Common anti-vaccine fallacies

Dear Editor:

I thank the Eganville Leader for giving space for the COVID vaccine opponents to present their viewpoints so that vaccine advocates may openly correct them. Unfortunately, even granting that space will not be sufficient to humble the opponents to the point where they stop repeating the falsehood that accurate criticisms of the vaccines are censored from the public space.

I am not a medicinal authority of any kind, but I am trained in applying rudimentary logic and I have engaged anti-vaccine opponents at length. So let us review some tiresome and overly-repetitive fallacies that vaccine opponents use non-stop:

• “COVID-19 vaccines have not been subject to long-term testing; vaccine takers are an experimental control group.” No prior vaccine has ever been found to have long-term side-effects that started more than two months after injection. By now, hundreds of millions of people have had second doses and months have gone by without harmful lasting side effects.
• “Doctors censored by the medical establishment are warning against the vaccines.” It is hard to take seriously allegations of censorship by (purported, often very political) doctors who tend to present their views in one-sided forums like Bitchute where mainstream doctors are excluded from conversation. It seems more like the “dissidents” are just trying to shore up their own Internet-focused echo chambers.
• “Doctors are forced to record deaths from COVID where people had the infection but likely died from other causes.” So where are any of the doctors who will testify that they recorded COVID deaths against their conscience? They seem mysteriously few in number.
• “Why would those who are fully vaccinated be in danger from those without the shot who have no active symptoms of the COVID or its new variant?” Well, the non-vaccinated who become COVID-infected can crowd up precious hospital space for those who need surgeries or care for non-COVID emergencies. Also, the non-vaccinated can become a breeding ground for new not-yet-existing variants of the virus that would themselves be vaccine-resistant.
• “Citizens who get side-effects from vaccines cannot sue the vaccine providers, that must be evidence of expected harm.” But governments know they will be punished by voters if government-approved vaccines create major harm, which is why they suspended AstraZeneca doses.
• “COVID vaccines are a conspiracy by Bill Gates to kill off and reduce the human population.” Such a large global conspiracy would inevitably involve people of conscience close to Gates who would bravely leak their involvement to the public at large. There are none identified by the vaccine opponents.

These fallacies aside, it is notable that vaccine opponents rarely accept correction on any of their fact-claims. Whenever disproven on any claim, they will usually immediately pivot to the next tedious information tidbit from “alternative” media, on and on without end.

There are very rare cases of persons dying from vaccine-induced blood clots. If you have any suspicion that you could get a blood clot from a vaccine, please consult your doctor. Everyone else, please get your COVID-19 protection.

Stefan Klietsch,

Renfrew