Coronavirus: COVID-19

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Gavrushka » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 11:48

I guess if there are some long term complications with the vaccines, we'll just have to deal with them as they occur, but right now the immediate problem is to stop this planet haemorrhaging so many vulnerable lives. Nobody can predict the future, but there will always be those who fixate on a 'zombie apocalypse' scenario when it comes to mass vaccinations and the like, but I doubt any serious individual is envisaging a side-effect worse than making people dead. - Thing is, vaccinations are focussed on those most likely to end up with severe complications from the disease, and even then they're given the option as to whether to be vaccinated or not.

I can't really comprehend the one-sided argument of those against the vaccination when no one is disputing there could be health implications of taking it. - There are immediate health implications of *not* taking it, and if you come to the decision taking it is more dangerous than not, well that's your choice. But for the love of god, don't spread disinformation, possibly dissuading others who may be easily influenced from taking it too.

The other thing you have to bear in mind is that there comes a point when the lockdown has such an averse affect on government finances that impossible decisions have to be taken. - I already feel restricting overseas aid (UK) is one of those decisions. - Government's first priority must be to protect the most vulnerable, and to do that they must have an income. - Mass vaccinations are the only way for the economy to start its slow recovery. Eventually, I imagine even more distressing decisions would need to be taken by any government, whatever the party.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Tamina » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:23

Alan Phipps wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 11:35
Don't forget that this is a global pandemic that has to be tackled on a world-wide basis. If a few nations were to enact national policies not to mass vaccinate against Covid despite it being reasonably safe for them to do so, then I suspect the rest of the world would soon consider those nations as unsafe and restrict all travel to and from them. They would in effect become pariah nations.
This reminds me of the smallpox vaccination, which left a scar on your skin. I don't know how they did it in other countries but in Germany they applied the vaccination on your right shoulder and you weren't allowed to travel without that scar, like some kind of vaccination passport. Nowadays, vaccinations don't leave a scar so that is out of the question, obviously. However, having some kind of border control to check your vaccination status is enough. And if your own people are all vaccinated travelling to and from those nations would be safe anyway.
So I don't think what you say is very realistic or reasonable, despite for nations like China with their "protecting their people from the evil barbaric unvacinated democratic nations"-narrative.

One thing I know for absolutly sure: People here would riot against any vaccination laws and will compare themselfes to jews in the Third Reich wearing yellow badges. 100%, no doubt.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:41

While I agree that having your own vaccination policy is a good factor for reducing risk, the take-up will never be 100% and we don't yet know the extent to which vaccination stops transmission as well as infection. There will always be risks in allowing visits to and from known Covid hot-spots and most governments will probably try to avoid those.

You also said "However, having some kind of border control to check your vaccination status is enough." That sounds very much to me like a policy of restriction of permission to travel. (Note that above I said 'restrict' and not 'ban'. :wink: )
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Ketraar » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:44

Tamina wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:23
One thing I know for absolutly sure: People here would riot against any vaccination laws and will compare themselfes to jews in the Third Reich wearing yellow badges. 100%, no doubt.
Hyperbole aside, there sentiment is not wrong per se. This is a slippery slope or a double edged sword or a coin with two sides, whatever your preferred phrase would be. Once you start to make stuff mandatory its yet another step towards authoritarianism. Seems like an exaggeration but its actually not. There is always a fine balancing act between forcing people to do "the right thing" for the benefit of society (usually easy when looked at it from the point of the ones agreeing with it) and not fall into a police state. If we just make a simple thought experiment, would one arguing for monitoring people's vaccines then also not argue to monitor people who say, smoke? Maybe we can also monitor people that eat too much, or badly? The impacts on society from having to deal with health issues directly related to life style choices are rather significant, why would we then not also monitor those?

While I agree that a vaccine is very important and everyone that can should take it, I feel the freedom for people to be idiots is more important (why do cars go way above the allowed speed limit?) and we need to find practical ways to inspire people to the right thing without resorting to imposition, its the societies fault that education is failing and critical thinking is at a record low. These need fixing properly.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BrasatoAlBarolo » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:07

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:44
Tamina wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:23
One thing I know for absolutly sure: People here would riot against any vaccination laws and will compare themselfes to jews in the Third Reich wearing yellow badges. 100%, no doubt.
Hyperbole aside, there sentiment is not wrong per se. This is a slippery slope or a double edged sword or a coin with two sides, whatever your preferred phrase would be. Once you start to make stuff mandatory its yet another step towards authoritarianism. Seems like an exaggeration but its actually not. There is always a fine balancing act between forcing people to do "the right thing" for the benefit of society (usually easy when looked at it from the point of the ones agreeing with it) and not fall into a police state. If we just make a simple thought experiment, would one arguing for monitoring people's vaccines then also not argue to monitor people who say, smoke? Maybe we can also monitor people that eat too much, or badly? The impacts on society from having to deal with health issues directly related to life style choices are rather significant, why would we then not also monitor those?

