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>We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense, and it can be used to discredit any s

>We need to decide if we're okay with science agencies lying to us. This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense, and it can be used to discredit any sort of scientific research. You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future. Secondly I don't understand how you were mislead about vaccines. The efficiency rates were always described in preventing you from going to the hospital. With COVID, the main issue has always been overstressing the health system - thats where the breakdown happens and thats why everyone needs to take the vaccine. Even now, ICU beds are not majority unvaccinated COVID cases, which overworks nurses and prevents people with other diseases from getting proper treatment. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3Ak-SmyHHQ

nickthemagicman 5y ago
I think they're asking for science not to misrepresent the facts. They're not asking for science to be perfect.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  It's easy to say the facts were misrepresented in hindsight. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> everyone needs to take the vaccine This is simply not true, anyone who claims this is ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence supporting the fact that individuals who’ve recovered from previous infection will be at least as well protected as vaccinated individuals against reinfection. If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries).
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries). It might be scientific consensus, but I do not consider this good public policy. There are several problems: 1. How do you verify if someone has gotten COVID already? The PCR test can report negative for as short as 2 weeks after symptoms go away. 2. Do you then parallel documentation where people have vaccine documents or positive test requirements? 3. How should businesses/schools treat positive testing individuals who did not get vaccinated? 4. Should the government just wait for the unvaccinated to get COVID and just roll the dice if they survive or not? I'm not sure how you can seriously argue that point versus the massively simpler to execute policy plan of just getting everyone vaccinated.
  - bobbytit 5y ago
    We are not cattle no matter what you public policy wonks have been led to believe. It is possible to test to differentiate between those currently shedding the virus and those who are recovered with natural immunity. Those with natural immunity actually do themselves harm by taking a double vaccine dose according to some immunologists.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > 1. How do you verify if someone has gotten COVID already? The PCR test can report negative for as short as 2 weeks after symptoms go away. Antibody tests?
- mcguire 5y ago
  "Among Kentucky residents infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, vaccination status of those reinfected during May–June 2021 was compared with that of residents who were not reinfected. In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm7032e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm... "Effectiveness of two doses remains at least as great as protection afforded by prior natural infection. The dynamics of immunity following second doses differed significantly between BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1, with greater initial effectiveness against new PCR-positives but faster declines in protection against high viral burden and symptomatic infection with BNT162b2. There was no evidence that effectiveness varied by dosing interval, but protection was higher among those vaccinated following a prior infection and younger adults." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262237v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262237v... "We examined whether sera from recovered and naïve donors, collected before and after immunizations with existing messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, could neutralize the Wuhan-Hu-1 and B.1.351 variants. Prevaccination sera from recovered donors neutralized Wuhan-Hu-1 and sporadically neutralized B.1.351, but a single immunization boosted neutralizing titers against all variants and SARS-CoV-1 by up to 1000-fold. Neutralization was a result of antibodies targeting the receptor binding domain and was not boosted by a second immunization. Immunization of naïve donors also elicited cross-neutralizing responses but at lower titers. Our study highlights the importance of vaccinating both uninfected and previously infected persons to elicit cross-variant neutralizing antibodies." https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abg9175 https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abg9175
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
> This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense No, this is not "Science is a liar sometimes" defense. When we were misled about mask efficacy with a number of circular lies (you don't need masks, you do need masks, double mask!, cloth masks are as effective as N9ts, N95 is overkill, it is not aerosolized, etc) a good number of those were well-known lies of varying proportion, and not the scientific method in progress. The truth was that people were lying to us consciously to preserve N95 mask supply for frontline workers, but that truth would have gone much further than the mistruths and half truths we were told. At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients. If there has been any damage done to science by our authorities during this crisis, it is completely self-inflicted.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >When we were misled about mask efficacy with a number of circular lies (you don't need masks, you do need masks, double mask!, cloth masks are as effective as N9ts, N95 is overkill, it is not aerosolized, etc) a good number of those were well-known lies of varying proportion, and not the scientific method in progress. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong. Again, I'm not sure how you can feel misled about the advice with regards to a novel virus. It just sounds like you are frustrated because the data wasn't 100% accurate on day one. >At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients. Your anecdote is not a good replacement data. Maybe your wife's hospital or experience was different but that may not reflect the hundreds of thousands of other hospitals. If you don't believe ICU reports, it could help to look at how salaries for traveling nurses have grown in the same time period. If hospitals are empty why are their salaries rising? Did hospital administrators suddenly get charitable? [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/going-back-to-a-staff-job-is-just-not-an-option-high-travel-nurse-pay-worsens-shortages-across-us.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/going-back-to-...
saurik 5y ago
> You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future. That isn't how I read this comment at all :/. First off, the person isn't even saying not to trust scientists at all, much less because they are wrong: in each case the idea was that they are acting in their best understanding of what the effect of a certain kind of intervention will be; the comment isn't blaming scientists for getting something wrong or failing to predict the future: it explicitly even seems to agree with each intervention as being a sensible thing to do given the information at the time and the risk/benefit analysis. And then secondly, the issue of someone overstating their confidence on purpose and knowingly is very different from someone misunderstanding something and later realizing they were wrong. "I think this is our best course of action to mitigate the impact" is an honest thing to say. But people seem to want to hear "this will solve the problem fully". People seem to not want to deal with "I realize this might not help much, but it certainly won't hurt: let's try it and see how effective it is" (another honest thing to say), but instead want to hear "trust me: you need to do this as I know it is going to work". I was--and am!--fully willing to do things that are only going to mitigate the impact, whether to myself or to others, and I am willing to do it even on reasoning as flimsy as "it is unlikely to hurt". But I feel like I am in a vast minority, and so everyone instead is motivated to overstate their confidence and overstate their intended result in the hope of getting more compliance, which is why we have people who don't just feel "scientists and doctors are trying their best to work in our best interests, and this is our best hope as of today" but help get on the bandwagon of "if you disagree with how effective this is going to be you are an idiot who is anti-science and you are part of the problem in our attempts to get compliance".
- nemothekid 5y ago
  I truly do not understand what distinction you are trying to make and your interoperation seems to be way less charitable than I gave. Your problem is, as I understand it, is you understand that they can be wrong, but they didn't use your preferred language? Are you asking the USG to personally message to 300MM Americans? Do you get mad at your doctor for being wrong sometimes for the same reason?
- mcguire 5y ago
rasz 5y ago
No, he is asking to not be knowingly lied to. You might be fine with this if you are from Far East or India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Ch.... Lying to save face, or even for greater good is not tolerated in the West.
- nemothekid 5y ago
  >No, he is asking to not be knowingly lied to. My problem is the implication what they lied. That's why I posted the "Science is a liar sometimes clip". You can't call someone a liar for giving you bad advice on imperfect information. Was Aristotle lying when he said the sun revolves around the earth or was he just wrong?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

