For the most part, it would seem that the main problem was the political risk-aversion of state and federal officials rather than the risk tolerance of the public that caused the most problems.

Granted, the stats do not tell a crystal clear story. Neither North nor South Dakota imposed many restrictions on their population. They Sturgis motorcycle rally in SD went on as planned, for instance -- pretty much a free for all. Not surprising, quite a few transmissions were traced to Sturgis. Nothing against motorcyclists. The NYT reported a big biomedical conference during the early stages of the pandemic may have resulted in 200,000 transmissions. Science types breathing on each other is about the same as motorcyclists breathing on each other.

Minnesota imposed state-wide restrictions over a long period of time, and Wisconsin didn't. The population of Minnesota and Wisconsin are pretty much the same demographic. Not much difference in outcomes. South Dakota imposed no state-wide restrictions and has managed to have higher rates per 100,000 than either Minnesota or Wisconsin, and that in a sparsely populated state covering a very large area. For some reason North Dakota got off with fewer cases.

South Dakota 74 cases per 100,000 (population 884,659)
North Dakota 48 cases per 100,000 (population 762,062)

Minnesota 57 cases per 100,000 (population 5.4 million)
Wisconsin 64 cases per 100,000 (population 5.8 million)

When states impose restrictions, positive Covid-19 tests, diagnosed cases, hospital admissions, and (eventually) deaths from Covid-19 all trend downward (not instantly of course).

I agree: without early and nationwide draconian measures, Covid-19 (an airborne disease) was bound to spread. But minimal measures in many states, and a late start everywhere, pretty much guaranteed a higher death toll and a higher percentage of the population becoming infected.

It seems exceedingly one sided that your values, your perspective, and what you want, is somehow of more value than what those who disagree with you want. — Book273

Where did I say anything even remotely like that?

So I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as I check with you first, and you say it's ok — Book273

Didn't mention that either

everyone not you is somehow less than you — Book273

Nor that

I have literally no idea what you're replying to but it doesn't seem to be my actual post - try again.

I think I can clear this up; he's replying to what he wants your comment to be like, and he does what he wants, so it makes perfect sense really.

Sounds like you've already had it.

Do the common complaints about vaccine testing, where it concerns "killed" viruses or replicated viral proteine, apply to mRNA vaccines though? Are, based on how they work, certain worries about safety still relevant here?

I don't know, I'm seriously asking.

Do the common complaints about vaccine testing, where it concerns "killed" viruses or replicated viral proteine, apply to mRNA vaccines though? Are, based on how they work, certain worries about safety still relevant here? — Benkei

It's very different and very new technology.

Any new pharmaceutical can have totally unexpected consequences. It's possible we discover entirely new pathways to mess-up the human body over the long term that no current expert could even dream of today, thanks to this vaccine. Experts may say the risk is small, but the consequence distributed over hundreds of millions of people is extremely big. As mentioned previously, "side-effects" can only be detected in the short term if they have clear symptoms and correspond to something we understand. The purpose of phase-4 trials is to catch the things no one thought was in any way likely or even possible. There can be many 1 in 1000 terrible long term side-effects that no one currently understands and therefore no one currently can check, and that will not appear as a discernible signal in current statistics. 40 000 seems like a lot of people, but if there are lot's of weird 1 in 1000 consequences it's far from sufficient quantity to find these things, even if there are symptoms (doctors will not be able to make a causal inference to the vaccine, and many 1 in 1000 events will simply not appear anyways, just from statistics, not to mention the populations not even represented, or not in any statistically significant way, within the 40 000).

Keep in mind there are many long term problems that have no short term symptoms. If the vaccines cause cancer for instance, it could literally be a decade before that's clear independent of how many people we vaccinate. Likewise impacts on fertility.

Keep in mind also, impacts may not be acute to certain individuals but spread out, and widely distributed affects (not acute in any one patient) are even harder to detect but may have greater consequence.

