141–150 of 434 posts
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If the vaccines were developed publicly there might not be any vaccines. This is not your ordinary flu shot.
About a quarter of the long list of vaccines was developed by public universities. Almost all were developed with billions in public subsidies.
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The Trump administration spewed misinformation from day one that caused massive dissonance in dealing with the problem. Saying they did better when they had literally no plan and let 400,000 people die is incredible dissembling and most likely a political statement than a logical one. They literally dissuaded people from using masks.
A lot of people in our democracy might not agree with your assessment of this pandemic. A lot of people feel that 1 in 750 people dying, mostly older with comorbidities, is not the disaster for society that some seem to think it is. A lot of people think that giving up a year or two of their social and economic lives is not worth trying to avoid a 1 in 750, or 0.13%, chance of dying. Especially those, like the young,…
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A lot of people in our democracy might not agree with your assessment of this pandemic. A lot of people feel that 1 in 750 people dying, mostly older with comorbidities, is not the disaster for society that some seem to think it is. A lot of people think that giving up a year or two of their social and economic lives is not worth trying to avoid a 1 in 750, or 0.13%, chance of dying. Especially those, like the young,…
Where did we come up with 0.13%? Approximately 0.3% of everybody in NYC died of COVID-19 so that's the lower bound assuming everyone in NYC was infected (and they weren't, of course).
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More people die the less you control the spread of the virus, the overall death rate at this point in time is not a good gauge of the potential impact of the pandemic.
But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I…
Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress.
This is the comment you've rewritten 1/2 hour after I replied.
Anyway, the federal government has lots of powers that apply, they even have a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intended to apply federal resources to controlling and preventing diseases.
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If the vaccines were developed publicly there might not be any vaccines. This is not your ordinary flu shot.
About a quarter of the long list of vaccines was developed by public universities. Almost all were developed with billions in public subsidies.
I never said a thing against public funding. That is not the same thing as developed publicly.
Thinking you can just go and develop a mRNA vaccine sounds like Dunning-Kruger to me. It took decades of research done by highly paid, highly specialized people highly driven towards a business goal and thus profit. I am not aware of any public entity doing that kind of research and actually successfully applying it too. (Yes, the development stands on the shoulders of public basic research. Not the same thing.)
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He didn't say that. He has made comments that we can likely get there sometime this year if we have widespread administration of vaccines. Which widespread vaccination is a lot cheaper than other measures, but it's not doing nothing either.
Fauci said we were getting close to herd immunity. He didn't say that. Not sure it matters when he recently admitted he was lying in stages about the percentages to encourage people to get vaccinated. After that and his self-admitted lying in the masking debacle, I'm not sure why anyone still listens to him. Credibility is one of the most precious resources in public health, and our public health authorities includin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
More people die the less you control the spread of the virus, the overall death rate at this point in time is not a good gauge of the potential impact of the pandemic.
But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I…
Here's the text you inserted after reply 2:
EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I read this but couldn't find a reference. My apologies.
It's fine to edit comments. It's ridiculous to substantially edit them in an attempt to rehabilitate them or re-contextualize replies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I…
But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. This is the comment you've rewritten 1/2 hour after I replied. An…
The feds have things they can do. I guess a lot of that is splashing money around. But it seems that the states have more directly and immediately applicable legal powers.
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I still don't know whether my parents should get the Chinese / Russian vaccines or not. I'm more concerned about lack of efficiency than safety. The problem is that after they get one of the vaccines, they won't have any chance to get more from the Pfeizer vaccine when it arrives.
The Sinovac CoronaVac efficacy is not useless, but not very good from what I've read. Gam-COVID-Vac on the other hand is around 91% https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/the-sputni... , which is quite good while not reaching Pfizer/BioNTech's 95% (the German firm BioNTech developed the vaccine, they partnered with Pfizer to test, manufacture, and distribute it).
Just as an example Sinovac is not even used in old people in China as far as I know.
There’s a similar question with AstraZeneca right now, German vaccination committee would like to see more Phase 3 data on old people before moving into Phase 4.
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> EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. Ouch. Reading this from Canada hurts. (We are way behind EU and I would be very surprised if we get ahead of them at any point).
Canada has no large scale vaccine production capacity so even if they could license the production they couldn't produce any decent amount any time soon.