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.
Source - testimony from a trial participant's mother:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&t=7130s
I'd suggest to watch the whole 3 hours though.
Source 2:
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635