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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

#91

Post by _heimdall »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #65
_heimdall wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a very red state and mostly know Trump voters. I disagree with them on plenty of political topics (though that was true with Biden voters as well). I don't consider many of them hateful though, and they are helpful to neighbors. The last 2-8 years has felt very strange to me comparing what I experience day to day and how I often see our society more broadly described. I've lived in Seattle, Europe, and the…

It's very common for people who do or support terrible things to also be nice to their neighbors, or more generally to be nice to the people they can identify with and know on a personal level. They just don't see the people that they can't identify with as fully human and worthy of the same dignity. This is not to say that your neighbors are evil people - I'm just saying that you can't just judge people by how they…

I don't actually think I would have fallen into the "in-group" for most of my neighbors over the years.

In most cases I've had pretty wildly different political and religious views, and for a period was myself an immigrant that could hardly speak the local language.

My honest view is that people individually and in small groups are surprisingly friendly, helpful, and welcoming. Its only when the community or group gets too big and people start defining teams that things get nasty.

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

#92

Post by _heimdall »

unquietwiki wrote: post #78
_heimdall wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get vaccinated for Covid after spending months reading whitepapers and listening to vaccine experts discuss the pandemic as it played out through 2020. I experienced plenty of hate thrown my way for 2 or 3 years after that decision, including in speeches from the president. I don't know how to quantify hatefulness, especially in a large group, well enough to absolutely compare the two. I do strongly stand be…

I think part of why the shots became so controversial, is because the disease adapted anyway. You're basically having to decide on "less bad" vs "roll the dice" when you inevitably get COVID. People were already needing encouragement to get a flu shot; now you need two every 6-12 months? And then you had the whole sidebar discussion of getting Ivermectin, or snake oil silver supplements, or whatever else that was sug…

I can only speak to my experience in the US and Europe during the pandemic, but I didn't feel singled out because people were aware that the virus kept adapting.

That was actually one of the key lessons I heard from virologists early on in 2020 - viruses like this tend to mutate quickly and escape vaccine-induced immunity. It wasn't until the vaccines were announced that the story changed and we were being told that the vaccines were effective and would only require one or two shots for permanent protection.

It got ugly because scientific study, and more importantly the limits of scientific understanding, was thrown out in favor of a more religious take on the whole field. Media organizations, late night talk shows, and even comedians were doing segments shaming anyone that was attempting to do their ow research (aka learn, consider the trade offs for themselves, and practice informed consent).

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

#93

Post by _heimdall »

fzeroracer wrote: post #73
_heimdall wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't get vaccinated for Covid after spending months reading whitepapers and listening to vaccine experts discuss the pandemic as it played out through 2020. I experienced plenty of hate thrown my way for 2 or 3 years after that decision, including in speeches from the president. I don't know how to quantify hatefulness, especially in a large group, well enough to absolutely compare the two. I do strongly stand be…

This sort of rhetoric might've worked pre-Presidency but you would have to be either deliberately ignorant or outright agree with some of the hateful rhetoric of the president. Things like depriving transgender individuals of their basic rights, moving to denaturalize citizens, the white house posting illegal immigration deportation ASMR [1] and many, many more. [1] https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1891922058415603980

Oh I don't agree with any of the examples you raised. I also don't know how to compare levels of hate, though.

I took issue with Obama-era ICE raids, Biden's speeches regarding anyone that decided not to get vaccinated, Bush's description of really most of the middle east. Hell, even how many have talked about Russians as though every single Russian citizen supports the Ukraine war is hateful.

Hate is almost a given when groups are given a name and we begin othering people. That's nothing new to human history and has seemed to be more and more common over the last decade or two.

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

#94

Post by _heimdall »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #88
_heimdall wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making a lot of assumptions here. China has seemed to play a larger role in novel viruses with zoological origins. The average flu season isn't driven by novel viruses, if they were every year would progress more similarly to CoV2. I've never seen a study comparing the relative efficacy of culling vs. not culling chicken flocks. Unless you have sources for that, you're assuming culling is always best. One cons…

The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert. And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices. Trump is coming in and saying culling isn’t needed, and he is finding experts that agree with his opinion to back it up. Whatever policy choice coming up, it will be one where science is abused to justify a pre-determined decision rather than using science to come up with the ri…

> 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 birds to avoid human transmission when we don't even know if that's possible seems idiotic at best, sadistic at worst.

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

#95

Post by tayo42 »

_heimdall wrote: post #64
fzeroracer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly a conspiracy when they're literally outright saying this is what they're doing. Like Elon Musk is out there regurgitating every single stupid reason you can think of for dismantling the government, you can spend like an hour trawling his feed and realize that all of these conspiracies are just things he's outright admitting.

> It’s a collusion to create chaos and dismantle the system that can track what they are doing. You think “flu vaccine”, they steal elsewhere. Today a vaccine, last week an email to justify jobs, earlier USAID, next week something else. It’s a distraction. This is the comment I was replying to. I at least haven't seen any direct acknowledgements if this being the goal, and the comment or even refers to it as collusio…

> The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

Steve bannon, part of the first trump presidency

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

#96

Post by _heimdall »

tayo42 wrote: post #95
_heimdall wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a collusion to create chaos and dismantle the system that can track what they are doing. You think “flu vaccine”, they steal elsewhere. Today a vaccine, last week an email to justify jobs, earlier USAID, next week something else. It’s a distraction. This is the comment I was replying to. I at least haven't seen any direct acknowledgements if this being the goal, and the comment or even refers to it as collusio…

> The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Steve bannon, part of the first trump presidency

Sure, I saw that interview clip and raised it elsewhere on HN. That still doesn't move this from conspiracy to confirmed plan as described in the earlier comment.

There's nothing wrong with a conspiracy theory. They're just often backed by anecdotal or circumstantial evidence and aren't yet really proven. This still falls into that bucket.

Interestingly enough, plenty of conspiracy theories turn out to be at least partially true, the same could happen here.

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

#97

Post by Aloisius »

_heimdall wrote: post #89
dekhn wrote: post #72

Earlier 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…

> 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 over the millennia? Never mind those who suffered lifetime disabilities from deafness to warped limbs.

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

#98

Post by [deleted] »

dekhn wrote: post #76
oefnak wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be possible you are wrong, and it is as bad as everyone here seems to think?

I find (after a verrrrry long time of arguing with people on the internet), when somebody acts as obtuse as the person you're replying to, they really aren't ignorant, they're trolling, or looking for an emotional argument. One of the common tells is making an obtuse statement that's fairly vague (to draw out responses) and then writing long replies to those that show much more cynicism/disingenous, which provoke peo…

[deleted]

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

#99

Post by kmos17 »

_heimdall wrote: post #89
dekhn wrote: post #72

Earlier 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…

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?

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

#100

Post by seanmcdirmid »

_heimdall wrote: post #94
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert. And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices. Trump is coming in and saying culling isn’t needed, and he is finding experts that agree with his opinion to back it up. Whatever policy choice coming up, it will be one where science is abused to justify a pre-determined decision rather than using science to come up with the ri…

> 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.

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