I absolutely appreciate anyone who worked to win against these diseases as well. I think vaccines are an amazing invention by humankind. What I don't appreciate is how modern corporations like Pfizer are working in combination with likes of FDA, spreading misinformation themselves by covering up side effects and by doing so giving a completely wrong impression of what the risk, rewards of this vaccine are as well as leaving anyone vaccine injured behind, gaslighted by the whole society. And I'd still suggest these vaccines at the very least to risk groups. I don't know about other groups, because I can't trust their data.
Source - testimony from a trial participant's mother:
I do not possess the resources to evaluate the veracity of this information. Just like I have with polio, pertussis, shingles, etc, I am going to punt it to FDA/CDC, and worry about things that are in my purview.
I punt a lot of things to a lot of organizations. Luckily I live in a time and place where the civil government organizations are more often than not, well intentioned.
It's difficult for me to say whether and how much they (government and FDA) are in this case motivated by greater good or because of money and greed. It's a very complex and difficult thing to judge.
There's evidence to either side. E.g. covering up all the bad cases will increase vaccine up take. Then again why give it to children if it's possible that for children vaccines may be more harmful than the benefits they give, is it also to just give this safe perception of those vaccines? It doesn't seem like giving vaccines to children would end the pandemic or let people go back to normal lives significantly faster.
Despite you not being able to evaluate the veracity, did you for instance take a look at the speech at least? What would you say your confidence on its veracity is?
It's not in my characteristics to hide information like that. Am I doing society a disservice by sharing this information, working against the "greater good"? Is it good to share this information to increase awareness and let people do more calculated decisions? I don't know.
> Despite you not being able to evaluate the veracity, did you for instance take a look at the speech at least? What would you say your confidence on its veracity is?
No, it would be a waste of time. There is nothing I can glean from someone talking in a YouTube video that would trump decades of reputation of the FDA/CDC.
I drive a car that I have no idea if it will blow up, I drive over bridges that I have no idea if they will fall down, I eat food that might have E. coli on it, I bathe in water that might have Legionnaires and carcinogens, and I take vaccines that doctors tell me to take.
> Am I doing society a disservice by sharing this information, working against the "greater good"? Is it good to share this information to increase awareness and let people do more calculated decisions? I don't know.
Yes, it is a disservice. The USA’s single greatest asset is trust within its society. It is why people want the USD, it is why people trust high end equipment made in the USA, and why we can go about our lives without worrying about bribing cops every time we travel, or not worry about your kids dying in car accident because people follow rules on the road, and why you can eat cold food at a restaurant or drink water not from a bottle of water opened in front of you without worrying about getting sick.
> It's difficult for me to say whether and how much they (government and FDA) are in this case motivated by greater good or because of money and greed. It's a very complex and difficult thing to judge.
Everything can be tainted by money and greed. It is a useless platitude. If you want to maintain consistency in that kind of reasoning, it would be best to go live in the woods and farm your own food.
> I drive a car that I have no idea if it will blow up, I drive over bridges that I have no idea if they will fall down, I eat food that might have E. coli on it, I bathe in water that might have Legionnaires and carcinogens, and I take vaccines that doctors tell me to take.
Sure, and in most cases it works out very well, until some new info about the car comes out, e.g. reports of it frequently exploding, some of the bridges frequently falling down etc. Article coming out by a reputable journal about how safety tests for the car were botched. The car uses some sort of new untested electric battery that wasn't tested for explosions at all.
> Yes, it is a disservice. The USA’s single greatest asset is trust within its society.
For me trust doesn't work like that. If something seems too good to be true, I lose trust. If negative things about something are censored I lose trust. I have trust when both good and bad things are talked about openly, data is transparent and can be validated.
> Everything can be tainted by money and greed. It is a useless platitude. If you want to maintain consistency in that kind of reasoning, it would be best to go live in the woods and farm your own food.
It's not useless. I need to know whether main motivation with vaccines is greater good or it is money. If it's greater good, then yes, maybe I am doing a disservice in my view. If it's money over society, then I'd believe I'm doing the right thing by spreading the information.
>Article coming out by a reputable journal about how safety tests for the car were botched.
Sure, but that has not happened here.
>If something seems too good to be true, I lose trust. If negative things about something are censored I lose trust. I have trust when both good and bad things are talked about openly, data is transparent and can be validated.
Has that happened here? Obviously, transparency is always good, but I do not know about the logistics of throwing up every piece of data from clinical trials. "Seems too good to be true" works sometimes, if the subject is simple enough. Like someone giving away free products or free labor. Does not really work when you need PhDs to understand the subject matter.
> I need to know whether main motivation with vaccines is greater good or it is money.
What does "main motivation" even mean? Everyone does everything with some ratio of money:"greater good". Some people will kill someone else for $1B, and some will not. If you want your society's best people at the cutting edge of medical science, then you better reward them, maybe even comparably to spending their time figuring out how to target you with ads online. But that does not mean they can also not do things for the greater good.
