3 ms·

That's the first thing I thought when I saw this (hopefully your detractors will explain themselves). It seems almost tautological. If you've accepted that the

That's the first thing I thought when I saw this (hopefully your detractors will explain themselves). It seems almost tautological. If you've accepted that the vaccine is effective, then it's effective when it gets used at scale.

whatshisface 5y ago
You're going down a dangerous road with that "seems almost tautological" perspective, because it is only one step away from "it's tautological, why bother checking?"
- version_five 5y ago
  Interesting, and I agree. The opposite result, mass vaccination and no change in outcome would have been important news, because it's new and unexpected information. But news that a vaccine that is shown to work works is a much less interesting outcome.
- monkellipse 5y ago
  Yes. Sometimes science seems silly for confirming things we think we already know. But if we don’t confirm them scientifically (especially when the stakes are high) we aren’t much better off than the magically-minded folk… Also, vaccine effectiveness in the real world is an important area of study, surely it’s good to know with higher certainty that the vaccine is effective against today’s disease, no?
- lmilcin 5y ago
  It is not tautological. Vaccines are designed and created based on enormous body of knowledge gathered over the past century. We know it works for sure because of trust in all that knowledge. We know what viruses are, how they work in principle. We can use that knowledge to predict what is going to happen if we disrupt how they multiply or spread or gain access to our cells. That knowledge is not self evident -- it has been hard won by generations of scientists.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    >We know what viruses are, how they work in principle. We can use that knowledge to predict what is going to happen if we disrupt how they multiply or spread or gain access to our cells. I think that's a misapprehension of how drug development works in practice. The models can lead towards discoveries, but most drugs fall out of the pipeline due to being unexpectedly unsafe or ineffective. The "checking if it actually works" step is the most important part of medicine by a large margin.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      What I meant is we know what happens if we have working vaccine. Meaning that working vaccine leads to less people being sick and that leads to less deaths from virus. As to the vaccine itself it is usually easy to come up with a formula that can disrupt the virus (any potent poison or lava flow can do that). The difficult part is that the formula must also not disrupt anything important. No amount of knowledge about virology can help with the second part, human body is vastly more complex than the virus.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I should have been clearer. I meant that if it was shown to be effective in clinical trials, then it's unsurprising that it worked when deployed in practice.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      The strains in the wild at the time of the clinical trials are different from the strains in the wild now. Furthermore, the trials did not test herd immunity, only direct immunity.

whatshisface 5y ago

You're going down a dangerous road with that "seems almost tautological" perspective, because it is only one step away from "it's tautological, why bother checking?"

version_five 5y ago
Interesting, and I agree. The opposite result, mass vaccination and no change in outcome would have been important news, because it's new and unexpected information. But news that a vaccine that is shown to work works is a much less interesting outcome.
monkellipse 5y ago
Yes. Sometimes science seems silly for confirming things we think we already know. But if we don’t confirm them scientifically (especially when the stakes are high) we aren’t much better off than the magically-minded folk… Also, vaccine effectiveness in the real world is an important area of study, surely it’s good to know with higher certainty that the vaccine is effective against today’s disease, no?
lmilcin 5y ago
It is not tautological. Vaccines are designed and created based on enormous body of knowledge gathered over the past century. We know it works for sure because of trust in all that knowledge. We know what viruses are, how they work in principle. We can use that knowledge to predict what is going to happen if we disrupt how they multiply or spread or gain access to our cells. That knowledge is not self evident -- it has been hard won by generations of scientists.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >We know what viruses are, how they work in principle. We can use that knowledge to predict what is going to happen if we disrupt how they multiply or spread or gain access to our cells. I think that's a misapprehension of how drug development works in practice. The models can lead towards discoveries, but most drugs fall out of the pipeline due to being unexpectedly unsafe or ineffective. The "checking if it actually works" step is the most important part of medicine by a large margin.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    What I meant is we know what happens if we have working vaccine. Meaning that working vaccine leads to less people being sick and that leads to less deaths from virus. As to the vaccine itself it is usually easy to come up with a formula that can disrupt the virus (any potent poison or lava flow can do that). The difficult part is that the formula must also not disrupt anything important. No amount of knowledge about virology can help with the second part, human body is vastly more complex than the virus.
- version_five 5y ago
  I should have been clearer. I meant that if it was shown to be effective in clinical trials, then it's unsurprising that it worked when deployed in practice.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    The strains in the wild at the time of the clinical trials are different from the strains in the wild now. Furthermore, the trials did not test herd immunity, only direct immunity.