Left hand. COVID proved that we could establish safety & efficacy of a medical treatment in about 12 months, to the point where as I recall a lot of the manufacturers have a legal exemption from any liability for damage done by vaccines.
Right hand. There are these opioids have been around for decades and somehow they reached this huge level of damage. Largely the same cultures of people involved.
I still think the authoritarian policies used during COVID were a mistake. The level of compartmentalisation needed to look past scandals like this one and still force people to trust big pharma unconditionally is pretty extreme. People should be allowed to make their own mistakes based on their own flawed judgement, rather than the flawed judgement of the likes of McKinsey & Perdue. It is bad enough when everything is voluntary.
Opioids were known to be harmful. Purdue attacked the gatekeepers and policy makers not the science. It was mostly a story of what happens when a well funded con artist enters an environment built on trust.
Suddenly pain management was viewed as very important by the medical establishment, while mostly paying lip service to all the long term consequences of said actions. After all you can’t actually know how much someone is actually suffering…
So, hypothetically, if a doctor prescribed me opioids I should be allowed to say I don't want to take them? Even if the manufacturers assure me it is safe, effective and they have lots of evidence of the same. Because to me that seems like a logical conclusion. I think that should be a general policy. People should be able to overrule doctors on the subject of how they are treated.
If you work for the FBI you can quit at any time and work for a different companies with different rules. You can’t work for a company that gets to ignore minimum wage laws.
we can go glass-half-full-glass-half-empty back and forth ad nausem here for sure :)
bottom line though, the then government (which is soon to be now government) went full ballistic on us during COVID times and vaccine mandates affected many lives
Only some parts of the government “required” their employees to get vaccinated, the entire US government didn’t. Even those bits only hit ~98% compliance.
When you volunteer to work for someone you’re agreeing to do what they want or quit, that’s by definition a choice. When many private employers had the same requirements complaining about overreach by the government is misplaced, it’s at most overreach by employers.
“only” 98% compliance should tell you all you need to know whether people are “forced” or not… the prospect of losing your job might not be that alarming for HN-average-person but…
Making hard choices inherently implies options. Vaccines saved well over a million people’s lives at negligible heath impact for the wider population, that’s simply what states are going to do in an epidemic.
Okay — but we have more concerns than a single virus.
It’s entirely possible to engage in net-negative behaviors because you fixate on a singular goal — a human version of the “paperclip optimizer”: we became “COVID optimizers” and produced suboptimal results.
Ethics and morals are time-honed heuristics to avoid those failures. “Freedom” is the heuristic that distributed risk assessment and planning out perform centralized versions — and we forgot that in our panic.
And some day there may be another epidemic for which we optimize for freedom, and after which there will be no human left to enjoy the freedom (or those left will be too busy surviving to worry about things such as “freedom”).
It is fortunate that the COVID-19 pandemic did not rise to that level. Maybe it couldn’t have, but that’s easier to say with the benefit of hindsight.
Or some other catastrophe that threatens us. My point is that natural things do not care for artificial concepts such as “freedoms” and “rights” and “morality”.
> Maybe it couldn’t have, but that’s easier to say with the benefit of hindsight.
We knew within two weeks of most major shutdowns that Covid wasn’t even close to as bad as predicted by the Imperial College. Society decided to completely ignore that data and instead doubled down on its hysteria for more than three years.
You say that as if the recommendations for freedom weren’t based on the initial medical data.
But they were and you’re inventing a false dichotomy whereby we had to engage in totalitarianism contrary to evidence of COVID’s deadliness or some hypothetical infinite bad might have happened.
That’s nothing but bullshit, from somebody who was wrong.
> Viruses are not concerned with ethics and morals.
Good thing we aren’t viruses and have intelligence and the ability to step back and think through our actions.
There is more to life than exactly one specific myopic focus on a virus. It takes an incredible amount of privilege to believe that the only problem humans can solve for is an exactly one single virus to the exclusion of literally everything else. Massive, massive amounts of privilege to think that way, in fact.
Nothing hypothetical about that, it’s generally how US healthcare works barring people being declared mentally incompetent, court ordered treatment, etc.
To address the seeming contradiction. Vaccination was never imposed by the healthcare system on patients during COVID, it was required by cruse ships, schools, and yes hospitals for staff etc.
Those organizations were doing so by government mandate — at the direction of government healthcare agencies. They didn’t invent those policies on their own.
That’s “imposing” and it speaks to the lack of ethics in the healthcare system they joined in coercing medical treatments rather than refusing to perform treatments people were only accepting under duress.
The alternative of continuing isolation was available though impractical for many.
The ethics around vaccination is it saved well over 1 million US lives without direct force, that’s a clear win by any reasonable ethical system. Being unable to be an unvaccinated healthcare worker is little different than requiring people wash hands, or preventing them from walking around shooting patients.
