I am very concerned that moderna is such an incredibly inexperienced company when it comes to actually delivering products. Companies like Pfizer and Astra etc have lots of infrastructure for manufacturing and logistics, as they’ve been making drugs for years. Moderna hasn’t ever released a product before, and now we need them to successfully make hundreds of millions or billions of doses of it very quickly? I have every confidence that the drug itself is safe and effective, but I fear that they won’t be able to deliver on the quantities required.
It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
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Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#192All correct. But also, disturbingly Utilitarian. Release vaccines before they are tested, and withdraw those that cause more deaths than they save? Trading lives for lives, coldly. There are costs to calculated Utilitarianism. The damage to public confidence in vaccines springs to mind. If a vaccine is provably killing 1% of those receiving it, yet saving the lives of 2% (and more once herd immunity is reached) it ma…
2 main comments:
1) your example of 1% death rate would be detected very early in a rollout, and would represent something akin to a 10000x worse vaccine outcome that has ever been experienced. The worst vaccine ever is generally regarded as causing 1 in 10,000 narcolepsy.
2) the word "approved" is misleading. Of you change this to say "banned" or "not banned", this reads very differently. The requirement to ban everyone from taking a vaccine in order to mitigate some extreme long tail event and maintain public confidence is hard to justify on utilitarian grounds, but pretty much any other ethical framework.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
So $25 million on a decentralized system to spread the idea not to wear a mask or social distance during a pandemic, and another $25 million on a vaccine.
You’re being downvoted presumably for snark, which as a lover of snark I can’t support. However, your point is also mislaid: there were plenty of anti-maskers at the time of the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Ignoring or selectively using facts to support the narrative you wish were true did not start with the internet!
There was also heavy government censorship of the press during WWI, which suppressed early reports of the pandemic. That should be a cautionary tale to people in the present day who want more centralized control over what people can say online - the censors might not always be on your side.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#194I could write Twitter in a weekend.
You're being downvoted but the point is valid. To say that this was built in two days is to completely ignore the near decade of investment into mrna vaccines. Total nonsense.
It's a totally valid point, but one that the article makes. The article is not disagreeing with that sentiment at al.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
So remember that’s tens of thousands of annual deaths with a vaccine. And what good have lockdowns really done? The virus seems to spread regardless. Look at all those European countries the US was compared to during the summer as an example of how to “do it right.” Not sitting so pretty right now...
The lockdowns in Europe worked. Full stop. Case rates dropped dramatically. Some of those countries are "not sitting pretty right now" because they ended their lockdowns. The answer is not "lockdowns don't really do any good." The answer is "don't prematurely end your lockdowns." Now that can be burdensome. You can do a middle ground (limited re-opening). That works too, but you have to be very careful and keep a clo…
I don’t think any European country has completely lifted their lockdown restrictions. All of it is a “limited re-opening.” Perhaps respiratory viruses spread much more effectively in the winter versus the summer? Maybe that’s it? Nah, it must be that everyone in Europe has perfect hygiene and practiced social distancing perfectly in the summer and they’ve all forgotten how to do those things now.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's well known that respiratory diseases cause permanent damage. We see it with flu and we see it with covid-19. "Damage" covers a huge range though. In June estimates were that 1 in 5 people who needed intensive care for covid were left with permanent damage. > People infected with the coronavirus may be left with permanent lung damage. Doctors are reporting growing numbers of people who still have breathlessness a…
Of course we know that respiratory infections can cause long-term effects. That is almost certainly true also of covid. What is not shown at all is that it turns you into a “mentally challenged cripple.”
Why did you say this, if you don't believe it?
> Because none of this is remotely evidence-based.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Americans would align more to stop it if it were deadlier is my point. There would be the same stupid outcry. Look at the history of the Spanish flu. It's the same crap.
Yeah, that’s fair. There were mask protests during the Spanish Flu, which had a much higher CFR.
Sorry if I came off as a jerk.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many who argue against lockdowns, but I haven’t yet seen an argument for that approach with an example of how it could look (for death toll and the economy). Has any country managed both those things without a lockdown? A hand waving “that approach could never work in X country because it’s so different there” seems the standard response to any strategy that has been proven to work.
Sweeden is one example, the death toll is still manageable and the life is pretty much still normal. Not a country: florida, it is one of the state in the usa that has the least covid related restriction. They are doing very well. Went there myself to visit recently. Its not hard to see why lockdown is not worth it. According to cdc, covid has very very low ifr : 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0…
It gets real dark real fast. The Post link suggests that their approach has worked, as long as you value a human life at no more than $1.1m. They are approaching 8k deaths and their approach is suggested to have added 5k to that.
“ Assume that the differential Swedish approach dampens the GDP fall this year by 1 percentage point. This represents a gain of approximately $5.6 billion. Also suppose that the approach has caused 5,000 extra deaths — a reasonable guess from comparisons with other Nordic countries. How could one estimate that loss of life in economic terms? The value of a statistical life, used by the Swedish Transport Administration in its cost-benefit analyses of investment in traffic security, is approximately $4.6 million. Using this number, the economic cost of lost lives would be as high as $22.9 billion — clearly outweighing the benefits from the smaller GDP fall. One might argue that the value of lost lives should be set much lower, as the vast majority of deaths have been among elderly people, with fewer years left to enjoy life: 89 percent of the dead in Sweden have been above 70 years of age, and 67 percent above 80. One reaches the break-even point in my calculation if one lowers the value of an average life lost to $1.12 million. For the Swedish approach to be “profitable,” the average life lost must be valued lower than that.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/20/sweden-eco...
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course we know that respiratory infections can cause long-term effects. That is almost certainly true also of covid. What is not shown at all is that it turns you into a “mentally challenged cripple.”
Why did you say this, if you don't believe it? > Because none of this is remotely evidence-based.
I'm responding to the conclusion that Covid will turn you into a "mentally challenged cripple." There is no evidence for that.
Re: It took two days to develop Moderna’s vaccine
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
To get worse than COVID you'd need a virus that takes a long time to develop symptoms and then has a high death rate. In that scenario there would be a lot more public fear and we'd have an easier time keeping people at home. So I'm still of the opinion it's harder to have a worse situation than COVID.
If the death rates in children vs. elderly were reversed with COVID, all hell would have broken loose. There is nothing people are more protective over than their kids. Behavior would have been completely different.
Agreed. Nothing is more important to most than the future (kids). The past seems to be a whatever. We don't learn from the past at all. Sadly.