I see a lot of complaints of people about the fact that Pfizer required legal immunity against side effects.
This is a must for any vaccine manufacturer, otherwise the vaccine is just not commercially feasible. That's what killed Lymerix, and why we don't have Lyme disease vaccine anymore. If the government does not back it up, the manufacturer won't stand a chance.
Even if the vaccine has a good safety profile, a 0.1% rate of side effects applied to millions is still a lot of lawsuits.
This also happened with the DPT vaccine in the 1980s. Manufacturers kept losing lawsuits based on junk science until they could no longer afford liability insurance. This is why the US congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that protects manufacturers from lawsuits.
That is a signal your laws are bad and squelching valuable innovation. Giving random one-off exceptions when you personally feel like it is a terrible way to regulate commerce.
Vendors should be able to grade their vaccines on a curve based on how much safety and efficacy data there is, then let people choose whatever in consultation with their doctors.
Please note that for a vaccine against a disease like corona, a 0.1% rate of side effects serious enough to lead to lawsuits is not a 'good safety profile', especially when given to people outside well-defined risk groups. The Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca vaccines, which probably have a 'borderline safety profile' have a rate of side-effects between 0.001% and 0.0001%.
In slovenia (~2mio pop, ~1mio had covid), the current statistics for girls under 25 show zero deaths due to covid and 1 death due to the vaccine (j&J). She got vaccinated because she had to, and all the measures are designed (accidentally or intentionally) to mostly affect the young, because old people (the ones who die a lot if not vaccinated) don't do most of the restricted stuff anyways (eg. closed nightclubs don't affect them)
The antivaxx bomb exploded and a significant chunk of the population has been hit by it. Now governments are trying to counteract that. (Twitter too.) Both usually have crude methods only.
This is not an antivaxx problem, this is a government/NGO ineptitude & trustworthiness problem. There's been a million fumbles and lies around the whole pandemic, making the quasistalinist approach to pandemic governance likely the number one catalyst of antivaxx stances.
Yep, so many many lies, so many "science changing is a good thing" stuff (eg "masks are useless, wash your hands", and mask wearers being conspiracy theorists, to "mandatory masks" and antimaskers being the conspirac nutjobs), "just 14 more days", etc.... but they still want you to "trust them" now, with "this new thing".
The science was always uncertain, the policy flip-flop was understandable, the absolutely fubar'ed PR is the nightmare fuel.
Masks work. That was not the question. How much they help is the question of science. The cost-benefit decision is the question of policy. How to communicate the changing policy should have been the PR question.
Framing this as "lies" is counter-productive. Policy converging with science is mostly a good thing, but first that needs high quality science (= high quality data, asking the right questions, etc). The current US communication zeitgeist using "science" as a shorthand for "policy based on cost-benefit evaluation of such and such scientific reports by this and this community of experts and stakeholders" is a big problem, but it's a symptom of other bigger US social phenomena.
Science can say "by our current knowledge, the 'truth' is X" .... and then change their mind and say "Y".. The problem are the government mandates and policies based on ever changing science.
Atleast in slovenia we had 4 vaccines (Astrazeneca, jannsen, moderna and pfeizer), and all four were marked as safe and effective for everyone. Then astrazaneca caused issues in neigbouring countries and then J&J killed a wife of our diplomat first (and a lot of blame was thrown around), and then a 20yo girl died, and we banned J&J, then the scandinavian countries stopped usage of moderna for younger people, and we've gone from four "safe and effective" vaccines to just pfeizer. If you're a vaccine skeptic, or even if not, but just a bit afraid to get vaccinated, and three out of the four vaccines that were "just yesterday" safe and effective, are now "not safe and effective" anymore, you don't think "the fourth one surely is safe and effective!", but stay unvaccinated and wait it out. I got vaccinated with J&J, because it was the most 'simple' choice back then, but soon after i needed a booster from pfeizer, because J&J isn't good enough... so all of the risks, basically none of the benefits.
