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What fuels the debate more than anything is how easily and quickly the goalposts move in discussion over COVID and the vaccines. The inconsistency and the blat

What fuels the debate more than anything is how easily and quickly the goalposts move in discussion over COVID and the vaccines. The inconsistency and the blatant suppression of dissenting viewpoints does not help either.

fdewrewrewf 4y ago
What do you mean? The goalposts were always clear, and open discussion was always acceptable.
- dijonman2 4y ago
  Open discussion was never acceptable, even here on HN. I was quickly downvoted for saying anything against masking and vaccinations. Not even objecting, mere questions elicited this reaction.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Sometimes, heroes will lose karma points when they caution people against best practices. This is the price heroes pay.
    - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
      "Best practices", like mass vaccination of a group of people for whom the vaccine may have been more risky than the disease?
  - junofan 4y ago
    It was pretty ridiculous. Anyone who’s interacted with health policy at the national level knows it’s just a big power game. Anthony Fauci doesn’t wake up in the morning thinking “what can I do for the American people?”—he wakes up thinking “Todd from the VA was an asshole at that budget hearing. What can I do about that?”
    - Erem 4y ago
      Can you please upgrade your comment from base slander to legitimate critique by providing any reasonable source to help us understand this perspective
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    So you're admitting that open discussion was accepted. Only people disagreed with what you were saying.
  - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
    We always were at war with eastasia.
Erem 4y ago
How do you distinguish moving goalposts from the more charitable reading of "Hey, this is a novel virus and so our guidelines will have to change as we find out more" I sure remember when the guidelines were that COVID wasn't transmissible through aerosol, only droplets. Then it was revised to include aerosol. Mask warnings also evolved from "not that effective" to "extremely effective". But isn't all of this explainable charitably without invoking suppression?
- AlphaOne1 4y ago
  I would argue because no charity was given to opinions contrary to what Dr. Fauci and the NIH declaired as truth. Perhaps most infamous is Dr. Collins asking for a takedown of the Great Berington declaration. The fact that so little was certain early on about COVID should have been a reason to allow physicians and scientists to discuss and debate policy without fear of having their careers destroyed. Now that we are further out from the pandemic cooler heads will prevail but I fear the damage to the reputation of the health authorities in the US will take a long time to recover. [1] https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-needed-covid-19-dialogue-between-scientists-francis-collins-moved-to-shut-it-down/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-n...
  - lern_too_spel 4y ago
    Dr. Collins didn't ask for their careers to be destroyed. He asked for a rebuttal (or "take down of it's premises" in his words), which was easy because The Great Barrington Declaration was the most poorly devised policy proposal I had ever seen. I'm not surprised that Dr. Prasad pretends not to understand the difference. It said that only nursing homes should be quarantined when the vast majority of elderly do not live in nursing homes. It encouraged everyone else to get infected as soon as possible, completely ignoring the fact that vaccines were being developed, which meant that later exposure would be far better than earlier exposure. One of the signatories of The Great Barrington Declaration actually did try to destroy a Caltech professor's career, but Dr. Prasad pretends the reverse happened. https://mobile.twitter.com/lpachter/status/1377048469865558016 https://mobile.twitter.com/lpachter/status/13770484698655580...
random314 4y ago
Myocarditis is caused by the spike protein present both in covid19 and the vaccine. 1. Myocarditis rate is much higher post infection than post vaccination by about 2X 2. Myocarditis rate post vaccination is 0.02 % . Covid FATALITY rate is 0.3%. Yet we are expected to have "debates" about it https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... Also, why the hell do we think scientific research needs a so called "debate". Are we trying to become school valedictorians? What is needed is peer review, not debate. Debate is simply a euphemism for validation seeking for confirmation bias on random social forums. If there was any problem with the peer review, there is cause for complaints. Are we going to hold a debate on whether the proof of fermat's last theorem is actually correct now?
- bigDinosaur 4y ago
  From your own link: > Among men under 40, there were an estimated four extra cases of myocarditis associated with the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 14 extra cases with the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for every 1 million men vaccinated. That risk rose with the second dose for all three vaccines studied and was highest for Moderna's, which had an additional 97 myocarditis cases per 1 million. For unvaccinated men under 40 with COVID-19, there were 16 additional myocarditis cases per million. which shows that the Moderna second dose is riskier than infection for men under 40? I have to admit I've been really disappointed by the way people have been minimising this. Part of that is being in that group of men < 40 myself (it has always been stratified by age and sex), another part of it is I think we need to be as transparent as possible about all risks in medicine as opposed to giving fuel (and good arguments) that information is being suppressed or charitably ignored because people are panicking.
  - random314 4y ago
    - ostenning 4y ago
      I had pericarditis (which i initially thought was myocarditis until I had an MRI) shortly after vaccination. People on this forum literally urged me to go get a booster despite my experience. The overzealous opinions go both ways. How about people just do whats right for them and stop conforming to groupthink
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

fdewrewrewf 4y ago

What do you mean? The goalposts were always clear, and open discussion was always acceptable.

