Edmund Storms wrote:
While what you say is true, Jed, not all vaccines are equally safe or effective, especially when it involves influenza.
Absolutely! The 1976 swine flu vaccines were spectacularly ineffective and dangerous.
Personally, I would rather wait to see how many people suffer from the shot and how many people get the flu before I take the risk.
That's wise but unfair. If everyone did what you are doing, no one would go first. You are letting other people act as guinea pigs, taking the risk for you, like collective food tasters. Since you -- Ed Storms -- are more valuable to society than most people, I approve, but it is ethically questionable.
Besides, I resent the government telling me to do anything because their advice is always bad in the long run.
That's a preposterous thing to say. Generally speaking, despite some well known exceptions, the U.S. government is one of the most knowledgeable, fair and effective organizations in history. Organizations such as the NIH and the CDC here in a Atlanta have made the largest and best contributions to public health in the world, bar none. The government directly invented or paid for most of the top technological breakthroughs of the 20th century in public health, and also for things such as aviation, lasers, computers and the Internet. It has done more for cold fusion than all private industry in the world combined.
Of course the DoE has been dysfunctional with regard to cold fusion, but nowhere near as dysfunctional as, say, General Motors, General Electric or Hitachi. These corporations should have invested hundreds of billions in cold fusion by now, but as far as I know they have done nothing. People say they are only following the lead of the DoE and the APS, but they pay no attention to the DoE with regard to things like plasma fusion, so I do not think we can blame their inaction with regard to cold fusion on the DoE.
- Jed