Add to this stories like this one (about the refugees), where countries are mandating locals to take the vaccine, but not refugees, and people get more and more skeptical.
no, 'masks work' is an extremely poor and politically-loaded statement (and as such, not a 'fact'). that phrase is meant to be thought-terminating, projecting false certainty, and curtly implies they work everywhere, all the time. instead, it should be something like 'masks are able to filter viable virus particles under the right conditions'.
that kind of distortionary perspective has been used to mandate wearing masks in public spaces, where they almost always do exactly no good at all (no additional benefit beyond normal human behavior and interaction), and neglects to mandate that we wear them around friends and family (social situations) where masks might potentially filter some live (viable) virus from warm exhalation and/or from close and prolonged inhalation by the uninfected.
as such, that usage/mandate is not for public health at all. it's political, for the individual, the reporter and the politician, to signal in-grouping and to apply counterproductive social pressure passive-aggressively (again, not to reduce spread, but to signal brainless obeisance).
The advice and main rules were really clear from the start. Do 1) this, 2) this and 3) this. And were repeated millions of times from thousands of people in the whole planet.
But some people didn't liked science and choose instead to go to bath masses, religious massive holidays and parties just to make a political point. Some people even put deliberately the live of other in risk, teared off their masks and spit in their faces.
As expected, they paid a big bill for their own 100% genuine stupidity. Those that don't died look now desperately for a decorous way out to save face and will blame other for it. You explained it only 5 millions of times to me, so I though that it was a joke. Is your fault to not repeat it 5.000.001 times
So blame the government because you can't understand even the and blame other for their own decissions.
This theory of "pandemic of the unvaccinated" can safely be dumped into the trashcan following that e.g. here in Finland we have a double vaccination rate of over 80% and yet the daily numbers are easily the highest of all time.
It also follows that the advice and main rules given to avoid the pandemic aren't actually effective, and somewhat ironically, it would bode well to use scientific principles to re-evaluate the evidence and adjust their posture.
It really is amazing that after two years of no clear correlation between mandates and results, many still believe that all those edicts and restrictions were based on science.
The fact is that to continue to believe in all the imposed rules is more of an act of faith, similar to the religious kind.
Vaccines never assured that would stop the transmission. Specially after being designed for different virus variants.
They claimed that the effects would be much less severe, and would save lives. And in millions of cases [1] they delivered exactly what was promised. Finland had 1000 people killed. Sweden with 70% vaccinated had 15.000 deaths, so all points that vaccines really work.
[1] There are a few debatable cases, and I don't have any problem to discuss it, but the fact is that any treatment carry a small risk of being harmful for a particular genetic. People accept to take this risks all the time because the possible benefits worth it. Nobody says "we must stop treating cancer because chemotherapy has killed one in a 100 million people before".
Rules can't be effective if everybody do all that must do, but a bunch of morons playing cowbells came and spit you in the face (or into your hamburger) just for fun. Don't blame the people that made the rules for that. Is not their failure
I will absolutely blame the people who use ineffective or dishonest methods to constrict my life without my consent, that is the price they pay to be in positions of power.
And? That is entirely the point. Pharma marketing & government sold this as a preventative cure which of which people with the know were skeptical about from the beginning.
I like this approach to explain some of antivax as well. Essentially big pharma has just finished up a massive campaign that was the opioid pandemic. Essentially there’s going to be a large correlation between people with jobs that get them injured and targeted for opioid use, and those people being right. Opioid addiction that comes from that targeting isn’t just a single victim thing, someone addicted to something as hard as opioids is going to affect entire families and likely extended families. It’s going to essentially feel like a massive economic and spiritual attack to the family, by pharmaceutical companies (after all the news that came out of that social pandemic). So it makes sense that the seeds for not trusting the medical system are there and in insanely rich fertilizer to grow by even groups previously seen as insane like antivax groups (seriously both sides of the isle used to mock those groups). The worst part is that the people taking a drink of that koolaid, are able to literally take their life experience and draw a completely sane line from A to B that Big Pharma shouldn’t be trusted.
