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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1757 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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If vaccination science ends up in the dustbin of history, just because of its complicity in the house arrests, it would hardly be the first field to be discredited to a great extent due to a single policy miss. Eugenics enjoyed widespread among high-information voters, before it got tied up with the nazis. Race science had its own experts, now they exist only on the margins.

Personally I am not a vaccine skeptic like OP, but he lives in a world where reasoning I explained is considered mainstream. I can hardly blame him for applying it to his own pet issue.

I don’t think eugenics had a single policy miss. With the technology of the day, basically every eugenic intervention was draconian. There was no PGS, no embryo selection. Governments settled for banning miscegenation and sterilizing undesirables.

The big exception would be immigration restrictions. I’d say those are still widely accepted with some caveats.

Vaccines aren't my pet issue. I just have to make a decision soon on Hep B.

And, yes, I think it's important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Vegetarianism is fine even though Hitler advocated it, etc... I find myself having to take an unpopular stance here mostly for rhetorical reasons. And it seems to have gotten one person in particular very fired up. But, unquestionably vaccines are good on net, even the Covid vaccine (for people at highest risk). But every vaccine is not for everybody.

Hep B can be given at any point, so you don't need to make a decision 'soon'. You can refuse at birth and get it later.

Yes. They give it at birth to prevent transmission from mother to child. My wife doesn't have Hep B risk factors and has tested negative, so there is no immediate need in our case.

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