Covid vaccines - thread banned users in First Post

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855086#Comment_119855086

You have no evidence that those deaths are linked to the vaccine.

It's not possible that the vaccine could cause millions of deaths and it would not be noticed.

You have to be suggesting a conspiracy to cover that up if you are suggesting that the vaccine is really killing millions.

And if you are suggesting a conspiracy for which you have zero evidence then this makes you an extreme anti vaxx conspiracy theorist.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119854689#Comment_119854689

And everyone I know has taken the vaccines and none of them have had any ill effects.

Therefore this proves the vaccines are safe.

This has already been argued to you. Not sure why you keep trying to claim that my personal experience somehow doesn't prove you wrong.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855048#Comment_119855048

Remember thay snowcat is arguing that a slight variation in menstrual cycles is the main concern. Not death.

So it's more like he's arguing against seatbelts cause they chafe.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855244#Comment_119855244

Lol. What a pathetic and lazy attempt to address his points.

Why would you care if the death toll is 15 million people or 6 million? You guys are arguing that both numbers are false anyway and the result of a conspiracy and also that they are insignificant.

Kinda seems more like you're desperate for a gotcha cause you're in a pissy mood from your previous embarrassing claims.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855350#Comment_119855350

Lol. What a pathetic and lazy attempt to address his points.

Fair point. Will address his points now.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855359#Comment_119855359

No. You won't.

You're going to waffle and distract and avoid as always.

Watch.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855233#Comment_119855233

15 million is over 6 million.

Indeed. Very significantly so. 2.5 times. That's kind of the point.

Whether it is closer to lower or higher figure - the BBC article explains the reasons for the uncertainty - you havent even tried to substantiate why it is dangerous or misinformation.

The reason the figure of 15 is is misinformation is it is inaccurate. The WHO made an error in their calculations - see this link: COVID death tolls: scientists acknowledge errors in WHO estimates

The reason it is dangerous is that it is inaccurate. Overstating the death toll makes Covid seem more deadly than in actually is, and that 15m figure was shared widely by people online as evidence for various scaremongering arguments. Indeed it was shared on this thread on more than one occasion.

I assumed somebody like yourself who is making impassioned posts berating others for reducing the total numbers of deaths to mere statistics and being "incapable of understanding what those deaths meant" would be better informed about this WHO error. Apologies, I assumed wrong.

You are just trotting out that line as an unthinking mantra / slogan now in your posts.

That's kind of ironic given the context.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855371#Comment_119855371

🤣 LOL, if you say so, man

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855410#Comment_119855410

Lol so you're giving out to us for not using a figure you believe is misinformation?

Shoulda stuck with the lazy sarcastic answer.

Also this whole argument is pointless as the lower number we do actually keep using in attempts to at least have some common ground of reality with you anyi vaxxers is dismissed as insignificant and the result of a conspiracy to inflate the number.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855474#Comment_119855474

Lol so you're giving out to us for not using a figure you believe is misinformation?

Quite the opposite. You have quoted this figure in the past.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855460#Comment_119855460

Yup. You just demonstrated as such.

Seriously man. You're not doing as well as you think.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855493#Comment_119855493

That's nice.

So you believe that both this figure and the lower figure are false.

This is because of a conspiracy.

Any chance you'd like to discuss the conspiracy? Or just looking for more gotchas in hopes people will somehow forget all of the previous pages?

Dohnjoe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855209#Comment_119855209

It's not disinformation and it's not a direct comparison.

On top of vaccines only injuring or killing a very tiny amount of people, they are saving a vast number of lives. Their net benefit greatly outweighs any drawbacks. A significant proportion of the world's population have caught Covid, and considering these vaccines can reduce the chances of death from Covid significantly, especially in older adults, the number of lives they have potentially saved is astronomical.

Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people in just the 20th century alone. Are we dying to Smallpox today? No. Vaccines.

It's amazing that this has to be constantly re-explained to adults. Especially at this stage in the pandemic.

Dohnjoe

Like much of the stuff on this conspiracy forum, it's best explained by psychology

"Commitment bias, also known as the escalation of commitment, refers to our tendency to adhere to positions we've taken, especially publicly, regardless of information that challenges them. It leaves us sticking with ideas and behaviors long past their usefulness or adherence to our values, simply so that we can appear to be consistent thinkers who never have to face the uncomfortable realization that we can be wrong — often about important things. The loud social media stances which many vaccine-hesitant individuals have powerfully asserted may well be fed by this bias — unconsciously driving them, along with their followers, to maintain a white-knuckle hold on their position, regardless of any evidence to the contrary."

