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Stephen Goldstein (follow on X) is a postdoc in Evolutionary Virology at the University of Utah Medical School, where he specializes in coronaviruses. He joins me to discuss vaccines and whether you should get them.

Short answer: yes.

I’ve been delving a bit into the claims of anti-vaxxers, and every time you look at one of their arguments it falls apart in the face of the most basic scrutiny. See tweets on RFK here, here, here, and here.

The debate has a certain motte-and-bailey quality. Anti-vaxxers will throw ten different things at you. They’ll dispute the term “anti-vaxx,” and claim they are only asking questions. Every question you answer leads to more ill-informed questions, and claims that this or that hasn’t been studied. Overall, we just have to step back and say that the main claims of their most prominent spokesmen – that the covid vaccine was a net negative for most people or that it led to a surge in sudden deaths, that there is any link between vaccines and autism, that vaccines have done more harm than good, etc – are false, and they have a negative influence on public life.

Maybe they once in a while have a very narrow point. Perhaps young men shouldn’t get two doses of a covid vaccine if they’ve recently been infected. Who cares? If your issue is public health, the world is much more undervaccinated than it is overvaccinated, so you should take up the cause of developing and distributing more vaccines, or just pick another topic. See my previous article on the “99% Good Principle.” There’s no reason to be questioning the common recommended vaccines people get that is not rooted in a misinformed and unscientific worldview.

Near the end, Stephen tells people to “do your own research.” Oh how we’ve learned what a can of worms that phrase opens up! As the success of anti-vaxxers has taught us, most people are bad at it. I reject the idea that if only elites were better or more honest, we wouldn’t have anti-vaxxers. Human stupidity doesn’t need a “root causes” explanation in the era of MAGA and the Joe Rogan Experience. Not sure what the answer is.