5 ms·

It’s frustrating how people cherry pick data and don’t think about important findings in their own cited sources. I’ve seen similar comments to that one so many

by mint2 5y ago

It’s frustrating how people cherry pick data and don’t think about important findings in their own cited sources. I’ve seen similar comments to that one so many times citing viral load being the same and always ignoring that the duration is much shorter. Their own citations undermine their point…

hagbard_c 5y ago
It is even more frustrating to see the dogmatic approach to the fact that the vaccines are less effective than they were made out to be. The more this becomes clear, the harder it will be to keep up this narrative. I assume that you, just like most others here, wants to see these epidemics and the pandemic end as soon as possible with as little damage as possible? In that case it is adamant to be objective in the search for a way out. Current data shows that the vaccines which are now available don´t provide the level of protection against either infection, hospitalisation or death which they were supposed to do so an alternative strategy is needed. This can include a new vaccine - there are many in the works - but it has to include a way to keep society running without imposing authoritarian mandates or we stand to loose much more than just the people who succumbed to the disease.
- Yoric 5y ago
  Let me see if I understand correctly your thesis (collated from several of your responses). 1. You believe/observe that the current generation of vaccines are useful. 2. You believe/observe that the current generation of vaccines are insufficient. 3. You believe/observe that many people (on HN?) have too much faith in vaccines as a silver bullet. 4. You believe/observe that the government responses (in western countries?) are authoritarian, hence politically dangerous. I imagine you mean lockdowns and the pressure towards vaccination. I am not sure whether you also mean other measures (mandatory masking, classroom shutdowns, remote work, closing down restaurants, etc.) 5. You believe/observe that the government responses (in western countries?) are inefficient or insufficient. 6. You conclude that that the government responses must change. Is that correct? I agree with you that it is an important conversation to have. Of course, I disagree with some of your points (in particular 4.), but that's life :)
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    > Is that correct? No, not really. Instead of walking your points I can summarise my position on this issue as it does not really differ from my position on most other issues. My starting point is objectivity and as such I dislike narrative. When SARS2 became a thing it was woven into a number of narratives, one of which has now become dominant in many western countries. This narrative revolves around a collectivist technocratic approach to tackling what is deemed to be a severe threat against public health. The technocracy gets to dictate how people are to act, when they are to act, with whom they are allowed to interact and when they have to refrain from interacting with anyone. Dissenters are quickly labelled and attempts are made to publicly shame those who oppose. The tools of the technocracy are deemed to be highly effective and, again, dissenters are labelled and shamed. The problems with this approach are manifold: - SARS2 is not a severe threat for large swaths of the population - this became clear early on in the pandemic and has been clear ever since. - liberal democracy and technocracy do not mix, the former depends on dissent and discussion to reach a consensus while the latter can not tolerate dissent. Most western countries have liberal democratic traditions in one form or another, most people like it that way and want to keep these traditions alive. - the tools of the technocracy are not nearly as effective - and in some cases not effective at all, or worse (e.g. forcing people to shelter in place, not allowing them to go outdoors) - as stated but those who point this out are quickly marked as dissenters, labelled and shunned. The same is done to anyone who suggests alternatives to the officially mandated tools. - authoritarian powers, once gained, are hard to give up. Once the epidemics and the pandemic are over - in a year or 2 - an overview of the pros and cons of the different strategies should be made based on real data (i.e. raw verified data) by neutral observers (if such can be found). What I expect that overview to show is that the costs of the more authoritarian measures - strict lockdowns, school closures, severe limits to personal contacts - ended up being higher than the benefits. Those costs can be expressed in lives lost to (substance/physical) abuse, loneliness, estrangement and other social impacts leading to an increase in suicides. They can be expressed in the loss of academic achievement due to school closures leading to a lowering of future prospects for the affected. As tends to be the case these impacts are not equally spread over all classes of society, the lower classes are hit much harder than the middle and higher. With all these things in mind it should be now be clear that for me the issues