FDA Approves First Covid-19 Vaccine

Your list of statistical errors:

* Millions of COVID cases were never counted in those statistics; people who never got tested, due to being asymptomatic, low-symptomatic, having poor access to testing due to a vulnerable socioeconomic status, catching it before tests were widely available, and the natural rate of false-negatives due to self-swabs. It is very likely that, actually, the official statistics don't capture the majority of total COVID cases. This isn't a clerical rounding error; the real denominator in that death rate is somewhere 2x-10x lower than published, and we'll never know exactly where. [1] [2]

* This situation has not improved since the beginning of the pandemic. While testing is far more widely available now, the secondary issue of non-sterilizing vaccine immunity is now in play; the vaccines are by-and-large "leaky", but tend to result in far less severe, oftentimes even asymptomatic, infection. Many of these people are not getting tested, but are still getting COVID, and thus the count is underreported. Or, maybe they do get tested, and it comes back positive, but should that test actually be included in the overall COVID death rate? After-all, because the vaccines are good at reducing the chance of death, the COVID they have isn't quite the same as the COVID an unvaccinated individual would have. I don't know, but its a valid question which the broad statistics do not care about; its COVID, its included in the aggregates.

* Here's an interesting fact most people don't know about: testing sites, of course, gather data about the patient before a test. One of those pieces of information is: are you vaccinated, when were you vaccinated, which vaccine. Pretty basic stuff. Except, the systems CVS and Walgreens (two of the largest testing providers in the US) used to gather this data, for many months early in the vaccination cycle, did not ask this, or did not ask for all three pieces of information. It was only within the last month that Walgreens started asking for all three.

* Let's continue down this path of "fun reporting": I had COVID four weeks ago. The first question everyone asks is: Oh, you got a positive test, which variant was it? I've been asked this dozens of times, which makes me think many people don't generally realize: the nasal swabs cannot determine the variant. In fact, states do not run variant tests on every swab! Generally, they run variant tests in aggregate on a statistically significant subset of swabs, then report the data in a range of once a week, to once a month.

* Many state reporting agencies are actually really bad at differentiating between "positive tests" and "positive individuals". In other words, the most "responsible" citizens, those who get tested at the start, then once or even twice at the end of the 10 days, are in many jurisdictions actually screwing up the statistics.

* Many deaths were counted in those statistics. Oftentimes, over-counted, at least in the context you're using those statistics in (what is COVID's death rate?). First world hospitals, having pretty excellent access to these tests as the pandemic entered its teenage stage, entered a pattern of testing every admittance, even for symptoms unrelated to COVID. If they were positive, and they died for any reason, COVID was, of course, listed on their chart; it then got counted as a comorbidity, not the true cause of death. State reporting agencies still count it as a COVID death; they don't discriminate.

* But, of course, many deaths were undercounted; especially those who died before seeking medical care, or before testing was widely available.

* And that's not taking into consideration tertiary deaths caused by the state pandemic response, not COVID itself; millions of people delayed seeking regular and even urgent medical care due to fear of the virus. Many of these cases were not even at the behest of the patient, but rather due to medical offices delaying appointments or moving to virtual appointments, which offer a far lower standard of care. The impact to generalized mental health, social development of children, adolescents, and young adults, socioeconomic development of young adults, and many other facets of our society, will continue to be studied for the rest of our lives. Let's say it turns out that a broad, authoritarian lockdown saved a million lives, but it is also directly or indirectly traced to 20 million new cases of clinical depression; is a lockdown a good idea? Even with hard numbers like that its actually not obviously clear one-way or the other, and the worst part is: the people making these decisions never have the numbers. They're always acting on intuition; it takes years to even realize that this possibility even exists, at any magnitude, and we never know the true numbers. Did you know suicide is the 10th leading cause of death? Did you know that social isolation increases rates of clinical depression, which is positively correlated with suicide? Quarantine saved lives; how many did it cost? How many will it cost? But we're super duper sure it was the right call... right?

* Drunk driving is far, far, far more common than the arrest rates would suggest. Like, its actually insane how common drunk driving is. Cops are not gods. They do not catch everyone. One million people were arrested in 2016 for drunk driving; its likely that 50 million+ people drove above the legal limit in that same year, multiple times each.

This is just me, outlining the uncertainty of our world. Because here's the kicker, here's the Topic Of Choice: We should mandate vaccinations. You sure? Are you absolutely certain, beyond any doubt, knowing how much we don't know, that its actually the right call for our society?

You've thought through the medical consequences. There probably won't be any en mass, sure. What about social ones? We've got a nation of tens of millions of people who don't want to be vaccinated, where personal freedoms run deep for all its pros and cons, and you so strongly believe that our society will be Better if we force these people to undergo a medical treatment they don't want. Do you actually think this is such an easy decision? That there wouldn't be social consequences? That the mandate would go out, and everyone will forget that the government just shit all over their perceived freedoms (whether or not those freedoms are legitimate is irrelevant; they believe they have them, we live in a democracy, and there are 500 million+ guns in America).

The world is very, very complicated. You're making broad, authoritarian suggestions based on an unbelievably erroneous analysis of data, yet you were totally convinced you're right. The people in charge are totally convinced they're right. No one is right. No one has access to all the information. We live in a very complex, very scary world where even the most equipped, powerful, rich states cannot have even 2% of the information they need to make the right decisions.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18272-4

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221137972...

Without claiming any knowledge of this particular case, the FDA has processes for accelerating approval for medication for which mass efficacy testing can only be done in the long-term, but testing for adverse side-effects is already complete. The recent approval of Alzheimer's medication[0] is one example of that.

From a quick Google, it seems that Phase III trials are about comparing a new treatment to existing alternatives, rather than monitoring side-effects. Perhaps the testing simply can't be complete before 2023, since it involves checking long-term immunity? In this case, the FDA may have approved the vaccine because they are confident that the risk of negative side-effects is sufficiently small, and that the vaccine gives some benefit - even if testing hasn't established exactly how much.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/28/alzhei...

For me it's the fact that I'm making the decision based on emotional factors. I don't trust big pharma and I don't trust the vaccines. Should be reason enough. There is plenty of things we don't trust in life, so we don't use those things.

That's an interesting quote and you're 100% correct. However you only gave a snippet of the quote. The full transcript is:

Commentator: If the Trump administration approves a vaccine before or after the election should Americans take it? And would you take it?

Harris: If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the Doctors, tell us we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it I'm not taking it.

Harris is alluding to the fact that we should listen to people who actually have medical experience and know what they're talking about. You have to remember this was only a few months after Trump had tried to play doctor on TV by saying:

"So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in one minute, that's pretty powerful."

Just like fauci

2 Shots of vaccine to end covid -> Most Americans will have to take booster shots -> Booster shots may not be one time thing