vidoc

I don't know, the idea that the spread of the Delta variant can be attributed to the "unvaccinated", whose morality is so low that they also happen to often be "anti-mask" as well. This is the kind of scapegoating i would imagine CNN do (I'm being unfair here, CNN would probably add a bit of Russian disinformation as well for good culture war mesure.)

I'm ready to change my mind tho if you back your statement with facts.

> Unfortunately unvaccinated people took off their masks and then Delta happened.

That's a CNNesque statement right there.

(replying to your last message)

If you read my initial message one more time, you may notice that I mentionned a google serach container. I'm not certain it is the appropriate term but basically, you can ask a question to google and it will select an authoritative answer from a trusted source (Reuters, AP, etc).

Back in the early day of the vaccine, if you were to ask google whether the vaccine prevents the transmission of the disease, you'd get this: "here is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent people spreading the disease." at the top of the index. You could click to have more context, but I hope you are now getting the point.

Let's just not be in denial that misinformation exists on both sides.

Do you not understand where the problem is here?

If the scientists were, at the time, not yet sure how the vaccine affected transmission. The correct 'fact check' should have been:

"There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines prevent people from spreading the disease."

instead of

"There is no conclusive evidence to claim COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent people spreading the disease."

To be clear, I was just merely trying to track back where this '100%' claim was coming from as I also didn't remember such a bold claim being ever made, let alone by Fauci.

Now, I invite you to make google searches with a date range and you will see that such studies claiming 100% efficacy on the product on kids started to appear in the early days actually:

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Since 100% is a pretty awesome figure, my theory is that there must have been quite a bit of press coverage at the time and I have no doubt a lot of people got confused.

At some point there was some PR about 100% effectiveness of the product on kids, according to, the guys who actually manufacture the product :)

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

> They never claimed it stopped infection

True, but they sure as hell implied it did. For example, this fact check appeared in the search container of google early on: note the use of the double negative in the VERDICT.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-transmission/fa...

> I can mute myself and go do something else.

That's exactly what Jeffrey Toobin said as well :P

> In your original post, you referred to the claim that it costs billions of dollars as a "scam"

Yes and I still mean it, it is a scam because now people cite this study and think 'cost' where in reality they should think 'opportunity cost'.

I'm not walking back anything, this is literally a talking point coming from some lobbyists to justify the widespread practice of fake pricing of drugs in the US.

Let me just copy paste the relevant section in the document that we are referring to.

"First, we summed direct and indirect research and development spending on a therapeutic agent in each year. All sums were inflation adjusted to 2018 dollars using the US consumer price index.

Second, we accounted for failed projects by dividing total research and development expenditures on a drug in a particular year by the corresponding aggregate phase-specific probability of success, similar to what was done in previous studies of costs of drug development.3-7 For example, for each drug, we divided phase 1 costs in each year by 0.138, which accounted for spending on the other 6.2 phase 1 trials that would fail, on average, for each successful development program. We used phase 1 rates to adjust preclinical expenditures, and we used the proportion of biologics license applications and new drug applications that are approved by the FDA to adjust costs once these applications were submitted to the agency for regulatory approval. Licensing fees and milestone payments, where captured, were adjusted using the success rate for the trial phase that was ongoing when the payments were made. When a phase shift took place within the financial year, we allocated the cost proportionally to the time spent in each phase. For example, if development moved from phase 1 to phase 2 on July 1 of a given year, we divided the costs equally between each phase. Similarly, in the year of approval, we multiplied the total cost by the fraction of the year elapsed by the time of approval. Hence, if a drug was approved on July 1, we only counted 50% of the costs in the year of approval since firms often incurred postapproval costs related to pharmacovigilance or testing in other indications.

Third, we applied a real cost of capital rate of 10.5% per year (ie, weighted average cost of capital in the pharmaceutical industry), as in the DiMasi et al study.4 Cost of capital is the required rate of return for an investor and encapsulates a risk-free rate (ie, opportunity cost) and premium based on the likelihood of business failure.24"

> Hmmm.... so you're arguing that it doesn't take years of time and billions of dollars to bring a drug to market?

You just made a straw-man argument.

I posted a 2 lines comment highlighting the fact that cost and opportunity cost are two very different things, to the point that the claim that taking a drug to market costing literally billions of dollars to poor drug companies can be taken with a grain of salt.

You main take-away was that I am "arguing that it doesn't take years of time and billions of dollars to bring a drug to market".

> The cost of R&D to bring a new drug to market is around $1 billion

This is one of the most well know, tired, scammy talking point big-pharma has used for decades.

