3 ms·

Sure, most of it comes down to the administration putting unqualified people with poor financial incentives in positions of high power. There was this particul

Sure, most of it comes down to the administration putting unqualified people with poor financial incentives in positions of high power. There was this particularly transparent example by the Director of the CDC a couple of years ago, about buying tobacco stocks when put in charge of programs for reducing tobacco usage: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/30/cdc-director-tobacco-stocks-after-appointment-316245 https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/30/cdc-director-tobac... Also this story about how FDA appeared to bend to political pressure to greenlight an experimental treatment due to political pressure, bypassing the normal guidelines for demonstrating efficacy: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-did-fda-authorize-convalescent-plasma-potential-treatment-covid-19-n1237848 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-did-fda-autho... There's also been a general failure to respond appropriately to the pandemic. We're so many months in and PPE is still an issue: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/8-months-into-pandemic-largest-n95-producer-ceo-says-ppe-demand-still-greater-than-entire-industry-capacity/ar-BB1975yY https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/8-months-into-pandemic-... And that's not even counting what the White House is doing, which is not good. Especially with the recently leaked audio tapes from Woodward from the same time POTUS was publicly downplaying it: https://youtu.be/-cfd_pJVYiM?t=179 https://youtu.be/-cfd_pJVYiM?t=179 Plus the hydroxychloroquine thing... There's a lot of buzz lately about how the administration is trying to influence the CDC, but most of it is journalism/politics blue twitter insider type chatter: * https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trump-aides-demand-that-cdc-publication-be-more-optimistic/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trum... * https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/trump-e2-80-99s-attempts-to-corrupt-the-cdc-explained/ar-BB192e7i https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/trump-e2-80-99s-att... * https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trump-aides-demand-that-cdc-publication-be-more-optimistic/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trum... * https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-appointees-sought-to-alter-cdc-scientific-reports-so-they-dont-contradict-or-undermine-the-president/ar-BB18X6nO https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-appointees-sou... But there is a lot of it, and that's pretty unusual for an organization like the CDC. Maybe it's all disinformation, but keep in mind it's the President's job to appoint the Director of the CDC: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/trumps-cdc-director-has-a-history-of-controversial-opinions-on-controlling-viruses/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/trumps-cdc-dire... I'm not saying every smear against the man is true. But after the last director had to resign over the tobacco thing, and the current director is now clearly affiliated with the President, so I'm skeptical if he has the public interest at heart. I've never had less faith in American institutions, and I think it's for good reason. There's a lot of corruption at the top, and it's clearly infiltrating the institutions. If they say a vaccine is safe to get, I don't think I can trust it. I'm going to need to dive deeper into opinions of professionals when it becomes available before I get it.

didibus 6y ago
Hum, okay I see what you mean. I think maybe it's premiditated to conclude that it's untrusworthy yet, but I wouldn't blame anyone from being a bit skeptical and double checking with say the Canadian and European health institutions to see if the advice is similar, and if not that might need to trigger some investigation into why they'd differ so much? And I don't know, throw in China and South Korea and Russia in there as well, in theory, all country should advise pretty similar things, medical science is mostly universal so any major discrepancy would be disconcerting a bit I admit. That said, I also don't want to fall into some fallacy of nirvana, I don't believe any governement ever existed in a perfect state with zero bias and total absence of corruption, sometime all we have is good enough to go by. And I also wouldn't want to fall in the fallacy of inflation of conflict, where because there are scientific disagreement in the medical community, especially given a very new very unknown problem such as Covid, that no conclusion can be reached or that the legitimacy of that field of knowledge is questionable.
- anon9001 6y ago
  I agree with you entirely, and I think that will be my plan. It could be a problem though if US society is back to "normal" with a "vaccine" that ends up rushed through some how, and I'm one of a few crazy holdouts that don't trust it. Would any of our Russian comrades reading along care to weigh in on how they're feeling about getting the vaccine on release day?
  - orbital-decay 6y ago
    eugene3306 summarized it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974. As someone fairly familiar with Gamaleya I agree completely, they are known to be responsible for some "bullshit-micyn" drugs as we call it here, so I'd hesitate to be an early adopter for their vaccine. (also you'd get funny looks if you called someone comrade in Russia, just saying)

didibus 6y ago

Hum, okay I see what you mean. I think maybe it's premiditated to conclude that it's untrusworthy yet, but I wouldn't blame anyone from being a bit skeptical and double checking with say the Canadian and European health institutions to see if the advice is similar, and if not that might need to trigger some investigation into why they'd differ so much? And I don't know, throw in China and South Korea and Russia in there as well, in theory, all country should advise pretty similar things, medical science is mostly universal so any major discrepancy would be disconcerting a bit I admit. That said, I also don't want to fall into some fallacy of nirvana, I don't believe any governement ever existed in a perfect state with zero bias and total absence of corruption, sometime all we have is good enough to go by. And I also wouldn't want to fall in the fallacy of inflation of conflict, where because there are scientific disagreement in the medical community, especially given a very new very unknown problem such as Covid, that no conclusion can be reached or that the legitimacy of that field of knowledge is questionable.

anon9001 6y ago
I agree with you entirely, and I think that will be my plan. It could be a problem though if US society is back to "normal" with a "vaccine" that ends up rushed through some how, and I'm one of a few crazy holdouts that don't trust it. Would any of our Russian comrades reading along care to weigh in on how they're feeling about getting the vaccine on release day?
- orbital-decay 6y ago
  eugene3306 summarized it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974. As someone fairly familiar with Gamaleya I agree completely, they are known to be responsible for some "bullshit-micyn" drugs as we call it here, so I'd hesitate to be an early adopter for their vaccine. (also you'd get funny looks if you called someone comrade in Russia, just saying)