Discussion: UK anti-vaxx 'freedom' morons, protests and QAnon idiots
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nogojones
spelling is overrated
I caught up with an old friend who I hadn't seen for a few years a couple of weeks back and went out to breakfast with him. Decent guy, who's had struggles with his mental health over the years, but generally held it down.
He's turned literally into a frothing at the mouth anti-vaxer, doing the demos and all that, explaining that he was mixing with far right shitheads for the common cause of freedom. I don't think lockdown did his head any favours and it came out in this way. He seems quite isolated and it turns out he lost his decent job due to his inability to not be a total twat in work during lockdown and refusing to wear masks or use any control measures, when working in customers buildings.
I explained that generally I tended to trust the overwhelming evidence and experience of the scientific community, whilst still being able to believe that the government were useless, corrupt tossers who valued the profits of Weatherspoons over the lives of 200,000 citizens. We both agreed that it was unlikely we'd change each others minds, so we chatted about old times and old mates who'd died during the last few years.
I won't be rushing to have breakfast again with him, because it still seems to be his primary thing that he talks about, but I wouldn't cut him out of my life either.
He's turned literally into a frothing at the mouth anti-vaxer, doing the demos and all that, explaining that he was mixing with far right shitheads for the common cause of freedom. I don't think lockdown did his head any favours and it came out in this way. He seems quite isolated and it turns out he lost his decent job due to his inability to not be a total twat in work during lockdown and refusing to wear masks or use any control measures, when working in customers buildings.
I explained that generally I tended to trust the overwhelming evidence and experience of the scientific community, whilst still being able to believe that the government were useless, corrupt tossers who valued the profits of Weatherspoons over the lives of 200,000 citizens. We both agreed that it was unlikely we'd change each others minds, so we chatted about old times and old mates who'd died during the last few years.
I won't be rushing to have breakfast again with him, because it still seems to be his primary thing that he talks about, but I wouldn't cut him out of my life either.
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
sounds like my best mate who i have referenced on this thread many times.
His facebook went from pictures of his kids and millwall memes to the most crazy, qanon tinged, antix vax shit real quick. he cut off all his old mates. his last message to our mates whatsapp group: "if anyone puts that poison in their arms, i won't speak to you or your families again." no one has heard of him since. a millionaire, owns his own air conditioning company. the only way i would reunite with him is if he reached out. we all tried to accomodate him and talk to him about it for months -we got paid back with sheep emojis. very sad. he was radicalised by monitised algorithyms, no less. you could see his activity, what he was sending, where he was linking too. i have yet to witness a quiet, retiring, humble anti vaxxer, and looking back he did have a touch of arrogance and narcissism about him - but that is why we loved him. he was funny, engaging, bold, brash. he was also excellent at taking the piss otu of himself too. Alas all of a sudden he's a great "Light Warrorior" and a baston of truth and anti corruption. It still is remarkable the level of self regard a fair few of the folks in the truther communities show.
There's something unhealthy about the obsessiveness displayed in this thread. Covid's over, people. Go outside and enjoy the fresh air.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Is it fuck. Wanker
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
You go first, and don't rush back ...
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Go outside and enjoy the fresh air is fair enough advice.
But, covid isn't over, the paramedics called to my mother recently said they were dealing with lots of covid call-outs again, the doctors & nurses looking after her have told me they have a growing number of covid cases in the hospital again, thankfully less deaths, and likewise staff off sick with it.
At least those of us vaccinated are likely to have fairly mild illness if we are unlucky enough to catch it, the anti-vaxxers are far more likely to get it bad, and even die from it, so there's every reason to attack them for spreading their misinformation.
That's fair enough. I apologise for the terseness of my initial comment, and the implication that the virus is not still out there causing heartache to many people.
I guess the point I was clumsily making is that this thread one that is clearly having a toxic effect on some peoples' emotional health. Going back and forth on social media with obsessive antivaxxers creates a sort of symbiotic relationship between those people and the anti-antivaxxers. Both sides are winding each other up, losing friends and family whilst the rest of the world continues on with their lives as before the pandemic.
Anyway, that's just my two pennies, and I didn't want to cause offence so I will leave it at that.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Thing is it isnt this thread that is having a toxic effect. The thread is just a reflection that strongly held views are out there and cause inevitable consternation and woe. Depending on how someone engages with that reality, threads like this can actually help people to let off steam and come to terms with the messy reality. Its not unhealthy to mourn the loss of friendships caused by some peoples beliefs having driven a wedge through past relationships. And people are only dedicating a tiny fraction of their existence to engaging with threads like this one, posting on it doesnt indicate an unhealthy obsession with the topic.
nogojones
spelling is overrated
I'm currently on day 12, still testing positive, and bringing up gunk. It don't feel very over to me
PR1Berske
Alligator in chains by the park gates.
There are 50 Covid patients in the hospital I work at. It's not over.
elbows
Well-Known Member
I hope you dont mind if I use that as a jumping off point to put a bit more flesh on the bones of that subject, its proportions and of the risk that remains.
A study from Singapore manages to succinctly describe that the effect of non-vaccination has on the death picture proportions there earlier in this year:
( from https://www.moh.gov.sg/docs/librari...ality-during-the-covid-pandemic-18sep2022.pdf )
That simple statistic can help us understand the increased burden the not fully vaccinated face, but also that there is still plenty of deaths of vaccinated people. Its important to acknowledge that the age-risk picture is still out there. This is also important when it comes to getting booster shots, especially since one reason the elderly are thought to be more prone to the worst consequences is that their t-cell immune system starts to fade notably with advancing age. In people with decent t-cell defences, evidence implies that the initial primary course of vaccines has provided longer lasting t-cell based immunity that takes much longer to fade than antibody defences. Even better if they've had one well timed booster and/or past infection. But for those who have to rely on antibodies to do most of the protecting, subsequent boosters are very important to undo the antibody fading effect.
