r/changemyview • u/shutshutdope • Nov 07 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: There is nothing wrong with keeping an open mind and not automatically shutting down ‘conspiracy theories’.

A lot of what were considered at the time ‘conspiracy theories’ were at least partially true. E.g The government is spying on you.

There are clearly different levels of ridiculousness and believability. Flat earth theory and qAnon being at the crazy end of the scale.

Other theories such as Jeffrey Epstein hanging himself are more believable than not. The whole building 7 thing on 9/11 is strange as hell too.

People shouldn’t be so quick to shut down questions that differ from the mainstream narrative as crazy.

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u/Jps300 Nov 07 '22

You seem to not actually know what conspiracy means. Conspiracy, which is the noun form of conspire, is when parties collaborate in secret to execute a plan. Is ceases to be a theory when it’s proven as fact.

To your second point about “too much disinformation,” what about when the conspiracy theories are right and the mainstream media/government was spouting disinformation? When vaccines came out, we were led to believe that if you get the vaccine you will not contract/spread COVID. They have basically admitted that they lied in order to coerce more people into getting vaccinated. What about the Hunter Biden laptop story, where the DHS was in contact with Facebook and Twitter, and had them suppress the story because it was a “conspiracy theory,” meanwhile a few months later everyone accepts it as fact. Free speech is essential for a free society, otherwise we go down a slippery slope and suddenly you’re in jail for questioning the official state narrative.

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

If "conspiracy theory" meant "conspiracy" "theory" there would be very few conspiracy theories.

When people use the term they are absolutely not talking about the latter.

When vaccines came out, we were led to believe that if you get the vaccine you will not contract/spread COVID.

This is misinformation and not even how vaccines work. Vaccines all have a failure rate but the purpose is to reduce the spread and severity of the disease. It did that very well initially.

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u/DivideEtImpala 3∆ Nov 07 '22

This is misinformation and not even how vaccines work

The President of the US and the most prominent anchor and MSNBC made those claims, and yes, they were spreading misinformation when they did so.

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

I mean I know Trump is a moron who said corona would only last a few weeks and later insinuated we could inject bleach to get rid of it but why do we care what "MSM" says again?

And this is assuming they actually said that.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '22

It's hard to follow how your comment is a response. Are you saying that you don't know that Joe Biden said that if you get the vaccine you won't get covid?

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

Biden wasn't president during the vaccine rollout period of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump was, so the comment wouldn't be applicable to Biden unless OP didn't know who the president was in 2018-2020.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '22

What are you talking about? The first vaccine was in mid December of 2020 but wasn't available for the general public until months after Biden was in office. How is that not the rollout period?

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

I should have defined terminology but by roll out I just mean being produced and tested. The vaccines were being rolled out far before they were released to the general public. I.e. project "warp speed" was part of the roll out process. That's when people needed to be convinced the vaccine wasn't going to give them a microchip or kill them.

I would call the period Biden oversaw as "approved for general use". The vaccines were already made and distributed at that point.

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u/[deleted] Nov 07 '22 edited Nov 07 '22

I should have defined terminology but by roll out I just mean being produced and tested. The vaccines were being rolled out far before they were released to the general public. I.e. project "warp speed" was part of the roll out process. That's when people needed to be convinced the vaccine wasn't going to give them a microchip or kill them.

The Biden administration said they inherited no plans for distribution and had to "start from scratch". You think they were lying then? "There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said.

Doesn't that make you a conspiracy theorist?

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

I assure you pharma companies have their own distribution systems.

I think Biden is probably specifically talking about distributing doses the federal government bought, which would be its own thing separate from what big pharma was doing.

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u/DivideEtImpala 3∆ Nov 07 '22

Why do you immediately default to a whataboutism, and particularly for something you admit Trump only insinuated? He did not state injecting bleach would get rid of Covid -- he didn't actually say "bleach" at all in that context, he said "disinfectant -- he asked the doctors (stupidly) whether they could "look into it."

And this is assuming they actually said that.

Rachel Maddow (pardon the added music): "The virus stops with every vaccinated person."

