most of this site that was anti-vax circa November 2020
This is a bit of a straw man
The majority take that I saw on here was along the lines of "I have doubts that a vaccine so rapidly developed under capitalism will necessarily be safe", a take which had evaporated by March as the data rolled in and showed that there weren't significant safety issues. This is not the same as "anti-vax", but I wouldn't disagree that some [vocal] people used that as cover for more genuine anti-vaccine views although I still think a lot of it was slightly over the top contrarian doom posting.
There are still leftists who will let then anti-vaccine takes fly in the name of "anti-pharma" though, and that's not good. It happens in spaces that are adjacent to this site, but fortunately it's been stamped out from here pretty thoroughly (although I still say it fizzled out on its own for the most part once we could see some data on it, and I have no issue with that).
Also a lot of the ‘skepticism’ was about how if the vaccines were anything less than shockingly effective, then the widespread belief that vaccines would end covid was delusional. Which in hindsight…
This is a bit of a straw man
The majority take that I saw on here was along the lines of "I have doubts that a vaccine so rapidly developed under capitalism will necessarily be safe", a take which had evaporated by March as the data rolled in and showed that there weren't significant safety issues. This is not the same as "anti-vax", but I wouldn't disagree that some [vocal] people used that as cover for more genuine anti-vaccine views although I still think a lot of it was slightly over the top contrarian doom posting.
There are still leftists who will let then anti-vaccine takes fly in the name of "anti-pharma" though, and that's not good. It happens in spaces that are adjacent to this site, but fortunately it's been stamped out from here pretty thoroughly (although I still say it fizzled out on its own for the most part once we could see some data on it, and I have no issue with that).
Also a lot of the ‘skepticism’ was about how if the vaccines were anything less than shockingly effective, then the widespread belief that vaccines would end covid was delusional. Which in hindsight…
This is a fair analysis and thank you for the counterpoint