My Greatest Tool Against Vaccine Misinformation
Channel: vlogbrothers
Date: 2021-06-11

I think there is a place for taking the time to fight against individual claims...but the thing you don't want to do is engage with the people who are not going to be convinced by anything...the people who have tied their identity and often even their livelihoods to believing that the government is trying to kill people (or something) because engaging with them only shines more light on them, and they will never run out of ways to move the goalposts and extend the argument. THAT'S THEIR JOB AND THEY LIKE IT!

But when someone asks me, "Why did it seem like vaccines were going to solve everything, and now it doesn't seem like they are?" that's not a question to get mad at, it's a normal question that people have about their world. But then there are the questions that people have because they've been engaging with the professional misinformers. Questions like, "Why don't you think the vaccines are more harmful than the virus when...**some long string of quacky theories about hidden vaccine-related illness**" and the answer is just like, "Because you're being manipulated and everything you just said was a lie." The answer I want to have to that isn't "stop lying." Instead it's "I am so grateful to the people who made these vaccines (and their distribution) possible, and who have freed me from some of the frustration and fear that I've experienced over the last year, and people saying that those folks are evil or ignorant are doing them (and you) a tremendous disservice."
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