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Left hand. COVID proved that we could establish safety & efficacy of a medical treatment in about 12 months, to the point where as I recall a lot of the manufac

by roenxi 2y ago

Left hand. COVID proved that we could establish safety & efficacy of a medical treatment in about 12 months, to the point where as I recall a lot of the manufacturers have a legal exemption from any liability for damage done by vaccines. Right hand. There are these opioids have been around for decades and somehow they reached this huge level of damage. Largely the same cultures of people involved. I still think the authoritarian policies used during COVID were a mistake. The level of compartmentalisation needed to look past scandals like this one and still force people to trust big pharma unconditionally is pretty extreme. People should be allowed to make their own mistakes based on their own flawed judgement, rather than the flawed judgement of the likes of McKinsey & Perdue. It is bad enough when everything is voluntary.

spamizbad 2y ago
That legal exemption was made possible by a law passed in 2005 which, at the time, was completely non-controversial. It's only after vaccines have become politicized that it suddenly became problematic for the government to take steps to protect its citizen's lives.
wrs 2y ago
The public policy for individual pain management and the public policy for highly contagious diseases can be different, for logical reasons that I hope are obvious.
- roenxi 2y ago
  Yeah, pain management is even more important and they got that wrong. COVID was just a flash in the pan then it seems to have settled down into the background as an issue, while chronic pain is an ongoing thing that is easier to study. So even if we assume that they weight their efforts by importance that isn't particularly impressive for the COVID authoritarianism.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Government rules around COVID were also a flash in the pan. On a per-day basis it was pretty proportional to the urgency.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Well, yes. We have a society built around concepts of individual liberty and respect for basic human rights. So all the rules were rolled back. The question is why they were rolled out in the first place. Even to this day there is a distinct lack of evidence that any given rule was helpful. We successfully transitioned from a world where everyone was eventually going to get COVID to a world where everyone eventually got COVID and in hindsight it is hard to see what the authoritarian slant of the policies earned anyone. Except perhaps earmarking the people who should be kept out of positions of power.
      - wrs 2y ago
        Contagious diseases aren’t compatible with the fantasy that individual liberty is always the highest good. That is why decades ago our society realized the need for public health authorities that can temporarily override individual liberties to protect society. Undoubtedly not all the COVID measures were perfect. Some ineffective measures were imposed, and some effective measures were not imposed. You can hindsight armchair quarterback that all you want, but there’s no question the authority to impose such measures is needed. And somebody (who thank heavens isn’t you or me) has to exercise that authority with only the information available at the time, and the highest possible stakes.
        roenxi 2y ago
        I don't think anyone is questioning the existence of the institutions; armies can do what armies want for example and there isn't much anyone can do about it unless the army agrees with their plans. Can't get rid of armies though, we just do what we can and live with the residual risk. The issue is more that in this case the institutions did act, in a panicky and random fashion that seems to, on balance, not have helped but rather violated a large number of human rights and good principles for no particular gain. The only policies that seemed effective were quarantines, light contact tracing, removing red tape and funding R&D. We can do all those things without unduly coercing anyone, they're pretty minor inconveniences compared to the madness that was actually unleashed.
Retric 2y ago
Opioids were known to be harmful. Purdue attacked the gatekeepers and policy makers not the science. It was mostly a story of what happens when a well funded con artist enters an environment built on trust. Suddenly pain management was viewed as very important by the medical establishment, while mostly paying lip service to all the long term consequences of said actions. After all you can’t actually know how much someone is actually suffering…
- roenxi 2y ago
  > Opioids were known to be harmful. So, hypothetically, if a doctor prescribed me opioids I should be allowed to say I don't want to take them? Even if the manufacturers assure me it is safe, effective and they have lots of evidence of the same. Because to me that seems like a logical conclusion. I think that should be a general policy. People should be able to overrule doctors on the subject of how they are treated.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Nothing hypothetical about that, it’s generally how US healthcare works barring people being declared mentally incompetent, court ordered treatment, etc. To address the seeming contradiction. Vaccination was never imposed by the healthcare system on patients during COVID, it was required by cruse ships, schools, and yes hospitals for staff etc.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      Which wasn't justified and should probably be an illegal requirement on privacy grounds. It doesn't make a difference if people doing work were vaccinated or not. It turns out to have had little in-practice effect on transmission, so the only important question is whether the passengers on things like a cruise were vaccinated themselves. They were evidence-free policies. We had a great natural case study in Australia of COVID through a vaccinated population. Everyone caught it over the course of a month, the vaccines did basically nothing to stop the spread. They were pretty much only useful on an individual level which means there was never a requirement for any coercive measures.
loeg 2y ago
Potential for misuse is sort of a different outcome than traditional approval processes. That said, we have known this about opioids forever. And as far as I know, no one is suggesting there is any kind of addiction mechanism for vaccines.
quickthrowman 2y ago
> I recall a lot of the manufacturers have a legal exemption from any liability for damage done by vaccines. Without a liability exemption, no company would manufacture vaccines, the government would need to step in as a manufacturer. With the liability exemption law, the private sector makes the vaccines while the government assumes the liability, which is a pretty good solution in my opinion. > In the United States, low profit margins and an increase in vaccine-related lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the DPT vaccine by the early 1980s.[4][unreliable source?] By 1985, vaccine manufacturers had difficulty obtaining liability insurance.[10] The price of the DPT vaccine skyrocketed as a result, leading providers to curtail purchases, thus limiting availability. Only one company was still manufacturing pertussis vaccine in the US by the end of 1985.[10] Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986, establishing a federal no-fault system to compensate victims of injury caused by mandated vaccines.[11][12] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_I...
bdcravens 2y ago
Remember that the fast tracking of the development of the vaccine was a project of the administration in power at the time. The shifting political narrative has diminished this very important part of the discussion. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319
- jmholla 2y ago
  Let's not forget that the administration in power denied the problem tooth and nail until it was so patently obvious that something needed to be done.
threeseed 2y ago
Nothing worse than these straw man arguments. a) Nobody has ever said that pharmaceutical companies should be blindly trusted. b) The companies only have an exemption for COVID and similar emergencies and only when the damages are not caused by wilful misconduct. The idea being that getting the vaccines out sooner would save more lives than any side effects.

