[selcuka]

Were the vaccines accessible because of the sympathy towards the people at the bottom, or so that they can go back to work as soon as possible? Medicine is subsidised when there is a global pandemic, but not when individual lives are at stake.

[brookst]

I don’t really find it fruitful to speculate about motives in complex systems. The claim was that average people don’t benefit from medical advances, which seems clearly untrue.

Now, if we’re shifting to why advances are often generally available, sure, there are lots of plausible theories that may or may be true, in whole or part, and which we’ll never prove one way or the other. Believe what makes you happy, or angry, or whatever mood you prefer.

[selcuka]

> Now, if we’re shifting to why advances are often generally available

But it's not me who is shifting, right? The claim was:

> Science and technology, I feel, has always had a certain apathy towards the plight [of] the people at the bottom rungs.

not

> The claim was that average people don’t benefit from medical advances

My point is to reject the claim that the high availability of vaccines is a counter-example. It's a political decision, not a science/technology related one.

[brookst]

You’re still getting at motives rather than facts, which means it’s unfalsibisble.

If you’re going to say that fact X is not a counter/example because [subjective, speculative reasons] then I’m confident you’ll never find a fact that contradicts your beliefs. There will always be some “oh, well the bridge collapsed, but it wasn’t bad engineering it was political reasons, so it doesn’t count as a collapse.”

[selcuka]

What I said is not subjective/speculative. It is not even unfalsifiable.

To restate, COVID vaccine can't be used as an example of "science/technology's sympathy towards the bottom rungs". They were only accessible because governments purchased those vaccines from science/technology companies and gave away for free. Companies developed it to make profit.

If the governments didn't purchase billions of doses at a subsidised price, most people wouldn't be able to afford it [1]. I don't see how this conclusion is subjective, speculative, or unfalsifiable?

[1] https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/covid-19-vaccines-what-i...