5 ms·

Somebody was kind enough to explain in a fair amount of detail how the process goes. It is an difficult ethical question. Mine is also an unfortunate formulatio

Somebody was kind enough to explain in a fair amount of detail how the process goes. It is an difficult ethical question. Mine is also an unfortunate formulation, perhaps "went under the radar" reflects the sentiment better. Here we are, managing a deadly pandemic with a novel technology and no depth line. All of this to say, given that there is no shortage of people willing to weather covid without a vaccine (17% of adults "definitely not" or "only if required" as of July 2021), perhaps there is a way to ethically design a study of the vaccines that doesn't lose its control group after less than a year. To risk "conspiratorial thinking" charges, what are the odds that in a country with 31% unvaccinated adults, only 2 participants in the control arm of a critical RCT didn't want to take the vaccine as soon as it was offered? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/us/virus-unvaccinated-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/31/us/virus-unvaccinated-ame... Edit: The study the NYT article references: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-july-2021 https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co... Edited the numbers to reflect the original source.

dekhn 5y ago
I recommend that instead of postulating things on hacker news, you go read up some more, and then temper your comments. Really, large numbers of highly educated people who do this for a living have been arguing about this. We want to do better but we're restricted by human ethics and public opinion.
- angelzen 5y ago
  I would be grateful for a handful of links to the highly educated people arguing about this, if the discussion happens to be public. I did speed read a few top academic Google hits on RCTs, but none of them tackled the particular issue of long term followups. Edit. Really, the only point I want to convey is that perhaps the highly intelligent and educated people could reflect on why RCT population of the covid studies don't seem to reflect the country population for the particular dimension of taking the vaccine as soon as the RCT ended. Perhaps this can be fixed somehow. This is as kind of a suggestion as I can muster. Perhaps they already do, and then all of this is moot.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    3 years isn't enough. People need to spend at least a decade working in human health before they can really contribute significantly towards improvements.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      Incidentally, I originally wrote 10, but then I cut it down to 3. More than happy to accept your correction. [This refers to paragraph I ended up editing out because it was not constructive enough, sorry for any confusion. Sometimes I wish HN had DMs.]

dekhn 5y ago

I recommend that instead of postulating things on hacker news, you go read up some more, and then temper your comments. Really, large numbers of highly educated people who do this for a living have been arguing about this. We want to do better but we're restricted by human ethics and public opinion.

angelzen 5y ago
I would be grateful for a handful of links to the highly educated people arguing about this, if the discussion happens to be public. I did speed read a few top academic Google hits on RCTs, but none of them tackled the particular issue of long term followups. Edit. Really, the only point I want to convey is that perhaps the highly intelligent and educated people could reflect on why RCT population of the covid studies don't seem to reflect the country population for the particular dimension of taking the vaccine as soon as the RCT ended. Perhaps this can be fixed somehow. This is as kind of a suggestion as I can muster. Perhaps they already do, and then all of this is moot.
- dekhn 5y ago
  3 years isn't enough. People need to spend at least a decade working in human health before they can really contribute significantly towards improvements.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Incidentally, I originally wrote 10, but then I cut it down to 3. More than happy to accept your correction. [This refers to paragraph I ended up editing out because it was not constructive enough, sorry for any confusion. Sometimes I wish HN had DMs.]