While I agree that a vaccine is very important and everyone that can should take it, I feel the freedom for people to be idiots is more important (why do cars go way above the allowed speed limit?) and we need to find practical ways to inspire people to the right thing without resorting to imposition, its the societies fault that education is failing and critical thinking is at a record low. These need fixing properly.

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The difference is that you can't infect people with your high cholesterol. And you can't infect people with damaged lungs after smoking a cigarette (you can't in fact smoke in a lot of places...).
I'm not totally pro mandatory vaccinations, but I think for some people covid vaccine should be mandatory (e.g. medical professionals, the elders and, in general, people that could be particulary susceptible to the worst consequences of a covid infection). And it's not really for their own safety, but to avoid the collapse of the healthcare system (full hospitals, not enough staff, ...) we're experiencing today.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Tamina » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:34

Alan Phipps wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:41
You also said "However, having some kind of border control to check your vaccination status is enough." That sounds very much to me like a policy of restriction of permission to travel. (Note that above I said 'restrict' and not 'ban'. :wink: )
"Restricting all travel" indeed sounded to me like "banning all travel", a misunderstanding on my part :)

@Ketraar I agree. It is just that some people use those hyperbolic statements to push their political and extremistic propaganda through social media, with the intend to brainwash more and more people. Or simply to make money. It is another form of a virus - infecting brains on a social level.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by red assassin » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:39

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:07
The difference is that you can't infect people with your high cholesterol. And you can't infect people with damaged lungs after smoking a cigarette (you can't in fact smoke in a lot of places...).
I'm not totally pro mandatory vaccinations, but I think for some people covid vaccine should be mandatory (e.g. medical professionals, the elders and, in general, people that could be particulary susceptible to the worst consequences of a covid infection). And it's not really for their own safety, but to avoid the collapse of the healthcare system (full hospitals, not enough staff, ...) we're experiencing today.
Yes, this is a really important point. If I smoke two packs and drink a bottle of whisky every day, I'm largely harming myself. (Some more complicated questions of child endangerment if I've got kids.) Or if I refuse to wear my seatbelt, again, mostly harming myself, possibly also anybody else in the car with me - yet it's still a legal requirement to wear my seatbelt! On the other hand, if I refuse to give my kids their measles vaccine and tell all my friends to do the same, if enough people listen we get a measles outbreak that affects not only all our unvaccinated-by-choice kids, but also any kids they come into contact with who are, say, immunocompromised and can't have the vaccine, plus any who are in the 5% for a 95% effective vaccine, etc etc. Vaccines mostly work through raising herd immunity high enough that the diseases can't spread, not through providing perfect protection for every individual. If the vaccination rate drops below the necessary level to maintain herd immunity, in order to protect public health the government must in some way incentivise more people to get the vaccine. Ideally that's through education and so forth, but that's slow - in the case of, say, active outbreaks or an international pandemic, stricter measures may need to be taken. Samoa's measles outbreak last year after vaccination rates dropped sharply (following a case of medical error administering a vaccine) is worth reading about: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/ ... d-in-samoa
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by CBJ » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:08

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:44
While I agree that a vaccine is very important and everyone that can should take it, I feel the freedom for people to be idiots is more important (why do cars go way above the allowed speed limit?) and we need to find practical ways to inspire people to the right thing without resorting to imposition, its the societies fault that education is failing and critical thinking is at a record low. These need fixing properly.
I'm not going to disagree with either the principle that the failings in education should be fixed, but there are occasions (and this is one of them) when we don't have the luxury of the time to actually make that happen. The tidal wave of ignorance and misinformation is not something that we're going to solve overnight, or even in a year or two, and we can't all just sit on our high horses and talk about principles while we watch millions of people die, many of whom are not the ones who are ignorant.