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/21/theres-a-psychological-reason-anti-vaccine-misinformation-is-so-hard-to-fight/

“Rather than behaving like cognitive scientists—examining evidence evenly with a goal to obtaining the most accurate approximation of objective reality—people sometimes behave like cognitive lawyers, appraising evidence in a biased way with a view to reaching a preferred outcome,” Matthew J. Hornsey (University of Queensland) wrote in a 2020 article for Current Directions in Psychological Science. “From this perspective, the question is not ‘Why would people reject the science?’ but rather, ‘Why would people want to reject the science?’”  

Researchers have also found that people resist efforts to correct their false beliefs. What’s more, skepticism toward science has proved remarkably unmovable, as a group of researchers reported in a review published in January. Research suggests that misinformation can continue to sway people’s thinking even after they accept a correction as true—a phenomenon known as the continued influence effect (Ecker et al., 2022). "

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/vaccinating-against-bunk

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855801#Comment_119855801

There a reason they don't want to attempt to put numbers to their claims about vaccine risks.

They know that doing so would show them up as hypocritical given how they are arguing that 6+ million deaths and millions more in injuries is not significant.

Much better to keep things vague and sinister sounding.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855086#Comment_119855086

"Statistical non events" - that is your metric, not mine.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855410#Comment_119855410

Nope, you have entirely failed to substantiate your claims.

For one thing, even with the revised figures, the calculated figure is closer to the higher bound than the lower. And that is how science works, the best available information is refined and revised. You have no evidence attempts were made to misrepresent the data. An improvement was made to the calculation. The figures presented originally were presented in a sincere, genuine effort at best estimate.

6 million deaths were used as the premise in the context of the argument. The actual number was not being discussed in that context. Classic attempt at a gotcha from you to take a quote out of context.

This is what WHO expert Jon Wakefield said about the report:

“I don’t think it makes a big difference for most countries... I would hope that people realize that it is not possible to get every country right first time, and I definitely think our estimates are more reliable than those of IHME and The Economist,” he adds. The biggest uncertainties in studies of excess deaths, he says, are not with data-rich European nations, but with countries that don’t publish any timely all-cause mortality data.

How is it scaremongering that the figure for Germany was overstated by one third?

How is it dangerous that the figure for Germany was overstated by one third?

You thinking and stating something is 'scaremongering' and 'dangerous' does not make it so, except to you.

Oh and care to comment on the misinformation on the thread that millions of people die from preventable illnesses every day. It was posted on this thread, you must have seen it as you commented on my post in response to it. Yet nope, blinkers on again. Hear no evil see no evil speak no evil when it comes to posters on one side of the debate.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856158#Comment_119856158

By the logic of the antivaxxers on the thread, to justify their concern about the vaccines, they have to be killing far far more than the amount of people who have died due to covid.

To them, 6 million is a insignificant pittance.

So what would be a significant number? 10 times as much?

They've claimed that it's possible that the vaccines are killing that many people, just that somehow this has gone unnoticed.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856162#Comment_119856162

Watch now as hometruths suddenly becomes more knowledgeable and informed than the guy who wrote the report.

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856162#Comment_119856162

Nope, you have entirely failed to substantiate your claims.

In the context of a discussion about inaccurate information, my claim was that the World Health Organisation released inaccurate information about the worldwide Covid death toll. This is a fact.

Does not matter how many straws you clutch at, or as KingMob might say, "waffle and distract and avoid as always" nothing alters the fact that the WHO released inaccurate figures which were then shared widely, including on here, to overstate the death toll, and thus the danger, of Covid.

And people who questioned the figures were met with abuse about having no empathy for the dead.

Oh and care to comment on the misinformation on the thread that millions of people die from preventable illnesses every day. It was posted on this thread, you must have seen it as you commented on my post in response to it.

Eh?! I don't think I did comment on your post in response to it?

Either way I have no idea how many people die every day whether from preventable diseases or otherwise, but I imagine it is a large number.

You seem to have a fair idea of the figure:

Oh and millions of people do not die everyday. Either from preventable illnesses or otherwise. You are just plucking numbers from thin air at this stage.

Any chance you can give us some numbers that are not plucked from thin air?

And what about the global Covid death toll? Numbers are being thrown around will nilly in here, yet nobody seems to be too sure. What is the most reliable, up to date figure in your opinion?

