3 ms·

>what the hell was “protect Grandma” then? A hopeful wish? It was an accurate assessment of the benefits of the vaccine, which prevents the worst effects and d

by simonh 4y ago

>what the hell was “protect Grandma” then? A hopeful wish? It was an accurate assessment of the benefits of the vaccine, which prevents the worst effects and dramatically reduces the risk of death from infection. The vaccine was never intended to prevent initial infection, so they had no reason to delay it's introduction testing for that. My wife's parents are in their late 70s with many health problems and got Pfizer here in the UK in the first wave of vaccinations. They both later got the virus and had barely noticeable symptoms. Sure it's possible that might have happened anyway, but I am confident the chances they would have died or been severely ill were dramatically higher if they hadn't been vaccinated. Still of course even if you had spread disinformation about the virus, misrepresented the facts, claimed that it was supposed to do things it wasn't, falsely implied that it had no value even if you actually knew perfectly well what it was intended to do and that it did it. Even if you knew that spreading such misinformation would be likely to cost lives. Even then, no matter of how low my personal opinion would be of you, no you shouldn't go to jail for that. People listening to such claims have an obligation to educate themselves and come to their own conclusions as adults.

gjsman-1000 4y ago
I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a good answer - but I’m increasingly understanding why some folks are “paranoid.”
- simonh 4y ago
  The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought it was worth working on that assumption due to the hoped for benefits. It turns out now, after extensive research on transmission by vaccinated people, that they were correct and vaccination does significantly slow transmission through populations even for the more recent highly infectious variants. >I’m increasingly understanding why some folks are “paranoid.” I really don't, all of this information has been available all the way through. That Pfizer executive was simply being honest, what the vaccines do and how they work and the benefits they offer has been accurately communicated right back from the trials phases. I know this because all through those times I kept myself well informed and followed the literature. It helps that my wife is a Nurse, and also that I'm in the UK where the whole issue was far, far less politicised and the accuracy and consistency of information from the media was actually pretty good. The problem is there was an awful lot of disinformation going around in the US from people either getting partial information and making wild unfounded assumptions, or deliberately fomenting opposition to various policies on political grounds. Nevertheless as I said in my previous post, we're all adults. It's our responsibility to inform ourselves, we can't blame disinformation, some of which is genuinely simply mistaken.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    I don’t dispute that either - it make sense. However, does it not scare you… that it is a fact now, but was not a fact back then, despite being widely preached as a fact back then, and nobody was permitted to counter this “fact” back then and admit it was not so? That’s the uncomfortable part.
    - simonh 4y ago
      No it doesn't scare me, they did the right thing and they had I think very strong reasons for doing so. They knew that the policy was safe because the risks of the vaccines evaluated in trials were very low, and they had many very good reasons based on experience from other infectious diseases as to what the outcome would be. They were in a situation where thousands, at times tens of thousands of people were dying every day. If you know a policy is very safe (not perfectly safe, not completely risk free, but known to be very low risk), and you know that the highly likely benefits are very high and are expected to save many many thousands of lives, why should I be scared of them implementing it? Genuinely, I just don't understand that attitude at all. It makes no sense to me. You look at the evidence and the risks and you make a decision. In this case I think it was a very easy one and huge numbers of people all over the world are alive now because of it. Meanwhile a lot of people are dead because they believed partial, misrepresented or incorrect information about the vaccines. Doesn't it scare you that people were spreading so much disinformation that was responsible for so many deaths? That excessive skepticism and distrust, based on simple lack of careful evaluation of widely available facts, was so incredibly destructive?
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact... I wonder if they wonder if substantially (the memeplex is...complex) describing it otherwise was to their advantage, in retrospect.
    - simonh 4y ago
      Who's "they"? It was to our advantage because it saved a lot of lives, and it was to the advantage of the public health services promoting the policy because it reduced demand on health services (and saved lives).
- the_other 4y ago
  Might you be conflating “get vaccinated” with “wear masks”?
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Government messaging around this was poor all around. In many places masks were pushed to "protect yourself" (so half the people would automatically not do it out of machismo) rather than "protect others" (which is how regular masks mostly work in reality). Vaccines fully preventing transmission is also technically not true, personally I never watched the news and only skimmed the actual studies so I knew it but a lot of the population would probably feel duped. However they do reduce transmission and in fact "protect grandma"---if you don't fall sick you don't cough as much so they reduce the number of infected droplets you fire, though of course this implies you also take other precautions like following the isolation guidelines and not being near your grandma in an enclosed space without a mask while talking a lot. Further if you fall sick and occupy medical facilities during a wave of COVID this may directly affect the ability of your grandma to get any treatment (not just for COVID). I wish we could expect public messaging to convey all this nuance!
  - simonh 4y ago
    There was a lot of mixed messaging rom governments, but frankly that was largely because for the first 6 months to a year we knew very little about the virus. A lot of recommendations and policy was based on best estimates and working assumptions, and some of these turned out to be wrong. Mistakes were made, lockdowns were introduced earlier or later than they should have been, assumptions about transmissibility were made based on super-spreader events that turned out to be statistical outliers. Mistakes were inevitable, I remember having a conversation with my brother back in March 2020 where we came to the conclusion that given the lack of data mistakes would be made, and these would be used by conspiracy theorists and be politicised to spread dangerous and even deadly propaganda that would get a lot of people killed. I dearly wish we had been wrong, but here we are.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      I mean messaging even long after the research was published, but yeah.

