So I also think this story misunderstands the causes for vaccine hesitancy & why a government would prefer—no, require—a vaccine to go through established, non-partisan, accountable organisations & multiple rounds of safety trials.
This seems clearly false to me. Yes, clinical trials should help reduce vaccine hesitancy, but here Nuno is describing a situation where people already wanted the vaccine. Some people being hesitant doesn’t justify using the police to stop people from taking the vaccine who were not hesitant, and who actively wanted to take the vaccine before the trials.
More broadly I think this vaccine hesitancy narrative seems quite harmful. During the pandemic intellectuals spent a lot of time re-iterating how reasonable it was for people to be skeptical of vaccines, despite the fact that this hesitancy was not reasonable, in a way that overall seemed like it caused an increase in vaccine hesitancy.
Feels like we’re talking past each other—I was explaining why a government might want to behave this way because I felt like it was missing from the discussion. Specifically, I think at the very least that reasonable people can disagree on whether a government with the goal of minimising suffering would paradoxically take longer to develop & test a vaccine (and also I wanted to suggest that the evidence is consistent with the German government having this in mind when shutting it down, rather than, say, the desire to establish their authority for its own sake).
I didn’t pass comment on whether it’s morally justified; that depends on your conception of personal liberty (which we clearly disagree on, but I doubt I’m gonna persuade you here).
This seems clearly false to me. Yes, clinical trials should help reduce vaccine hesitancy, but here Nuno is describing a situation where people already wanted the vaccine. Some people being hesitant doesn’t justify using the police to stop people from taking the vaccine who were not hesitant, and who actively wanted to take the vaccine before the trials.
More broadly I think this vaccine hesitancy narrative seems quite harmful. During the pandemic intellectuals spent a lot of time re-iterating how reasonable it was for people to be skeptical of vaccines, despite the fact that this hesitancy was not reasonable, in a way that overall seemed like it caused an increase in vaccine hesitancy.
Feels like we’re talking past each other—I was explaining why a government might want to behave this way because I felt like it was missing from the discussion. Specifically, I think at the very least that reasonable people can disagree on whether a government with the goal of minimising suffering would paradoxically take longer to develop & test a vaccine (and also I wanted to suggest that the evidence is consistent with the German government having this in mind when shutting it down, rather than, say, the desire to establish their authority for its own sake).
I didn’t pass comment on whether it’s morally justified; that depends on your conception of personal liberty (which we clearly disagree on, but I doubt I’m gonna persuade you here).