FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
111–120 of 134 posts
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the results will be somewhat predictable: the impact flu has every year is variable, with some years being incredibly bad and some being not that bad. Part of that is attributed to the vaccine rate, and how effective the vaccine is (this meeting is key to decision making about our expectations and how to make an effective vaccine), and part is simply random (based on too many correlated values, preventi…
> 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…
We know how many people died before we had vaccines, especially children. There is no argument here. We eradicated or almost eradicated a whole bunch of terrible diseases with vaccines.
What you're proposing here is simply murder. We know what would happen, many more people would die.
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#113Well 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.
> ... "because they don't know anything about anything."
And because like Trump and Musk, many (most?) of them truly believe they know more about everything than anyone else (more than even the experts).
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Idiocracy is how we got here, not principle.
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#115Is 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.
> They may even go one step deeper and believe the vaccines aren't proven properly to know whether they work well enough.
They may even go further still and claim that the shot causes the flu—like RFK recently did with measles:
> Kennedy claimed the outbreak was likely caused by vaccines — contrary to evidence that showed low vaccination rates as the culprit. The false theory seems to stem from a misreading of a California Department of Public Health report that mentioned cases of a vaccine-induced rash, not vaccine-induced measles.
* https://www.nbcnews.com/news/texas-measles-outbreak-anti-vac...
Measles used to not be a thing:
> The US declared that measles had been "eliminated" in 2000, but the country has seen outbreaks in recent years amid a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment. The last US measles death was in 2015, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 bel…
I'm not following what CDC said as I'm not from the US, but in my country we had early warning of a big flu season. Poultry farmers were advised to get the flu vaccine in October last year (it's decentralised in my country so it might only have been a local directive), so I doubt a scientific paper ever said 'mammals can't catch this strain'.
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> They may even go one step deeper and believe the vaccines aren't proven properly to know whether they work well enough. They may even go further still and claim that the shot causes the flu—like RFK recently did with measles: > Kennedy claimed the outbreak was likely caused by vaccines — contrary to evidence that showed low vaccination rates as the culprit. The false theory seems to stem from a misreading of a Cali…
> They may even go further still and claim that the shot causes the flu
If by "the flu" you're referring to the disease rather than a specific pathogen, a vaccine can cause the flu. Its common for vaccines to cause symptoms similar to the pathogen, though those symptoms are usually more mild.
Think about it for a second. A vaccine is meant to induce an immune response to allow the body to learn the pathogen before a natural infection. Symptoms are little more than the physical effects of your immune system doing its job and responding to a pathogen. Why wouldn't a good vaccine induce similar, though likely less severe, symptoms?
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#118Earlier 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…
> a population left to fight an outbreak through natural immunity will be stronger in the end. Most people get the flu multiple times during their lives already. When is this natural immunity supposed to kick in and stop the elderly and infirm from dying from it? Hell, why didn't this natural immunity protect the hundreds of millions of people who died prior to the introduction of vaccines from reoccurring outbreaks…
The flu isn't a stable thing though, there are multiple strains of what we call "the flu" and its constantly adapting/mutating. Previous infection is no guarantee of protection, just like previous vaccination us no guarantee.
> When is this natural immunity supposed to kick in and stop the elderly and infirm from dying from it?
That's a whole different ball game. You're talking about immunocompromised individuals, their immune system isn't well prepared to respond to natural infection PR vaccination. Vaccines can still help, though they're usually less effective and more likely to cause symptoms similar to the original disease you're vaccinating against.
A vaccine isn't a magic bullet for preventing death. Vaccines still depend on the immune system doing its job effectively.
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#119Earlier 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…
> a population left to fight an outbreak through natural immunity will be stronger in the end. Most people get the flu multiple times during their lives already. When is this natural immunity supposed to kick in and stop the elderly and infirm from dying from it? Hell, why didn't this natural immunity protect the hundreds of millions of people who died prior to the introduction of vaccines from reoccurring outbreaks…
> Measles mortality fell markedly (>90%) from the 19th century to mid-20th century prior to introduction of measles vaccine or the widespread use of antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections [1][2]
This story is similar for most infections we now vaccinate for, death rates were dropping dramatically years before vaccines were introduced.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-inf... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Measles+mort...
Re: FDA meeting to pick next winter's flu shot is canceled, in ominous sign for US
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 bel…
I'm not following what CDC said as I'm not from the US, but in my country we had early warning of a big flu season. Poultry farmers were advised to get the flu vaccine in October last year (it's decentralised in my country so it might only have been a local directive), so I doubt a scientific paper ever said 'mammals can't catch this strain'.
My point wasn't that transmission had been scientifically disproven though. My point was that the CDC itself was saying that this avian flu couldn't jump to humans - they no longer say this but the earlier commenter claimed that only a quack would say human transmission hasn't been proven.
Where I would expect a scientific paper to come in is to provide a controlled study show transmission from an infected bird to a healthy human. Maybe that has been done, but if so I haven't seen it or ever heard it mentioned anywhere.