That said, I don't think we actually need to make vaccinations mandatory on a national level, and I'd be somewhat surprised if many countries do. I think it's both proportionate and perfectly reasonable for there just to be specific restrictions if you decide not to. Some schools don't accept children without appropriate vaccination certificates, for example, and that is a sensible model. You can choose not to get your children vaccinated, but since your decision affects the lives and health of other people with whom they will be in close contact, you have to accept the consequences of your actions. The same should apply in this case. If people are free to choose not to get vaccinated then employers, schools, businesses and venues should be free to choose not to let you in.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Ketraar » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:28

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:07
The difference is that you can't infect people with your high cholesterol.
No but you can still drain resources required to treat other people, occupy hospital beds, etc. its not really too different. You can just make arbitrary exclusions as you like, it does not retract from the fact that you are forcing people to do something they dont want wrt to their body, regardless how absurd it may seem to you the principle is the same.
CBJ wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:08
I'm not going to disagree with either the principle that the failings in education should be fixed, but there are occasions (and this is one of them) when we don't have the luxury of the time to actually make that happen. The tidal wave of ignorance and misinformation is not something that we're going to solve overnight, or even in a year or two, and we can't all just sit on our high horses and talk about principles while we watch millions of people die, many of whom are not the ones who are ignorant.
Yes we do, in fact its EXACTLY what we should do. Rushing in to take invasive measures wrt to people liberties in the name of terrorism, health, {insert reason} is a old tradition and slowly but surely choice is removed, Patriot Acts, China's Social Points and the likes creep into peoples life and before we know it we get used to it, all in the name of comfort.

Again, the principle needs to be first (its in the name :roll: ) and not put aside every time its inconvenient, we just need to take responsibility and find ways to a solution that is healthy in both aspects. Sure have some restrictions, people's choices can and should have consequences, but avoid the mandatory stuff as much as possible. Its not too different from the mandatory voting and that (the lack of people engaging in politics) probably kills more people.
Tamina wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 13:34
@Ketraar I agree. It is just that some people use those hyperbolic statements to push their political and extremistic propaganda through social media, with the intend to brainwash more and more people. Or simply to make money. It is another form of a virus - infecting brains on a social level.
Yeah tough luck, we need to find ways to counter that with BETTER statements, better education, not censorship or autocracy.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Vertigo 7 » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:43

At a bare minimum, people should understand any trepidation some may have about putting things in your body that the Trump administration has had a hand in creating. I'm not suggesting that Donald "Very Stable Genius" Trump actually made the vaccine, before some Confucius wannabe distorts that, but putting political pressure on the development of this to allow Trump to say "look, I did this. No one else did." should be enough to give people pause before they put it in their bodies.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by red assassin » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:46

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:28
Yes we do, in fact its EXACTLY what we should do. Rushing in to take invasive measures wrt to people liberties in the name of terrorism, health, {insert reason} is a old tradition and slowly but surely choice is removed, Patriot Acts, China's Social Points and the likes creep into peoples life and before we know it we get used to it, all in the name of comfort.

Again, the principle needs to be first (its in the name :roll: ) and not put aside every time its inconvenient, we just need to take responsibility and find ways to a solution that is healthy in both aspects. Sure have some restrictions, people's choices can and should have consequences, but avoid the mandatory stuff as much as possible. Its not too different from the mandatory voting and that (the lack of people engaging in politics) probably kills more people.
"The government mandating <specific thing under discussion that I don't like> is a slippery slope that leads to authoritarianism!" as an argument is utterly without merit. The government, for example, mandates that we don't murder anybody, and severely punishes people who violate that. Few people worry about that as a slippery slope to authoritarianism, but there's not actually a difference logically. It's just that "don't murder people" seems reasonable as a government edict to you and "get a vaccine" doesn't. Which is exactly the point here - in a democratic society we must decide what level of regulation we choose to accept in exchange for safety. Crying "slippery slope!" any time the government governing comes up gets you out of confronting the actual issue each time. Here, that issue is "how many people - potentially including you and your loved ones - are you personally prepared to condemn to death or serious injury in the name of 'personal freedom'"? As CBJ says, I don't think it's likely that many democratic nations will actually institute a universal mandatory vaccine, but there are likely to be restrictions on what's allowed for people who choose not to take it, and that is a reasonable thing for a democratic government to do to avoid large numbers of deaths.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Ketraar » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:04

