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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20513 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Notoriously, it wasn’t called the flu vaccine but flu shot.

For many vaccines, there was near 100% protection.

Notoriously, it wasn’t called the flu vaccine but flu shot.

Do you have a citation for this?

Here's a paper from the 90s referring to it as vaccine.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7668032/

Common usage was the flu shot. That’s still the common usage (ie get your flu shot)

Common usage around me was always at least as much "flu vaccine."

Common usage is imprecise or inaccurate all the time, that does not mean that anything was redefined or renamed.

Plenty of questionable stuff happened during COVID but the COVID vaccine and all the other vaccines are still vaccines.

No. There was a dictionary definition that matched the common usage. The covid vaccines were far and away from the dictionary definition which reflected common usage. They then changed the dictionary definition to match their technical usage.

However, every day people still operated under the common usage. TPTB preyed upon people mistaking the common usage for the technical usage and when called out on it cited the changed dictionary.

People misuse technical terms all the time, that doesn't change the fact that vaccines have never really provided "immunity." Yes the COVID and Flu vaccines are less effective than some other ones, but popular misunderstanding doesn't mean they aren't vaccines, they've always been referred to as vaccines in the literature.

You seem to miss the entire point of my motte and Bailey argument.

I'm saying the influenza vaccine is a vaccine. I'm saying the COVID vaccine is a vaccine. You can be mad about things that happened during COVID without conspiratorial rigamarole about names and definitions.

While I'm usually pretty happy to blame the public health experts it really isn't their fault laymen misunderstood what a vaccine is and does, again that says nothing about if the COVID vaccine should have been mandatory or whatever.

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