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That's assuming that we have already seen the worst-case outcome for a rushed vaccine - which I don't think is true. Human medicine is sufficiently complex that

That's assuming that we have already seen the worst-case outcome for a rushed vaccine - which I don't think is true. Human medicine is sufficiently complex that its negative consequences are extremely ripe for black swan events. From that perspective, your argument falls in the same hole as Ben's: based on a retrospective view of bounded outcomes, you are trying to argue about unbounded future events. The real risk of a rushed vaccine rollout is not a repeat of the 1976 incident, but a medical disaster which is unpredictably and massively worse. Modern medical red tape exists precisely because of the risk of such disasters.

pdonis 6y ago
> That's assuming that we have already seen the worst-case outcome for a rushed vaccine Why don't you think the swine flu vaccine, which was much more rushed than the current COVID vaccine, was reasonably close to a worst case outcome? Or at least close enough to serve as an upper bound estimate for side effects from the COVID vaccine? > based on a retrospective view of bounded outcomes, you are trying to argue about unbounded future events That's just as true of our actual response to COVID--none of the so-called "experts" ever really considered where we are now as a possibility back when doing so would have mattered. > a medical disaster which is unpredictably and massively worse You mean like what actually happened with COVID? > Modern medical red tape exists precisely because of the risk of such disasters. No, it doesn't. Modern medical red tape exists because our approach to risk is extremely one-sided; we punish regulators only when something bad happens that we think they could have prevented, not when something good fails to happen that they could have enabled. For example, the FDA took ten years longer than European regulators to approve beta blockers for people at risk for heart attacks. A rough estimate is that 100,000 heart attacks were suffered by Americans during those ten years that could have been prevented. But no regulator got punished for allowing those 100,000 deaths to happen.
- ivanbakel 6y ago
  >Why don't you think the swine flu vaccine, which was much more rushed than the current COVID vaccine, was reasonably close to a worst case outcome? Or at least close enough to serve as an upper bound estimate for side effects from the COVID vaccine? Because 1. the negative side-effects of a vaccine are not a function of its rushed-ness - just like the injuries you get when a car runs you over are not proportional to how quickly you ran into the road without looking both ways. 2. I don't believe there is a sensible "upper bound" for medical side-effects, apart from the obvious one (everyone dies). Even if there was, you could not think to have safely established it through a single example. >we punish regulators only when something bad happens that we think they could have prevented, not when something good fails to happen that they could have enabled. This is also a very retrospective view. How would you establish when a regulator "failed to enable" new medicine? How could you decide that an entity had enough information in advance to make a decision that is obvious in retrospect? How would that entity then prove its historical ignorance in its own defense? Moreover, in the case of a disaster, how would it argue that its predictions were justified and the opportunity cost was too great to institute rigorous checks? These questions don't exist for the current system. A regulator that fails to catch some medical issue is not questioned on its intentions, but instead punished for simply not being rigorous enough. That cures are slow to roll out is just the price of safe medicine.

pdonis 6y ago

> That's assuming that we have already seen the worst-case outcome for a rushed vaccine Why don't you think the swine flu vaccine, which was much more rushed than the current COVID vaccine, was reasonably close to a worst case outcome? Or at least close enough to serve as an upper bound estimate for side effects from the COVID vaccine? > based on a retrospective view of bounded outcomes, you are trying to argue about unbounded future events That's just as true of our actual response to COVID--none of the so-called "experts" ever really considered where we are now as a possibility back when doing so would have mattered. > a medical disaster which is unpredictably and massively worse You mean like what actually happened with COVID? > Modern medical red tape exists precisely because of the risk of such disasters. No, it doesn't. Modern medical red tape exists because our approach to risk is extremely one-sided; we punish regulators only when something bad happens that we think they could have prevented, not when something good fails to happen that they could have enabled. For example, the FDA took ten years longer than European regulators to approve beta blockers for people at risk for heart attacks. A rough estimate is that 100,000 heart attacks were suffered by Americans during those ten years that could have been prevented. But no regulator got punished for allowing those 100,000 deaths to happen.

ivanbakel 6y ago
>Why don't you think the swine flu vaccine, which was much more rushed than the current COVID vaccine, was reasonably close to a worst case outcome? Or at least close enough to serve as an upper bound estimate for side effects from the COVID vaccine? Because 1. the negative side-effects of a vaccine are not a function of its rushed-ness - just like the injuries you get when a car runs you over are not proportional to how quickly you ran into the road without looking both ways. 2. I don't believe there is a sensible "upper bound" for medical side-effects, apart from the obvious one (everyone dies). Even if there was, you could not think to have safely established it through a single example. >we punish regulators only when something bad happens that we think they could have prevented, not when something good fails to happen that they could have enabled. This is also a very retrospective view. How would you establish when a regulator "failed to enable" new medicine? How could you decide that an entity had enough information in advance to make a decision that is obvious in retrospect? How would that entity then prove its historical ignorance in its own defense? Moreover, in the case of a disaster, how would it argue that its predictions were justified and the opportunity cost was too great to institute rigorous checks? These questions don't exist for the current system. A regulator that fails to catch some medical issue is not questioned on its intentions, but instead punished for simply not being rigorous enough. That cures are slow to roll out is just the price of safe medicine.