That’s not true for younger people. The risk of the vaccine is probably higher than the risk of the virus for them. Search elsewhere in this thread.
Wide spread poor choices in industry backed by science is not only possible, it's frequent and common.
To tell people to listen blindly and ignore all the evidence to the contrary _because_ of statics, popularity and consensus is the definition of anti-science.
However, to touch upon your point about the recent evidence-based medicine and hospital management movements - yes, they were once sorely lacking, with existing pre-modern medical practices handling quite a bit of load. However, the consensus is that evidence-based practices are already well established for high risk areas of practice and only increasing as time goes on elsewhere.
It's important to note that modern versus pre-modern medicine isn't a hard line, but a continuum we're continually shifting to the left. It's very much more like the border between generations instead of the hard line between decades.
In any case, new practices/devices/medicines/etc... are held to a much higher standard than legacy approaches. This is a very good thing as they are, generally speaking, much more powerful tools. We've figured out how to understand evidence and understand when we have enough to make good decisions and now we use it. We didn't always, but we're working towards replacing what came before but until then we're often forced to use it because we've nothing better or it hurts worse to do nothing. That's how most things are - that's how medicine is.
> To tell people to listen blindly and ignore all the evidence to the contrary _because_ of statics, popularity and consensus is the definition of anti-science.
The consensus of experts on the validity of the collection and interpretation of data, relying on the tools of statistical analysis of that data to make sound decisions about the applicability of that data as evidence, in relationship to deciding the answer to question at hand - relying of multiple points of view and power to cross check, reproduce experiments, and systematically eliminate biases - is exactly what science is. Is the process perfect? Absolutely not! Is it better than taking everything in and saying "well, both sides make good points so I guess we'll never know", "look at all this untrustworthy, untested data I don't know how to interpret but with which I agree so the mainstream opinion must be wrong" and "who trusts academics anyway"? You know, actual anti-science? Absolutely, yes.
At least for "new devices" I really wish this was consistently the case.
However there are many horror stories (including here on HN), about new medical devices being grandfathered in using some prior device or category certifications (from rough memory of the description).
And it really sounds like they shouldn't be. :/
That being said, there are other HN posts about rigorous things some new device manufacturers have had to go through too.
Hospitals are glorified hotels with super over-priced roomservice and activities. But the business model is very similar.
"Conspiracy" is just rhetoric. It's a word to shoo people away who aren't inclined to think things through. Replace "conspiracy" with "paycheck", and you've just explained how the world works. There are chemical plants, with hundreds of employees each, that have been poisoning communities for generations. And most of these employees live in the same communities they've been poisoning! And the situation persists! And you're rolling your eyes at us for doubting that the medical establishment--the 3rd leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, with its whopping 19.7% of US GDP--couldn't hide their boo-boos (even if they tried!) behind esoteric epidemiologyese?
I believe that's at the heart of what we're discussing. There's an important distinction to be made between actual malice and simple ignorance. This is not a Russel Bliss/Times Beach situation, as you seemingly imply. This is many independent actors all working independently on many potential solutions, each of which stand to gain massive financial benefit for exposing malfeasance. I would not confuse that with "looking the other way for a paycheck". It's quite the opposite, in fact.
Or, to paraphrase Lewis Grizzard:
"One boy, one whole brain. Two boys, half a brain. Three boys, no brain at all."
Dr Google & Dr. Wikipedia: 4
GPs & Specialists: 1
And the one ailment that the system did successfully treat was primarily a result of misinformation that the system perpetuated. If the system were functioning, there would be no way for an amateur to outperform them so consistently.
edit: and since HN is slowposting me now:
I mentioned a study in my original comment:
https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.long
While this comment made no claim to being a study. It is highlighting an extreme improbability. If random taco cart guy is besting the average software dev 80% of the time, that's a pretty clear sign something is wrong with the field.
edit 2: and to joshuamorton
Mine was by a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins and his research assistant, subsequently published in the British Medical Journal. Yours is a blog post by a "science communicator," whatever that is supposed to be. Of course the BMJ article would be widely criticized by an industry that claims almost 20% of US GDP. They can afford to have it criticized--by professional criticizers no less.
And the BMJ article is but one of many on the misrepresentations and oversellings of modern medicine. Read Ioannidis, or Mendelssohn, or Illich, or Mullins, or so many others!
As an old person, who has seen a lot of people cut short by the hospitals, all of these takedowns have held true to life. I've seen heart patients MRSA-ed to death by the hospitals, who would have been just fine if they stayed home; cancer patients killed off by post-radiation pleural effusion long before the cancer would have gotten them; people losing 1/3 of their blood volume, or suffering from intestinal perforations, from "routine" colonoscopies.
The primary contribution to human life expectancy in the last century was not mainstream medicine. It was public hygiene.
It doesn't pass the smell test (it would imply that more than 1/3 of deaths in hospitals are due to medical errors, which is, suffice to say, silly), but is highly enthralling, as it allows one to believe they're better than the experts.
Which isn't to say medical personnel are perfect or don't make mistakes, but it is to say that if you believe that study, you should really reevaluate both how you analyze medical studies, because you're doing a bad job of it, and reevaluate your worldview, and see if you're aiming to be different solely to be different.
And the BMJ article is but one of many on the misrepresentations and oversellings of modern medicine. Read Ioannidis, or Mendelssohn, or Illich, or Mullins, or so many others!
As an old person, who has seen a lot of people cut short by the hospitals, all of these takedowns have held true to life. I've seen heart patients MRSA-ed to death by the hospitals, who would have been just fine if they stayed home; cancer patients killed off by post-radiation pleural effusion long before the cancer would have gotten them; people losing 1/3 of their blood volume, or suffering from intestinal perforations, from "routine" colonoscopies.
