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YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

washingtonpost.com

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Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#371

Post by ghoward »

ryandrake wrote: post #359

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence…

Oh, Mirriam-Webster already decided that "fully vaccinated" people are "anti-vaxxers" if they do not support vaccine mandates. [1]

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#372

Post by jlebar »

It's ironic (or maybe not?) that the comments section here is filled with exactly the kind of anti-vax misinformation that YouTube is trying to take down.

To respond to one point I keep reading in here over and over: Getting and recovering from covid does not necessarily give you better protection from disease than getting the vaccine.

1/3 of people who get covid develop no antibodies at all, as compared to 0% of (non-immunocompromised) people who get the vaccine. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/574284-natural-covid-...

Also, of course, if you get covid...you got covid which was kind of the thing that we were trying to avoid. Not just for ourselves, but for our communities.

Another point I keep reading is, we don't know the long-term effects of these vaccines. And, it's undeniably true that we don't know with the certainty of evidence what will happen in ten years. But:

- 2.5 billion people have gotten at least one covid shot. This is one of the most-studied medical interventions in the history of medical interventions.

- There is no known and plausible mechanism by which the shot suddenly has bad effects years down the line. Historically, any side effects from vaccines show up within a few weeks, https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...

- We also don't know what will happen in ten years to people who caught long covid, and we do know that people who die from covid will not be alive in ten years.

Stay safe, everyone.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#373

Post by jaybrendansmith »

listless wrote: post #174

My wife is very vaccine hesitant, and every time they make a move like this to block content or take it down, it only strengthens her position. She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth. The only thing worse than bad ideas is the suppression of bad ideas. It’s tragic that we knew this at some point, but are going to have to figure it all back out again the hard way.

She might just die. I recently convinced a coworker to get the vaccine, and she did. And four weeks later contracted Covid-19, probably the delta variant, lost her taste and slept for 5 days straight. Had she not had the vaccine, it's quite likely she would now be dead.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#374

Post by mmcdermott »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #209
mmcdermott wrote: post #121

One of the things that gets lost in the arguments around this sort of censorship (and, before I lose you, it is censorship and that is fine; we all engage in forms of censorship in determining what we will or will not ingest - the danger comes when some third party is acting as the censor for others) is the distinction between legality and morality. Legally, it seems self-evident that YouTube should be permitted to c…

You can't "reverse" the situation in good faith. Facts, science, logic exist on one side of the discussion, not both. So if we are going to reverse the situation, then we have to acknowledge that the original stance is science/logic invariant.

> Facts, science, logic exist on one side of the discussion, not both.

I'm not really sure I buy this. There are people who are simply misled, but most disagreements touch on either disagreements with regard to facts or else values about what is more or less important. I tend to find that there are thoughtful people who disagree with me that are worth hearing.

Beyond that, though, there is simply risk management. The harder it is to impose speech controls (governmental or corporately), the harder it is for them to be applied badly - and there is no tool that cannot be used for ill as well as good.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#375

Post by __blockcipher__ »

ryandrake wrote: post #359

A little off topic, but I wish we could stop using this nice-sounding "hesitant" euphemism. Hesitant implies that people are weighing options and open to changing their minds. With the amount of time they have been available and the overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death, I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence…

While I almost entirely disagree with you, I agree with the general idea that most people aren't "hesitant". Personally I'm vaccine "hell no!" (because I don't have a personal medical need for the COVID vaccine, potential side effects aside, and I reject the societal benefit argument given the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike).

So while I come at it from the total opposite reason, you're right that with the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months, most people who are not vaccinated are fairly strongly opposed to getting it (not necessarily all for the same reason). There are definitely a bunch of "I wanna wait and see" type people, but given all the coercion/propaganda they are few and far between.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#376

Post by SSilver2k2 »

mariodiana wrote: post #65

I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices. I'm subscribed to the channel of an M.D. on YouTube who discusses COVID-19, vaccines, etc. He is very careful to (repeatedly) point out that he is vaccinated, he has personally vaccinated hundreds of patients, he encourages everyone to speak to their doctor and follow their recommendations, believing that the vaccine is…

No one is stopping anyone from hosting their own website and getting on their own soap box. You just can't do it on this person's lawn anymore.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#377

Post by jaybrendansmith »

ggggtez wrote: post #279
mariodiana wrote: post #65

I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices. I'm subscribed to the channel of an M.D. on YouTube who discusses COVID-19, vaccines, etc. He is very careful to (repeatedly) point out that he is vaccinated, he has personally vaccinated hundreds of patients, he encourages everyone to speak to their doctor and follow their recommendations, believing that the vaccine is…

> I think we have to ask No we don't. The question we have to ask is whether allowing this content is worse for society than any stifling of moderate voices. And the answer is obviously yes. Covid-hoaxers represent millions of people who are causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore . Fuck moderate voices who are "just asking questions". They can deal with playing a little less devil'…

Hard agree. I've had it with moderate voices on this issue, it's a matter of life and death. Would we not push someone out of the way of an oncoming train? Do we not have lights, gates, and bells that ring when a train is going to come through? Should we take those down, and just leave it up to each individual and their opinion? Fuck their idiotic opinions.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#378

Post by numeromancer »

mariodiana wrote: post #65

I think we have to ask if this won't have a chilling effect on open discussion by moderate voices. I'm subscribed to the channel of an M.D. on YouTube who discusses COVID-19, vaccines, etc. He is very careful to (repeatedly) point out that he is vaccinated, he has personally vaccinated hundreds of patients, he encourages everyone to speak to their doctor and follow their recommendations, believing that the vaccine is…

The accumulation of "chilling effects" has now become a deep-freeze.

Re: YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

#379

Post by colordrops »

jlebar wrote: post #372

It's ironic (or maybe not?) that the comments section here is filled with exactly the kind of anti-vax misinformation that YouTube is trying to take down. To respond to one point I keep reading in here over and over: Getting and recovering from covid does not necessarily give you better protection from disease than getting the vaccine. 1/3 of people who get covid develop no antibodies at all, as compared to 0% of (no…

Ironic indeed. How about referencing scientific sources rather than opinion pieces from political news sites. It's less than 2%, not 1/3, that don't develop antibodies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24622-7#Sec2

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abf4063

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9

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