Good point. If you are realtively young in certain parts of the country you are going to hear a lot more stories about pharma killing people (opioids) than saving them.
Opioids killed most of my childhood friend group. Left many others passed out every day in their parents basement now into their 30s with no propects.
All the pretentious late night comedian jokes and Twitter clapbacks in the world won't be able to turn that around, you need some empathy to reach people where they are.
There's a PDF collection of alleged vax injuries/deaths that's been growing since March 2021, now over 200 pages. If autopsies were performed on any of the listed cases, the claims could be challenged. Since these are based on news reports, the list is at least publicly available and could be analyzed by federal or state agencies. There's also a much larger tier of anecdotal injuries within friend and family networks, which never reached the media. Without data/evidence collection, narrative gaps will remain.
I’m sure some time from now a different government won’t try to “counteract” some other threat with even more draconian measures. And it definitely can’t be the other side targeted next time. There’s nothing dangerous in giving unchecked power to the government to counteract “threats”.
I'm not saying what's happening is good. I'm stating it as a matter of fact. As you (cynically, but likely correctly) note that such authorizations tend to lead to very serious abuses of power. But it's also important to see that there are many countries on the planet that do exist with those draconian measures, without those getting abused. (Again, I'm not saying getting complacent about this is desirable. Quite the opposite.)
It's pretty much evident that real free speech can only exist in a society where basic needs are unconditionally guaranteed, and so on. ("I disagree, but I'd defend your right to say it." is great, as long as there is literally exactly zero probability that it might backfire on you. Because the moment there's a non-zero probability there's a non-zero chilling effect.)
There are, of course, various workarounds for these problems caused by a too oppressive/powerful majority, but the way to implement them start with letting go of the simple, but wrong idea that there free speech is simple and it can be simply free. (And similarly it'd be good to kill other useless idols like the "national security" one, that is routinely used to suppress speech. And then the "think of the children" one, which is again used to oppress, and so on.)
You say this like it's all due to misinformation. There are many VAERS and other self-reports in other countries, many studies and countless doctors also coming out against this. Overall I think vaccines have higher pros/cons (I'm vaccinated) but it's by no means cut and dry.
In slovenia (~2mio pop, ~1mio had covid), the current stats for girls under 25 is zero deaths due to covid and 1 death due to a vaccine (jannsen), and she only got vaccinated, because the alternative was a lot worse (paid tests every 48 hours, waiting in line, not being able to use a bus to go to the test site without the test, etc).
Yes, old unvaccinated people get fucked by covid, but 95% of the current measues in place only affect the young, because most old people don't go do bars after 10pm, don't go to clubs, don't even go to work anymore, etc.
Cherry-picking one out of a huge number of tiny groups (girls under 25 from Slovenia) is the hallmark of bad science. This is completely unsuitable for a good risk/benefit analysis.
In the whole <35yo group (men and women), we currently have 5 deaths all together... that's less than the number of drownings here, a lot less than traffic deaths, less than suicides, less than work accidents, less than overdoses etc.
And the mandates? If you're a 75yo pensioner, basically nothing has changed for you... curfew (back then) didn't affect you, because you're asleep, closed bars after 10pm the same, you don't go to shopping centers and restaurants, and normal grocery stores and pharmacies don't require testing or vaccinations... so you're basically living your life as normal.
And the <35yo crowd? Imagine a 6yo kid, first grade, can't read or write was put behind a pc running zoom for 5-6h per day. Students couldnt go out, meet, get drunk, have sex.... Want to go to school? mandatory testing. Want to use a bus to go to school? The in-school testing is not good enough for a bus, you need a different test for that, to get the right certificate. Shoppping centers, clothes stores, everything needs testing, vaccine or (sometimes even) intentionally getting sick with covid. Gyms the same. Nightclubs closed totally. Chritmas markets without food and drinks (even though you can get food and drinks in restaurants and bars on the same street).