That is why you need various teams of experts double checking each other (for example in this case, various governments and even non government agencies evaluating vaccines). Is it possible the whole system is corrupt a la Hollywood style evil syndicate movie? Maybe. Is living life worth it assuming every situation is like that without considerable evidence? No.
For the record, in case you are curious about my thoughts on the government's response, I was OK with government restrictions if hospitals were being overwhelmed and vaccines were not widely available. After the vaccine had been made widely available, my response would have been to remove all government restrictions and let people get turned away from hospital emergency rooms if they are unvaccinated. I see no problem with vaccine requirements. My parents had vaccine requirements, I had them growing up, and the evidence behind herd immunity and population wide vaccination is readily evident, considering the lack of smallpox and polio today, etc. And the resurgence of measles and whooping cough in areas where people do not vaccinate.
> Does not really work when you need PhDs to understand the subject matter.
You don't need PhD to roughly understand percentages and frequencies of various side effects and risks occurring from trial data. If there's 1% chance of X from a vaccine as opposed to 0.1% chance of X from the virus, you don't need to have PHD to understand what would be a better option for you.
> What does "main motivation" even mean? Everyone does everything with some ratio of money:"greater good". Some people will kill someone else for $1B, and some will not. If you want your society's best people at the cutting edge of medical science, then you better reward them, maybe even comparably to spending their time figuring out how to target you with ads online. But that does not mean they can also not do things for the greater good.
So my question is, are the current vaccines truly good for the society? E.g. are they given to children because of money, or because they are confident of these being safer to children than the virus? They can still be given because of money as well when they are safer in addition, but I guess the main point is - are they willing to overlook the fact that children will get harmed by vaccines more than they would by the virus in order to make money or gain political power?
> That is why you need various teams of experts double checking each other (for example in this case, various governments and even non government agencies evaluating vaccines). Is it possible the whole system is corrupt a la Hollywood style evil syndicate movie? Maybe. Is living life worth it assuming every situation is like that without considerable evidence? No.
And if you check the article you will see that this evaluation was not done properly. Despite complaints of poor practices, unblinding, falsified data, people who made the complaints were fired and FDA did not investigate the complaints.
> For the record, in case you are curious about my thoughts on the government's response, I was OK with government restrictions if hospitals were being overwhelmed and vaccines were not widely available. After the vaccine had been made widely available, my response would have been to remove all government restrictions and let people get turned away from hospital emergency rooms if they are unvaccinated. I see no problem with vaccine requirements.
My personal stance is that based on information I know right now, I do not agree with vaccine mandates for these particular vaccines and I do think taking these vaccines should be a personal choice and no one should be pressured or forced into taking them.
>Is British Medical Journal not a reputable journal?
I have no idea, I am not in this field. The claims may very well may be legitimate, but I do not know what normal clinical trials entail or how much corruption is to be expected.
>You don't need PhD to roughly understand percentages and frequencies of various side effects and risks occurring from trial data. If there's 1% chance of X from a vaccine as opposed to 0.1% chance of X from the virus, you don't need to have PHD to understand what would be a better option for you.
Is it that easy? I imagine when you are dealing with 8B people worldwide, you are dealing with population size and systemic effects, not worrying about individual effects. I do not know for sure, I am not an epidemiologist, but I assume the CDC or whatever orgs have some on staff that know better.
>I guess the main point is - are they willing to overlook the fact that children will get harmed by vaccines more than they would by the virus in order to make money or gain political power?
Who knows? This is an ever present risk in society. As far as I can tell, Moderna and Pfizer and J&J are profiting from this, and I do not see why all the leaders of the government health agencies from US/UK/EU/Canada would be particularly simultaneously invested in it.
>And if you check the article you will see that this evaluation was not done properly. Despite complaints of poor practices, unblinding, falsified data, people who made the complaints were fired and FDA did not investigate the complaints.
These are companies and organizations employing tens of thousands of people. Maybe there is a big cover up happening, maybe there is not. I know from operating businesses and managing people myself that claims can get start getting thrown around willy nilly very quickly. It takes time to gather all the info and analyze the big picture. There are lots of "bombshell" type news items that come out every day about every business "meat producer does this" "farming corp does this" "Apple did this" etc.
All I know is that the results of these organizations have mostly trended in the right direction, so that is what I have to operate with and hope for the best.
>> these organizations have mostly trended in the right direction
[citation needed]
Not sure how many times the government and pharmaceutical companies have to be proven horrifically, detrimentally corrupt before people become concerned enough to push back. For many, the answer is "after it's too late".
The citation is infant mortality rates, and talking to all of my grandparents and their brothers and sisters and how women used to regularly have babies die or have polio or smallpox. And now it is very rare to have any of that happen.
I appreciate “them” winning against polio, pertussis, measles, chickenpox, shingles, etc.