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Your bet is nonsense, and nobody is making the argument you're framing the bet against. There's not the slightest similarity in the massive teratogenicity of th

Your bet is nonsense, and nobody is making the argument you're framing the bet against. There's not the slightest similarity in the massive teratogenicity of thalidomide vs waiting a few months for safety data on a vaccine. Not getting an EUA is not at all equivalent to a black label. You completely ignore we have two vaccines that work better already, that have research behind them from post-SARS1 and MERS research with the mRNA approaches. Astra will get approved after it proves its safety. Where did I miss anyone mentioning sars-covid-2 besides you? You are the one that brought it up, and I still have no idea why you did. The FDA is right to make sure vaccines are safe. We know AZD1222 is less effective already, so it better be at least equivalently safe and that requires data. Are you confused and think you're replying to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26048470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26048470 ?

dcolkitt 6y ago
> There's not the slightest similarity in the massive teratogenicity of thalidomide vs waiting a few months for safety data on a vaccine. You're right. They're not comparable. Spuriously waiting for Covid data is way worse than thalidomide. The latter resulted in two thousand deaths, whereas the former will result in two million deaths.
- throwaway5752 6y ago
  I dare you to make the case for this causing 2M incremental deaths. Please proceed.
  - dcolkitt 6y ago
    The UK, where the main difference is the approval of the AZ vaccine, is forecast to reach herd immunity four months before the United States.[1] America is currently averaging 3500 deaths per day.[2] That's an unecessary 127 deaths per 100,000 persons. Since we're comparing total worldwide deaths from Thalidomide, that would result in 6 million unnecessary deaths if FDA policies were adopted globally. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/#global-time-series-rates https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... [2]https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths
    - mft_ 6y ago
      So if the AZ vaccine was the only vaccine available to save Americans’ lives (which it’s not) and it was 100% effective (which it’s not) and the FDA delayed its rollout by a month, by your argument the FDA’s delay would have caused 105,000 (3500 x 30) unnecessary deaths. 1. Those numbers don’t work. There are other vaccines in play which can have a disproportionate impact on the death rate if they’re properly targeted at people at highest risk of severe infection. You don’t need herd immunity to prevent most deaths. 2. I’m still not seeing the ‘two million’ deaths you mentioned?
JoshuaDavid 6y ago
> Not getting an EUA is not at all equivalent to a black label. It is equivalent though, because without an EUA it's illegal to give that vaccine. Right now, we are supply constrained on vaccines - the choice for the people on the margin is not "AstraZeneca now or Moderna now", it's "AstraZeneca now or Moderna in a few months, during which time there's an uncontrolled pandemic raging". Or rather, that would be the choice, except that the AstraZeneca vaccine is illegal to distribute so the only choice is "take your chances with no protection at all".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

dcolkitt 6y ago

> There's not the slightest similarity in the massive teratogenicity of thalidomide vs waiting a few months for safety data on a vaccine. You're right. They're not comparable. Spuriously waiting for Covid data is way worse than thalidomide. The latter resulted in two thousand deaths, whereas the former will result in two million deaths.

throwaway5752 6y ago
I dare you to make the case for this causing 2M incremental deaths. Please proceed.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  The UK, where the main difference is the approval of the AZ vaccine, is forecast to reach herd immunity four months before the United States.[1] America is currently averaging 3500 deaths per day.[2] That's an unecessary 127 deaths per 100,000 persons. Since we're comparing total worldwide deaths from Thalidomide, that would result in 6 million unnecessary deaths if FDA policies were adopted globally. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/#global-time-series-rates https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... [2]https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths
  - mft_ 6y ago
    So if the AZ vaccine was the only vaccine available to save Americans’ lives (which it’s not) and it was 100% effective (which it’s not) and the FDA delayed its rollout by a month, by your argument the FDA’s delay would have caused 105,000 (3500 x 30) unnecessary deaths. 1. Those numbers don’t work. There are other vaccines in play which can have a disproportionate impact on the death rate if they’re properly targeted at people at highest risk of severe infection. You don’t need herd immunity to prevent most deaths. 2. I’m still not seeing the ‘two million’ deaths you mentioned?

JoshuaDavid 6y ago

> Not getting an EUA is not at all equivalent to a black label. It is equivalent though, because without an EUA it's illegal to give that vaccine. Right now, we are supply constrained on vaccines - the choice for the people on the margin is not "AstraZeneca now or Moderna now", it's "AstraZeneca now or Moderna in a few months, during which time there's an uncontrolled pandemic raging". Or rather, that would be the choice, except that the AstraZeneca vaccine is illegal to distribute so the only choice is "take your chances with no protection at all".

deleted 6y ago
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