So we're basically keeping parts of the country/economy partially closed (or even fully), to force young people to get vaccinated (because they're mostly the only ones affected by the mandates), and grandma doesn't care, because it doesn't affect her. The vaccination propaganda has quietly shifted from "protects you from infection and spread" to "protects you from hospitalization", but the mandates still affect mostly the ones where the chances of hospitalization are minimal.
Just requiring vaccinations to withdraw your pension (even if we left everything open and let everyone else be free) would save more lives than all the mandates targeting the young and ignoring the old.
> Just requiring vaccinations to withdraw your pension
Agreed.
(Un)fortunately(?) society is not pure utilitarian. The mandates mostly protect the elderly. It seems the power structure came to the conclusion that it wants to protect them even if they don't care.
Folks love their grannies unconditionally it seems.
> Nightclubs closed totally.
Come to Budapest!
...
> In the whole <35yo group (men and women), we currently have 5 deaths all together...
That is a quite improper expression to describe a situation which also covers the inquiry "What is going on here, I am seeing absurdities, lunacy [esp. with regards to said «counteraction»] and I am witnessing facts that simply do not match narratives".
People giving too much weight to the actions of Twitter (as a company) seems to be a serious problem. Twitter (as the company and its users as a whole) does not control whether the vaccine is good/bad.
The formula used to be simple. I want to travel to this or that foreign country I need this or that vaccine. Kids at age this and that get this and that vaccine.
Simple Bayesianism puts a limit on the chance that there's a large but extremely competent group conspiring to hide unfathomably huge problems with vaccines. The chance was never 0, which was fueling the slow burn of the antivaxx movement.
But now with this pandemic those voices suddenly reached a much larger audience, and those who have certain biases are much more susceptible to this, and hence the bomb explosion. (In particular people whose mind sufficiently discounts the very real risk of getting sick compared to the astronomically slim risk of getting an 5G chip in their arm.)
It's a useful link, but not as a good overview, because that's a very bad faux stream of consciousness cherry picking with a straight narrative to ideology town. (Of course, there's nothing really wrong with it, it's simply one more echo in the chamber.)
So it's sort of useful because we see how vaccine denial/skepticism/hesitancy (and vaccine optimism/acceptance/overpraise) become a matter of identity between the culture war camps.
Yes it’s a dangerous precedent. So we need to quantify the relative dangers. Hundreds of thousands, and potentially many millions of dead Americans one one hand right now, against a precedent that might be abused in future in theory. It depends how much confidence we have in democracy in America.
The US had a debate and had elections even during the pandemic. Decisions about these issues are being made at state and federal level, informed by broad and local public opinion. That’s the system working.
>Hundreds of thousands, and potentially many millions of dead Americans one one hand right now
whose average age is greater than the life expectancy.
But sure, let's discard our free society to prolong their lives by a bit. If history tells us anything, it's that free society is a stable attractor, so I'm sure we'll get it back in no time, right guys?
The analysis on years of life lost, including reduced life expectancy in those with long covid, has actually been done.
>Conclusion: More than 28 million excess years of life were lost in 2020 in 31 countries, with a higher rate in men than women.
Yes the chances of young people dying is individually very low, and gets tiny for the very young, but for example in Brazil it’s estimated that about 500 babies died due to complications from coronavirus exposure, and many thousands of toddlers. Those small percentages, multiplied by big enough numbers, still add up.
28 million years of life lost in 31 countries whose population appears to add up to over 1 billion people.
So what are we talking about here, maybe like 2 weeks each? Which is optimistic -- because personally I believe most of the restrictions have a very small effect. Roughly that many people were going to die anyway, whether we did Sweden's approach or Austria's approach or anywhere in between.
Well - good god, I'm really looking forward to those extra 2 weeks of my life. They will be amazing. It will definitely make up for spending my entire youth, and possibly my entire life, in a hellish surveillance state where you aren't allowed to go to school or see your family and you have to show your papers to enter a restaurant. SO WORTH IT, right?
Right, that’s the loss of life _with_ lockdowns, mass vaccinations, etc. we’ve successfully managed to limit the damage to much, much, much lower levels than it would have been otherwise. It’s been a huge success, compared to an unrestricted or minimally constrained propagation of the virus.
