Re: Pfizer or Oxford?
Here's why I see both sides.
Challenge trials have done some monstrous things, but the idea of experimenting on live, willing subjects - subjects who are not being pressured in any way whatsoever to participate - could yield huge dividends. This is an extremely important qualifier; I don't know if it is possible to get someone to go for this without some sort of inducement, and the moment you do this, you're taking the objectivity out of it. There's also the flip side. Most people who think challenge trials are monstrous also think it's totally 100% okay to test things like vaccinations on mice and rats, who not only cannot give consent but who have been specifically raised in captivity, with no hope of escape, to advance the human cause. There's some really leaky ethics there.
I think I actually see what Ghost is saying re: MRNA stuff, at least to some extent. Obviously, a Covid-19 vaccine is not an AIDS virus, and doesn't carry the same payload of malicious biological code, for want of a better term. But if the implications of the existing code are not fully understood, then there is potential there for problems. Note that I am not ending with a "therefore, don't use" or "therefore, don't trust" hard stop. I'm simply saying that it is maybe not quite so cut and dried as it's being represented.
Clearly, oversight is needed for any important medical trials, full stop. But how uch is too much, and how little is too little? I think right now we're on the high side, and that sometimes there is good reason to shortcut the process partially.
It's also important to point out that even though China has a bad history with human rights, and may have plenty to answer for, it never seemed to experience the same level of outbreak as other, supposedly more enlightened countries. Let that sink in for a minute. I'm not advocating that we just do away with all the human-rights stuff - are you kidding? I'm a social worker! - but clearly it wasn't just a disaster, so even if they fell into it ass backward, they must have done something right.
I think it's important to weigh all the factors appropriately. Yes, the unexplained deaths are bad; no, they are not statistically significant, since as Canlorn pointed out, nobody has a problem with cars, yet cars continue to be made and used every day even though they sometimes have a nasty habit of getting people killed. It's all in the perspective.
I'll analogize, shall I? Let's say I'm in a large room, where small clouds of invisible particles are floating free in the atmosphere. If I inhale any of these clouds, I can get sick; maybe I'll die, maybe I'll fully recover, or maybe I'll have complications for the rest of my life. Now, someone comes in and puts a gigantic bottle of pills in the room with me and says, "These pills are protection against the clouds of particles. If you take one of these, there's a tiny, tiny chance you will die or suffer serious complications, but since you have to live the rest of your life in this room, and since the clouds aren't going to dissipate on their own, you have to weigh the choice yourself." Me, I would take the pill and roll the dice, because the odds of death are so, so low.
Now, if the room was completely empty except for the pills? Then no, I'm obviously not going to take one; why risk death for no reason?
And our world right now is that cloud-filled room. And the bottle of pills is filling up as we speak.
-- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