Of course, western leaders and with no doubt pharmaceutical companies are completely willing to exchange future cancers no matter how many there may end up being against ending the pandemic and fixing the economy. However, this is because they are evil people; there is no rational basis to take such a risk. Not to say some proxy experiments have been made to be more than less confident the vaccines don't cause cancer, but every pharmaceutical that ends up causing cancer had similar evidence (and these kinds of proxy experiments can only be accelerated to a point, keep in mind).

The chance of dying of coronavirus along with developing "long Covid" is on the order of 1 in 1000 or greater for most people (i.e. IFR estimates are in the 0.1 - 0.2 range, including vulnerable populations, so for the healthy populations it can go all the way to 1 in 100 000 risk for young healthy profiles).

Therefore, giving healthy people the vaccine is an extremely big experiment without any assurance that it is smaller risk than actual Covid for the healthy population.

This can just be a catastrophe, leading to more demand on the health system and not less to deal with these problems while the vaccine program may not stop transmission anyways, so the Covid situation maybe unchanged.

@Isaac has good comments on why real effectiveness (at stopping the pandemic) is not proven; to summarize, the phase 3 trials didn't even attempt to prove the vaccines will decrease transmission or decrease hospitalizations. The vaccines may end up increasing both. That governments and the media insist we assume and promote the idea the vaccines are effecting at ending the pandemic is completely absurd as no scientist involved in the trials is even making such a claim (they sometimes explicitly state they basically have no idea if transmission or hospitalizations will end; censorship has officially started of criticizing the vaccines, which would include simply repeating the actual claims of the creators of the vaccines).

The effectiveness numbers are at reducing symptoms, mainly in the healthy population that is at minimum risk anyways. People on reddit like to claim that reducing symptoms reduces transmission, but this is an unverified hypothesis; the vaccine could result in a small number of people having no symptoms but being infectious for extended periods of time (a sort of shingles type situation where the immune system manages but never gets rid of the virus nor stops the virus being infectious; there is currently nothing that would exclude such a possibility). For the vulnerable that are likely to end up in hospitals we may discover the vaccine actually makes their cases worse and not better, causing sever immune reactions (cytosine storms). And of course, not to mention mutations, both present and future, which may not simply defeat the vaccine but outcomes maybe worse for vulnerable vaccinated people and even healthy people; there's an assumption that "oh, well, it maybe like the flu and we must vaccinate each year"; terrible assumption considering vaccinating against the flu doesn't stop the flu, vaccines for the flu are based on historic patterns that don't exist for coronavirus (we have no basis on which to predict the dominant coronavirus strain or strains next season), and coronavirus is nothing like the flu so maybe that strategy wouldn't even work even if it was possible.

Keep in mind (lot's to keep in mind), that without the vaccine statistics makes the dominant strains likely to remain the dominant strain through the network effect. However, put pressure on the dominant strain and other strains that already exist may flourish if they have a mutation that defeats the vaccine. Competent scientists would have collected as many strains as possible to then actually test at least in laboratory (rather than just say there's no reason to assume a new strain will defeat the vaccine and so we shouldn't worry ... yet .. I guess?) while distributing the trials over as wide a range geographically as possible, to at least have some basic tests.

In other words, not only may these vaccines not work they could make the situation worse while collapsing all trust in health authorities and the "gov'ment".

Of course, if we really go deep into the biology we may decide the risks are small (I am not offering any calculations of the risks I'm talking about, just pointing out there are many of them, no evidence they don't happen and therefore it's a big gamble) and so, though even if we conclude risks are small they would remain possible and perhaps still unreasonable when multiplied by hundreds of millions of people and the governing and social consequences if things go wrong, nevertheless unlikely.

In which case, the likely situation is still not "good". The current vaccine programs are too little and too late to affect this winter season; coronavirus has demonstrated strong seasonal tendency and so will anyways go down in the spring and it will be difficult to know if the vaccine is working or not, and if we will be hit by a third wave next season anyways, whether due to the vaccines not working or new strains defeating the vaccine.