Thats a fallacy though. The gov dos not mandate to you not murder people, its a Human Right that we as a society defined. Even so, there are many exceptions to murder people, even the gov allows you to murder in self defense and that has varying degrees, wars are legal murdering of people. That train of thought is not logical at all imho. Again its a long way from "we should all follow these guidelines for the sake of all" to "everyone not doing it gets a stamp marking them as the other". The later is where stuff tickles my spidy senses. Its fine to have consequences, like mentioned, you need to be vaccinated to work in healthcare or the like, but segregation is not something people should take lightly regardless the inconvenience and yes even some risk. And yes its a slippery slope.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by red assassin » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:22

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:04
Thats a fallacy though. The gov dos not mandate to you not murder people, its a Human Right that we as a society defined. Even so, there are many exceptions to murder people, even the gov allows you to murder in self defense and that has varying degrees, wars are legal murdering of people. That train of thought is not logical at all imho. Again its a long way from "we should all follow these guidelines for the sake of all" to "everyone not doing it gets a stamp marking them as the other". The later is where stuff tickles my spidy senses. Its fine to have consequences, like mentioned, you need to be vaccinated to work in healthcare or the like, but segregation is not something people should take lightly regardless the inconvenience and yes even some risk. And yes its a slippery slope.

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Ketraar
"Human rights" are a law defined by governments like any other. Sticking a fancy name on it does not change the fact that any actual protection of your "human rights" come down to what it says in applicable law, e.g. the UK's Human Rights Act, the US Constitution's Bill of Rights, etc. "We as a society" define them - by picking the governments that write them into law. You are, of course, entirely correct that there are cases in which killing is allowed (though they're generally not defined as "murder"), but that's exactly the point. We as a society, via our governments writing and interpreting laws, make determinations on what restrictions are reasonable in the name of maintaining a stable society... in exactly the same way as "we as a society" determine, for example, what measures are reasonable to vaccinate the population against a deadly pandemic.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Mailo » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:50

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:44
Tamina wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 12:23
One thing I know for absolutly sure: People here would riot against any vaccination laws and will compare themselfes to jews in the Third Reich wearing yellow badges. 100%, no doubt.
Hyperbole aside, there sentiment is not wrong per se. This is a slippery slope or a double edged sword or a coin with two sides, whatever your preferred phrase would be. Once you start to make stuff mandatory its yet another step towards authoritarianism. Seems like an exaggeration but its actually not. There is always a fine balancing act between forcing people to do "the right thing" for the benefit of society (usually easy when looked at it from the point of the ones agreeing with it) and not fall into a police state. If we just make a simple thought experiment, would one arguing for monitoring people's vaccines then also not argue to monitor people who say, smoke? Maybe we can also monitor people that eat too much, or badly? The impacts on society from having to deal with health issues directly related to life style choices are rather significant, why would we then not also monitor those?

While I agree that a vaccine is very important and everyone that can should take it, I feel the freedom for people to be idiots is more important (why do cars go way above the allowed speed limit?) and we need to find practical ways to inspire people to the right thing without resorting to imposition, its the societies fault that education is failing and critical thinking is at a record low. These need fixing properly.

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Ketraar
Strangely enough it appears to be fine to monitor peope who say, take heroin or crack or any other number of substances except tobacco or alcohol without devolving into the authoritarian police state you paint. Also, pretty much everywhere it is illegal to go above the speed limit no matter how fast your car can actually go. The freedom for someone to be an idiot ends where it threatens the freedom of others. I'd argue only an idiot would fire an automatic rifle in random directions. Freedom for idiots?
My wife cannot take any vaccinations due to several severe health reasons. Why do you value the freedom of others to be idiots more highly than her right to live?
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by BrasatoAlBarolo » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:51

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:43
At a bare minimum, people should understand any trepidation some may have about putting things in your body that the Trump administration has had a hand in creating. I'm not suggesting that Donald "Very Stable Genius" Trump actually made the vaccine, before some Confucius wannabe distorts that, but putting political pressure on the development of this to allow Trump to say "look, I did this. No one else did." should be enough to give people pause before they put it in their bodies.
Nobody is "unsure about getting the shot" because of Trump saying it's "his vaccine" (which clearly isn't). If you exclude anti-vaxxers (because - I think we can agree on that - they're just mad men), some people questions the speed of the testing process and is worried about the possibility pharmaceutical societies and research centers have "skipped some step" to rush and save as many people they can. Honestly, I don't feel like saying they are 100% wrong, because it's outside of my area of expertise, but I'm sure that the normal process is slowed a lot by bureaucracy, that in this case has been put aside (that's the main cause of the shorter timespan we can have a working vaccine for covid 19).
I can understand their perspective, even if I don't agree with it. And I can understand how "mandatory vaccines" are felt like some for of authoritarism (every mandatory thing is, even wearing seatbelts and, if you think about it with a bit of cynical and ultra-anti-capitalist mind, you'd think it's all about money: accidents are expensive for the community, as curing unvaccinated covid infected people is expensive).