are not so much related to whether the vaccines are useful or not or whether masking works or not. If the vaccines are shown to work people will take them without the need for a dictate from the authorities to do so. Even if they are shown to only be marginally effective those in the most vulnerable groups will still take them to lower their personal risk. Locking down society has not been proven to be effective in reducing the spread of transmission [1,2] while it has a marked impact on social well-being as well as economic activity. The Swedish example shows that people voluntarily adjust their behaviour to limit the risk of personal exposure without a need for the authorities to intervene. People make risk assessments every day, some of them rational - people tend to not cross busy motorways since they know they probably won't survive - and other irrational. A policy based on informing people of the true risks (which was hard to do in the beginning of the pandemic but a lot easier a few months in), providing means - informational, material, medical and economical - to lower those risks and a limited number of targeted actions to keep essential services running is compatible with a liberal democratic political tradition and does far less damage to society than an authoritarian regime of lockdowns and forced medical procedures. The authoritarian approach might fit countries with an authoritarian political tradition, China or - earlier - the Soviet Union being prime examples of such. Western countries tend(ed) to pride themselves on not being 'like China' or 'like the Soviet Union'. I'd like to keep it that way, if I want to live in an authoritarian state there are plenty of such to move to. I did not do so, instead I moved from one liberal democracy to another. [1] https://www.hhs.se/sv/forskning/sse-corona-economic-research-network/research-reports/2020/do-lockdowns-work-a-counterfactual-for-sweden/ https://www.hhs.se/sv/forskning/sse-corona-economic-research... [2] https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/article/67/3/318/6199605 https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/article/67/3/318/6199605
- mint2 5y ago
  We seem to speak different languages. In my language non strictly enforced mask mandates, mild social distancing, and vaccine mandates for approved vaccines that do actually provide solid protection (while yes not complete protection, this was not promised btw) sounds highly reasonable. You seem to say those measure mean authoritarianism you. Thus we speak different languages. I could talk in my own language, writing pages on my beliefs, but unless I spend a huge amount of research to write it in your language, it’s pointless.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    Why, yes, a vaccination mandate using an experimental vaccine for a disease which is not a significant risk for a large part of those who would actually be forced to take those vaccines given that those for whom SARS2 is a risk mostly have been vaccinated by now and where those vaccines do not give significant protection against catching or spreading the disease is not reasonable. I suspect you would have not called this reasonable before the pandemic hit but were scared into accepting a "new normal" for 'the greater good of society". Calling the vaccines "approved" is playing with words, compare what it normally takes to get approval for a bog-standard vaccine with how this novel mRNA vaccine was "approved" to see what I'm getting at, consider that there is no long-term experience with either mRNA vaccines in humans nor this specific vaccine based around the (known to be harmful [1,2,3,4]) "spike protein". Realise that the method of action for these vaccines (whether mRNA or vector-based) is to induce your body to produce just that harmful spike protein and consider the potential for damage, especially in combination with the untargeted delivery mechanism - nano-lipid particles carrying mRNA fragments, targeting is done by injecting into muscle tissue and as such wholly depends on the accuracy of the injection - my wife could hardly move her arm for a week after an inaccurately (too high) placed first dose of "Moderna SpikeVax". Do we speak a different language? That is possible, language is malleable and words change their meaning. This tends to be an evolutionary process which takes a significant amount of time. Changing the definition of words and concepts in a mere few months is not evolutionary but revolutionary, this is not a natural process. I'll stick to evolution instead of revolution. [1] https://www.contagionlive.com/view/spike-protein-of-sars-cov-2-virus-alone-can-cause-damage-to-lungs https://www.contagionlive.com/view/spike-protein-of-sars-cov... [2] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-sars-cov-spike-protein-lung.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-sars-cov-spike-protei... [3] https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/90224/gene-changes-caused-by-spike-protein-could-explain-long-covid/ https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/90224/gene-changes-cau... [4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100279/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100279/