The virus is now well mixed in the population and so social distancing no longer really matters. Full isolation would be needed now to significantly reduce cases which was reasonable to do as part of containment strategy (which I advocated for in the spring) but is no longer possible once containment is irrelevant (no where to "contain" the virus to).

The alternative is of course to let the strong do what they will and the weak to suffer what they must (i.e. what is happening now because there is no longer any other alternative). Although it may seem at first reasonable to take a massive risk on the long term health and fertility of the young and healthy population, very quickly it is of uncertain ethical foundation; of course, this is now the policy so we'll see what happens. In any case, getting to the morally wrenching point is due to a large criminal negligence of our leadership. Therefore, whatever happens, Nuremberg type trials should be held and our western leadership hanged.

Abandoning containment was in essence undertaking a genocide against the poor either out of neglect or to protect the stock-market (which has done very well indeed, so the policy has succeeded). If we are better than the Nazi's we will employ the same legal standards and consequences for those responsible.

If we do not, we are no better than the Nazi's, merely their heirs.

40 000 seems like a lot of people, but if there are lot's of weird 1 in 1000 consequences it's far from sufficient quantity to find these things, even if there are symptoms (doctors will not be able to make a causal inference to the vaccine, and many 1 in 1000 events will simply not appear anyways, just from statistics, not to mention the populations not even represented, or not in any statistically significant way, within the 40 000). — boethius

If my math is correct, 1 in 1000 over 40,000 results in 40 cases. If it could "simply not appear" in those 40,000 as you suggest, then clearly it cannot be called a 1 in a 1000 consequence. And since these consequences are described as "weird", I think it's very unlikely that no inference would be drawn from the appearance of 40 weird consequences in a case study of 40,000. Therefore I think your proposal of what could be possible from "1 in 1000 consequences" is completely unrealistic. You could boost it up to 1 in 100,000, or 1 in 1,000,000 consequences, but then you're getting into a range of insignificance, which is exactly what the trials aim to do. So I believe that this particular concern of yours is unfounded.

If my math is correct, 1 in 1000 over 40,000 results in 40 cases. — Metaphysician Undercover

40 cases in 40 000 that aren't clear what they are is a weak signal. You can only find what you're looking for. Obviously we're looking for people dying right away, so 40 people dying right away would be a strong signal and we're looking for that.

Now, if there was 4000 people with unclear but the same symptoms, that would be a clear signal. But 40 people who report feeling "weird" is not going to be easy to detect and differentiate with people feeling weird for other reasons or short-term weirdness (from the immune response that's supposed to happen for instance), and certainly not in a short time period. For longer term things with no short-term symptoms it doesn't matter how many people are in the trial if the consequences are far beyond the time frame of the trial (cancer, pregnancy, smaller but significant long-term symptoms that people themselves assume will go away or are caused by life events, and need to persist for some time for people to notice etc.).

Phase 3 trials are normally quite long, and phase 4 longer still to get confidence difficult to detect things aren't missed. If you asked previous to this vaccine why bother with phase 3 and phase 4 trials a doctor would easily list off all sorts of cases in the past where really unexpected things happened and only detected with a lot of time, sometimes event after phase 4.

So, to pretend now that we can have anywhere near the same level of confidence with short phase 3 and no phase 4 trials, is just absurd.

Maybe it will work great, maybe it will be a Chernobyl scale fuckup.

40 cases in 40 000 that aren't clear what they are is a weak signal. You can only find what you're looking for. Obviously we're looking for people dying right away, so 40 people dying right away would be a strong signal and we're looking for that. — boethius

When looking for side effects in a drug trial, they are looking for "weird" consequences, they are not expecting people to be dying. I think that by the time they are using 40,000 people they are pretty sure that people are not going to be dying.

When looking for side effects in a drug trial, they are looking for "weird" consequences, they are not expecting people to be dying. I think that by the time they are using 40,000 people they are pretty sure that people are not going to be dying. — Metaphysician Undercover

It was just to contrast signal strength. A person dying is a strong signal.