The primary contribution to human life expectancy in the last century was not mainstream medicine. It was public hygiene.
edit: And if you, as a literate and numerate person, ever get sick, trust but verify. Listen to the doctor, but also do your own research. I can guaran-damn-tee that you will obtain vastly superior results. It's not that all doctors are scoundrels looking to kill you & take your wallet. It's that they are afflicted by the same tunnel-vision, group-think, & subconscious self-interest as any other group of professionals. When the only tool you have is a hammer...
When you have created an unfalsifiable position, you lose all credibility as you've ventured totally into conspiracy, not science or reason or empiricism or rationality or whatever.
> Listen to the doctor, but also do your own research. I can guaran-damn-tee that you will obtain vastly superior results.
Of course, and I said as much! But your fearmongering and aspersions on the medical community are both wrong and harmful. And doubling down on them isn't done out of evidence, it's because you need to feeling superior to the experts. That's stupid. The experts are usually right. Not always, but "usually*, and you're citing complete nonsense along with occasional mistakes by experts to imply that they're usually wrong. That's bad and dumb and wrong.
> Dr Google & Dr. Wikipedia: 4
> GPs & Specialists: 1
cool! mine have been internet-1, professionals-5, which cancels out your own sample data.
consequently, you've got no more complaints about this, being an empiricist who follows the data and everything, right?
And the fact that they simply changed the definition of what a pandemic is, seemingly on a whim, to no longer include death rates, with no scientific intervention, is that something we should accept as some kind of perfect and neutral decision making that's obviously in the interest of.. whom exactly?
better phrased: 'I, personally, as 1 of the people in the world, argue this thing'
so, argue it, but try to stick to specifics: "This is the direct evidence that the CDC killed scientists who disagreed with this study" or whatever the specific conspiracy theory is as it pertains to this article
In most countries it's literally official policy to fire doctors if they question the vaccine or speak out against it.
You know, the thing about silenced people is just that - they're actually silenced. You don't hear from them. So, all these people shouting about being silenced while also shouting about the vaccine not working or not being necessary and posting links to studies and case reports and nonsense?
Yeah, they're not being silenced. It's just that the evidence they're posting just isn't good evidence. The studies they're posting just aren't good studies. The case reports they're posting, well, they're just that - single case reports. Case reports do not generalise to populations.
That's all.
"independently verifiable incontrovertible evidence of a show-stopping problem" seems a fairly high bar.
The risks from COVID have been fairly well understood for a while now, if you're young and healthy and have no comorbidities the risk of dying from it is quite simply vanishingly small:
EDIT: so a hypothetical 19 year old unvaccinated me has a 1 in 1,000,000 risk of dying after catching COVID according to that University of Oxford model.
The burden of proof is on those who are arguing for a specific action or inaction to cause a specific result. So let be the weight of the clear and convincing evidence against the other - all of it.
Is there a serious study showing that the young and healthy (those w/o any comorbidities) are at significantly increased risk of these due to catching Covid itself? Those issues were affecting people long before Covid arrived.
QCovid predicts that that hypothetical 19 year old unvaccinated me has a 1 in 62,500 risk of "catching and being admitted to hospital with COVID-19". For context: what's the risk of ending up in hospital after a car accident in your part of the world?
> This simple focus on death rates misses the mark entirely
Some would say that two years+ of singular focus on Covid is what's missing the mark.
As my doctor keeps telling me, there are plenty of other viruses and plenty of other health conditions.
Covid is simply too new for any of us to have reliable long-term data. Even the UK's ONS said so in the Spring[0]:
"More deaths were registered in young people aged 15 to 29 years in England in 2021 than the average number registered in 2015 to 2019; however, there was no excess in 2021 for deaths from circulatory diseases.
We do not yet have a complete picture of how the coronavirus pandemic has affected deaths in young people, because it takes a long time to investigate deaths from external causes; we will continue to monitor the safety of vaccines and the changes in excess deaths.
Early indications show deaths in 2020 increased for some causes, particularly suicides in young females and accidental poisonings (mostly drug poisonings) in young males"
So let's put Covid to one side and talk about seasonal flu, since that's been with us for long enough.
The US and Canada were (at least relatively recently) the only places that recommend everyone over six months to get the (seasonal) flu vaccine.[1]
"Apparently, not a single country in Europe asks the general population to seek that same kind of protection, according to Robb Butler, the World Health Organization technical officer in vaccine preventable diseases and immunizations in the organization's Europe office in the Netherlands.
That's because global health experts say the data aren't there yet to support this kind of blanket vaccination policy, nor is there enough money"
The USA is "the land of the medicated" according to a NBC article[1] and "What the drug companies are doing now is promoting drugs for long-term use to essentially healthy people. Why? Because it’s the biggest market."[2]
YMMV, but $BigPharma's shareholders would definitely prefer you to take more medicine, and not ask too many questions.
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/17/health/flu-vaccine-policy... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/america-land-medi... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp...
Sorry - your argument just do not hold whatever the underlaying question is.
Goverments and most probably the rich can keep the secrets from us, in particular when the topic is complex.
Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions of this article are subject to criticisms that are being considered by the Editors. A further editorial response will follow once all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full.
We really can't infer that the risk from vaccination is higher from this study.
No, that's been published in Scientific Reports not Nature. Scientific Reports has a vastly higher acceptance rate, engages in pay to play, and published a picture of Donald Trump hidden in baboon feces. You're relying on junk science.