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by CBJ » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:04

Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:28
CBJ wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:08
I'm not going to disagree with either the principle that the failings in education should be fixed, but there are occasions (and this is one of them) when we don't have the luxury of the time to actually make that happen. The tidal wave of ignorance and misinformation is not something that we're going to solve overnight, or even in a year or two, and we can't all just sit on our high horses and talk about principles while we watch millions of people die, many of whom are not the ones who are ignorant.
Yes we do, in fact its EXACTLY what we should do.
Let me get this straight, you just said that we should let millions of innocent people die or suffer long-term illness in order to protect the "freedom" of a few people who have read some garbage conspiracy theory on Facebook and don't believe in vaccines?

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Vertigo 7 » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:16

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:51
Vertigo 7 wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 15:43
At a bare minimum, people should understand any trepidation some may have about putting things in your body that the Trump administration has had a hand in creating. I'm not suggesting that Donald "Very Stable Genius" Trump actually made the vaccine, before some Confucius wannabe distorts that, but putting political pressure on the development of this to allow Trump to say "look, I did this. No one else did." should be enough to give people pause before they put it in their bodies.
Nobody is "unsure about getting the shot" because of Trump saying it's "his vaccine" (which clearly isn't). If you exclude anti-vaxxers (because - I think we can agree on that - they're just mad men), some people questions the speed of the testing process and is worried about the possibility pharmaceutical societies and research centers have "skipped some step" to rush and save as many people they can. Honestly, I don't feel like saying they are 100% wrong, because it's outside of my area of expertise, but I'm sure that the normal process is slowed a lot by bureaucracy, that in this case has been put aside (that's the main cause of the shorter timespan we can have a working vaccine for covid 19).
I can understand their perspective, even if I don't agree with it. And I can understand how "mandatory vaccines" are felt like some for of authoritarism (every mandatory thing is, even wearing seatbelts and, if you think about it with a bit of cynical and ultra-anti-capitalist mind, you'd think it's all about money: accidents are expensive for the community, as curing unvaccinated covid infected people is expensive).
Well, that's kind of one in the same, too. So here's the thing... if every vaccine development prior to COVID was delayed simply for the sake of bureaucracy, then our governments have catastrophically failed us in the past and we should pat them on the back today for finally deciding the cost of human life isn't worth the bureaucracy? And in my case, the same government that said COVID would just go away, and it was a hoax concocted by the media and the democrats? I don't trust this government. They've given me no reason to.
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Ketraar » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:24

CBJ wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:04
Let me get this straight, you just said that we should let millions of innocent people die or suffer long-term illness in order to protect the "freedom" of a few people who have read some garbage conspiracy theory on Facebook and don't believe in vaccines?
Not sure where you got that tbh. I said, you need not discard the PRINCIPLE of protecting the freedom. Its not black and white, but sure lets pretend I didnt mention any nuance.

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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by Mightysword » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 18:08

BrasatoAlBarolo wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 16:51
some people questions the speed of the testing process and is worried about the possibility pharmaceutical societies and research centers have "skipped some step" to rush and save as many people they can. Honestly, I don't feel like saying they are 100% wrong,
Correlation, direct causation and indirect causation need to be separated. Is there some political motivation behind the accelerated process? Of course there is, it's so obvious that I don't think that even need to be a question. But the real question is: in what way the political motivation affect the process?

