7 ms·

Imagine a firefighter who, in the middle of fighting a house fire, learns that the water being used has mildly elevated levels of arsenic and decides to turn of

Imagine a firefighter who, in the middle of fighting a house fire, learns that the water being used has mildly elevated levels of arsenic and decides to turn off the hose "out of an abundance of caution." That's the level of absurdity I'm seeing in the European response to these AZ issues. The frequency of issues, even if 100% correlated to the vaccine, is still SO MUCH BETTER than what's happening every day with COVID-19. All of the existing seeds of FUD are validated and amplified by this sort of thing, which is about as sensible as telling a starving person to not eat the food in front of them because it isn't organic.

ppf 6y ago
It's also the level of absurdity I'm seeing in the response to Covid itself.
- shockeychap 6y ago
  I won't argue that. I'm quite concerned about the power-grab taking place. Elected administrators clearly see themselves as rulers who can issue dictates almost arbitrarily with little regard for their effectiveness or necessity. The emergency powers that most, including myself, supported last year have been turned into open-ended excuses for unchecked power. However, the anti-vaxers and COVID-is-a-hoax folks aren't helping either. I've lost one friend personally and known several people who lost friends or relatives. The virus is real, and the vaccine is a huge tool for stopping the suffering and loss. (And no, I do NOT support mandated vaccine passports either.)
  - NoPie 6y ago
    Sadly, I have lost more people I knew from drug overdose than from virus during last year. Most people won't care about to understand the damage that lockdowns have done to vulnerable people. The difference is that covid deaths are direct and lockdown effect are nebulous so harder to prove and understand. Now the same people are so worried for some vaccine side-effects. It doesn't make sense to me but that's how people think.
- llampx 6y ago
  Yup, I feel like we are sacrificing our young to add a few more years to the average old person's life. Sounds a bit heartless, but so does ruining years of development of children and youth so that the old have a longer life.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    If by sacrificing young you mean that we let virus run rampant so it evolves into a version that more successfully infects young and with more disastrous effects .. then yes, we did exactly that. Some new mutants cause way more harm in younger people than the original version did.
    - ppf 6y ago
      Will it definitely evolve into such a version? What's to stop any other virus doing the same? How do you intend to stop this, without continuous vaccination and social control? What new piece of information do we have, that justifies the apparent change in policy from "flatten the curve for a few weeks" to "global control and vaccinations until...(?)"?
      - scotty79 6y ago
        > Will it definitely evolve into such a version? It already did evolve this way and will continue to do so. Any novel virus evolves in ways that helps its spread into popularions previously unavailable for infection. And only after it is at risk of wiping populations it infects it evolves milder variants that are careful no to kill too many hosts to quick. > What's to stop any other virus doing the same? Other viruses don't evolve further in this direction because they are with us long enough that they already reached that state. All other common human viruses and bacteria exceedingly easily infect young and can be a major cause of death and disability in young. And before we had vaxcines against most dangerous of them, it was horrible. > How do you intend to stop this, without continuous vaccination and social control? We are going to stop this with continous vaccinations, exactly the same way we stopped other very infectious and dangerous viruses that were spread in human population. > What new piece of information do we have, that justifies the apparent change in policy from "flatten the curve for a few weeks" to "global control and vaccinations until...(?)"? That new piece of information might be the knowledge of other variants of this coronavirus. This gives us an idea of how fast this virus is evolving (when it is allowed to infect this many people). It has the potential to cause great harm to younger generation which we tend to care more about and also outpace our ability to prepare new vaccines which is already probably close to the best we can do. So it became more crucial to rob this virus of opportunities to evolve. There are already variants that infect more easily, infect younger, happily reinfect people who got sick from original variant.
thehappypm 6y ago
No, that's a terrible analogy. Mildly elevated arsenic would imply a small amount of health issues to everyone near the water, when it's a 0% danger to most people, and death to a small percentage. It's more like: There's a militia terrorizing a town square. The police are using machine guns to fight back, and a few stray bullets are hitting innocent bystanders.
- shockeychap 6y ago
  I get what you’re saying, but the point still stands. Would you rather take your chances with a stray bullet or the militia? Would it be wise to withdraw the police “out of an abundance of caution” because of a statistically tiny set of stray bullets whose body count isn’t even a rounding error compared to the militia?
  - thehappypm 6y ago
    It's a fair question, no? If I was a healthy mid-20s woman, I'd probably be waiting for J&J or something. I don't want to play Russian roulette.
- senectus1 6y ago
  31 cases in 2.1 million doses. I don't think your analogy fits either. actually the numbers are even bigger than that: >The safety committee reviewed 62 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and 24 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis reported in the European Union’s drug safety databases as of March 22. Eighteen of these cases were fatal. The cases came from the reporting systems of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, where 25 million people had received the vaccine. https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/07/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-linked-to-blood-clots/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/07/astrazeneca-covid-19-vac... and don't forget, blood clots happen without the vaccine as well...