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856381#Comment_119856381

Lol. Another lazy, dodging post from yourself.

As King Mob, I don't think that odyssey's post waffles, distracts or avoids anything. He directly addresses your points and you dismiss them as "clutching at straws" and don't actually counter them.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856381#Comment_119856381

Also, yea man. You guys have declared that 6 million dead don't matter and described that number as a pittance.

Of course you're getting flack for a lack of empathy for this. Why would you expect otherwise?

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855810#Comment_119855810

"Commitment bias, also known as the escalation of commitment, refers to our tendency to adhere to positions we've taken, especially publicly, regardless of information that challenges them. It leaves us sticking with ideas and behaviors long past their usefulness or adherence to our values, simply so that we can appear to be consistent thinkers who never have to face the uncomfortable realization that we can be wrong — often about important things.

And is commitment bias, the exclusive preserve of anti-vaxxers?

Because this is yet another article blaming the anti-vaxxers for our failure to achieve herd immunity:

If we hope to reach the vaccination levels that will prevent COVID-19 from permanently affecting our way of communal life, we must reimagine the way in which we interact with those whose confirmation bias leads them to reject the science and humanitarian evidence that supports vaccination as the only way to achieve herd immunity

In the context of the Covid vaccines, what is the "science and humanitarian evidence that supports vaccination as the only way to achieve herd immunity"?

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856501#Comment_119856501

It sure seems to be the exclusive preserve of anti-vaxxers.

And yet again, demanding answers for questions after dodging constantly.

odyssey06

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856381#Comment_119856381

Oh look, it is a goal post shift when challenged. You've back tracked from dangerous scaremongering to 'inaccurate'.

How many times have we been down this path before.

The corollary to your point is that the original figures based purely on 'official' Covid death tolls were also inaccurate. Was it dangerously so? No, in terms of the qualitative threat Covid represented, it did not alter things.

Just because a figure is inaccurate, it does not make it dangerous \ scaremongering. Will a figure ever be 100% accurate? The point is that it is produced on best available data, following scientific methodologies. The figure may be revised in future, but it forms a reasonable basis. This is all discussed in the linked WHO article, and the difficulty in establishing a figure for some regions. The referenced Economist article lists a range for this reason.

The total number of deaths in a year on planet Earth is estimated at less than 100 million. So anyone suggesting millions of deaths a day has plucked figures from thin air.

https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856517#Comment_119856517

Remember when Hometruths was harping on about negative effectiveness and then the author of the study told him directly that the numbers at that end of the scale were too inaccurate to make any conclusions and that effectiveness was likely underestimated.

But then he decided to continue to literially scaremonger about negative effectiveness anyway...

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856517#Comment_119856517

I am not changing the goalposts at all, the context of the discussion about sharing misinformation - ie inaccurate - online was that false information can be dangerous.

So riddle me this:

An organisation publishes wildly inaccurate figures of the vaccine deaths, and those figures are widely quoted and shared to highlight the dangers of vaccination.

This is a problem because it is considered as dangerous and scaremongering misinformation I presume? And should be called out for what it is?

But yet...

An organisation publishes wildly inaccurate figures of the numbers of Covid deaths, and those figures are widely quoted and shared to highlight the dangers of Covid.

And this is not a problem because it is considered to be just how science works?

Seems legit.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856580#Comment_119856580

The issue is that you're trying to ascribe some sort of malice to the WHO's actions because you've an agenda to prove there's a conspiracy going on.

You have not explained how it is dangerous. You have not explained how it is scaremongering. Those are just your high biased and ill informed opinion that yet again is influenced by your social media.

When you tried to misrepresent a study and use inaccurate data to scaremonger about "negative effectiveness", this was scaremongering because you were deliberately overstating things to make them sound more scary than they were. It was dangerous because you could have potentially influenced people away from getting the vaccines.

You've already been shown studies that show the type of misinformation and scaremongering you engage in has a negative effect. (You dismissed this studies and declared that Nature was an unreliable source.)

hometruths

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856693#Comment_119856693

and declared that Nature was an unreliable source.

Really? You're just trolling now. This sort of thing is exactly why people ignore you.

King Mob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856723#Comment_119856723

Yes, really. You constantly referred to misinformation etc etc. I asked you several times to clarify, but as always you ignored and dodged. So I can only reach the conclusion that's open to me.

If you don't believe that Nature is an unreliable source, simply state that and refain from firing out accusations of misinformation in an attempt to avoid points.

And no man. You cats ignore me because you can't address my points.