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What's most surprising to me is how willing journalists are to completely suspend their disbelief. During covid the authorities loudly proclaimed that vaccines

by gizmo 3y ago

What's most surprising to me is how willing journalists are to completely suspend their disbelief. During covid the authorities loudly proclaimed that vaccines were 99% effective, provided durable immunity (years!), and that vaccinated people would not spread covid themselves. But what was amazing to me, at the time, that journalists refused to ask basic questions like: - If the vaccine is brand new, how can we possibly know how many years the protection will last? - Coronaviruses mutate rapidly, and because of that people are unable to build long lasting natural immunity and because of that we've never been able to create a conventional vaccine for coronaviruses. If RNA vaccines trigger a natural immune response that doesn't provide lasting immunity, just like conventional vaccines, how can we be so sure these new vaccines will be durable in the face of mutations? - How can we know that vaccinated people are no longer able to spread covid, when we haven't done trials that demonstrate that, because such trials are forbidden (because you can't do trials where you intentionally expose healthy people to a disease). This is not an angry rant about vaccinations or about covid. I'm vaccinated, it was fine. This is about how journalism fails during a crisis, and how patriotism (i.e. encouraging people to get vaccinated, with truth, lies, whatever it takes) takes precedence over doing their actual job (i.e. informing the people). And government agencies will grab and hold on to power when they're no longer kept in check by real journalists. The annoying kind that asks tough questions. You describe the "greatest PR coup in human history", but I think the simple explanation is that it's easy to have great PR when journalists do your PR work for free.

fabian2k 3y ago
It was certainly discussed that we can't know how long the protection from the vaccines will last. But it also didn't matter much as we needed the protection now, and even a waning protection later is much better than no protection at all. There were various studies about how the vaccines affected transmission of COVID-19. You don't need unethical studies for that, you can still get that data by observation. The data is a bit noisy as it's affected by all kinds of confounding factors. But we had that data at various points in time. One big problem was that the variants affected that enormously, so the data was out of date at some important points. This was also discussed a lot in the media. There were various arguments around vaccine mandates that seemed to have missed the memo on the transmission studies for Omicron. This was still discussed in the media, though I found it very annoying that bad arguments were made here by people that should know better.
- rayiner 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - fabian2k 3y ago
    COVID-19 is not a harmless disease, especially for the elderly. You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries. A large part of the population is older and/or has risk factors that put them at a higher risk due to COVID-19. So yes, large parts of the population did need that protection now. And while the process was accelerated, the vaccines were tested and closely monitored.
    - rayiner 3y ago
      > You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries. Not even close. As of April 2023, there have been less than 80,000 deaths of people under the age of 50. That's 2/3 of the population.
      - fabian2k 3y ago
        So 80,000 deaths are irrelevant? When a safe and effective vaccine exists?
        rayiner 3y ago
        In a country of over 300 million people it indicates a fairly low risk of death from covid for most of the population. Low enough that i think people could reasonably opt out if I they were worried about potential long term side effects from a first generation mRNA vaccine. I rolled the dice and got vaccinated, along with my whole family, but we didn’t need it. We had all had covid already with no drama. So I’m going to be pretty angry if we find out there are even mild long term side effects from it.
        3y ago
gverrilla 3y ago
The alternative was panic and worse. The journalists didn't refuse to ask basic questions, they only applied a metaheuristic. There were already MILLIONS of people worldwide thinking the vaccines were a ONU/bill gates pedophile-satanic conspiracy, etc. A lot of people not only didn't want to understand the science, but was attacking ALL SCIENCE. Even democracy got at risk. The system had to reorganize somehow, or the bases of civilization would be at risk. No passarán.
- gampleman 3y ago
  Hint: providing an obviously false and/or one-sided narrative isn't a great way to dampen down conspiracy theories, rather quite the opposite.
- gizmo 3y ago
  I think your attitude exemplifies the difference in values that was brought to the surface during covid. When you embrace extremist claims that "the bases of civilization [were] at risk" you can justify anything. There is no moral line you would not cross if the alternative is the very collapse of civilization itself. This kind of thinking is not healthy and not compatible with the kind of free society we should strive towards.
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  > The alternative was panic and worse. Either panic or (false) advertising an experimental vaccine. This does look like a false dichotomy. You might instead educate people about the potential risks and clarify the limits, so they may decide. In the defence of vaccine producers I want to say that they at least did point out early on that they did not develop it with the goal of stopping transmission. Which maybe led some to believe "there is a chance", but it's the code for "it does not do it". This was known even before the fourth phase of the study (approval of the vaccine). > There were already MILLIONS of people worldwide thinking the vaccines were a ONU/bill gates pedophile-satanic conspiracy, etc. A lot of people not only didn't want to understand the science, but was attacking ALL SCIENCE. Even democracy got at risk. The system had to reorganize somehow, or the bases of civilization would be at risk. Either you believe in the vaccine or in an absurd (and very specific) conspiracy. These are both extreme view points and gov/media did themselves a disservice by sticking with one of them.
lynx23 3y ago
Journalists are oppotunists with a big ego. I dont trust a single story anymore, they lie whenever they open their mouths!
BlueTemplar 3y ago
A crisis calls for radical solutions. I am much more bothered by the lack of spotlight on Fauci et al. that are suspected to be partially to blame for Covid, engaged in what looks very much like ass-covering using their positions of authority, yet were not only not immediately removed from them (for reasons of conflict of interest), but were even sent to China to "investigate" !

