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> THESE PILLS WERE the pride and joy of Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the Founding Fathers and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Later, a descendent of

by anonu 1y ago

> THESE PILLS WERE the pride and joy of Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the Founding Fathers and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Later, a descendent of Dr Rush would go down in infamy for a foolhardy escapade to the Titanic in a carbon-fiber submersible called Titan. > Dr. Rush’s style of “heroic medicine” had caused his star to fall quite a bit by this time — especially after the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, when his patients died at a noticeably higher rate than untreated sufferers. Seems familiar...

flanked-evergl 1y ago
[flagged]
- ffsm8 1y ago
  The vaccine wasn't even close to 99% effective nor is any medication 100% safe, and neither was this vaccine. It had severe side effects in a lot of people. This kind of messaging is a large part of the problem, because it's trivially verify-able to be a lie, muddying the waters of wherever it should be used.
  - Sardtok 1y ago
    There's this thing called sarcasm
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    I wouldn't say "a lot of people". See https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27746/interactive/adverse-effects-of-the-covid-19-vaccine/ https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27746/interactive...: only a few conditions, such as Myocarditis, are linked to the mRNA vaccines. I'd be way better off taking even the dodgiest vaccine (Oxford–AstraZeneca, which is no longer in production) than no vaccine, if exposed to actual COVID-19: the reduction in COVID-19 severity would be well worth it in terms of health outcomes (let alone the herd immunity consequences).
  - jibal 1y ago
    > It had severe side effects in a lot of people. False. The only way to reach that conclusion is by misusing/misinterpreting the VAERS data.
    - ffsm8 1y ago
      I'm not sure how to take your statement seriously. Do you not consider being bed ridden for months while suffering from symptoms similar to long covid severe? Or did you interpret my "a lot of people" as "a high percentage of people getting the vaccine"? Because I agree it wasn't a high percentage, but still _a lot of people_ nonetheless. If neither applies, I struggle to understand how you can make that claim in good faith.
    - jibal 1y ago
      P.S. > This kind of messaging is a large part of the problem, because it's trivially verify-able to be a lie, muddying the waters of wherever it should be used. How ironic. I'm not going to respond directly to and get into an argument with someone who accuses me of bad faith, but I offer this from ChatGPT (these statements are readily verifiable): Most side effects were mild and short-lived (injection site pain, fatigue, headache, fever). Severe side effects were very rare — things like myocarditis (mostly in young men, usually mild and treatable), Guillain–Barré syndrome, or blood clotting events with adenovirus vaccines. Surveillance data (VAERS, V-Safe, EMA, etc.) show that the incidence of these severe effects was in the range of a few per hundred thousand to a few per million doses — not “a lot of people.” By contrast, COVID-19 infection itself caused severe illness in many more people, and even increased the baseline risks of myocarditis and clotting much more than vaccines did. So the corrected takeaway: Saying vaccines caused severe side effects “in a lot of people” is inaccurate. The reality is that severe vaccine side effects were rare but carefully monitored, and the risk/benefit balance strongly favored vaccination.
cco 1y ago
The head of our health and services department is not so far off Dr Rush's opinions on how human health works. 250 years after Dr Rush and somehow the head doctor in our country believes in the miasma theory of disease, only marginally more modern (still ancient Greek).
- n4r9 1y ago
  Oh my Lord, you're right: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine...
  - antonvs 1y ago
    > The section is titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," in the chapter "The White Man's Burden" [in his book attacking Fauci, titled "The Real Anthony Fauci"] RFK Jr. seems to be trying to answer the question, how misguided can one man be?
  - goodluckchuck 1y ago
    The article defeats itself by acknowledging that he uses the term in a different sense… which doesn’t deny the existence or effect of germs, but focuses on the fact that for example many of the worst effects from COVID-19 were in obese people. His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. He’s saying we miss the forest for the trees when we forget to focus on the underlying health of our bodies. Of course they wanted to write a hit piece… and what he’s saying isn’t actually controversial.
    - jeltz 1y ago
      > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. That is a quite controversial claim and one I hope he did not make. Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? If we had not developed a vaccine I do not think people would have changed their habits, more overweight people would just have died. The medical community has taken overweight very seriously and a lot of money has been put into developing weight loss drugs but it is not like CDC can magically make people eat better.
DonHopkins 1y ago
[flagged]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