Many long term side-effects have only "I feel weird" as a signal in the short term, and more severe consequences much later or maybe you just feel weird for the rest of your life.

Many long term side-effects have no symptoms, potentially for decades.

Proper experimental design, previous to these vaccines, was no question for anyone in the scientific community a combination of numbers and time. The idea that this standard, based on a long history of painful lessons, is actually not really needed, is just stupid.

I agree the trials established strong bad signals don't happen, like many people dying right away, and this is definitely a positive thing. But it is far from the end of the story when it comes to side-effects.

It was just to contrast signal strength. A person dying is a strong signal. — boethius

My point was, that by the time they're trying 40'000 human beings, they're way beyond your "strong signal" criteria.

Yeah, you'd think so if you have no idea what you're talking about.

In the case of problems that happen beyond the time frame of the trial it doesn't matter what number of people you get to, you have no signal. Cancer the typical example.

In the case of problems that have no clear symptoms, it's very difficult to detect 1 in 1000 events within a sample of 40 000, because there's no test setup to catch those events. If you don't know what you're looking for, you are unlikely to find 1 in 1000 events in any short time-frame (it takes a lot of work to find what you don't know you're looking for). These 40 people may not self report because they themselves can't explain the symptoms and minimize it as caused by something else and assume will go away, those that do maybe ignored as it seems psychosomatic or assumed will go away, and questionnaires and followup etc. don't suspect this kind of problem and so collect no data on it. And even the doctors that do notice "something" may not have a diagnosis to report because it's totally new, so they'll wait and see and certainly won't ring any alarm bells considering how important the vaccine is to get out to people. 40 cases could easily be missed. With a 1000 cases it's much more likely to be an unmissable pattern.

But the basic hypothesis driving the policy is that long-term effects hopefully aren't there, but if they are they will be spread out over a long period of time so a worthwhile exchange to solve the pandemic. However, this is not necessarily a morally sound position if we are exchanging the health of the young against the health of the old.

The other problem with this policy is there's no reason to believe the vaccine will decrease transmission or hospitalization. If we want to learn from history, most medical interventions based on an unproven assumption fail. At each step of development and testing more interventions fail than succeed. It's not the case that "once you pass phase 1, it's easy riding from there" for people who develop medical interventions of any sort. Therefore, extrapolating from history, the reasonable position is these vaccines will fail phase 4 trials once enough data is collected for a robust phase 4 analysis.

Of course, in the wishful thinking framework that has gotten the world into the current crisis: what happened in China can't happen in the west for reasons, what happened in Italy won't be so bad elsewhere for reasons, there's 100 times more undetected infections and so the IFR is super low and we're almost at heard immunity, treatments are getting better and if there's a second wave (... which probably there won't be guys) the death rate won't go up ... like super probably ... well, the logical extension of this pattern is "vaccines with no evidence they will end the pandemic and do more good than harm are like, for sure dude, going to end the pandemic, it's just common sense bro".

Then why use 1 in 1000 in your example, if your other parameter is problems with no immediate symptoms? Why not propose 1 in 100, 1 in 10, or just propose that there is some problem which everyone will have, and it's impossible to detect in the trial because the symptoms will only develop much later. That is a much better representation of your proposal.

You know, a vaccine is basically a one time thing, it's not the same as taking the same drug every day, over and over again for years, which produces a likelihood for things like cancer to develop from long term use.

Yes, for problems with no immediate symptoms, it can be any number. Literally everyone who gets the vaccine could get cancer and we'd have no way of knowing at this point. If the Gaussian curve of cancer diagnosis is around 10 years from now, the small forward tale would be so small in the next year that it would be impossible to differentiate such cancers with other causes of cancer, but the signal will be unmistakable in 10 years.

I picked 1 in a 1000 simply because it's around the estimated IFR rate, and that even if there are symptoms, unless they are obvious, the signal could easily go unnoticed. It's assumed by many commentators on the internet that whatever risks remain are certainly lower than the risk of Covid as they must be below 1 in 40 000, I am pointing out that assumption is false and explaining how it could be false without us knowing yet.

