Well, FWIW, posts like this help me. I'm particularly susceptible to over-simplification, especially when it comes in an optimistic package. I need all 3 of realism, pessimism, and cynicism to keep my episodic forgetting in check. In particular, here, your remembering:
• the complicated calculus in trusting agencies under cronyism, • all the social chaos (BLM, right-wing rallies, etc.) coinciding with COVID-19, and • that each attempt at expression should be as authentic and error-correcting as possible I need continual (not periodic, not discrete) reminders of that last one. Thanks. On 5/6/21 3:38 PM, David Eric Smith wrote: > Pieter, there is a good conversation to have here, but these bastards who > seem committed to doing _everything_ in bad faith irritate me to the point > where I spend time writing FRIAM posts instead of doing anything that will > _ever_ benefit anyone or accomplish anything. > > Yes, the mRNA platform is great, and should be a geme-changer. Let’s pursue > that topic. I’m fully with you on that. > > And? > > Oh, human challenge trials are an “innovative technique”. They also > explicitly violate the Hippocratic oath. Do we fail to do them for no > particular reason, or has someone thought about whether the Hippocratic oath > is an important consideration? Dunno, hmmmm. How would one decide? > > Oh, public health people admonished Americans away from buying medical masks > early on. Clearly just because those bureaucrats are so dead set against > efficiency. We haven’t had that conversation ad nauseam on this channel > already? We know why they did it; they are communicating to Americans, > which is like communicating to a troupe of Tasmanian devils surrounding a > roadkill. They know their words have consequences, and they feel the weight > of that responsibility. Then, sometimes they also make mistakes. Do we > criticize to correct, or exploit to destroy? > > And, just by the bye of things not mentioned. Let’s do a ballpark of what > the best-case scenario might have been with very proactive response and > people really trying to work together, like maybe some events in US society > in WWII. Instead of having spent maybe USD5Tn by the end of the trump term, > with — what was it at the time — something like 450k people dead, I could > imagine that with a scaled-up S. Korea like response, the economic support > could have been maybe USD 1Tn to 1.5Tn to achieve a similar backstop, and > maybe 100k people dead. That would have been _really hard_ to pull off, but > it is the kind of hard that good countries aspire to and sometimes achieve. > And the fact that _all_ that didn’t happen is clearly to the fault of some > public health people who didn’t know early how much transmission was fomites > and how much respiratory droplets? Or trying to redirect masks to hospitals? > The public health people were _against_ testing? I believe that last claim > is > flatly false, and overwhelmingly documented to be so. There was nothing else > going on at the time? Hmm, can’t recall. Or since? Or still, even worse? > How would one tell? And Americans have a great record of really being > supportive of each other, and using great reasoning based on all the best > evidence, but were just thwarted again and again by the public health > officials and agencies? > > And the vaccines were developed so rapidly, this time only because the > agencies removed obstacles that they could have removed any time. Well, for > the adenovirus vaccines (a largely established technology) there is a claim > to that effect that can be made fairly. But of course the article puts up > the mRNA vaccines as evidence of how, because the agencies got out of the way > (is implied), BioNTech and Moderna had vaccines in a few days. That is > deliberate BS, and I doubt the writer is such an idiot that he doesn’t know > it. (cf. the very useful article in NYT a couple of weeks ago on Kariko and > a little about the history of mRNA update and expression research.) They > were done in a few days because of 30 years of work, much of it publicly > funded, that was waiting in the wings, and had been postponed earlier, and > only pushed through now, only because there hadn’t been a disease structure > that enabled the (non-human-challenge) trial at a price the companies were > willing to > pay. The disinformation on that simple matter of fact has been wonderfully > employed by those who will now ensure that we have an endemic, no longer just > a pandemic. > > And now there is a fight on about suspending patent limits on vaccine > production to open to more operators, and the companies argue that it > wouldn’t make any difference because it is current capacity saturation that > limits us (Jon’s DW news articles yesterday, which the Canadians say is false > even now), deliberately bypassing the obvious intent of the suspension that > capacity can be built by more actors in parallel, going forward from now. > The company objection is that it would not be capacity _they own_, cf my rant > from yesterday. But sure, now that the technology _exists_, clearly everyone > will be fine. I find that foreshortening of the conversation harmful, > because it is again anti-empirical. We are not distributing the technology > we have well enough to evade an endemic — the needed and productive > conversation is in large part WHY that is occurring, and what we want to > change. These guys will tie themselves in any knot to distract from a real > version of that discussion. > > So I don’t object to all the good points you raise about mRNA vaccines and > their potential. I feel obliged to notice, however, the specific strategy by > this klatch of writers, of using the techno-points to obstruct the > conversation about human cooperation, which is immediately actionable, and > responsible for a large part of the shortfall. Because the empirical > discussion is in large part a discussion about the restraint of POWER. They > live to prevent that discussion, and they will take us all down with them if > they succeed. > > There is a thing we do, that they exploit. If they include a few statements > that aren’t false in an overall framework that is deliberately distorted, we > all bend over backward to grant them standing because a few things they say > overlap with the truth. Maybe at first, a little. But conversations have a > pragmatics and it is relevant. > > So, onward… > > Eric > > > >> On May 7, 2021, at 6:02 AM, Pieter Steenekamp <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> I know I run the risk of responses like "it's Pollyanna, oh sorry I mean >> Pieter, again", but I'll take the risk and share the link with the >> speculation about technological progress with mRNA vaccines that will end >> pandemics like covid. >> https://reason.com/video/2021/05/06/why-covid-19-may-be-the-last-pandemic/ >> <https://reason.com/video/2021/05/06/why-covid-19-may-be-the-last-pandemic/> >> -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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