by roenxi 2y ago

spamizbad 2y ago

That legal exemption was made possible by a law passed in 2005 which, at the time, was completely non-controversial. It's only after vaccines have become politicized that it suddenly became problematic for the government to take steps to protect its citizen's lives.

wrs 2y ago

The public policy for individual pain management and the public policy for highly contagious diseases can be different, for logical reasons that I hope are obvious.

roenxi 2y ago
Yeah, pain management is even more important and they got that wrong. COVID was just a flash in the pan then it seems to have settled down into the background as an issue, while chronic pain is an ongoing thing that is easier to study. So even if we assume that they weight their efforts by importance that isn't particularly impressive for the COVID authoritarianism.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Government rules around COVID were also a flash in the pan. On a per-day basis it was pretty proportional to the urgency.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Well, yes. We have a society built around concepts of individual liberty and respect for basic human rights. So all the rules were rolled back. The question is why they were rolled out in the first place. Even to this day there is a distinct lack of evidence that any given rule was helpful. We successfully transitioned from a world where everyone was eventually going to get COVID to a world where everyone eventually got COVID and in hindsight it is hard to see what the authoritarian slant of the policies earned anyone. Except perhaps earmarking the people who should be kept out of positions of power.
    - wrs 2y ago
      Contagious diseases aren’t compatible with the fantasy that individual liberty is always the highest good. That is why decades ago our society realized the need for public health authorities that can temporarily override individual liberties to protect society. Undoubtedly not all the COVID measures were perfect. Some ineffective measures were imposed, and some effective measures were not imposed. You can hindsight armchair quarterback that all you want, but there’s no question the authority to impose such measures is needed. And somebody (who thank heavens isn’t you or me) has to exercise that authority with only the information available at the time, and the highest possible stakes.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        I don't think anyone is questioning the existence of the institutions; armies can do what armies want for example and there isn't much anyone can do about it unless the army agrees with their plans. Can't get rid of armies though, we just do what we can and live with the residual risk. The issue is more that in this case the institutions did act, in a panicky and random fashion that seems to, on balance, not have helped but rather violated a large number of human rights and good principles for no particular gain. The only policies that seemed effective were quarantines, light contact tracing, removing red tape and funding R&D. We can do all those things without unduly coercing anyone, they're pretty minor inconveniences compared to the madness that was actually unleashed.

