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while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid ep

by trhway 5y ago

while all that drama on the surface, the industry had coopted government's War on Drugs and pushed opiates (great thing when used as needed) into the opioid epidemics, and now they coopted government's War on Covid and has been pushing billions of doses of the vaccines (great thing when it works) which clearly fail to control the spread (and thus these vaccines have only limited use, i.e. only for the people who really need it (like high risk groups, etc.) - the situation pretty similar to opioids. And if one looks at those 3rd, 4th, ... boosters - sales tactic wise it looks eerily similar to the jacking up the "12hr" opioid dose approach as it simultaneously increases sales and creates addiction). I wonder if several years down the road we'll see vaccine trials/settlements similar to the opioids ones.

snakeboy 5y ago
Seems like they're pretty different cases, given how life-destroying opioid addiction is. Pushing vaccines is mostly just profiting by adding another layer of bureaucracy and annoyance into daily life. I'm not really more angry at pfizer than I am Booz Allen for wasting however many billions of my tax dollars.
- trhway 5y ago
  >Seems like they're pretty different cases, given how life-destroying opioid addiction is. Pfizer/Booz Allen waste of billions of tax dollars do come with resulting indirect damage to people health and lives who could have been helped otherwise. And for direct damage - I think jury is still out on that one. For example, in UK according to the link they already count 0.3M of heart issues which they officially pinned on pandemic stress https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/post-pandemic-stress-disorder-heart-conditions-covid-london-physicians-b969436.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/post-pandemic-stress-... with more expected to come: "Mark Rayner, a former senior NHS psychological therapist and founder of EASE Wellbeing CIC, said that as many as three million people in Britain are already suffering from PPSD, thanks to stress and anxiety caused by the effects of Covid-19. He fears this could result in a dramatic rise in physical health issues, such as coronary heart failure, if cases are not detected or treated early." Pinning on pandemic stress means they couldn't pin it on covid - either it is non-infected people or timing isn't correlated enough. Now, simple politically correct choice - stress or mRNA vaccines known for causing heart issues?
  - snakeboy 5y ago
    > Now, simple politically correct choice - stress or mRNA vaccines known for causing heart issues? Huh? You assume the vaccines cause heart issues, and use as evidence for concluding that vaccines cause heart issues...? Did I misunderstand? I don't really have an opinion here since I haven't looked at any of the data you're referencing. Moreover, this is straying from my initial point, which was that opioid addiction is life-destroying on an scale far beyond what we have yet seen from vaccines, and it doesn't even require any careful study to see that since the effect size is so huge, with explicit societal harm in the form of drug trafficking, crime, and overdose deaths.
jjoonathan 5y ago
Pro-opiate and anti-vax? Niiiice!
- hhpindia 5y ago
- kragen 5y ago
  I'd like to be able to discuss ideas on their merits instead of being confronted with factional applause lights like "anti-vax".
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    Arguments like "clearly fail to control the spread" are low effort Gish Gallops that need to be treated as such. Publicly slugging it out in the weeds grants an optical stalemate to an argument that deserves to lose. Do this a million times in a row and you can launch an entire contrarian movement off vapors -- which is exactly what we have seen.
    - trhway 5y ago
      I don't see any arguments beside cheap meta and labels from your side (which seems to be pretty characteristic of the people pushing the current vaccine campaign). >Arguments like "clearly fail to control the spread" are low effort Gish Gallops that need to be treated as such. The failure to control the spread has been obvious for at least half-a-year for anybody doing simple arithmetic on public numbers (and like others i have commented on that as far back then). Now beside being obvious, it is also confirmed by a proper scientific publication https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y " A person who was fully vaccinated and then had a ‘breakthrough’ Delta infection was almost twice as likely to pass on the virus as someone who was infected with Alpha." "Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus."
psd1 5y ago
> these vaccines have only limited use It's clear that the vaccines don't confer total immunity. They do change the course of the infection if you contract it, though. As you'd expect: they induce your immune system to create antibodies. Spend even a few minutes browsing stories from ICU nurses and you'll conclude that pretty much all their admissions are unvaccinated. Vaccinated => get sick Unvaccinated => get very sick, maybe die That seems like a great utility to me. Sure, that's anecdata, but data doesn't convince people who call others "sheep"
- trhway 5y ago
  that has no meaningful bearing on the situation of many people who has very low risk of serious decease to start with. Yet the industry got its way, and the vaccines are forced down the everybody's throat.