If it is not reasonable to exchange the health of the young against the health of the old, then many age and risk profiles have far lower risk than the general IFR, the basic problems I'm pointing become even harder and harder to detect and so to prove the policy is morally sound (assuming my moral supposition here).

However, I mean not to do any calculations here, just to outline a framework in thinking that we currently have no data upon which to make a robust conclusion (we have no calculations to make that would resolve the issues, we have only hope upon which the rebellion of the upperclass is based: that, whatever happens, we will do nothing to hold them accountable). The framework of thinking is simply why, before these vaccines, all our medical interventions are supposed to pass fairly long phase 3 and even longer phase 4 trials before we'd consider giving something to hundreds of millions, much less billions of people, and that we haven't magically come up with a substitute for numbers and time simply because our leaders wish it to be true.

The pharmaceutical companies have been racing to oblige, but there is a clear subtext to everything they actually say, which is: we have no idea what will happen but give us the money.

Literally everyone who gets the vaccine could get cancer and we'd have no way of knowing at this point. — boethius

OK, that seems like a good reason for you to refrain from getting vaccinated, the possibility of unknown, unforeseen consequences potentially caused by the vaccine. But I think that the possibility of unknown, unforeseen consequences potentially caused by the virus present an even larger risk. And in fact, we can add to that all the known and documented consequences caused by the virus and conclude that the risks involved with getting the virus are much higher than the risks of getting vaccinated. So, it's obvious to me that the risks from not taking the vaccine are far higher than the risks from taking it, therefore it's not a good reason to refrain from getting vaccinated, to me.

Remember thalidomide? Google if you don't.

Apparently the vaccine makes people sick as crap for 24 hours. Jeese!

Yeah. It all depends on the progress they've supposedly made. Here's Stat on mRNA approaches just a few years ago

mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects.

Moderna actually pinned almost its entire investment strategy on better mRNA delivery methods. Supposedly it now has them, but the failure to test in the immunocompromised wouldn't guarantee that (especially as heightened immune response seems to have been one of the issues and is coincidentally one of the factors in the severity of covid infection).

The difficulty as I understand it is both in delivering the mRNA, and in the body's potential reaction to the protein thus generated. Both have been implicated in autoimmune disease development. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26728772/

But I'm not an expert in this field, and those that are are heavily invested in the technology. I think the best indication os likely adverse reactions comes from the MHRA (the UK's FDA). In November they ditched their old adverse reaction reporting system because they said it would be unfit to cope with the number of reports that would likely result from the roll out of a vaccine (for balance, here's the Full Fact assessment of that news). Personally, I think the MHRA response is a bit weak, but others may be satisfied with it.

Both Astra-Zeneca and Pfizer have negotiated immunity from prosecution for liability under the Adverse Reaction Compensation Scheme, and the Government have closed off their own compensation routes for Covid vaccines...https://www.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vaccine-liability-idUSKCN24V2EN

Make of that what you will. The explanation given for both is the very large expected take-up. But in terms of impact - both on health sevices and community health robustness - that's no reassurance. We're not judging the vaccine, but the likely global reaction to its rollout.

The main point I want to emphasise though before this gets lost in the weeds of potential adverse reactions is that we are not comparing vaccines vs doing nothing. There are a lot of well-proven methods of reducing both transmission and severity of infection which could be vastly improved on given the same money.

I get the part about the lack of testing etc. and the lack of information wrt long term effects and whether it will even stop the pandemic.

I was under the impression that the basic technology has been around for 50 years. Is that still new in pharmacy? Sounds ancient.

Exactly right.

you know, until it turns out that you don't get covid but everyone that got the injection is rendered sterile. Then...actually, it won't matter much then.

Why would anyone be rendered sterile? I don't see the connection, you're just making up an imaginary scenario. What's the point? God might strike me dead with a lightning bolt when I walk out the door, as punishment for not believing in Him. Do you think that's going to make me believe in Him, or stay inside? Such scenarios are absolutely pointless unless you can demonstrate why the claimed result, sterility, is at all likely.

