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I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very big payday. There's lots of mon

• sarchertech 3y ago
  The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been approved by the national health agencies of dozens of countries, and China has approved a very similar home grown mRNA Covid vaccine. No amount of money in the world could pay to do that and keep it secret.
  • fwungy 3y ago
    Corrupt government officials get a commission on big contracts. It happens all the time. Why do you think people spend so much campaigning for low paying political offices? They can be quite lucrative investments. There are NDAs and other threats to shutdown whistleblowers.
    • sarchertech 3y ago
      Think about how many people were involved in the approvals across the entire globe? Most of the approvals processes were conducted in public by career scientists and doctors. There were tens of thousands of people involved that would have to look the other way. Any company that’s capable of pulling off a global operation like that with absolutely zero exposure, is already running the world and doesn’t need to bother with piddly $40 billion scams.
      • fwungy 3y ago
        You don't become a career scientist or doctor by rocking the boat. A medical degree is a huge investment. Doctors have student loans and families. Anyone who sticks their neck out is at risk of losing their license or research grants.
        • Yoric 3y ago
          For context, in many countries outside of the US, you don't risk your student loan or your licence by rocking the boat, whether you're a physician or a researcher. In fact, if you're a researcher, chances are that rocking the boat is how you get exposure, which will improve your chances of a research grant. Bad science, on the other hand, is how you lose your reputation and your research grants.
        • educaysean 3y ago
          > Anyone who sticks their neck out is at risk of losing their license or research grants. Sticks their neck out against whom? Against the Afro-Chinese/Euroamerican consortium that took kickbacks from the "medical companies" in order to keep the COVID theatre going? Those poor honest doctors around the world - if only they could speak up! If only one doctor would tell the truth!
          • fwungy 3y ago
            Doctors depend on the free exchange of information to help their patients. It is one of the pathways that medicine advances. Covid was managed in a top down, hierarchical mode. Doctors who questioned it were threatened and punished by medical boards, some lost their licenses. Had a non-vaccine treatment for covid been discovered via clinical practice it would have destroyed the EUA for the covid vaccine, i.e. that's how they were able to issue an experimental vaccine widely to the public. An effective covid treatment would have cost the corporations billions of dollars in the present, and the ongoing subscription income of annual covid vaccinations for hundreds of millions of people. When you've got billions of income it's easy to spread it around to politicians, media, and scientists who are willing to carry the story. You just pay them well and make them sign NDAs: no one will talk. This forms a ready alliance to silence anyone who dares question the corporate narrative.
  • Izkata 3y ago
    I don't know about the order/process elsewhere, by the time they were up for the approval process in the US there really wasn't another option simply because of the outcry after so many people had taken it, if it wasn't approved.
    • sarchertech 3y ago
      As a counterpoint to that, 20 million people took the Johnson and Johnson vaccine under the emergency authorization, but the FDA didn’t approve it. Also buying the emergency approval process in the first place would have required an epically massive conspiracy.
      • HerculePoirot 3y ago
        eggs and bacon
      • fwungy 3y ago
        Not really. They do it all the time. Legislator votes for the right bills and her niece gets a cushy job somewhere in exchange. You can't prove anything wrong happened. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. - George Carlin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
  • loeg 3y ago
    I’m not a vaccine conspiracy theorist but just as a counterpoint, Pfizer and then J&J have been selling completely ineffective Sudafed PE for more than a decade.
    • sarchertech 3y ago
      Phenylephrine was approved in the 70s and classified as "Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective", which allowed companies to start selling it in pill form without going through the normal approval process as soon as Pseudoephedrine started requiring ID to purchase. Dozens of companies sold versions of this not just Pfizer and J&J. This isn't in any way comparable, because thousands of doctors and dozens of medical groups have been pointing out that it's not effective for years. There was no effort to "silence" any of them, and no requirement to pay off or even convince regulators and law makers to do anything in order to get it approved. It just took time for the wheels of regulatory momentum to do anything about it. If anything it shows what happens when a bad drug is approved or starts being sold. Thousands of doctors and dozens of reputable medical groups start speaking up--no global Pharma conspiracy can keep them from doing so.
      • loeg 3y ago
        Sure, I agree with all of that.
• therealdrag0 3y ago
  What does adversarial inquiry look like?