by trhway 5y ago

snakeboy 5y ago

Seems like they're pretty different cases, given how life-destroying opioid addiction is. Pushing vaccines is mostly just profiting by adding another layer of bureaucracy and annoyance into daily life. I'm not really more angry at pfizer than I am Booz Allen for wasting however many billions of my tax dollars.

trhway 5y ago
>Seems like they're pretty different cases, given how life-destroying opioid addiction is. Pfizer/Booz Allen waste of billions of tax dollars do come with resulting indirect damage to people health and lives who could have been helped otherwise. And for direct damage - I think jury is still out on that one. For example, in UK according to the link they already count 0.3M of heart issues which they officially pinned on pandemic stress https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/post-pandemic-stress-disorder-heart-conditions-covid-london-physicians-b969436.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/post-pandemic-stress-... with more expected to come: "Mark Rayner, a former senior NHS psychological therapist and founder of EASE Wellbeing CIC, said that as many as three million people in Britain are already suffering from PPSD, thanks to stress and anxiety caused by the effects of Covid-19. He fears this could result in a dramatic rise in physical health issues, such as coronary heart failure, if cases are not detected or treated early." Pinning on pandemic stress means they couldn't pin it on covid - either it is non-infected people or timing isn't correlated enough. Now, simple politically correct choice - stress or mRNA vaccines known for causing heart issues?
- snakeboy 5y ago
  > Now, simple politically correct choice - stress or mRNA vaccines known for causing heart issues? Huh? You assume the vaccines cause heart issues, and use as evidence for concluding that vaccines cause heart issues...? Did I misunderstand? I don't really have an opinion here since I haven't looked at any of the data you're referencing. Moreover, this is straying from my initial point, which was that opioid addiction is life-destroying on an scale far beyond what we have yet seen from vaccines, and it doesn't even require any careful study to see that since the effect size is so huge, with explicit societal harm in the form of drug trafficking, crime, and overdose deaths.

jjoonathan 5y ago

Pro-opiate and anti-vax? Niiiice!

hhpindia 5y ago
kragen 5y ago
I'd like to be able to discuss ideas on their merits instead of being confronted with factional applause lights like "anti-vax".
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Arguments like "clearly fail to control the spread" are low effort Gish Gallops that need to be treated as such. Publicly slugging it out in the weeds grants an optical stalemate to an argument that deserves to lose. Do this a million times in a row and you can launch an entire contrarian movement off vapors -- which is exactly what we have seen.
  - trhway 5y ago
    I don't see any arguments beside cheap meta and labels from your side (which seems to be pretty characteristic of the people pushing the current vaccine campaign). >Arguments like "clearly fail to control the spread" are low effort Gish Gallops that need to be treated as such. The failure to control the spread has been obvious for at least half-a-year for anybody doing simple arithmetic on public numbers (and like others i have commented on that as far back then). Now beside being obvious, it is also confirmed by a proper scientific publication https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y " A person who was fully vaccinated and then had a ‘breakthrough’ Delta infection was almost twice as likely to pass on the virus as someone who was infected with Alpha." "Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus."

psd1 5y ago

> these vaccines have only limited use It's clear that the vaccines don't confer total immunity. They do change the course of the infection if you contract it, though. As you'd expect: they induce your immune system to create antibodies. Spend even a few minutes browsing stories from ICU nurses and you'll conclude that pretty much all their admissions are unvaccinated. Vaccinated => get sick Unvaccinated => get very sick, maybe die That seems like a great utility to me. Sure, that's anecdata, but data doesn't convince people who call others "sheep"

trhway 5y ago
that has no meaningful bearing on the situation of many people who has very low risk of serious decease to start with. Yet the industry got its way, and the vaccines are forced down the everybody's throat.