What's the best way to respond to a family member who says the COVID vaccines are being used to depopulate?

Submitted ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Tiffany1994@lemmy.cafe⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

They are citing ONS figures of excess deaths as proof the vaccines are killing people. I tried to explain that not being able to get a doctor’s appointment, staying home and getting fat, etc explain the figures (official sources have said it too) but they said it’s “gaslighting” and then said their family doctor wouldn’t get the vaccine.

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DarkFuture@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
You stop speaking to them.

They’ll either come to realize that there are real world consequences for being a dumb asshole, like their friends and family abandoning them…or they won’t. Either way, you win.

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Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I heard You’ll die in six months at Thanksgiving one year.

“Really? Holy fuck, I’m immortal! Call the press! Wait, no, I don’t want to be locked in a room and tested for 40 years, maybe we all just keep this our little secret.”

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Lasherz12@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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“If you think the world’s top scientists are trying to kill you, then why would you listen to any expert about anything? They’ll save you from yourself when you’re wrong anyway. Would you do the same for them? That’s why they’re trustworthy, and you and your sources are not.”

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Stern@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You can’t logic someone out of something they didn’t logic themselves into, and they definitely got emotionally attached to antivax before they found “statistics” to back shit up.

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db2@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“Bye.”

Then leave and stay gone.

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- partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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Resplendent606@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not everything requires a response and at some point you have to pick your battles. They have revealed to you they are an idiot. It is not your job to fix them.

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- bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Seriously, I’ve had multiple conversations with my BIL where he comes over to me and says something insane, and my response is just “huh okayyy…” and I walk away without saying anything else. I don’t care to be polite anymore.
  
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  - dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Sometimes the best response is no response at all. Silence can be deafening.
    
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troglodytis@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Disengage and choose your family

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sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’m often a dick. I probably wouldn’t say anything immediately, and then use that asinine opinion to dismiss anything else the person says later. Forever. They say something about <whatever topic>, “Yeah, but you also think vaccines kill people, so we already know you are an idiot.” Just on repeat on every opinion they voice, until they never want to say anything around me or talk to me.

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- wide_eyed_stupid@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yup. This is the answer.
  
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Ask for the comparison in excess deaths comparison of vaccinated versus unvaccinated.

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frog_brawler@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
You just stop talking to them entirely. Sorry.

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Clasm@ttrpg.network ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I generally reframe it from a perspective even they think they understand: Money.

Governments want their money. Less Population = Less Taxes for them to take, ergo, no government is trying to lower their population. And do they, the audience, think that the government is willing to have less money?

I don’t think so!

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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Maybe not the answer you’re looking for, but I have an uncle like that.

I suggest going no contact if you can.

Reason being, they don’t care about facts, nothing you say will convince them.

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Toes@ani.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I told their grandmother how silly they are.

Straightened them right out. (Happened with my close friends family)

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FelixCress@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

What’s the best way to respond to a family member who says the COVID vaccines are being used to depopulate?

“You are a fucking idiot” usually does the job.

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- AlreadyDefederated@midwest.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  “That is a fucking idiotic idea.”
  
  Attacks the idea, not the person. Probably will be the same result, because they probably were a fucking idiot to believe that stuff, and they are very attached to stupid ideas.
  
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  - FelixCress@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Attacks the idea, not the person
    
    Well anti-vax are idiots so there is that.
    
    Probably will be the same result
    
    Precisely. If someone is an idiot, they won’t understand the difference anyway.
    
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catty@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Don’t bother. Anything bad you say will be dismissed as a ‘smear’ campaign against that person because ‘they’ (big pharma, the millions of scientists who are all in on “it”) don’t want you to know and they’ll just shut off against you. Just take a step back from the dolt.

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Nomecks@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Tell them that you’re a sheeple, and got the safe dose of the vaccine, since they want to keep the compliant people around. Too bad they’re on “the list”.

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daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Tell them that’s completely true, and that if they keeps spreading the truth the black vans will come for them, they know to much.

The birds have already heard the rumors, and the clock if ticking. They better do something and shut up before they end un in “the facility”.

