Vaccination Posts - Policy

[helvella]

Vaccinations have always been contentious.

We have had some remarkable success stories. But that has not been universal. Side effects and adverse reactions have always been possibilities.

Vaccinations are not in any sense thyroid issues.

The admins (moderators) do their best to keep up with thyroid disorders and medicine. But it is simply not possible to also keep abreast of vaccination issues. None has a background in medicine, let alone virology, infectious diseases and vaccination.

The sheer volume of information is unmanageable. Some issues:

• Untold numbers of papers and they are often in pre-print/draft then final published versions followed by comments.

• There are many papers that are simply inaccessible.

• The papers often rely on science and statistics that is extremely complicated.

• Much argument on grounds other than science and medicine – such as political both in pushing vaccination and in withholding.

Broadly, we have two possible approaches to handling vaccine post issues:

We could allow vaccine discussion almost unmoderated.

--- Or ---

We could disallow vaccine discussion almost entirely.

If we allow vaccine discussion, the forum could be overwhelmed by the volume of posts and replies. And with the very strong views of many, they could result in considerable unpleasantness. Moderation of posts/replies can appear unbalanced even if they are edited or removed for reasons such as unacceptable language!

If we do not allow vaccine discussion, the forum does exclude some real health concerns. But most vaccine issues are not specifically related to thyroid. They are general and apply across everyone whether or not they have thyroid issues.

Also, please consider that there are untold numbers of other places to discuss vaccines.

We do not want this forum to deteriorate and become unpleasant. Therefore, we will act if there are significant discussions about vaccinations. This includes both Covid and Influenza – most especially as we are currently seeing major concurrent vaccination programs across both.

Action might include minor edits, deletion of replies, switching off replying, or deleting whole posts and all replies.