The Vaccine Apologist’s Playbook
Published on July 28, 2023
The strategies and twisted logic of those still trying to hold on
I’ve been warring online with vaccine apologists for some time. People who refuse to admit the Covid19 vaccinations are not as “safe and effective” as they were made out to be.
These sorts of conversations tend to follow a particular pattern, almost without fail.
So today I’d like to offer my observations based on my own experiences online talking to folks like this.
I do this in the hope of both understanding them and their thought processes better, and to give some guidance to those interested in joining this war.
There are distinct similarities with this particular type of groupthink and others, the trans agenda followers have some particularly interesting tactics when confronted with the truth, but I’ll write more about those topics later and focus on the vaccine apologists for now.
1. Deny
This is almost always the first step, especially if you say that you know someone who has been injured by the vaccine. You’ll be told that it’s in your imagination, or that you’re making it up, or that you have an agenda, or whatever.
It just isn’t happening, OK? So there’s nothing to worry about and so stop talking about it, OK?
a. “you’re making it up, you don’t know anyone who is vaccine-injured.”
b. “nobody is dying from the vaccine, stop being ridiculous”
c. “I’ll take something that never happened for $500 thanks”
2. Distract – Usually Using Insults/Labels
Sometimes this is just interwoven in their messages, sometimes it’s just a barrage of this sort of thing. They’ll ridicule you, call you names, or try to bring up other things like “you’re a Trump supporter” or other assumptions about you.
This is a huge part of discourse right now.
a. “you’re a conspiracy theorist”
b. “antivaxer”, “cooker”
c. “you’re a grifter/ghoul”
3. Attack Credibility
They’ll imply you don’t have enough education to talk on the matter, or that you’re not an “expert”. They’ll take a nugget of information you’ve given them and run with it, and say they don’t believe it, or that it means something else than what it actually means.
Or they might pull something from your timeline and then say that it’s inconsistent with what you’re saying now.
Bottom line is that you can’t be trusted because you’re making it all up and anyway you have no idea what you’re talking about.
a. “you’re not a doctor/scientist, you don’t know anything”
b. “you are just doing this for attention/likes”
c. “you are making money from this”
4. Deflect
They’ll try to blame excess deaths on others things, or say they’re not happening. They’ll present data that suggests what you’re saying can’t possibly be right.
a. “look at this graph, it proves that what you are seeing with your eyes isn’t real”
b. “things have always been this way, nothing has changed”
“it’s because of ‘climate change’/racism/{insert whatever other bullshit reason you want here}”.
5. Minimize
Even if they do concede that damage has been done, they’ll attempt to minimize the damage in context of the many doses given, or the many lives saved, and so on.
There might be some logic to this if it were actually true, but given that it isn’t, it’s just an insult to the vaccine-injured.
a. “there were 15 billion doses given, a few deaths were inevitable”
b. “the vaccine saved 50 million lives, so any deaths or injuries are offset by that”
c. “it’s a small price to pay for having our freedoms back”
As with any argument/conflict/debate you’re seeking to win, the one thing one must remember to do is not to get distracted or put off by any of the above tactics. We all have weak points and most of these tactics are designed at targeting certain weak points.
The best armour you can have against all these attacks, especially the personal ones, is to have a sense of humour about things, and especially yourself. Let the attacks come in and slide off you.
There was a lady recently who was complaining about “abuse” online. I saw what she’d been targeted with and I was a bit outraged. Not by the abuse, but by the fact that it wasn’t really abuse and that she was getting quite hurt about very little.
I told her she needed to harden up. She objected, and this was my response.
Whatever you do, don’t let these bastards get you down. Their opinions are mostly worthless rehashes of government propaganda and they don’t understand in a lot of cases what they’re saying.
When they’re on the ropes you can expect them to get quite nasty indeed. I’ve lost track of the insults said to me, I think I’m “vaccinated” against insults these days. I do still find it difficult to be treated as a non-credible person, because most people that talk to me face to face very quickly realize that I’m quite credible indeed.
You can safely discard the insults, abuse and attacks on credibility because of the source they’re originating from.
As I discussed in my article “The Lost”, many are so deep in the totalitarian spell that they don’t see anything wrong with the current situation.
In some cases, there’s a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome going on.
I’ll touch on some of the tactics used by the trans agenda/climate agenda/15 minute city agenda apologists soon.
Funnily enough these are often the exact same people, and many of the tactics are very similar, but there are some important differences.
Thanks as always for reading and your support. I’m happy to report that I’m feeling much better physically after my medical mishap, but retain the big chip on my shoulder.
https://principia-scientific.com/the-vaccine-apologists-playbook/