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Comment by mittermayr | Hacker News Reader

Sure, yet, I wonder why this seems to trickle out the day AFTER the first run, when, if it's true what you say (and I have no idea, so you certainly know more about it) they would have been able to avoid this entire report / potential fiasco (think of the anti-vaxxers) by announcing it a bit more boldly beforehand, no? Why let that bit of negative information overshadow the second day?

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It's more or less standard. _Any_ new drug is highly likely to exclude certain classes of people. This is particularly the case with vaccines where the risks of excluding a small number of people are generally low, as you're relying on herd immunity anyway.

I'm not sure if this was talked about before, but the fact that (like basically every vaccine ever) it won't initially be available to pregnant women was certainly talked about ahead of time. This isn't a fiasco; it's normal.

I think you miss the point entirely. The broader public's perception of the drug is instrumental to its adoption. If the public are led to believe that the medicine is unsafe, the result will be a reduced level of herd immunity as fewer people will take the vaccine.

Medical institutions (CDC, BMJ, Public Health England), the Government, and the broader media (newspapers, TV stations, companies like Facebook) are responsible for encouraging safe and efficacious use of medicine for the good of society, but they can't do that when the narrative is co-opted by anti-vaxxers, the right, and other shameless opportunists.

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