dijonman2 4y ago
Open discussion was never acceptable, even here on HN. I was quickly downvoted for saying anything against masking and vaccinations. Not even objecting, mere questions elicited this reaction.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Sometimes, heroes will lose karma points when they caution people against best practices. This is the price heroes pay.
  - fdewrewrewf 4y ago
    "Best practices", like mass vaccination of a group of people for whom the vaccine may have been more risky than the disease?
- junofan 4y ago
  It was pretty ridiculous. Anyone who’s interacted with health policy at the national level knows it’s just a big power game. Anthony Fauci doesn’t wake up in the morning thinking “what can I do for the American people?”—he wakes up thinking “Todd from the VA was an asshole at that budget hearing. What can I do about that?”
  - Erem 4y ago
    Can you please upgrade your comment from base slander to legitimate critique by providing any reasonable source to help us understand this perspective
- hackerlight 4y ago
  So you're admitting that open discussion was accepted. Only people disagreed with what you were saying.
- fdewrewrewf 4y ago
  We always were at war with eastasia.

Erem 4y ago

How do you distinguish moving goalposts from the more charitable reading of "Hey, this is a novel virus and so our guidelines will have to change as we find out more" I sure remember when the guidelines were that COVID wasn't transmissible through aerosol, only droplets. Then it was revised to include aerosol. Mask warnings also evolved from "not that effective" to "extremely effective". But isn't all of this explainable charitably without invoking suppression?

AlphaOne1 4y ago
I would argue because no charity was given to opinions contrary to what Dr. Fauci and the NIH declaired as truth. Perhaps most infamous is Dr. Collins asking for a takedown of the Great Berington declaration. The fact that so little was certain early on about COVID should have been a reason to allow physicians and scientists to discuss and debate policy without fear of having their careers destroyed. Now that we are further out from the pandemic cooler heads will prevail but I fear the damage to the reputation of the health authorities in the US will take a long time to recover. [1] https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-needed-covid-19-dialogue-between-scientists-francis-collins-moved-to-shut-it-down/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-n...
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  Dr. Collins didn't ask for their careers to be destroyed. He asked for a rebuttal (or "take down of it's premises" in his words), which was easy because The Great Barrington Declaration was the most poorly devised policy proposal I had ever seen. I'm not surprised that Dr. Prasad pretends not to understand the difference. It said that only nursing homes should be quarantined when the vast majority of elderly do not live in nursing homes. It encouraged everyone else to get infected as soon as possible, completely ignoring the fact that vaccines were being developed, which meant that later exposure would be far better than earlier exposure. One of the signatories of The Great Barrington Declaration actually did try to destroy a Caltech professor's career, but Dr. Prasad pretends the reverse happened. https://mobile.twitter.com/lpachter/status/1377048469865558016 https://mobile.twitter.com/lpachter/status/13770484698655580...

random314 4y ago

Myocarditis is caused by the spike protein present both in covid19 and the vaccine. 1. Myocarditis rate is much higher post infection than post vaccination by about 2X 2. Myocarditis rate post vaccination is 0.02 % . Covid FATALITY rate is 0.3%. Yet we are expected to have "debates" about it https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-poses-higher-risk-for-myocarditis-than-vaccines https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/08/22/covid-19-infection-... Also, why the hell do we think scientific research needs a so called "debate". Are we trying to become school valedictorians? What is needed is peer review, not debate. Debate is simply a euphemism for validation seeking for confirmation bias on random social forums. If there was any problem with the peer review, there is cause for complaints. Are we going to hold a debate on whether the proof of fermat's last theorem is actually correct now?

bigDinosaur 4y ago
From your own link: > Among men under 40, there were an estimated four extra cases of myocarditis associated with the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 14 extra cases with the first dose of the Moderna vaccine for every 1 million men vaccinated. That risk rose with the second dose for all three vaccines studied and was highest for Moderna's, which had an additional 97 myocarditis cases per 1 million. For unvaccinated men under 40 with COVID-19, there were 16 additional myocarditis cases per million. which shows that the Moderna second dose is riskier than infection for men under 40? I have to admit I've been really disappointed by the way people have been minimising this. Part of that is being in that group of men < 40 myself (it has always been stratified by age and sex), another part of it is I think we need to be as transparent as possible about all risks in medicine as opposed to giving fuel (and good arguments) that information is being suppressed or charitably ignored because people are panicking.
- random314 4y ago
  - ostenning 4y ago
    I had pericarditis (which i initially thought was myocarditis until I had an MRI) shortly after vaccination. People on this forum literally urged me to go get a booster despite my experience. The overzealous opinions go both ways. How about people just do whats right for them and stop conforming to groupthink

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]