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FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

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Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#101

Post by _heimdall »

kmos17 wrote: post #99
_heimdall wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this meeting is cancelled, we would expect the vaccine to be less effective and would see greater impact (simply because it wasn't tailored to the be the most likely effective vaccine), but due to all the variables I mentioned it could even appear that "things got better after we did this" (post hoc ergo propter hoc). There is an alternative here - a population left to fight an outbreak through natural immunity…

Vaccines reinforce natural immunity. So to be clear you’re arguing let’s kill a whole bunch of people to “increase” the population’s strength, although you express some mild concern about the “cost” of doing that? Is that the argument here?

Vaccines attempt to induce natural immunity not reinforce it. This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine. An effective vaccine stimulates the immune system after introducing enough material similar to the natural pathogen that the immune system can learn to respond to it. I could just be misunderstanding your meaning hear, but "reinforce" sounds to me more like an additional layer of defence - a beam reinforcing a homes foundation is adds additional strength to existing beams rather than making the existing beams themselves stronger.

I'm not arguing that we kill anyone. You're implying that choosing not to intervene with vaccines is murder, which I would disagree with, but even then I left open the door for that cost to not be worth it.

My argument here was simply that if vaccines aren't used, as happened for effectively all of natural history, the population remaining (assuming some remain) is stronger for it.

That doesn't meant we should choose not to administer vaccines if we have them and they are proven safe and effective. That also does not mean that we should actively kill anyone, eugenics is a pretty messed up idea.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#102

Post by _heimdall »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #100
_heimdall wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert. You are taking an agency's assumption as a fact though, its functionally yours at that point. It doesn't matter if someone else says it, it matters if you agree with the logic of how they got there. > And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices. Human transmission has yet to be proven. Culling hundreds of millions of bir…

> Human transmission has yet to be proven. Only the quacks say that, the science is firmly in the corner that not only is bird (or bat) to human transmission is possible, it has already happened a few times this season. This is where having someone like Trump as president isn’t just annoying, but downright deadly.

> Only the quacks say that

Not long ago the CDC itself was saying that mammals couldn't catch this strain of avian flu and we had nothing to worry about. Then they found a few milk cows believed to be infected, but they assured us it couldn't kill cows and that the infection couldn't be transmitted through milk.

Where along the way did we go from scientific knowledge that it couldn't jump to humans to only quacks believing such nonsense? More importantly, where are the controlled studies proving transmission from infected birds to humans?

Proving transmissibility of such a pathogen would require something along the lines of Koch's postulates. Unless I missed something extremely important, we haven't done this type of study yet.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#103

Post by defrost »

_heimdall wrote: post #101
kmos17 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccines reinforce natural immunity. So to be clear you’re arguing let’s kill a whole bunch of people to “increase” the population’s strength, although you express some mild concern about the “cost” of doing that? Is that the argument here?

Vaccines attempt to induce natural immunity not reinforce it. This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine. An effective vaccine stimulates the immune system after introducing enough material similar to the natural pathogen that the immune system can learn to respond to it. I cou…

> This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine.

You've missed a significant strength of vaccines by focusing on individuals rather than on populations.

Vaccines slow the transmission rate through a population and reduce the severity of infection.

In a population with a high vaccination rates those few with weak immune systems have less exposure to infection.

It's similar to back burning and fuel reduction in combating wildfires.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#104

Post by _heimdall »

defrost wrote: post #103
_heimdall wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccines attempt to induce natural immunity not reinforce it. This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine. An effective vaccine stimulates the immune system after introducing enough material similar to the natural pathogen that the immune system can learn to respond to it. I cou…

> This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine. You've missed a significant strength of vaccines by focusing on individuals rather than on populations. Vaccines slow the transmission rate through a population and reduce the severity of infection. In a population with a high vacci…

I understand the argument for herd immunity, I've just never seen a study proving it out. The idea is compelling and modelling studies seem to show that its possible, but that is still different from a controlled study showing it happening.

Early on in the Covid pandemic response claims of herd immunity were being thrown around and Fauci was claiming a threshold of 60-65% vaccine rate for it to work. As time went on that number kept going up, eventually he admitted that they used a low number to start with only because they didn't think people would comply if the required vaccine rate seemed unrealistically high.

Herd immunity is almost certainly a thing at a certain immunity rate, the question that goes unanswered is what that rate actually is. For there to even be a case for vaccine mandates, of even just the arguments that people ought to get vaccinated due to herd immunity, we have to know the % of immunized population and the risk of vaccine side effects.

My understanding is that we don't have a solid understanding of the exact tipping point for herd immunity, and that at least during the covid pandemic response we didn't have a solid understanding of the true risks of adverse side effects to the vaccines either.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#105

Post by stubish »

triceratops wrote: post #49
fzeroracer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flu vaccines target specific strains that they expect to be common during flu season. In order to do this, the FDA collaborates with a bunch of different agencies and groups around the world to do collect data, track flu viruses etc. The sort of thing that a government agency is generally really good at doing and companies are generally really bad at. Normally it's around this time period that decisions around wh…

> manufacturers have no clue what to do. Sounds like bad news. But can the manufacturers meet among themselves to hash it out? Would they? And if they did, would they make a worse or different decision than if the FDA were involved? Just trying to see a way this could turn out ok.

The decisions will still be made, but by other Northern Hemisphere countries. Manufacturing might remain local, since the infrastructure is there. Or maybe that will get shutdown if it is cheaper to ship from India or China.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#107

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

dekhn wrote: post #3
techorange wrote: post #2

Is there a strategy here, or is this all emotional. Or is the strategy like, we can reduce social security spending if more old people die of the flu? This isn't entirely cynical, I do assume there are some pragmatists who might think this way.

There is no strategy here except to disempower the establishment.

They are the establishment. The goal is destruction of government for tax breaks.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#108

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

_heimdall wrote: post #47
techorange wrote: post #2

Is there a strategy here, or is this all emotional. Or is the strategy like, we can reduce social security spending if more old people die of the flu? This isn't entirely cynical, I do assume there are some pragmatists who might think this way.

Attempting to steel man the decision, they may not believe the vaccines work or are worth the expense and overhead. They may even go one step deeper and believe the vaccines aren't proven properly to know whether they work well enough.

Peter principle meets Idiocracy. People will die unnecessarily because of incompetency and failure of leadership.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#109

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #29
techorange wrote: post #2

Is there a strategy here, or is this all emotional. Or is the strategy like, we can reduce social security spending if more old people die of the flu? This isn't entirely cynical, I do assume there are some pragmatists who might think this way.

We simply now have a completely nuts anti-vax Secretary of Health. He probably actually thinks he's saving people from vaccine injury.

Nuts, crims, and greedy billionaires out to blow up all of government because they don't understand it, privatize everything, and slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while lying about the tax breaks they're going to get out of it.

Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US

#110

Post by cantrecallmypwd »

jmclnx wrote: post #7

Well I guess once the Bird Flu jumps to Humans, which due to Trump's and Musk's Stupidity will happen, and next years flu arrival we will have another yet another Trump Caused pandemic.

To be fair, a fair share of pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and climate change common root cause is industrial meat agriculture. Ano-ochlo-kleptocrats are and will screw up the basis of organized civilization in America because they don't know anything about anything.
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