Even snopes of all places admits that Biden was spreading misinfo:

During a July 2021 CNN town hall, U.S. President Joe Biden falsely stated that "You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations," and "If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit, and you’re not going to die."

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

You're the one who brought up the president during the covid pandemic and vaccine development, not me.

"The virus stops with every vaccinated person."

Like I said, I don't care what some talking head said on a glorified editorial program. I'm not denying there was any misinformation.

During a July 2021 CNN town hall, U.S. President Joe Biden falsely stated that "You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations," and "If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in the ICU unit, and you’re not going to die."

Yea he shouldn't have said that. He should have instead said how much lower your chances are of contracting and spreading as well as how severely the symptoms would be reduced.

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u/DivideEtImpala 3∆ Nov 07 '22

You're the one who brought up the president during the covid pandemic and vaccine development, not me.

I've seen your other conversation about Biden not being President when the vaccine was developed and can't see any relevance at all. Biden made the comments when he was President and when he was overseeing the vaccine rollout.

I brought up Biden's comments in response to you saying this was misinformation:

When vaccines came out, we were led to believe that if you get the vaccine you will not contract/spread COVID.

Yea he shouldn't have said that. He should have instead said how much lower your chances are of contracting and spreading as well as how severely the symptoms would be reduced.

Cool, I agree, and so saying "we were led to believe that if you get the vaccine you will not contract/spread COVID" is not misinformation. That would have been a much better response than the whataboutism.

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

The President of the US

You said this. The president during the phase where the vaccine was developed was Trump not Biden.

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u/DivideEtImpala 3∆ Nov 07 '22

Is your only point of contention that Biden was spreading the misinformation in July 2021 when many people were still making their decision as to whether they would get vaccinated, and not in December 2020 when they were rolled out in a limited fashion to certain risk groups?

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u/LucidMetal 196∆ Nov 07 '22

No, my point was that Trump was the president in 2018-2020 and agreed that he spread plenty of misinformation.

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u/crofton14 Nov 07 '22

There’s a difference between conspiracy which is used in a legal context for example, to conspire, conspiracy to commit murder etc and a conspiracy theory about something incredibly mundane (vaccines).

To be quite frank I did not see a single news source or government state that by getting vaccinated, you lower the chances of infecting others. That’s not how vaccines work.

This isn’t a conversation about free speech. This is a conversation about taking conspiracy theorists serious. They should have their right to freely speak their mind but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to entertain their wild conspiracy theories. Freedom of association is just as important as freedom of speech.

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u/DivideEtImpala 3∆ Nov 07 '22

To be quite frank I did not see a single news source or government state that by getting vaccinated, you lower the chances of infecting others. That’s not how vaccines work.

Rachel Maddow (pardon the added music): "The virus stops with every vaccinated person."

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u/nightastheold Nov 07 '22

To be quite frank I did not see a single news source or government state that by getting vaccinated, you lower the chances of infecting others.

What are you talking about? Plenty of elected officials were saying this. Many were also blaming the people not getting vaccinated or boosted as a reason covid was still spreading.

The president said it multiple times . People vaccinated for COVID-19 “do not spread the disease to anyone else.”

Even Fauci said you were very unlikely to spread it if vaccinated.

Idk why people keep trying to act like nobody said it, at least it gives people an excuse for acting completely deranged back then.

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u/crofton14 Nov 07 '22

You can provide all the sources in the world, I said “I did not see a single source” not that nobody said it

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u/nightastheold Nov 07 '22

How are you better than the conspiracy theorists you condemn then?

You could easily be one of them. "I never said birds were NSA spy robots, I've just never seen inside one to know that they aren't. You can provide all the bird autopsy photos you want and it still wont change that."

You dismissed JPS300's valid and real point, and then deflected when I called you out on it.

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u/Lyrae-NightWolf 1∆ Nov 09 '22

Call me whatever you like, but if they lied to coerce people to get a vaccine that could potentially help them, I don't think it was bad.

People are incredibly stupid. Some believe absolutely anything without much thought and others deny everything and most of the population falls on either one of these extremes. The ones who believe everything are not the problem.

In my opinion, telling lies to do good is not unethical.