I am surprised so many people are suddenly in full "believe the science" mode, especially when big pharma companies weren't exactly the most ethical players on the market in the past.
I just trust the scientific process. Yes, the conclusions currently drawn from the evidence can be wrong. I'm not disappointed if it is. If scientists gain new insights, it just means the proces is working.
That said, I believe the legal repercussions of lying about these studies will be too high to stomach, so I do trust the companies to be truthful here. That doesn't mean that it is irrational to choose not to trust them.
Again though, the fact that it is inevitable that we will eventually find out is why I personally believe the data today - I trust the company to not sacrifice long-term credibility for short-term gains.
Also science can be corruptible as well. It was once scientific fact that non-whites were inferior to whites. The "father of gynecology" experimented on black women because it was scientific knowledge that black women don't feel pain.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/james-mari...
It was once "science" to cure sick people with leeches. It was once science to give "misbehaving" women hysterectomies or lobotomies. One of the most famous ones being rosemary kennedy.
> If scientists gain new insights, it just means the proces is working.
I guess the victims of mengele and U-731 appreciate your confidence in the "process".
For someone so critical of religion, you have an almost blind and zealous and unquestioning faith in the "scientific process".
When money, corporations and politics are involved, you should be skeptical. Even if it is "science". And pfizer and these companies aren't in the business of science, they are in the business of making money.
"Trusting something" !== "An almost blind and zealous and unquestioning faith"
Trusting the scientific process doesn't mean you shouldn't be skeptical. It means the opposite. If a company lies, we will find out eventually. You can look at the evidence. There will be independent data eventually. You don't need "faith".
Why you needed to involve Mengele to make an argument is beyond me. Invoking Godwin's law will never help you win a discussion.
Sure, we should be skeptical of the government line on the pandemic, but why should we be skeptical of a product that comes from a company whose product must work for them to make money?
I think instead of letting our previous biases in one arena influence our current decision making in another, we should look at the evidence, make an independent decision, and then loop back on that when the evidence changes. Government bad != private company creates product that doesn't work
And what's with the trust in the market to fix things? The 737-MAX crashes did not affect Boeing share price or Boeing management in any meaningful way, neither are safety problems with the new covid vaccines going to affect Pfizer or Moderna.
> I am surprised so many people are suddenly in full "believe the science" mode
Two reasons:
1. We want our lives back. Covid sucks and people are getting tired of the precautions. Many of us are still being careful to protect others, but "covid fatigue" is very real. A vaccine promises tangible light at the end of this tunnel.
2. While many of the efficacy trials are shorter than normal, there's no reason to believe that these vaccines are dangerous. mRNA ones, in particular, basically can't give patients the virus itself, unlike many other kinds of vaccines.
Yes, the vaccines may be riskier than we're accustomed to. GBS is a 1 per million side effect in most vaccines, with some proportion of these people having permanent side effects. I wouldn't be surprised if we find that these vaccines are more like 1 in 25k. But that's better than the odds even young people face from COVID-19.
Thinking about it from a societal perspective, I'm willing to take a small risk from getting the vaccine to avoid inadvertently getting and spreading the virus to more vulnerable people like my grandparents.
From an overall risk/reward perspective, I would include the risk of subsequently infecting your parents, grandparents or other vulnerable/high-risk family/friends with severe disease as a 'potential long term side effect' of covid in a young/low-risk individual.
(1) My company switched to work from home two or three years ago, I've just recently subscribed to Walmart+ so I've got free grocery delivery for a year, I've gotten into the habit of making my own meals which is healthier and cheaper than how I ate pre-COVID so I'm going to stick with that even after COVID is gone, and my socializing was almost all online before COVID.
It is no problem for me to keep mostly quarantined for another year.
(2) The few times in the next year I will have to interact closely with other people will probably be with people who have taken it (e.g., doctors and dentists).
(3) While it is true that mRNA vaccines cannot give you the thing they are vaccinating against, it is still possible they will have other side effects. As far as I know there is no way to determine the long term risk of a medicine other than just waiting to see.
(4) I live in a county that has not been hit hard.
(5) It looks like there are at least two vaccines that are going to get quick approval, and I believe there are more deeply into their phase 3 tests.
Putting this all together, it seems I personally have a pretty low chance of getting COVID, and if I do get it a pretty low chance of spreading it while I'm still asymptotic, so can afford to wait and see if any of the vaccines have longer term issues or if one of them is clearly better than the others.
I'll be the first in the queue personally. Lets get back outside, even I'm bored of these walls now.
Excellent! That is exactly what I want. The more people who take it because they are either at high risk, or because avoiding exposure seriously harms their lifestyle, the more data there will be for me when I decide to take it.
As far as side effects go, the kind of things that take years to show up are usually things that you'd only see in a medicine that you have to take regularly.
The latest research suggests that we probably get long term COVID immunity. Those few cases of people getting it twice were probably people who got a small viral load the first time and didn't develop strong immunity.
All the COVID vaccines look like they will be take once (or take twice over a short period) and that's it, so we almost certainly won't see anything like people developing cancer from it 5 years later. Those things take times to build up, like say we had with Actos and bladder cancer, with each time you take it adding to the risk.
If there are long term bad effects from the COVID vaccines, the underlying damage will happen within a couple weeks or so of taking them, and then should start being detectable in the health statistics of people who took it versus people who did not within a year.
Thus, at the latest we should know about any long term effects by the time my Walmart+ subscription is up for renewal, which is perfect timing.
Good points regarding the build up, thanks for the response
If we're wrong we can be disappointed about it later