by anonu 1y ago

flanked-evergl 1y ago

[flagged]

ffsm8 1y ago
The vaccine wasn't even close to 99% effective nor is any medication 100% safe, and neither was this vaccine. It had severe side effects in a lot of people. This kind of messaging is a large part of the problem, because it's trivially verify-able to be a lie, muddying the waters of wherever it should be used.
- Sardtok 1y ago
  There's this thing called sarcasm
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  I wouldn't say "a lot of people". See https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27746/interactive/adverse-effects-of-the-covid-19-vaccine/ https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/27746/interactive...: only a few conditions, such as Myocarditis, are linked to the mRNA vaccines. I'd be way better off taking even the dodgiest vaccine (Oxford–AstraZeneca, which is no longer in production) than no vaccine, if exposed to actual COVID-19: the reduction in COVID-19 severity would be well worth it in terms of health outcomes (let alone the herd immunity consequences).
- jibal 1y ago
  > It had severe side effects in a lot of people. False. The only way to reach that conclusion is by misusing/misinterpreting the VAERS data.
  - ffsm8 1y ago
    I'm not sure how to take your statement seriously. Do you not consider being bed ridden for months while suffering from symptoms similar to long covid severe? Or did you interpret my "a lot of people" as "a high percentage of people getting the vaccine"? Because I agree it wasn't a high percentage, but still _a lot of people_ nonetheless. If neither applies, I struggle to understand how you can make that claim in good faith.
  - jibal 1y ago
    P.S. > This kind of messaging is a large part of the problem, because it's trivially verify-able to be a lie, muddying the waters of wherever it should be used. How ironic. I'm not going to respond directly to and get into an argument with someone who accuses me of bad faith, but I offer this from ChatGPT (these statements are readily verifiable): Most side effects were mild and short-lived (injection site pain, fatigue, headache, fever). Severe side effects were very rare — things like myocarditis (mostly in young men, usually mild and treatable), Guillain–Barré syndrome, or blood clotting events with adenovirus vaccines. Surveillance data (VAERS, V-Safe, EMA, etc.) show that the incidence of these severe effects was in the range of a few per hundred thousand to a few per million doses — not “a lot of people.” By contrast, COVID-19 infection itself caused severe illness in many more people, and even increased the baseline risks of myocarditis and clotting much more than vaccines did. So the corrected takeaway: Saying vaccines caused severe side effects “in a lot of people” is inaccurate. The reality is that severe vaccine side effects were rare but carefully monitored, and the risk/benefit balance strongly favored vaccination.

cco 1y ago

The head of our health and services department is not so far off Dr Rush's opinions on how human health works. 250 years after Dr Rush and somehow the head doctor in our country believes in the miasma theory of disease, only marginally more modern (still ancient Greek).

n4r9 1y ago
Oh my Lord, you're right: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-is-rooted-in-a-disbelief-in-germ-theory/ https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine...
- antonvs 1y ago
  > The section is titled "Miasma vs. Germ Theory," in the chapter "The White Man's Burden" [in his book attacking Fauci, titled "The Real Anthony Fauci"] RFK Jr. seems to be trying to answer the question, how misguided can one man be?
- goodluckchuck 1y ago
  The article defeats itself by acknowledging that he uses the term in a different sense… which doesn’t deny the existence or effect of germs, but focuses on the fact that for example many of the worst effects from COVID-19 were in obese people. His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. He’s saying we miss the forest for the trees when we forget to focus on the underlying health of our bodies. Of course they wanted to write a hit piece… and what he’s saying isn’t actually controversial.
  - jeltz 1y ago
    > His point is we have 364 days a year to address obesity, but - in practice - the medical community waits until the last day and tries to develop a vaccine that will allow us to stay overweight and just kill the germ. That is a quite controversial claim and one I hope he did not make. Do you seriously mean we should not have developed a vaccine because fat people dying would have been preferrable? If we had not developed a vaccine I do not think people would have changed their habits, more overweight people would just have died. The medical community has taken overweight very seriously and a lot of money has been put into developing weight loss drugs but it is not like CDC can magically make people eat better.

DonHopkins 1y ago

[flagged]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]