nickthemagicman 5y ago

I think they're asking for science not to misrepresent the facts. They're not asking for science to be perfect.

nemothekid 5y ago
It's easy to say the facts were misrepresented in hindsight. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong.

criticaltinker 5y ago

> everyone needs to take the vaccine This is simply not true, anyone who claims this is ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence supporting the fact that individuals who’ve recovered from previous infection will be at least as well protected as vaccinated individuals against reinfection. If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries).

nemothekid 5y ago
>If you were to say “most people who don’t already have natural immunity ought to be vaccinated” that would be a much more sensible recommendation, in-line with general scientific consensus (and public health policies in other countries). It might be scientific consensus, but I do not consider this good public policy. There are several problems: 1. How do you verify if someone has gotten COVID already? The PCR test can report negative for as short as 2 weeks after symptoms go away. 2. Do you then parallel documentation where people have vaccine documents or positive test requirements? 3. How should businesses/schools treat positive testing individuals who did not get vaccinated? 4. Should the government just wait for the unvaccinated to get COVID and just roll the dice if they survive or not? I'm not sure how you can seriously argue that point versus the massively simpler to execute policy plan of just getting everyone vaccinated.
- bobbytit 5y ago
  We are not cattle no matter what you public policy wonks have been led to believe. It is possible to test to differentiate between those currently shedding the virus and those who are recovered with natural immunity. Those with natural immunity actually do themselves harm by taking a double vaccine dose according to some immunologists.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  > 1. How do you verify if someone has gotten COVID already? The PCR test can report negative for as short as 2 weeks after symptoms go away. Antibody tests?
mcguire 5y ago
"Among Kentucky residents infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, vaccination status of those reinfected during May–June 2021 was compared with that of residents who were not reinfected. In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm7032e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm... "Effectiveness of two doses remains at least as great as protection afforded by prior natural infection. The dynamics of immunity following second doses differed significantly between BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1, with greater initial effectiveness against new PCR-positives but faster declines in protection against high viral burden and symptomatic infection with BNT162b2. There was no evidence that effectiveness varied by dosing interval, but protection was higher among those vaccinated following a prior infection and younger adults." https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262237v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.18.21262237v... "We examined whether sera from recovered and naïve donors, collected before and after immunizations with existing messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, could neutralize the Wuhan-Hu-1 and B.1.351 variants. Prevaccination sera from recovered donors neutralized Wuhan-Hu-1 and sporadically neutralized B.1.351, but a single immunization boosted neutralizing titers against all variants and SARS-CoV-1 by up to 1000-fold. Neutralization was a result of antibodies targeting the receptor binding domain and was not boosted by a second immunization. Immunization of naïve donors also elicited cross-neutralizing responses but at lower titers. Our study highlights the importance of vaccinating both uninfected and previously infected persons to elicit cross-variant neutralizing antibodies." https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abg9175 https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abg9175

