Neomania is dangerous. New things are usually not fully understood, and what we understand about them is usually asymmetric: the upsides are generally obvious and occur in the near term, and the downsides are generally poorly understood and take a while to become apparent. The history of science is absolutely littered with examples of this in nearly every applied field.
Well, let's add that in this case there was nothing scientific behind this 'therapy'. The quack medication was produced by a medical school dropout (and then the poor patient over consumed the otherwise dangerous and poisonous substance) [1]
The history of science may be littered with similar examples, but we see less and less of them. And also let's not forget what your other option is. Sometimes it's simple, you just don't use the new thing and lose little. You don't have to use the newest cell phone or car. Sometimes you have to make a compromise. E.g. when talking about medications to potentially life limiting conditions.
Next time the kids don't eat their vegetables or some new dish you cooked, we'll point them to this comment and tell them it's perfectly appropriate and safe to behave that way.
Yes, even cooking requires competence and tradition - food and nutritional science exist for a reason. Scott Adams joked about "a diet entirely made of cheese".
If the kids don't trust your dish, get the feedback and work on building trust.
This is exactly the argument against blindly trusting an experimental vaccine that hasn't gone through long term testing, whose possible long term downsides are unknown, especially for those whose risk from Covid are so minuscule (young, not overweight or other comorbities). But this prudent and nuanced view is drowned out by the neomania to trust the science...
The matter in your reference is/was more about an eagerness towards reducing contagion and avoiding DoS on health services - meaning, the drive is/was not "in a vacuum" but instrumental towards these goals. Many other historical cases tend more towards the utter lack of concern and prudence.
(In fact, said eagerness has been a partial factor in creating distrust, as some perceived it as a "whatever it takes" - another immense communicational failure).
Surely, the new shout "trust the science" I have seen misused and abused by the very many, in political activity, in the medical profession, in the press and in interpersonal communication: used without providing the required scientific substance ("Which rule or regulation?" // "Yes.") they gave the idea of a psychological manipulation ("Buy this stereo, it's organic"). Having used the idea of "Science" as a "totem" has been a great damage against civilization - probably clumsy instead of malicious, it still counts as dis-education.
It's not experimental and it's not 100% unknown or new. Scientists do know a lot about long term effects of vaccines in general, though of course, not about these specific COVID vaccines.
The thing a lot of people overlook is that we also don't have knowledge about the long term downsides of the virus infection. (And there is some overlap between what's in the virus and what's in the vaccine...)
Also, the size of the group for whom the risk is miniscule (less than the expected risks from the vaccine, even the estimated but unknown long term ones) is not that big.
The covid vaccines are by no means an example of "neomania". The experts are well aware of the trade offs and the uncertainties. But you have to compare the probabilities of the two choices that you have. (Most people aren't aware that they are basically making a choice of getting vaccinated or contracting the desease. Yes, you can get infected if you are vaccinated too.)
What does this mean? Can you quantify how much of the long term effects are unknown?
>though of course, not about these specific COVID vaccines
These specific Covid vaccines are of course what I'm talking about, so reference to other things that aren't these is a non sequitur.
I think we have a pretty good idea at this point (if you pay attention to the declining effectiveness of the vaccine to immunize against Covid as time goes on, thus "boosters") that Covid is something everyone is eventually going to get. That natural immunity, if any, is the end-game. And so in this context, the upside of the vaccine is even smaller, while the unknown downside remains.
Whatever you want to say about the size of the cohort that has no comorbidity risk and are in, say, 40s and below age brackets, the point is, especially if they are maintaining good fitness levels and lower body fat levels (which should have been advised for everyone if we really wanted to be honest about the threat and mitigations) they have a perfectly legitimate risk/reward reason to avoid the vaccine.
> These specific Covid vaccines are of course what I'm talking about, so reference to other things that aren't these is a non sequitur.
Nope. You're confounding your lack of knowledge with the lack of knowledge of the experts. This is a pretty usual pattern I've been seeing lately. Interestingly, both completely unknowledgeable and uneducated people and pretty smart and educated people fall for it. People make bold claims about what "we" don't know and a lot of times it's evident that it's about them. They don't know. Now, if you listen to experts (not me, I'm just a humble being who knows that he doesn't know much about this), then they'll say that they know a lot about how vaccines interact with the immune system and the body in general and what kind of side effects you can imagine. Since the vaccine is out of your body after a few days, it's, I guess, very hard to imagine a long term effect that it induces and which then stays undetected for over a year (where we are now). I know, cancer. You can always point at cancer.
