Yesterday evening I had a big discussion with part of my family. The starting question was legitimate: should you take the covid19 pfizer vaccine? This same question started an interesting debate also on HN a couple of days ago. I argued for yes, they argued for no. I could have lived with that, hoping that the majority of people won't think like them. But what really made me furious was the line of arguments they were putting on the table, completely detached from the reality, downplaying the role of the virus, disregarding as credible any statistics, taking as truth that pfeizer is fraudulent, and basically questioning without doubt the good faith of all the people involved in supplying this vaccine. I snapped, I couldn't take it. The mood of the dinner was ruined, and nothing I said really made any difference: that covid19 is evident from excess mortality curves even discarding altogether the covid19 cases count, that the time for approval for this vaccine is the same as the others, that people should ask themselves what gamble they prefer take, that a vaccine is the only way of hoping to go back for normality in 2021, and that any evil plan by pfizer (not to mention bill gates...) has no iota of proof whatsoever.
If it were a random stranger from the internet, it's sad but I could let go. Here, I still care about these people and want to keep having some sort of conversations with them. My question to you is: how do you keep calm and get a constructive conversation happening? Kid were also listening, and I was very worried for them much more than for the adults in the room.
