up sending major red flags. This is not true. This is not how anything in the real world works. Mistakes happen, problems can occur.
So the question that comes to mind is "what should I do about this?"
2. On the individual's right of risk assessment.
When people face any issue they wish to solve, they perform a risk assessment, even if the latter is purely intuitive and takes a split second. You weigh in your issue, the solution, the risks connected to them and in the end you come up with a decision. "Should I take the vaccine?" question should depend on the situation of the person. I live alone, I don't leave my house, I have nearly no contact with anyone. If for some reason I am in a company of other people, I always wear the mask. Why should I be forced to take a vaccine if for me the risks associated with it are higher than the probability of catching the disease? Would I take it if I had to travel 24/7, constantly be around other people and had my old parents in my apartment? Maybe. Why do people try to convince us that evaluating our own circumstances and making our own risk assessment is completely unreasonable and madness? it isn't, it's something we always do and it works. Are there situations where this right should be limited? Probably, yes (ideally you'd wish to limit it for "tried and true" things). Are we in one of those extreme situations? If we are, no one is doing a good job of explaining it. Look at many EU countries currently. If you compare with the autumn of 2020, some countries currently have more cases and more people hospitalized. And they went from 0 to 64% vaccination rate. Personally, I don't care about any nuances, any "it's not that simple" mentally ill explanations. All I care about is this - vaccine curve go up, infected curve go down. If it isn't like that, I have the right to be skeptical and evaluate my own risks carefully.
3. On natural selection.
I believe that the reason people become increasingly skeptical of the situation is because the narrative goes against something very fundamental in human nature. Here is a general question.
Let's say you are faced with some danger you know little about. There are several options on what you can do about it. Which option should you take?
First and foremost, if you do not have to act right away, what will usually happen is that you will become very conservative and careful, delaying the decision until you absolutely have to make it. That's just how people deal with the unknowns. And it works. People are actually rather good at it. One of the things I like to cite is that how accidents at dangerous workplaces happen mostly with people who have been there for 3-4 years. Because people who have just started working there are very careful, conservative and never take any unnecessary risks. Because that guarantees survival.
But let's say it has come up to the point where you have to make a decision. What will happen?
You'll think and take one way over the other. Maybe due to your reason, intuition, ideology or maybe just because you didn't get enough sleep last night. And so will all other people. In the end, interestingly, different people will act differently, so that (in the overwhelming majority of cases) all possible solutions to the unknown problem will be explored. Some will succeed, others will fail. The solutions taken by those that succeeded will be deemed as correct and if we are lucky, we will even find an explanation on why these solutions work. I know that some people think they're smarter than they really are and will try to contest this point, but in essence, whether your decision turns out to be correct is just based on chance. You might be right, you might be wrong. The only thing that matters in the grand scheme of things is to ensure that at least
some were right, even though based on pure luck. No matter how depressing this might be, it is part of the natural selection and of how this world works. And when I am told by others "No no, look, we know COVID-19 and mRNA vaccines are a new thing, but you need to take it and if you think otherwise you are a madman", the entirety of my organism revolts - this is not natural.
4. On the scientific community.
There is also this argument I see sometimes: "99% of the scientific community agree that you should take the vaccine". Some time ago the scientific community agreed that lobotomy is good. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of 20th centuries the overwhelming majority of physicists agreed that physics is mostly settled and there is no way any new major discoveries can happen. And on and on and on and on. The consensus in scientific community only shows that based on current information it is reasonable to think this way. This doesn't provide any truths set in stone. Actually most of the real scientists understand this and you will never hear them tell you that something is true because "most agree it is". I believe "the scientific community" argument is told by people who fetishize science and have never worked in any STEM field in their lives. This, once again, sends a major red flag.
5. On the media and their lies.
Here is a screenshot with the titles from the start of the pandemic.
I had coworkers smugly explaining to me that masks will never work, since viruses are too small. And then, after 2 weeks doing a complete 180° and wearing their masks like good boys, smugly explaining how important it is.
Nothing that media says is trustworthy, the narrative changes whenever it is required to. Dumb masses parroting them also don't change anything. None of it matters, since it can all change in a blink of an eye. And the reason is not necessarily because they are evil. The reason is that they are just humans like me and you. They have no clue what is happening.
6. On governmental mandates.
There are very few cases where government willingly gave up the control it gained at some point. What do we have in the current year? You can't go work if you don't have a jab. You can't visit anywhere public. You can't go to the malls. You won't get unemployment money without a jab. Those who didn't get the jab might need to be sent to a lockdown. Here are these QR codes and apps you constantly need to show law enforcement..
So what do you think will happen? "Oh, look, it is 2022, the pandemic has passed, let's remove all these restrictions quickly". Do you honestly believe that is what the government will say? You can already feel it in the current narratives. Ask yourself, where does all of this end? Will it end if we get 80% of population vaccinated? Doesn't seem like it, since the super-effective vaccines last only 6-12 months. Booster shots every year? So are we going to move on to a society where you constantly need to be injected to be allowed to go and earn a living? What if other new viruses come up? Will we have a list of yearly injections for all the adult population and a giant surveillance system to supervise it?
This is just a march towards a dystopia. There is nothing good about any of this. Any possible positive effects from these mandates will be overshadowed by the nightmare that we are bringing into the world.
7. Conclusion.
The point I wanted to convey is that there is nothing wrong about being skeptical of vaccines, of thinking you are in your right to decide for yourself. Media, governments, corporations, they never act solely from the goodness of their own hearts. There are always ulterior motives, conspiracies, things you don't see and don't know. There's a good way to find out if someone is trying to con you. Just tell that you need some time to think it over. They will get very angry, since, usually, if you take some time and slow down, all the house of cards falls apart.
It is perfectly natural to have a group of people not wanting to take the vaccine. It is perfectly natural to be conservative and unwilling to take new drugs for brand new diseases. And it is very reasonable to not do anything and just wait and see what happens. In fact, I maintain that the people who say otherwise are going against the nature. And going against the nature often ends in disasters.
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