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Doctors and lawyers have very steep tradeoff curves for their work. One lawsuit can ruin them. Yet they're still liable. Why should companies be any different?

Doctors and lawyers have very steep tradeoff curves for their work. One lawsuit can ruin them. Yet they're still liable. Why should companies be any different? If the world was certain of the vaccine's safety then it should be no big deal for them to stand behind their product. It's crazy how people are just shrugging their shoulders at this.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> Doctors and lawyers have very steep tradeoff curves for their work. One lawsuit can ruin them. Yet they're still liable. Why should companies be any different? If a few doctors decide the liability tradeoff doesn't work for them, a few patients that could have been saved might die. If Pfizer decides the liability tradeoff isn't worth developing a COVID-19 vaccine... Well, we're already past 600,000 dead in the US alone. > If the world was certain of the vaccine's safety Define "certain." The preponderance of evidence is that it's safer than catching COVID-19. Long-term effects are by definition unknown. The PREP act allows HHS to basically say to a private company "We will assume the unknown risk of long-term vaccine consequences by shielding your company from direct civil liability" (and Uncle Sam will foot the bill for treating long-term effects of the vaccine in the population). > It's crazy how people are just shrugging their shoulders at this I think few people who understand medical risk profiles are shrugging their shoulders at this (note: I don't consider most of the public to be in that category; this stuff requires college math to really grasp and the average American tops out around a 6th-grade level). The decisions government officials are making are literally life-or-death. But the regular risk / reward profile goes out the window during a pandemic and is replaced with "apparent best course of action" tradeoffs, because society lacks the luxury of doing nothing. Do nothing, and a lot of people definitely die (back-of-the-napkin math suggests the US would look down the barrel of 5.9 million dead at the end of the pandemic). Deploy a vaccine with possible (but low-probability) side-effects, and far fewer people die unless there's an extremely unlikely set of unknown-unknowns. To give a (bad) software development analogy: unit, integration, and functional tests are best practice. But at a startup company, there are occasional instances of "we need a demo by 6:30 tomorrow or the company will run out of money and die." In those circumstances, regular best practices go out the window because the company lacks the luxury of time. Project managers in such circumstances will declare that if the quick hacks result in pain down the road, they'll cover the team's ass (and devote resources later to fixing any pain caused by less-than-best practice). Pandemic time is risk tradeoff time.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  A better analogy is... You have a 6:30 demo and if it burns the entire company down and gives everyone cancer... you can just shrug your shoulders and say oh well our bad, and then make a swimming pool out of your money... You're trying to justify something totally insane. Also your back of the napkin calculations for total deaths are way off. Under 50% of the country is vaccinated and we're not even at a fraction of that. 5 million is very sensational.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Not only is it not insane, I'm fairly certain a similar protection was provided for the vaccines during the Spanish Flu epidemic. > Back of the napkin I used an approximately 1.8% fatality rate for infected individuals at present, and extrapolated to eventual 100% infection of the population assuming a hypothetical scenario where no major company had stepped up to build a vaccine and so the only immune protection available would be natural. You are quite correct and that it is not great math... certainly epidemiologists tend to use a more conservative approach under the assumption that somebody will develop countermeasures. But honestly, with no vaccine it's probably in the ballpark unless we had done something drastic like a sufficient quarantine of infected individuals to zero out the spread (which never seemed in the cards based on behavior I observed among my fellow Americans).
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      1.8% fatality rate.... You're neglecting to include asymptomatic infections which have been theorized to be up to 80% of the infected. So you have to add (x * 34 million, where x equals some percentage of asymptomatic infections) to your infection count....if you want to be accurate which I'm assuming that's not your priority. https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693.full https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693.full Also, The average death is 80 years old with two comorbidities. For healthy populations under the age of 55 that fatality number drops into the miniscule amounts. 34,000/34 million. People under the age of 55 make up 80% of the total population. Car accidents and opioid deaths are more of a danger to the under 55 crowd. This is two separate diseases based on population group. So millions of old people who are already past the average lifespan will die slightly sooner.

shadowgovt 5y ago

> Doctors and lawyers have very steep tradeoff curves for their work. One lawsuit can ruin them. Yet they're still liable. Why should companies be any different? If a few doctors decide the liability tradeoff doesn't work for them, a few patients that could have been saved might die. If Pfizer decides the liability tradeoff isn't worth developing a COVID-19 vaccine... Well, we're already past 600,000 dead in the US alone. > If the world was certain of the vaccine's safety Define "certain." The preponderance of evidence is that it's safer than catching COVID-19. Long-term effects are by definition unknown. The PREP act allows HHS to basically say to a private company "We will assume the unknown risk of long-term vaccine consequences by shielding your company from direct civil liability" (and Uncle Sam will foot the bill for treating long-term effects of the vaccine in the population). > It's crazy how people are just shrugging their shoulders at this I think few people who understand medical risk profiles are shrugging their shoulders at this (note: I don't consider most of the public to be in that category; this stuff requires college math to really grasp and the average American tops out around a 6th-grade level). The decisions government officials are making are literally life-or-death. But the regular risk / reward profile goes out the window during a pandemic and is replaced with "apparent best course of action" tradeoffs, because society lacks the luxury of doing nothing. Do nothing, and a lot of people definitely die (back-of-the-napkin math suggests the US would look down the barrel of 5.9 million dead at the end of the pandemic). Deploy a vaccine with possible (but low-probability) side-effects, and far fewer people die unless there's an extremely unlikely set of unknown-unknowns. To give a (bad) software development analogy: unit, integration, and functional tests are best practice. But at a startup company, there are occasional instances of "we need a demo by 6:30 tomorrow or the company will run out of money and die." In those circumstances, regular best practices go out the window because the company lacks the luxury of time. Project managers in such circumstances will declare that if the quick hacks result in pain down the road, they'll cover the team's ass (and devote resources later to fixing any pain caused by less-than-best practice). Pandemic time is risk tradeoff time.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
A better analogy is... You have a 6:30 demo and if it burns the entire company down and gives everyone cancer... you can just shrug your shoulders and say oh well our bad, and then make a swimming pool out of your money... You're trying to justify something totally insane. Also your back of the napkin calculations for total deaths are way off. Under 50% of the country is vaccinated and we're not even at a fraction of that. 5 million is very sensational.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Not only is it not insane, I'm fairly certain a similar protection was provided for the vaccines during the Spanish Flu epidemic. > Back of the napkin I used an approximately 1.8% fatality rate for infected individuals at present, and extrapolated to eventual 100% infection of the population assuming a hypothetical scenario where no major company had stepped up to build a vaccine and so the only immune protection available would be natural. You are quite correct and that it is not great math... certainly epidemiologists tend to use a more conservative approach under the assumption that somebody will develop countermeasures. But honestly, with no vaccine it's probably in the ballpark unless we had done something drastic like a sufficient quarantine of infected individuals to zero out the spread (which never seemed in the cards based on behavior I observed among my fellow Americans).
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    1.8% fatality rate.... You're neglecting to include asymptomatic infections which have been theorized to be up to 80% of the infected. So you have to add (x * 34 million, where x equals some percentage of asymptomatic infections) to your infection count....if you want to be accurate which I'm assuming that's not your priority. https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693.full https://thorax.bmj.com/content/75/8/693.full Also, The average death is 80 years old with two comorbidities. For healthy populations under the age of 55 that fatality number drops into the miniscule amounts. 34,000/34 million. People under the age of 55 make up 80% of the total population. Car accidents and opioid deaths are more of a danger to the under 55 crowd. This is two separate diseases based on population group. So millions of old people who are already past the average lifespan will die slightly sooner.