  • fwungy 3y ago
    A debate in real time between qualified adversaries. Treat these things like you're making a major investment. Make both sides answer hard questions from each other. For example have RFK and Fauci put together teams of MDs and PhDs to debate in a live event.
    • MostlyStable 3y ago
      "live" debate selects far less for truth and far more for "skill at debating" which is nearly orthogonal to being correct. That is not to say that live debate has no place, or is worthless. I'm just not sure I'd come even close to agreeing that it's the ideal way to come to the truth.
      • fwungy 3y ago
        Every Ph.D. goes through oral qualifications. An expert should be able to articulate and defend their views on the subject at hand in a live question format.
        • MostlyStable 3y ago
          And yet, there is a reason that Orals are not what is used to give the final assessment and grant the degree. Like I said, has a place, but not the ideal way to reach the truth. Orals serve a purpose, but that purpose is most definitely not "determine the truth, as best as we are capable, of a particular question". Also, I don't really agree that Orals are particularly similar to a "debate" at all. For one thing, there usually aren't two "positions".
          • fwungy 3y ago
            A true leader takes hard questions and answers them live. Watch some footage of Steve Jobs taking hard questions (yes, I know Steve Jobs had some real issues, because we have to mention that, but I cite him because he is one of the great leaders in the tech space). When Fauci went in front of the media and dodged and weaved he didn't build trust, he made people question. If you're ever in a situation where a leader is dodging hard questions that's a big tell. Take note of it.
• danny_codes 3y ago
  Occam's Razer man. Covid is super infectious, so it infected everyone. This is not that complicated.
• autoexec 3y ago
  You're the unfortunate but inevitable result of our total failure to keep critical institutions honest and trustworthy. When scientists can accept money to produce fake results, or to bury any results unfavorable to corporations without consequences, and doctors can lie or take kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies without severe consequences for both the pharmaceutical company or the doctors, and politicians and news organizations can tell outright lies with impunity, this is what we get. People like you who can't see the truth even when it's staring them in the face. Your stance that covid numbers are all lies and vaccines are a conspiracy is wrong, but it's not entirely your fault. Politicians, scientists, doctors, and media have a responsibility to continuously prove that they can and should be trusted, but they haven't been willing to do that and until they do we'll see more and more people like you who feel like they just can't trust anything anymore. At a certain point it's just self-defense to be distrustful.
  • fwungy 3y ago
    I'd just like to see them answer some hard questions, just like I have to answer on my job. The point of vaccines is to extend human lifespan and reduce illness. It should be a relatively easy matter for them to show that taking more vaccines does those things, right? Assuming similar infrastructure and income (rough) between countries there should be some correlation between vaccine rates and healthcare outcome statistics. We could even rate individual vaccines on how much illness and expense they alleviate. Perhaps some are more effective than others? But to even questions anything about a vaccine somehow makes one an "antivaxxer" - someone who irrationally hates vaccines. There would probably be a lot fewer "antivaxxers" if the media and medical corporations did not respond like jerks when people had honest questions about vaccines, like they would when choosing any other product.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  There was a lot more money involved in attempting to force everyone back to work during the pandemic and let them take their chances before a vaccine was produced.
• pasc1878 3y ago
  Most of the vaccines were designed and developed in University labs - so if you trust science then you should trust them. The COVID numbers also come from scientists in public health and statistics organisations. Why don't you trust those scientists they made no profit. The first vaccine to be approved the AstraZenica one approved in the UK was sold at cost so that should show that it was needed. Why do you not trust those scientists I show above. Which scientists do you accept? and why are they different? It did have issues in that for under 30 it had a slightly higher risk of embolisms (which is one reason that it is not use much now) and in its first tests did not have enough over 60 year olds in the trial. This latter was picked up by several things US did not approve it - how much was NIH it got nad press possibly because the not over 60s tests meant that European politicians misinterpreted so say it was unsafe and that view was not changed when it had the full tests, its PR was messed up saying things like it passed all tersts then had to backtrack making AZ look shady. Being the fitst some people pressing for patyent free vaccines criticised it from day one even thopugh much cheaper for all than other vaccines. So everyone was critising it even though it worked. How much of this was driven by other pharma companies lobbying because of the at cost price vs their with profit price. The AZ president has said that they would not do things at cost again as it is just not worth the issues.