If it means some head of state can kick down the door of the research lab and told the director something like "I don't care and I don't give a shit, I want the vaccine ready tomorrow or off with your head!" then yeah, that's bad. Ironically, this is where I'm thankful to capitalism, and the fact most of these research labs are corporations. I probably would have the same missgiving as some others if these are state-run companies. I don't mean Biotech companies are example of virtues, they are arses, but there are different type of arses. These guys may have no problem to strip your wallet bare, suck up your tax dollar, and rip you off when they treat you, but the point of their business is still "to treat you". This vaccine deal no matter how big, will not be their last deal. So for them to risk their reputation on such a large scale just for some politicians to get their brownie points simply run against the interest of their own business, and that's what Capitalists don't do. In fact, forget all other arguments, this is my main counter-argument to the whole government conspiracy talk regarding the vaccine. It's different if you live in a dictatorship (i.e China or Russia), but thankfully most of us live in a capitalist democracy.


Rather, the political motivation translate into these actions:

- If you rewrite a "sequential" program running on a Pentium into a parallel program running on the latest multi-core, it will simply run faster, and does not result in a worse output. That's what the bureaucracy reform means for the vaccine process.

- Money: it's simple, money make things go fast. I can wait for 3 weeks for a package delivered to me from Asia, or I throw money at it and make it appear on my door in 24h, and my package doesn't arrive worse because it arrives faster. You look at the space race during the cold war where space agencies were given limitless money, and the number of achievements/milestone during that period. Biotech is a field that requires a lot of money, and this is the result when you give the process a blank cheque.

So yes, the accelerated result we see is definitely a result of political motivation, but it acts as an enabler and motivator. It's like charity, people do it under different motivations. But to a foodbank, whether someone donated out of the goodness of their heart, or someone donated to buy fame, or for tax evasion, or for good karma: none of that matter, more money = more food. An impure motive will not make the same amount of money to buy less food. :wink:
Reading comprehension is hard.
Reading with prejudice makes comprehension harder.

CBJ
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Re: Coronavirus: COVID-19

Post by CBJ » Thu, 3. Dec 20, 18:32

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:16
Well, that's kind of one in the same, too. So here's the thing... if every vaccine development prior to COVID was delayed simply for the sake of bureaucracy, then our governments have catastrophically failed us in the past and we should pat them on the back today for finally deciding the cost of human life isn't worth the bureaucracy? And in my case, the same government that said COVID would just go away, and it was a hoax concocted by the media and the democrats? I don't trust this government. They've given me no reason to.
With all due respect, the idea that this is about "this government" is an extraordinarily US-centric view of a worldwide situation. Nobody outside the US gives a damn what Trump, or the US democrats for that matter, say about the vaccine. In most parts of the world this is simply not a political issue. In the UK, for example, there are political disagreements over the handling of the pandemic, the decision-making process for the restrictions imposed on people, the economic support given to affected groups, and so on, but there is no politicisation of the pandemic itself, or of the delivery of the vaccine. No political party is claiming credit for the success of the vaccine; in fact even our most self-aggrandising leaders are busy congratulating the scientists on their success in getting it done so soon.

The point about vaccine development taking way too long in the past has some merit, but there are couple of mitigating factors here. One is that until the last 20 years or so, vaccine development has largely been directed at diseases that have been around for years and whose toll has been steady rather than exponential. That, and the fact that many of the diseases mainly hit parts of the world that didn't have a lot of money to throw at the problem, meant that there was little pressure to develop vaccines quickly. It was only really with the emergence of new diseases such SARS and MERS, and later Ebola (although not technically new, it didn't pose the threat of widespread infection until recently) that that pressure grew, not just because of the diseases themselves but because of the realisation that the emergence of new pandemics was increasingly likely. The other factor is recent developments in our understanding of the processes behind the immune system, and in our ability to identify the key components of a virus and manipulate the components that make up a vaccine to mimic it. This means that scientists can spend a lot less time going down blind alleys during vaccine development, and have the tools to pretty much build a vaccine from components, Lego-style, with much more certainty of it actually working. So the bureaucracy was slow largely because there was very little pressure for it to be quicker, and bureaucracy that has no pressure on it just is... slow; once there was an imperative to change that, it was surprisingly easy to do so.
Ketraar wrote:
Thu, 3. Dec 20, 17:24
Not sure where you got that tbh. I said, you need not discard the PRINCIPLE of protecting the freedom. Its not black and white, but sure lets pretend I didnt mention any nuance.
Well, I just quoted where you said it. I said we can't just sit back and let millions of people die because of a matter of principle, and you said that's exactly what we should do. Hard to find the nuance in there. But I do realise that that's probably not what you really meant to say. :) So how about what I said after that? Does that satisfy your principles?

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