by gizmo 3y ago

fabian2k 3y ago

It was certainly discussed that we can't know how long the protection from the vaccines will last. But it also didn't matter much as we needed the protection now, and even a waning protection later is much better than no protection at all. There were various studies about how the vaccines affected transmission of COVID-19. You don't need unethical studies for that, you can still get that data by observation. The data is a bit noisy as it's affected by all kinds of confounding factors. But we had that data at various points in time. One big problem was that the variants affected that enormously, so the data was out of date at some important points. This was also discussed a lot in the media. There were various arguments around vaccine mandates that seemed to have missed the memo on the transmission studies for Omicron. This was still discussed in the media, though I found it very annoying that bad arguments were made here by people that should know better.

rayiner 3y ago
[flagged]
- fabian2k 3y ago
  COVID-19 is not a harmless disease, especially for the elderly. You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries. A large part of the population is older and/or has risk factors that put them at a higher risk due to COVID-19. So yes, large parts of the population did need that protection now. And while the process was accelerated, the vaccines were tested and closely monitored.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > You can argue about children and young adults without risk factors, but that is only a small part of the population in developed countries. Not even close. As of April 2023, there have been less than 80,000 deaths of people under the age of 50. That's 2/3 of the population.
    - fabian2k 3y ago
      So 80,000 deaths are irrelevant? When a safe and effective vaccine exists?
      - rayiner 3y ago
        In a country of over 300 million people it indicates a fairly low risk of death from covid for most of the population. Low enough that i think people could reasonably opt out if I they were worried about potential long term side effects from a first generation mRNA vaccine. I rolled the dice and got vaccinated, along with my whole family, but we didn’t need it. We had all had covid already with no drama. So I’m going to be pretty angry if we find out there are even mild long term side effects from it.
        3y ago

gverrilla 3y ago

The alternative was panic and worse. The journalists didn't refuse to ask basic questions, they only applied a metaheuristic. There were already MILLIONS of people worldwide thinking the vaccines were a ONU/bill gates pedophile-satanic conspiracy, etc. A lot of people not only didn't want to understand the science, but was attacking ALL SCIENCE. Even democracy got at risk. The system had to reorganize somehow, or the bases of civilization would be at risk. No passarán.

gampleman 3y ago
Hint: providing an obviously false and/or one-sided narrative isn't a great way to dampen down conspiracy theories, rather quite the opposite.
gizmo 3y ago
I think your attitude exemplifies the difference in values that was brought to the surface during covid. When you embrace extremist claims that "the bases of civilization [were] at risk" you can justify anything. There is no moral line you would not cross if the alternative is the very collapse of civilization itself. This kind of thinking is not healthy and not compatible with the kind of free society we should strive towards.
AnonCoward42 3y ago
> The alternative was panic and worse. Either panic or (false) advertising an experimental vaccine. This does look like a false dichotomy. You might instead educate people about the potential risks and clarify the limits, so they may decide. In the defence of vaccine producers I want to say that they at least did point out early on that they did not develop it with the goal of stopping transmission. Which maybe led some to believe "there is a chance", but it's the code for "it does not do it". This was known even before the fourth phase of the study (approval of the vaccine). > There were already MILLIONS of people worldwide thinking the vaccines were a ONU/bill gates pedophile-satanic conspiracy, etc. A lot of people not only didn't want to understand the science, but was attacking ALL SCIENCE. Even democracy got at risk. The system had to reorganize somehow, or the bases of civilization would be at risk. Either you believe in the vaccine or in an absurd (and very specific) conspiracy. These are both extreme view points and gov/media did themselves a disservice by sticking with one of them.

lynx23 3y ago

Journalists are oppotunists with a big ego. I dont trust a single story anymore, they lie whenever they open their mouths!

BlueTemplar 3y ago

A crisis calls for radical solutions. I am much more bothered by the lack of spotlight on Fauci et al. that are suspected to be partially to blame for Covid, engaged in what looks very much like ass-covering using their positions of authority, yet were not only not immediately removed from them (for reasons of conflict of interest), but were even sent to China to "investigate" !