A pile of TWADALs…

Posted onAuthorIan M Mackay, PhD (EIC)1 Comment

IMPORTED POST*

During my time engaging with a gaggle of hardcore vaccine denialists, I developed a term and acronym…TWADAL

TWADAL stands for “Those Who Are Decided Against Learning“. It came about because those I engaged with were not “vaccine hesitant” in any sense.

Who are TWADAL?

TWADAL are dedicated to pushing an agenda of anti-science, anti-logic and anti-politeness, underpinned by memes and quote-cards highlighting every rare bad outcome from a vaccine. They amplified every side (well known and mostly minor) or adverse event and never once mention all the lives that vaccines have saved and protected today, yesterday or in the future.

It’s okay to stand up to lies, bullies and trolls

By all means describe this as name calling, I’m not disagreeing. But also go spend some time engaging with TWADALs – some quality time. Prove to me that they are open to learning anything new. Show me that after they drop into your social media neighbourhood unannounced and spew unsolicited, unverifiable out-of-context untruths about vaccines killing people, collect a few others to pile on, call you a shill for big pharma, or much worse…that they will then concede any of their points when you try to engage them in a calm discussion and oiffer to answer question and provide scientifically-backed facts. If you can prove and show me these things – then you have not engaged with TWADAL.

 

 

  • *IMPORTED POST
    This post from 29AUG2016 was posted over on my old blog platform virologydownunder.blogspot.com.au and has now been moved to here. 

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1 thought on “A pile of TWADALs…”

  1. Learning, I used to think about it, is a progressive thing: no way one could know everything about a single topic (ie: vaccines, epidemics, cats behaviour, etc.) and no further education or research needed. An open mind posture for a mean individual might be useful. Vaccine hesitancy is a multi-faceted phenomenon and should be taken into a whole-society perspective in order to correct any wrong message or misconception. Distrust in a national political establishment – especially when plagued with bribery or corruption – incompetence from public health officials, un-accountability, un-reliability are further decreasing public opinion adherence to messages from mainstream media (often heavily influenced – even in democracies – by politicians and their oligarchs). So, corrections – urgently needed – involve many sectors, but I doubt that Empire’s provinces are able to get rid of their parasitic interests in time to save many lives…

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