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

> This is the "Science is a Liar sometimes"[1] defense No, this is not "Science is a liar sometimes" defense. When we were misled about mask efficacy with a number of circular lies (you don't need masks, you do need masks, double mask!, cloth masks are as effective as N9ts, N95 is overkill, it is not aerosolized, etc) a good number of those were well-known lies of varying proportion, and not the scientific method in progress. The truth was that people were lying to us consciously to preserve N95 mask supply for frontline workers, but that truth would have gone much further than the mistruths and half truths we were told. At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients. If there has been any damage done to science by our authorities during this crisis, it is completely self-inflicted.

nemothekid 5y ago
>When we were misled about mask efficacy with a number of circular lies (you don't need masks, you do need masks, double mask!, cloth masks are as effective as N9ts, N95 is overkill, it is not aerosolized, etc) a good number of those were well-known lies of varying proportion, and not the scientific method in progress. The original consensus is that there was no need for widespread mask wearing, and a supply shock would have been dangerous. We only know now (or rather a couple months later), that advice was wrong. Again, I'm not sure how you can feel misled about the advice with regards to a novel virus. It just sounds like you are frustrated because the data wasn't 100% accurate on day one. >At the same time as the hyperbole was spreading about covid taking over ERs and News coverage was emphasizing this fact, my surgeon wife was telling me how empty all of the hospitals were, and the on-call cases dropped to nothingness because people were isolating and not going outside. But still, the drumbeat of 24/7 news cycle kept putting out bogus info about saturation of ERs and ICUs chock full of intubated covid patients. Your anecdote is not a good replacement data. Maybe your wife's hospital or experience was different but that may not reflect the hundreds of thousands of other hospitals. If you don't believe ICU reports, it could help to look at how salaries for traveling nurses have grown in the same time period. If hospitals are empty why are their salaries rising? Did hospital administrators suddenly get charitable? [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/going-back-to-a-staff-job-is-just-not-an-option-high-travel-nurse-pay-worsens-shortages-across-us.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/nursing/going-back-to-...

saurik 5y ago

> You are basically asking that our agencies be 100% correct the first time and be perfect predictors of the future. That isn't how I read this comment at all :/. First off, the person isn't even saying not to trust scientists at all, much less because they are wrong: in each case the idea was that they are acting in their best understanding of what the effect of a certain kind of intervention will be; the comment isn't blaming scientists for getting something wrong or failing to predict the future: it explicitly even seems to agree with each intervention as being a sensible thing to do given the information at the time and the risk/benefit analysis. And then secondly, the issue of someone overstating their confidence on purpose and knowingly is very different from someone misunderstanding something and later realizing they were wrong. "I think this is our best course of action to mitigate the impact" is an honest thing to say. But people seem to want to hear "this will solve the problem fully". People seem to not want to deal with "I realize this might not help much, but it certainly won't hurt: let's try it and see how effective it is" (another honest thing to say), but instead want to hear "trust me: you need to do this as I know it is going to work". I was--and am!--fully willing to do things that are only going to mitigate the impact, whether to myself or to others, and I am willing to do it even on reasoning as flimsy as "it is unlikely to hurt". But I feel like I am in a vast minority, and so everyone instead is motivated to overstate their confidence and overstate their intended result in the hope of getting more compliance, which is why we have people who don't just feel "scientists and doctors are trying their best to work in our best interests, and this is our best hope as of today" but help get on the bandwagon of "if you disagree with how effective this is going to be you are an idiot who is anti-science and you are part of the problem in our attempts to get compliance".

nemothekid 5y ago
I truly do not understand what distinction you are trying to make and your interoperation seems to be way less charitable than I gave. Your problem is, as I understand it, is you understand that they can be wrong, but they didn't use your preferred language? Are you asking the USG to personally message to 300MM Americans? Do you get mad at your doctor for being wrong sometimes for the same reason?
mcguire 5y ago

rasz 5y ago

No, he is asking to not be knowingly lied to. You might be fine with this if you are from Far East or India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept)#Ch.... Lying to save face, or even for greater good is not tolerated in the West.

nemothekid 5y ago
>No, he is asking to not be knowingly lied to. My problem is the implication what they lied. That's why I posted the "Science is a liar sometimes clip". You can't call someone a liar for giving you bad advice on imperfect information. Was Aristotle lying when he said the sun revolves around the earth or was he just wrong?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]