by mint2 5y ago

hagbard_c 5y ago

It is even more frustrating to see the dogmatic approach to the fact that the vaccines are less effective than they were made out to be. The more this becomes clear, the harder it will be to keep up this narrative. I assume that you, just like most others here, wants to see these epidemics and the pandemic end as soon as possible with as little damage as possible? In that case it is adamant to be objective in the search for a way out. Current data shows that the vaccines which are now available don´t provide the level of protection against either infection, hospitalisation or death which they were supposed to do so an alternative strategy is needed. This can include a new vaccine - there are many in the works - but it has to include a way to keep society running without imposing authoritarian mandates or we stand to loose much more than just the people who succumbed to the disease.

Yoric 5y ago
Let me see if I understand correctly your thesis (collated from several of your responses). 1. You believe/observe that the current generation of vaccines are useful. 2. You believe/observe that the current generation of vaccines are insufficient. 3. You believe/observe that many people (on HN?) have too much faith in vaccines as a silver bullet. 4. You believe/observe that the government responses (in western countries?) are authoritarian, hence politically dangerous. I imagine you mean lockdowns and the pressure towards vaccination. I am not sure whether you also mean other measures (mandatory masking, classroom shutdowns, remote work, closing down restaurants, etc.) 5. You believe/observe that the government responses (in western countries?) are inefficient or insufficient. 6. You conclude that that the government responses must change. Is that correct? I agree with you that it is an important conversation to have. Of course, I disagree with some of your points (in particular 4.), but that's life :)
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  > Is that correct? No, not really. Instead of walking your points I can summarise my position on this issue as it does not really differ from my position on most other issues. My starting point is objectivity and as such I dislike narrative. When SARS2 became a thing it was woven into a number of narratives, one of which has now become dominant in many western countries. This narrative revolves around a collectivist technocratic approach to tackling what is deemed to be a severe threat against public health. The technocracy gets to dictate how people are to act, when they are to act, with whom they are allowed to interact and when they have to refrain from interacting with anyone. Dissenters are quickly labelled and attempts are made to publicly shame those who oppose. The tools of the technocracy are deemed to be highly effective and, again, dissenters are labelled and shamed. The problems with this approach are manifold: - SARS2 is not a severe threat for large swaths of the population - this became clear early on in the pandemic and has been clear ever since. - liberal democracy and technocracy do not mix, the former depends on dissent and discussion to reach a consensus while the latter can not tolerate dissent. Most western countries have liberal democratic traditions in one form or another, most people like it that way and want to keep these traditions alive. - the tools of the technocracy are not nearly as effective - and in some cases not effective at all, or worse (e.g. forcing people to shelter in place, not allowing them to go outdoors) - as stated but those who point this out are quickly marked as dissenters, labelled and shunned. The same is done to anyone who suggests alternatives to the officially mandated tools. - authoritarian powers, once gained, are hard to give up. Once the epidemics and the pandemic are over - in a year or 2 - an overview of the pros and cons of the different strategies should be made based on real data (i.e. raw verified data) by neutral observers (if such can be found). What I expect that overview to show is that the costs of the more authoritarian measures - strict lockdowns, school closures, severe limits to personal contacts - ended up being higher than the benefits. Those costs can be expressed in lives lost to (substance/physical) abuse, loneliness, estrangement and other social impacts leading to an increase in suicides. They can be expressed in the loss of academic achievement due to school closures leading to a lowering of future prospects for the affected. As tends to be the case these impacts are not equally spread over all classes of society, the lower classes are hit much harder than the middle and higher. With all these things in mind it should be now be clear that for me the issues are not so much related to whether the vaccines are useful or not or whether masking works or not. If the vaccines are shown to work people will take them without the need for a dictate from the authorities to do so. Even if they are shown to only be marginally effective those in the most vulnerable groups will still take them to lower their personal risk. Locking down society has not been proven to be effective in reducing the spread of transmission [1,2] while it has a marked impact on social well-being as well as economic activity. The Swedish example shows that people voluntarily adjust their behaviour to limit the risk of personal exposure without a need for the authorities to intervene. People make risk assessments every day, some of them rational - people tend to not cross busy motorways since they know they probably won't survive - and other irrational. A policy based on informing people of the true risks (which was hard to do in the beginning of the pandemic but a lot easier a few months in), providing means - informational, material, medical and economical - to lower those risks and a limited number of targeted actions to keep essential services running is compatible with a liberal democratic political tradition and does far less damage to society than an authoritarian regime of lockdowns and forced medical procedures. The authoritarian approach might fit countries with an authoritarian political tradition, China or - earlier - the Soviet Union being prime examples of such. Western countries tend(ed) to pride themselves on not being 'like China' or 'like the Soviet Union'. I'd like to keep it that way, if I want to live in an authoritarian state there are plenty of such to move to. I did not do so, instead I moved from one liberal democracy to another. [1] https://www.hhs.se/sv/forskning/sse-corona-economic-research-network/research-reports/2020/do-lockdowns-work-a-counterfactual-for-sweden/ https://www.hhs.se/sv/forskning/sse-corona-economic-research... [2] https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/article/67/3/318/6199605 https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/article/67/3/318/6199605
mint2 5y ago
We seem to speak different languages. In my language non strictly enforced mask mandates, mild social distancing, and vaccine mandates for approved vaccines that do actually provide solid protection (while yes not complete protection, this was not promised btw) sounds highly reasonable. You seem to say those measure mean authoritarianism you. Thus we speak different languages. I could talk in my own language, writing pages on my beliefs, but unless I spend a huge amount of research to write it in your language, it’s pointless.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  Why, yes, a vaccination mandate using an experimental vaccine for a disease which is not a significant risk for a large part of those who would actually be forced to take those vaccines given that those for whom SARS2 is a risk mostly have been vaccinated by now and where those vaccines do not give significant protection against catching or spreading the disease is not reasonable. I suspect you would have not called this reasonable before the pandemic hit but were scared into accepting a "new normal" for 'the greater good of society". Calling the vaccines "approved" is playing with words, compare what it normally takes to get approval for a bog-standard vaccine with how this novel mRNA vaccine was "approved" to see what I'm getting at, consider that there is no long-term experience with either mRNA vaccines in humans nor this specific vaccine based around the (known to be harmful [1,2,3,4]) "spike protein". Realise that the method of action for these vaccines (whether mRNA or vector-based) is to induce your body to produce just that harmful spike protein and consider the potential for damage, especially in combination with the untargeted delivery mechanism - nano-lipid particles carrying mRNA fragments, targeting is done by injecting into muscle tissue and as such wholly depends on the accuracy of the injection - my wife could hardly move her arm for a week after an inaccurately (too high) placed first dose of "Moderna SpikeVax". Do we speak a different language? That is possible, language is malleable and words change their meaning. This tends to be an evolutionary process which takes a significant amount of time. Changing the definition of words and concepts in a mere few months is not evolutionary but revolutionary, this is not a natural process. I'll stick to evolution instead of revolution. [1] https://www.contagionlive.com/view/spike-protein-of-sars-cov-2-virus-alone-can-cause-damage-to-lungs https://www.contagionlive.com/view/spike-protein-of-sars-cov... [2] https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-sars-cov-spike-protein-lung.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-sars-cov-spike-protei... [3] https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/90224/gene-changes-caused-by-spike-protein-could-explain-long-covid/ https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/90224/gene-changes-cau... [4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100279/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34100279/