First, if you had looked for evidence of silver being a vampire weakness in European folklore, you might have found one or two accounts that silver, particularly consecrated/blessed silver, can hurt both vampires and werewolves1 But, by and large, silver is absent from the vampire mythos before the 20th century.2 I’m not saying silver has no religious or folkloric significance, mind you. I’m only commenting on the relationship with vampires.
Second, the comment that you made that prompted me to send the ask was
If it isn’t possible to be right or wrong about vampire lore itself, why say something like this do definitively, instead of saying, “I believe ...” or “sometimes it’s the case that ...”? There’s nothing about that comment that indicates that you were sharing a personal headcanon or referring to the lore of a particular piece of media, so I figured you were commenting on folklore/history. And in folklore/history, the lack of a reflection is caused by the lack of a soul, not silver.3
That said, I will give you The Strain. I haven’t read it, but if it uses the silver=/=reflection idea, then I suppose that is more than just something pretentious people say and has found a place in modern vampire lore.
Third, I obviously wasn’t comparing the actual thing you said to being an anti-vaxxer. I meant exactly what I said, which was that people confidently spreading misinformation without fact-checking is a broad issue, and that misinformation about vampire folklore and misinformation about vaccines are both symptoms of the general problem that people don’t fact-check. Granted, the type of fact-checking and the onus on the person to fact-check are very different. I wasn’t trying to say the situations were the same, just that they were caused by the same broad issue, and that I cared about this vampire thing because I care about that broader issue.
Also, I don’t think it’s fair to compare me to someone who “goes around attacking anyone” who disagrees with me. Obviously, you did get upset, but that doesn't mean that I attacked you; it just means you care a lot about this debate.
I don’t expect you to respond to this, or, probably, even see it. I’m just putting this out there for posterity, to clear up my position.
Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber pp. 54, 63
The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead by J. Gordon Melton, pp. 637-9
