[breck]

> Why in the hell would big Pharma pay any media to promote the vaccines?

To make more money. Do you know there is clear and abundant data that giving the recovered the vaccine provides zero benefit? Not only theoretically, but empirically too, in all countries, across the vaccine trial data and real world data. But if 1/3 of Americans are recovered, that would drop vaccine sales by 33%. Even worse, it would make the vaccine look less effective, as by giving the vax to the recovered it juices the numbers so that a smaller % of people get COVID post vax. A 33% drop in vaccine sales would amount to tens of billions of dollars in lost profits. So a rational actor would easily spend more than $10B in PR costs to promote max-vax.

This is just how the publishing/media industry works. Even when industries aren't explicitly buying ads, they are paying PR firms to inconspicuously plant Op-Eds and nudge editorial. Not unique to Big Pharma or vaccines. Moderna or Pfizer themselves don't even have to be involved! Outside shareholders can indepdently pay for the PR dirty work.

What's interesting with vaccines is how blatant it is. Caused me to reevaluate the importance to abolishing copyrights, giving everyone the right to be a publisher, and removing the monopoly power of our current media. It's disgusting how true knowledge is stifled and lies are propped up. It's much harder to propagate lies when there are millions of capable publishers, not just 10.

[la6471]

From personal experience I have seen quite young fit and healthy person die of COVID. If you saw it first hand , you would know how quickly and dangerously this virus takes over . Having a vaccine with even a 50 percent chance is a no brainer to prevent the devastating damage this virus can cause in a very short time. And so is wearing masks.

[breck]

I've seen plenty of the virus first hand. It's bad. ~5x worse than the flu, which everyone knows is awful. (Though of the 1,000+ people in my closest circle, 100x more life has been lost in the past 1.5yr from things other than COVID, despite well over ~100+ known contacts with it). If you haven't had it, looking at the numbers, I think the vaccine is a good bet, increasingly good as your age and/or weight increases.

But a vaccine provides 0 benefit (0 with a capital "Z"), if you've recovered. It's an absolute no brainer that this is the case. If your body wasn't capable of learning an immune resistance from actually having the virus, then vaccines wouldn't work. When public health figures claim that recovered should get vaccinated anyway, even though it goes against theory, empirical data, and clinical trial data, you have to question their credibility. Then you look at their dissolution of the placebo control group. Then you look at their decision to stop tracking breakthrough cases. None of this is acceptable. One must have high standards.

When you have an idea in engineering and you think it's amazing, you have to keep measuring and questioning that. If your data shows that it's not as amazing as you claim, the solution isn't to hide evidence, it's to keep going, keep measuring, and try harder.