ppf 6y ago

It's also the level of absurdity I'm seeing in the response to Covid itself.

shockeychap 6y ago
I won't argue that. I'm quite concerned about the power-grab taking place. Elected administrators clearly see themselves as rulers who can issue dictates almost arbitrarily with little regard for their effectiveness or necessity. The emergency powers that most, including myself, supported last year have been turned into open-ended excuses for unchecked power. However, the anti-vaxers and COVID-is-a-hoax folks aren't helping either. I've lost one friend personally and known several people who lost friends or relatives. The virus is real, and the vaccine is a huge tool for stopping the suffering and loss. (And no, I do NOT support mandated vaccine passports either.)
- NoPie 6y ago
  Sadly, I have lost more people I knew from drug overdose than from virus during last year. Most people won't care about to understand the damage that lockdowns have done to vulnerable people. The difference is that covid deaths are direct and lockdown effect are nebulous so harder to prove and understand. Now the same people are so worried for some vaccine side-effects. It doesn't make sense to me but that's how people think.
llampx 6y ago
Yup, I feel like we are sacrificing our young to add a few more years to the average old person's life. Sounds a bit heartless, but so does ruining years of development of children and youth so that the old have a longer life.
- scotty79 6y ago
  If by sacrificing young you mean that we let virus run rampant so it evolves into a version that more successfully infects young and with more disastrous effects .. then yes, we did exactly that. Some new mutants cause way more harm in younger people than the original version did.
  - ppf 6y ago
    Will it definitely evolve into such a version? What's to stop any other virus doing the same? How do you intend to stop this, without continuous vaccination and social control? What new piece of information do we have, that justifies the apparent change in policy from "flatten the curve for a few weeks" to "global control and vaccinations until...(?)"?
    - scotty79 6y ago
      > Will it definitely evolve into such a version? It already did evolve this way and will continue to do so. Any novel virus evolves in ways that helps its spread into popularions previously unavailable for infection. And only after it is at risk of wiping populations it infects it evolves milder variants that are careful no to kill too many hosts to quick. > What's to stop any other virus doing the same? Other viruses don't evolve further in this direction because they are with us long enough that they already reached that state. All other common human viruses and bacteria exceedingly easily infect young and can be a major cause of death and disability in young. And before we had vaxcines against most dangerous of them, it was horrible. > How do you intend to stop this, without continuous vaccination and social control? We are going to stop this with continous vaccinations, exactly the same way we stopped other very infectious and dangerous viruses that were spread in human population. > What new piece of information do we have, that justifies the apparent change in policy from "flatten the curve for a few weeks" to "global control and vaccinations until...(?)"? That new piece of information might be the knowledge of other variants of this coronavirus. This gives us an idea of how fast this virus is evolving (when it is allowed to infect this many people). It has the potential to cause great harm to younger generation which we tend to care more about and also outpace our ability to prepare new vaccines which is already probably close to the best we can do. So it became more crucial to rob this virus of opportunities to evolve. There are already variants that infect more easily, infect younger, happily reinfect people who got sick from original variant.

thehappypm 6y ago

No, that's a terrible analogy. Mildly elevated arsenic would imply a small amount of health issues to everyone near the water, when it's a 0% danger to most people, and death to a small percentage. It's more like: There's a militia terrorizing a town square. The police are using machine guns to fight back, and a few stray bullets are hitting innocent bystanders.

shockeychap 6y ago
I get what you’re saying, but the point still stands. Would you rather take your chances with a stray bullet or the militia? Would it be wise to withdraw the police “out of an abundance of caution” because of a statistically tiny set of stray bullets whose body count isn’t even a rounding error compared to the militia?
- thehappypm 6y ago
  It's a fair question, no? If I was a healthy mid-20s woman, I'd probably be waiting for J&J or something. I don't want to play Russian roulette.
senectus1 6y ago
31 cases in 2.1 million doses. I don't think your analogy fits either. actually the numbers are even bigger than that: >The safety committee reviewed 62 cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and 24 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis reported in the European Union’s drug safety databases as of March 22. Eighteen of these cases were fatal. The cases came from the reporting systems of the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, where 25 million people had received the vaccine. https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/07/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-linked-to-blood-clots/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/07/astrazeneca-covid-19-vac... and don't forget, blood clots happen without the vaccine as well...