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Are you suggesting that the limited duration of protection and hence the need for followups (like flu shots) is.. the result of a conspiracy? Its not clear why

Are you suggesting that the limited duration of protection and hence the need for followups (like flu shots) is.. the result of a conspiracy? Its not clear why you think they should be 'distrusted' which calls your judgement into question.

stevehawk 3y ago
the common argument I heard from the anti-vaxxers was that the mRNA COVID vaccine was obviously bad/fake/contrived because it required a booster and "no other vaccine requires a booster!" And if you mention tetanus, hepatitis or meningococcal, or other vaccines that required a booster/multiple shots then you just get ignored. Ignorant gonna ignorant.
- breck 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
breck 3y ago
No I am saying that there was no protection and the follow ups provided none either. Yes, with 99% odds I am saying there was a conspiracy to end the randomized placebo control group early to bury any chance that someone could ever conclusively prove these vaccines were ineffective. The claim was they decided it was unethical to withhold a "life-saving" vaccine from control participants and that's why they ended it. I would bet with 99% odds that if there was a funded investigation with subpoena power you would find strong evidence that the primary reason that control group was ended because of extreme financial incentive to end it. If the control group were allowed to continue and it were shown that the vaccines were ineffective (which is what ended up being the case), tens of billions would have been lost. I am counting on someone being sloppy and letting the truth spill somewhere internally. Now if you are saying that I am showing bad judgement for speaking truth to power, for caring about honesty, I could see a valid argument there. But to me truth and honesty is more important than money. There is zero scientific evidence that this thing saved a single life. The only randomized control group experiment showed zero lives saved.
- burnished 3y ago
  Have you not updated your priors given the difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? It seems odd to be so fixated on a control study that was abandoned for ethical reasons when so much evidence amassed regardless.
  - breck 3y ago
    > difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? I have never seen a trustworthy dataset that showed this. I was the Senior Software Engineer at Our World in Data who built the Covid Data Explorer so it was literally my job for a year to work with Covid data. A big reason I was so upset that they killed the control group was because this was finally going to be the trustworthy dataset where we could see the true danger of Covid, which was grossly exaggerated (10x or more), by government and the media. I was really focused on that study, and it was showing very little mortality from Covid. And then they killed the control group. Looking back it was a smoking gun that this was a "Scamdemic". Sure, a bad virus, and 2x-4x worse than the typical flu. But not even close to the Doomsday scenario it was made out to be. The real pandemic was fear. > for ethical reasons I 100% dispute this. I do not see how you can make the case that it is ethical to abandon the scientific process and risk the health and safety of hundreds of millions, and destroy any slam dunk evidence that could put blame on the vaccine makers. It was extremely unethical to cancel that control group. They said they did it to "save lives", and yet, at the time they did it, all the data showed zero lives saved from the vaccine. "It hasn't saved any lives yet, but trust us it will, we have a hunch". That is not scientific. That is not ethical.

stevehawk 3y ago

the common argument I heard from the anti-vaxxers was that the mRNA COVID vaccine was obviously bad/fake/contrived because it required a booster and "no other vaccine requires a booster!" And if you mention tetanus, hepatitis or meningococcal, or other vaccines that required a booster/multiple shots then you just get ignored. Ignorant gonna ignorant.

breck 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

breck 3y ago

No I am saying that there was no protection and the follow ups provided none either. Yes, with 99% odds I am saying there was a conspiracy to end the randomized placebo control group early to bury any chance that someone could ever conclusively prove these vaccines were ineffective. The claim was they decided it was unethical to withhold a "life-saving" vaccine from control participants and that's why they ended it. I would bet with 99% odds that if there was a funded investigation with subpoena power you would find strong evidence that the primary reason that control group was ended because of extreme financial incentive to end it. If the control group were allowed to continue and it were shown that the vaccines were ineffective (which is what ended up being the case), tens of billions would have been lost. I am counting on someone being sloppy and letting the truth spill somewhere internally. Now if you are saying that I am showing bad judgement for speaking truth to power, for caring about honesty, I could see a valid argument there. But to me truth and honesty is more important than money. There is zero scientific evidence that this thing saved a single life. The only randomized control group experiment showed zero lives saved.

burnished 3y ago
Have you not updated your priors given the difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? It seems odd to be so fixated on a control study that was abandoned for ethical reasons when so much evidence amassed regardless.
- breck 3y ago
  > difference in infection rate and severity between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations? I have never seen a trustworthy dataset that showed this. I was the Senior Software Engineer at Our World in Data who built the Covid Data Explorer so it was literally my job for a year to work with Covid data. A big reason I was so upset that they killed the control group was because this was finally going to be the trustworthy dataset where we could see the true danger of Covid, which was grossly exaggerated (10x or more), by government and the media. I was really focused on that study, and it was showing very little mortality from Covid. And then they killed the control group. Looking back it was a smoking gun that this was a "Scamdemic". Sure, a bad virus, and 2x-4x worse than the typical flu. But not even close to the Doomsday scenario it was made out to be. The real pandemic was fear. > for ethical reasons I 100% dispute this. I do not see how you can make the case that it is ethical to abandon the scientific process and risk the health and safety of hundreds of millions, and destroy any slam dunk evidence that could put blame on the vaccine makers. It was extremely unethical to cancel that control group. They said they did it to "save lives", and yet, at the time they did it, all the data showed zero lives saved from the vaccine. "It hasn't saved any lives yet, but trust us it will, we have a hunch". That is not scientific. That is not ethical.