Mrna produces viral "spikes" to identify the "other". The body's immune system attacks the "other", as in the actual virus, and immunity is achieved. YAY. Version one.

Mrna produces viral "spikes" to identify the "other". The body's immune system attacks the "other", produced in the body, which is tah-dah! an injected autoimmune disease. The body, no longer able to effectively identify "other" elects to focus on sperm and ova as an "other" as well as the virus. Poof! sterile population and immune to Covid. Version 2.

Bottom line is, they don't know any long term effects. end of story.

@Book273 Book, I don’t understand why you are willing to wear a mask at work, because your boss requires it, but would be willing to refuse to be vaccinated, and thus lose your job...what’s the difference b/w wearing a mask and getting inoculated, if either saves your job? It seems to me that, by wearing a mask at work, you are compromising your fierce pro-choice stance; if you are willing to lose your job over vaccination, why not just go ahead and lose it over masks, and get it over with?

And why are you wearing a mask when you go out in public merely because it is mandated, when, as everybody can see, there is no enforcement of these mandates? That’s where you could really display, with no risk, your uncompromising individualism, and teach it to your children who, I presume, sometimes accompany you...

A man who risked his life climbing steep rock-faces without a tether is unwilling to have a vaccine injected into his body because he might become sterile??

why are you wearing a mask when you go out in public merely because it is mandated, when, as everybody can see, there is no enforcement of these mandates? — Todd Martin

What do you mean "no enforcement"? You cannot enter a grocery store, post office, bank, restaurant, courthouse, trainstation, &c., &c. without a mask. Not only are there average civilians surveilling and informing on noncompliers, but security guards are being hired to enforce this measure at the entrance of every public place. This is an early precursor of the surveillance state.

But perhaps it's not being enforced in your part of the world, if so I should definitely move there.

Mrna produces viral "spikes" to identify the "other". The body's immune system attacks the "other", produced in the body, which is tah-dah! an injected autoimmune disease. The body, no longer able to effectively identify "other" elects to focus on sperm and ova as an "other" as well as the virus. Poof! sterile population and immune to Covid. Version 2. — Book273

You haven't explained how use of the vaccine could suddenly cause an autoimmune disease. There's no reason to believe that the body would suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other". By your logic, me catching the common cold might cause my body to suddenly lose the ability to identify the "other", and trigger an autoimmune disease.

Your ideas savor too much of extremity without proportion, destructive of meaning and of freedom. — tim wood

I, like to proceed dialectically, to do stress tests on ideas to see what results (like Nietzsche's twilight of idols, or a particle collider).

Very postmodern, eh?

&

Permit me to retract my allegory, I am not committed to it enough to sustain any interest in it. Nevertheless, people are self-imprisoned, in the psychological sense, and covid hysteria is just more fodder to heap on the pile of evidence.

I'm getting vaccinated because I have a functioning brain. — Baden

Do you have a brain? Has your skull ever been opened so you could verify it? We need some hard evidence here.

S.I.R.S: Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. For those who don't know. Look it up, apply it globally, and good luck. — Book273

Exactly. It would almost be scary if it weren't so interesting to observe happening right before my eyes. And, I'm really excited about the whales succeeding us.

There are millions of healthy people wearing masks, not because they are sick and risk infecting someone, but because they are ignorant of whether they are sick or not. Ignorance, not illness. Conformity, not heroism. — NOS4A2

Conformity absolutely. Unfortunately conformity isn't for me, as I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion.

The inconsistency in it all is baffling. There are infinite things that we are ignorant of, which could potentially pose a mortal danger to humanity at large. I wish I could give you examples, but as I said, we are ignorant of these things. We should have think tanks working round the clock, speculating on possible dangers, and devising solutions and protocols to counteract them. I'm really tired of the same lame old bullshit about how covid is a unique case because it is contagious.