> that Covid is something everyone is eventually going to get. That natural immunity, if any, is the end-game.
Again, nope. It's a false dichotomy on multiple levels. First of all, it does make lot of difference if you get it after being vaccinated (more precisely, while you do have some immunity) vs if not. Second, your natural immunity is not an end game, because covid will stay with us, just like flu, so you'll probably contract it several times. Though, if we are lucky, it's virulence will vane over time (just like it probably happened with the other 3 or 4 human coronaviruses).
> comorbidity risk and are in, say, 40s and below age brackets, the point is, especially if they are maintaining good fitness levels and lower body fat levels
> (which should have been advised for everyone if we really wanted to be honest
> about the threat and mitigations) they have a perfectly legitimate risk/reward reason to avoid the vaccine.
Well, this is again, factually wrong. Especially because of the 40s cohort. (Which, I guess, then you are a part of. Somehow most people think that the ones who are at risk are the ones who are older than them.) For the 40s cohort, the CFR is nearing 1%. Of course, it depends on your country and the health care system, but the performance of the health care system also depends on the height of the wave, the number of people who get sick (and gets hospitalized) at once. Which depends on the percentage of vaccinations. Now that 1%, or even 0.1% is several orders of magnitudes higher than the worst case estimates for serious side effects from the various vaccines. (They are not equal, of course.) Yes, we're just comparing blood clots or myocarditis (neither of which is 100% lethal) with death from COVID. (While COVID itself does cause blood clots and myocarditis and generic long covid.)
Of course, you can keep saying that I haven't proven anything. And you would be right. It's not my job. Not only, because you haven't proven anything either, but because just like you, I'm no expert. I am definitely interested in learning more (e.g. now I do follow an online virology course - super interesting), but it doesn't mean that I'll know enough to know better than the experts any time soon. And the overwhelming majority of them says that not getting vaccinated is simply stupid. The wrong decision.
All I can do is maybe induce a bit of doubt in you about your idea of trying to figure this out mostly on your own, against a large number of scientists working on all these issues related to COVID. Maybe being bit smarter than average is not enough. Maybe arguing with people who are not experts in any of these fields doesn't prove that you are right and all the experts are somehow wrong.
>because covid will stay with us, just like flu, so you'll probably contract it several times.
Yea this is essentially what I was talking about. Coronoviruses do not go away, exactly.
So it is a giant crisis if people don't take an experimental vaccine (it is different than previous vaccines and you know this, so don't lump all of them into one group) that will have very limited effectiveness and then they'll still get covid. Are you going to keep getting boosters for the rest of your life? This is silly.
I'm in my 30's. But I'd really love to see where you've found a CFR rate near 1 for 40s that, again, aren't overweight, which I and many people aren't. A majority of covid deaths included comorbitities especially overweight/obese.
My point is, for people of a specific group of characteristics, covid is a non-issue. For these people, whether they get the vaccine or not is not important, and crushing our economy by firing people and inducing political and social conflict is such an unforced error. Even China doesn't mandate the vaccine.
Even given everything you just said, I'd bet you'd still advocate the vaccine for kids yes? Which is just absurd. People are listening to some so-called experts (there are plenty that have different opinions than the main-stream consensus) and like a social contagion going crazy over something that isn't that big of a deal for so many people.
yeah I can understand that-- mRNA vaccines are really cool, and my inclination at the moment is to think that they're safer than traditional vaccines, but they are new. I can respect not wanting to use a new therapy-- but it seems to me that that's no reason to remain unvaccinated: vaccine therapies for covid-19 that rely on tried-and-true technology are available. Seems worthwhile to make use of them, same way we make use of the flu shot, shingles vaccine, chicken pox shot, tetanus, pertussis, polio.. did you know that most people who get polio don't get particularly sick? It only paralyzes a small fraction of those infected. Folks went ahead and got vaccinated though.
That of radium drinks (and toothpaste etc.) is one of the examples some use against the idea of embracing lightly what we do not fully know.