I wish we had open-source flowcharts for common debate talking points. Each could be linked to several dozen HN sub-threads where similar points were made by both sides, ending in a handful of common termination nodes. Once a flowchart exists and has been proven reusable, it could be condensed into a comic, meme or other visual mnemonic. If would also be easier to place new studies into the context of previous debates.
With repetitive graphs out of the way, discussion could focus on more nuanced points.
That's a huge assumption. Given how well Sweden has done with limited lockdowns [0] one could also jump to conclusions that lockdowns have prolonged and exacerbated a situation that would otherwise have fizzled out with herd immunity.
The Swedish government regards the claim that they have not implemented lockdowns similar to many other countries as a myth:
>Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde said that the "so-called Swedish strategy" was one of many myths about Sweden, and described it as "absolutely false".
>...Remarks similar to Linde's have also been made by Lena Hallengren, Minister for Health and Social Affairs, who disagreed with the belief that Sweden had a radically different approach to the virus compared to other countries, saying she believed that there were only differences in two major regards: not shutting down schools, and not having regulations forcing people to remain in their homes.[161]
>Linde has also spoken out against reports of Swedes not practising social distancing, calling it another "myth" in the reporting about Sweden, and she said Sweden's combination of recommendations and legally binding measures had so far proven effective.
What do I care about the US system as an European? I certainly haven't had a single chance to vote about any issue regarding COVID, these have all been top-down decisions.
>It depends how much confidence we have in democracy in America.
After Hunter Bidens laptop story got removed from everywhere, there can be no doubt that the only correct answer to to that question is negative infinity.
All of this only begins to be a problem when 1) discussion about side effects is constantly shut down and 2) you force people to take the vaccine against their will.
Each contract has it's own terms, one of the cause for delays within the EU was due to some of those legal terms. USA and UK waved a lot of responsibilities.
If it's shared liability, for example, in the EU it would be both EU and Pfizer that would back this up.
At least in Germany, the state wasn't back in it up. It may have changed now. But when the first Astrazeneca problems popped up, the answer was "you did it knowing the risks, when you signed up for it".
Brit here. I’m not intending to be argumentative, you’re right, but I’d prefer to put it a bit differently. The British government chose to take on responsibility for ordering and using the vaccines. We did our testing, contracted the drug companies to do a job to standards we set, and paid them for it. If a mistake was made, it’s on us. I have no problem with that.
Now, if the drug companies lied, or failed to live up to their contracts, that’s a different story. But if they did the job we asked in good faith, we’ll, that’s fine.
Contrast with the OxyContin debacle in the US. Those people lied, concealed evidence, conspired and goodness knows what else. They deserve the full force of the law. I am in no way advocating blanket liability waivers for drug companies.
I don't doubt the intentions, to be honest this is a chip on the shoulder that I have from that period.
Back then I tried to wrap my head around the whole delays of vaccines, when some propaganda were saying that the EU was being "cheap" and bargaining for cents, costing time, with the famous Boris quote, paraphrasing, "we have a better deal".
Only to find out that one of the major setbacks that caused the delay was in fact liability terms.
The EU wanted to share liability so that pharma was not completely off the hook, and had some skin in the game - and I'm fine with this decision, even it costed some weeks of delay.
I'm also fine with USA and UK decisions, it's just the framing and propaganda that was despicable... it wasn't a better deal, just different terms and demands.
I think this whole coronavirus period made me sick of politics.
the government is responsible for lyme disease, "plum island shennanigans," and then magicly whipped out a response... strange, history may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme all too often
This is a must for any vaccine manufacturer, otherwise the vaccine is just not commercially feasible. That's what killed Lymerix, and why we don't have Lyme disease vaccine anymore. If the government does not back it up, the manufacturer won't stand a chance.
Even if the vaccine has a good safety profile, a 0.1% rate of side effects applied to millions is still a lot of lawsuits.
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