Retric 2y ago

Opioids were known to be harmful. Purdue attacked the gatekeepers and policy makers not the science. It was mostly a story of what happens when a well funded con artist enters an environment built on trust. Suddenly pain management was viewed as very important by the medical establishment, while mostly paying lip service to all the long term consequences of said actions. After all you can’t actually know how much someone is actually suffering…

roenxi 2y ago
> Opioids were known to be harmful. So, hypothetically, if a doctor prescribed me opioids I should be allowed to say I don't want to take them? Even if the manufacturers assure me it is safe, effective and they have lots of evidence of the same. Because to me that seems like a logical conclusion. I think that should be a general policy. People should be able to overrule doctors on the subject of how they are treated.
- Retric 2y ago
  Nothing hypothetical about that, it’s generally how US healthcare works barring people being declared mentally incompetent, court ordered treatment, etc. To address the seeming contradiction. Vaccination was never imposed by the healthcare system on patients during COVID, it was required by cruse ships, schools, and yes hospitals for staff etc.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    Which wasn't justified and should probably be an illegal requirement on privacy grounds. It doesn't make a difference if people doing work were vaccinated or not. It turns out to have had little in-practice effect on transmission, so the only important question is whether the passengers on things like a cruise were vaccinated themselves. They were evidence-free policies. We had a great natural case study in Australia of COVID through a vaccinated population. Everyone caught it over the course of a month, the vaccines did basically nothing to stop the spread. They were pretty much only useful on an individual level which means there was never a requirement for any coercive measures.

loeg 2y ago

Potential for misuse is sort of a different outcome than traditional approval processes. That said, we have known this about opioids forever. And as far as I know, no one is suggesting there is any kind of addiction mechanism for vaccines.

quickthrowman 2y ago

> I recall a lot of the manufacturers have a legal exemption from any liability for damage done by vaccines. Without a liability exemption, no company would manufacture vaccines, the government would need to step in as a manufacturer. With the liability exemption law, the private sector makes the vaccines while the government assumes the liability, which is a pretty good solution in my opinion. > In the United States, low profit margins and an increase in vaccine-related lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the DPT vaccine by the early 1980s.[4][unreliable source?] By 1985, vaccine manufacturers had difficulty obtaining liability insurance.[10] The price of the DPT vaccine skyrocketed as a result, leading providers to curtail purchases, thus limiting availability. Only one company was still manufacturing pertussis vaccine in the US by the end of 1985.[10] Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986, establishing a federal no-fault system to compensate victims of injury caused by mandated vaccines.[11][12] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_I...

bdcravens 2y ago

Remember that the fast tracking of the development of the vaccine was a project of the administration in power at the time. The shifting political narrative has diminished this very important part of the discussion. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319

jmholla 2y ago
Let's not forget that the administration in power denied the problem tooth and nail until it was so patently obvious that something needed to be done.

threeseed 2y ago

Nothing worse than these straw man arguments. a) Nobody has ever said that pharmaceutical companies should be blindly trusted. b) The companies only have an exemption for COVID and similar emergencies and only when the damages are not caused by wilful misconduct. The idea being that getting the vaccines out sooner would save more lives than any side effects.