When we add that detail to the picture, we are better equipped to judge the extent to which our battle with this virus is not 'all over'. And also that anti-vaxxers influencing older people not to bother with vaccination and boosters is a particular area of concern.
We could also chuck in the idea that in countries like ours, older people overall were less likely to have been exposed to the virus at earlier stages of the pandemic, lots of them did a good job of keeping out of harms way. We cant measure this with complete certainty because of how antibody markers we can detect fade over time, but we should still consider that younger, louder anti-vax people are more likely to have already taken the biggest risks in the past. Whereas a lot of older people who may not have been vaccinated or boosted have thrown those dice less often in the past, and we shouldnt encourage them to throw those dice in too confident a manner going forwards. There is a balance to be struck and vaccines have enabled people to resume their lives without as much risk as existed in the first waves of the pandemic. But some degree of care is still required.
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gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
I interact less and less with antivaxers - mostly I just iggy them and never see them again.
So far as I know I have none in my family - even though the whole generation above me are lick-spittle Tories, they at least remember polio et al ...
I've moved on and I'm back to trying to lead by example when it comes to making noises about the trashing of the planet... at 62 I won't be supergluing myself to the M32 ...
I tend to iggy straight-forward climate deniers too - be they alt-right twats or simply incapable of learning....
I have come to realise recently with the energy crisis that even those with a good understanding of other aspects of the world - often with the higher education I lack, are simply incapable of engaging with the very basic science they were taught when they were 11 - so I suppose inability to grasp the basics of what a virus is and how vaccines work was only to be expected ... I think my own interest in virology has been sated for now - but perhaps encountering the conspiracies to a certain extent is useful in forcing me to learn a little bit more here and there - just as creationism made me learn a bit more about evolution (and, incidentally, religion) - which of course put me in a good place when covid came along..
For me the greatest disappointment is that so many people are not interested to learn the basics of how things actually work ...
elbows
Well-Known Member
Oh and what I left out of the picture in my previous post is what the full burden of long covid and other risks from repeated infection will turn out to be as more evidence accumulates over time. An unpleasant picture is already emerging but it is difficult to talk about it with the appropriate degree of concern, without seeming either over the top or too complacent, difficult to put it in perspective, difficult for humans in general to get this sense of risk and what level of risk-reduction is most appropriate spot on.
I can see that. Although I suspect antivaxxers are not so much created by a lack of education as by having a particular psychological profile. Gut instincts and emotion play far more of a role in opinion formation that rational thought. Which is partly why engaging in debate with them may actually make things worse, because any form of debate has an emotional impact that can back a person into a corner.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes it certainly involves how people end up framing events and the effects on their lives of these pandemic years, how their worldview is formed and the role they give themselves and powerful forces within that worldview. And how anger, fear, paranoia and the perceived motivations of others is woven into that picture. If you attach most of the fear to the virus and its consequences then you obviously reach very different conclusions to if you attach that fear to other powerful forces. And fear directed at governments etc can be connected to very different angles - anger and fear can be connected to perceptions of an inadequate response to the pandemic, resulting in views such as my own, or to the idea that governments went too far and were using the pandemic to serve other agendas, resulting in views we will criticise in threads like this one.
elbows
Well-Known Member
And when we consider the unvaccinated and the only partially vaccinated, there is a cultural component that we cant really do justice to by focusing on the sort of loud anti-vaxxers that come up on threads like this. I'm white and its within my comfort zone to focus on the far-right, the 'hippies' etc. Its not so easy or appropriate for me to spout my views about what has influenced other groups. Normally I will only go as far as to speak vaguely about cultural and historical reasons why some groups have more distrust of medical and other authorities that would be expected to influence attitudes, and to point out data such as the following. So I dont claim I can do that subject justice, far from it, I just want to acknowledge the limitations of our most commonly discussed angles here.
(from the weekly covid & flu surveillance report https://assets.publishing.service.g...116648/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w45.pdf )
(from the weekly covid & flu surveillance report https://assets.publishing.service.g...116648/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w45.pdf )
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
Don't actually disagree with this. I was pretty obsessively posting on this thread for months, mainly because I was transfixed by what happened to my mate so I was delving into the communities and reporting back.
But the general sentiment here i sort of agree with. Stop feeding the wolf.
BigMoaner
What A Load of Old Bollocks
This is true too - i literally only think of covid when alerted to this thread.
but of course too yes it isn't over at all and agree its still having a big impact.
elbows
Well-Known Member
But ultimately its the continued existence of vaccination programs and other aspects of the pandemic response that feeds the wolf, not the degree to which we pay attention to it.
For example the absence of lockdowns took away some of the wolfs reasons for being. And the closure of virus testing centres removed some of the physical locations they could target. And when there is no news about hospital wards being stuffed full of covid patients, its less likely that wankers will ignorantly march into hospitals in order to 'expose the truth'.
For example the absence of lockdowns took away some of the wolfs reasons for being. And the closure of virus testing centres removed some of the physical locations they could target. And when there is no news about hospital wards being stuffed full of covid patients, its less likely that wankers will ignorantly march into hospitals in order to 'expose the truth'.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
ITMA.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Evolution is going backwards...
prunus
Tick tock.
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Devolution.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
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