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RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
encourage them to go to therapy

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Fedizen@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Every time he lies about vaccines you break one of his fingers and tell him lying is bad for his health.

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GaMEChld@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Get the vaccine. Best response.

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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“How to speak to a vaccine sceptic: research reveals what works Hesitancy about vaccinations is on the rise, but studies show there are specific ways to address people’s questions.”

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01771-z

Optimistic, but a start maybe.

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- Berttheduck@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  In summary of the nature article:
  
  Listen and be interested in why they hold those opinions, use motivational interviewing techniques (I explain this as Inception, trying to get the patient to have the ideas) and provide solid evidence, be realistic about data and certainty, ie the MMR vaccine is safe (and doesn’t cause autism) the COVID vaccine has less data as it’s newer, but it is still safer for the vast majority of people than COVID.
  
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floop@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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JackDark@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“If that were true, I’d be trying even harder to make you take it.”

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AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Try Bayes’ theorem. Ask them to give percent likelihoods for the following:

A. The odds that the government (or whoever) is trying to kill everyone, before taking the evidence of excess deaths into account
B. The odds of seeing excess deaths for any possible reason, not just their conspiracy hypothesis
C. The odds of seeing excess deaths if the conspiracy hypothesis were true.

Then logically, the odds of the conspiracy being real given the excess deaths should be A*C/B. If you disagree on the outcome, you must disagree on one or more of the assumptions (probably A—if it’s B, you can find the objective odds by checking historical data).

If you still disagree on the prior assumption (A), you can set aside the excess deaths argument and ask what other evidence led them to form that prior assumption. Then you can repeat the process until you either reach agreement or they’re left with an assumption with no evidence.

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- veniasilente@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  …You are asking people who… willfully choose to be idiots to… do science?
  
  I mean, you do you, but at the point someone is willing to believe “the top scientists in the world are trying to get you killed” you might as well consider them lost, as they are ignoring elementary-level statistics.
  
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- Albbi@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
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- RegalPotoo@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You can’t use logic to talk someone out of a position they didn’t use logic to get into in the first place
  
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  - Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well, not with that attitude.
    
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Death_Equity@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They don’t need a vaccine to depopulate when heart disease(695k/y), car accidents(40k/y), overdoses(82k/y), abortion(1m/y), and suicide(49k/y) kill far more people than the vaccine could possibly be linked to the COVID vaccines(8k in total).

Don’t at me for including abortion, I support abortion access and want it to be a free service, but we are talking about depopulation means and abortion is a means to depopulate.

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- Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A pregnancy is not a person to count. That’s anti-abortion rhetoric.
  
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  - neumast@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The question is: does it make sense for the government to ban abortions, just to kill ppl with vaccines on the other hand?
    
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Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Their bullshit causes a risk that someone else hesitate or pass on vaccination. You did an attempt at convincing. The responsible alternative is to make them feel uncomfortable bringing up the subject.

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partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is an easy one:

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Ask them to point to the depopulation occurring.

On the graph the fuzzy dot is on June 2021 which was around the time that vaccines were in full availability. According to their logic we should see a decline occurring from the “depopulation” occurring from COVID vaccines. Where is that decline?

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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The growth rate is a better chart for that, because you can see the population growth drastically diminishing (because more deaths = less grow) until vaccines where made available and then it immediately goes back to normal. If someone wanted to depopulate all they had to do was prevent the vaccines from reaching people or have people not take the vaccine.
  
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  - bright_side_@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s a cool suggestions. Where can one find something like that I wonder 🤔
    
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kender242@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
IIRC there was a study where people with strong opinions talked to an Al and the process changed their minds.

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schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
in 2025? Vaccines have been available for how many years now? Why does anyone even think about COVID vaccines anymore in this year? We would have figured out any adverse effects by now if there were any.

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bacon_pdp@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Well I guess we agree that we should respect body autonomy.

But please be cognizant of the social consequences of not having herd immunity to protect the vulnerable and the perfectly reasonable judgement that your actions will result in the death of children, potentially including your own.

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