Hint: in the very document you linked, htere is a 'costing method' section, you might want to read it a bit more carefully and you will discover the big scam: opportunity cost, not cost.

> they personally care a lot so this story gets a ton of media attention.

Exactly, conveniently they are over dramatizing a story about their main competitor on the advertisement dollars market.

For what it's worth, I had this thing in my basket since 10-ish pacific, during all this time, i was stuck at the order checkout 'comfirm purchase' step.

In google fashion, it'd fail in very diverse ways: 1) mostly 'OR_PCVH_01' "unexpected error occured". 2) sometimes a troika of codes with the label "your purchase has expired". This would be ~5% of the time. 3) sometimes no error at all, just a blank page.

I was rather afraid to attempt going back to 'store.google.com' to checkout my cart again and find the items sold out, but I courageously overcame my fears and decided to stand up for myself. Consumer me went ahead, created a new tab, clicked the basket and pressed 'checkout'. And after the one or two 'OR_PCVH_01' and some blank page, boom, it went through.

Long story short, i suspect that error message 2 is misleading in what it means. It doesn't mean 'try to click this comfirm purchase' button later, it means try to "checkout your cart again".

I'm now seemingly at the very end of the order process, clicking the 'confirm purchase' button, the wheel turns, then nothing. Sometimes i have a popup with an obscure error code, sometimes not. It feels like doing a bitcoin transaction :P

Awesome awesome! I'm seeing some progress, it seems quicker and quicker to land on this R013 page. Fingers crossed!

Anyone knows if having some items in the basket while being unable to complete the order somehow guarantees a certain spot in the queue on store.google.com?

I want this phone badly, I want to be part of this inclusive camera experience, but due to systemic issues in the ordering process, I am still unable to checkout.

I think we can safely call this a train-wreck of a launch!

I'm now making progress: Error code: R013

I'm getting a 500 from the get go on store.google.com

what a joke!

It's incredible how CRINGE these over-produced events have become. Everything is totally cliche and looks like some Hollywood idealized view of the world garbage.

They are on a PR roll! I saw one of their billboard today with just "Thank you, science".

I've noticed a big inflation of the use of the word 'harm' in the last few weeks actually!

Many years ago, 60 minutes interviewed her about these kind of dealings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZ7DdT5ZoI

> I'm guessing that there must be an intuitive advantage like measuring the fuel economy of a car in gallons per 100 miles rather than the usual miles per gallon, but I'm not seeing it. Can you explain further?

Sure, ARR is more interesting for risk/cost benefits analysis. So much so that it is part of the official FDA guidelines expressed in this document ("Communicating risks and benefits: An evidence based user guide" [1]).

"Another statistical choice is between reporting relative or absolute risks. Because there is no way to infer the latter from the former, absolute risks are always more informative. Doubling a risk means very different things if that entails going from 10% to 20% or from 0.001% to 0.002%.Even when they contain the same information, different summaries can highlight different perspectives, hence bias choices."

Besides, if you compare the ranks of the main vaccines in each stat, you can see that it is not the same information expressed differently:

ARR: AZ 1.3%, Moderna 1.2%, J&J 1.2%, 0.84% Pfizer RRR: 95% Pfizer, 94% Moderna, 67% J&J, 67% AZ

1: https://www.fda.gov/media/81597/download

> Effective at doing what, exactly?

I think at this point all the 'efficacy' numbers given by drug companies for the various vaccines on the market are: relative risk reduction of hospitalization or death.

Not uninteresting per se, but would be even more interesting if paired with the absolute risk number [1].

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7996517/

Last time I drove by, they literally installed a wall of virtue signal signs at the entrance of the town. This thing is rather comical.

But, during this pandemic, Bolinas showed its real colors: https://abc7news.com/coronavirus-in-bay-area-cases-corona-vi...

Not exactly 'hippie' in my book.

> I don’t know what’s going on here either with masks.

I live there too, and I share your feeling big time. Just to give you a little idea of the local mentality with regards to covid: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101883465/vaccinated-dont-nee...

> What makes bunting dishonorable?

Well, it is obviously subjective, but bunting can be used to prevent no-hitter which is why I personally see it as disgraceful.

> Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "stoppage"? When players or coaches call timeouts (I don't know if this is the official name), even tho there is no clock to interrupt, to interrupt the flow of the game at key moments.

> I don't understand what you mean by your "dishonorable gameplay" example. What does amortizing a ball mean to you?

It took me some time to find out, but this is what I was refering to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunt_(baseball).

Now truth be told, one thing that makes me love baseball is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Gaedel#At_the_plate.

In a way, the drama is a genuine part of the sport. Many matches became memorable just due to these theatrics.