by simonh 4y ago

gjsman-1000 4y ago

I agree with you but that’s not what I was referring to. I was referring to pressure on young people to get the vaccine to avoid harming the elderly. If we never tested transmission… what was that about? Why not just let the elderly get it and the young risk it if they wanted? What was behind “by getting the vaccine you are protecting others” when all we actually know is that it protects yourself? There’s probably a good answer - but I’m increasingly understanding why some folks are “paranoid.”

simonh 4y ago
The expectation was that because they knew the vaccines reduce the chances of getting symptoms such as coughs associated with transmission, reduced the time people were sick for, and also reduce the viral load in people who got sick, that this would result in a reduced chance that people who caught the virus but were vaccinated would transmit the virus. It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact but they thought it was worth working on that assumption due to the hoped for benefits. It turns out now, after extensive research on transmission by vaccinated people, that they were correct and vaccination does significantly slow transmission through populations even for the more recent highly infectious variants. >I’m increasingly understanding why some folks are “paranoid.” I really don't, all of this information has been available all the way through. That Pfizer executive was simply being honest, what the vaccines do and how they work and the benefits they offer has been accurately communicated right back from the trials phases. I know this because all through those times I kept myself well informed and followed the literature. It helps that my wife is a Nurse, and also that I'm in the UK where the whole issue was far, far less politicised and the accuracy and consistency of information from the media was actually pretty good. The problem is there was an awful lot of disinformation going around in the US from people either getting partial information and making wild unfounded assumptions, or deliberately fomenting opposition to various policies on political grounds. Nevertheless as I said in my previous post, we're all adults. It's our responsibility to inform ourselves, we can't blame disinformation, some of which is genuinely simply mistaken.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  I don’t dispute that either - it make sense. However, does it not scare you… that it is a fact now, but was not a fact back then, despite being widely preached as a fact back then, and nobody was permitted to counter this “fact” back then and admit it was not so? That’s the uncomfortable part.
  - simonh 4y ago
    No it doesn't scare me, they did the right thing and they had I think very strong reasons for doing so. They knew that the policy was safe because the risks of the vaccines evaluated in trials were very low, and they had many very good reasons based on experience from other infectious diseases as to what the outcome would be. They were in a situation where thousands, at times tens of thousands of people were dying every day. If you know a policy is very safe (not perfectly safe, not completely risk free, but known to be very low risk), and you know that the highly likely benefits are very high and are expected to save many many thousands of lives, why should I be scared of them implementing it? Genuinely, I just don't understand that attitude at all. It makes no sense to me. You look at the evidence and the risks and you make a decision. In this case I think it was a very easy one and huge numbers of people all over the world are alive now because of it. Meanwhile a lot of people are dead because they believed partial, misrepresented or incorrect information about the vaccines. Doesn't it scare you that people were spreading so much disinformation that was responsible for so many deaths? That excessive skepticism and distrust, based on simple lack of careful evaluation of widely available facts, was so incredibly destructive?
- mistermann 4y ago
  > It was an expectation, yes, not a proven fact... I wonder if they wonder if substantially (the memeplex is...complex) describing it otherwise was to their advantage, in retrospect.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Who's "they"? It was to our advantage because it saved a lot of lives, and it was to the advantage of the public health services promoting the policy because it reduced demand on health services (and saved lives).
the_other 4y ago
Might you be conflating “get vaccinated” with “wear masks”?
throwaway290 4y ago
Government messaging around this was poor all around. In many places masks were pushed to "protect yourself" (so half the people would automatically not do it out of machismo) rather than "protect others" (which is how regular masks mostly work in reality). Vaccines fully preventing transmission is also technically not true, personally I never watched the news and only skimmed the actual studies so I knew it but a lot of the population would probably feel duped. However they do reduce transmission and in fact "protect grandma"---if you don't fall sick you don't cough as much so they reduce the number of infected droplets you fire, though of course this implies you also take other precautions like following the isolation guidelines and not being near your grandma in an enclosed space without a mask while talking a lot. Further if you fall sick and occupy medical facilities during a wave of COVID this may directly affect the ability of your grandma to get any treatment (not just for COVID). I wish we could expect public messaging to convey all this nuance!
- simonh 4y ago
  There was a lot of mixed messaging rom governments, but frankly that was largely because for the first 6 months to a year we knew very little about the virus. A lot of recommendations and policy was based on best estimates and working assumptions, and some of these turned out to be wrong. Mistakes were made, lockdowns were introduced earlier or later than they should have been, assumptions about transmissibility were made based on super-spreader events that turned out to be statistical outliers. Mistakes were inevitable, I remember having a conversation with my brother back in March 2020 where we came to the conclusion that given the lack of data mistakes would be made, and these would be used by conspiracy theorists and be politicised to spread dangerous and even deadly propaganda that would get a lot of people killed. I dearly wish we had been wrong, but here we are.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    I mean messaging even long after the research was published, but yeah.