PS: Actual estimates for lives saved is around 3 million with a fair bit of uncertainty and some wiggle room in terms of definitions. Over 1 million is basically incontrovertible, but in a wider context you need to look at the spike in cancer deaths due to an overworked healthcare system and extrapolate not just consider the individuals who get infected.
> The alternative of continuing isolation was available though impractical for many.
There was, in fact, many alternatives beyond “isolation”. But thanks to society’s hysterical myopic focus and constant propaganda and suppression of information most people were not allowed to discuss them out loud.
How anybody could continue to believe what society did in response to Covid was not only okay but was the only option is absolutely wild to me. It’s a testament to the massive amount of propaganda cranked out by various governments. Their belief is not just wrong it’s insulting to the people who watched the nonsense unfold.
COVID vaccines weren’t believed to be QALY positive for a substantial period of the mandates, according to actuarial estimates.
The vaccines hospitalized at a rate higher than they prevented hospitalizations and the mandates applied to groups who were at virtually no risk.
> The ethics around vaccination is it saved well over 1 million US lives without direct force, that’s a clear win by any reasonable ethical system.
Except that force was used, to restrict the rights of those who didn’t comply with mandates. And numerous atrocities have been conducted by exactly that utilitarian mindset.
You can claim you needed to violate Nuremberg, but the data doesn’t support that and I’ll continue to think you’re morally defective.
> The vaccines hospitalized at a rate higher than they prevented hospitalizations
The vaccines emptied the hospitals. Literally.
Two weeks after the vaccination (with any of the western trio, or the one China exported), the odds of people being hospitalized felt more than 90% every time somebody measured, everywhere.
The Chinese one was the "bad" one, with the odds falling by not much more than 90%. The other ones were much better.
> weren’t beloved to be QALY positive for a substantial period of the mandates,
False.
> Except that force was used.
Nobody was forcefully vaccinated, and in fact 10’s of millions of Americans never got vaccinated and a vastly larger percentage of them died. The numbers aren’t even vaguely comparable.
Which wasn't justified and should probably be an illegal requirement on privacy grounds. It doesn't make a difference if people doing work were vaccinated or not. It turns out to have had little in-practice effect on transmission, so the only important question is whether the passengers on things like a cruise were vaccinated themselves. They were evidence-free policies.
We had a great natural case study in Australia of COVID through a vaccinated population. Everyone caught it over the course of a month, the vaccines did basically nothing to stop the spread. They were pretty much only useful on an individual level which means there was never a requirement for any coercive measures.
1) Little as in "0, but maybe someone wants to quibble that technically it did something so I'll hedge". As far as I can tell literally everyone I know caught COVID, so it is fair to say the vaccine had no impact on transmission. Raising the obvious question of why it matters where people caught it.
2) If catching COVID is going to kill you, by now you are dead by now. Factor in that there'd probably be between 40 and 60% uptake of the vaccine just by people being prudent and the authoritarianism was not only a betrayal of the principles our civilisation is supposed to be defending but also ineffective.
And, as the current article showcases, extremely ill-advised.
3) That logic is silly. We don't mandate people do anything special about flus and that'd save far more lives than thousands. Do you consider people who advocate normal life even though influenza exists to be some sort of malign force in society? Even COVID is still killing people. 100s of thousands are still going to die from this thing. But you want to support an abandonment of basic human rights over a few thousand maybe-deaths that can't even be detected? In the extreme, more people have been purposefully murdered to secure basic liberties than that - these aren't the sort of rights that should be casually taken away.
> 1) Little as in "0, but maybe someone wants to quibble that technically it did something so I'll hedge". As far as I can tell literally everyone I know caught COVID, so it is fair to say the vaccine had no impact on transmission. Raising the obvious question of why it matters where people caught it.
Many hospitalizations and deaths from COVID occurred on subsequent infections.
> 2) If catching COVID is going to kill you, by now you are dead by now.
False, that’s simply not how infection works.
Part of the difference here is viral load on exposure. Vaccines and masks reduced viral loads in the air, which then gave people’s immune system longer to react. The immune system takes time to ramp up, but so do infections. A larger initial exposure can snowball even in reasonably healthy individuals.
So are you advocating authoritarianism on an ongoing plan? Because most COVID infections - and deaths - are still to come in the future. By this ineffective logic you are looking at 10s of thousands if not 100s of thousands of deaths because we're reverting to a dignified baseline of respecting civil liberties and human rights. Are you comfortable with that?
> It doesn't make a difference if people doing work were vaccinated or not. It turns out to have had little in-practice effect on transmission
This is because of Delta. The original strain was substantially reduced but an order-of-magnitude efficacy jump made that moot. You’re right, however, that we should have focused on masking and air filtration since that was actually effective at preventing spread in close quarters like a school or workplace.
> We had a great natural case study in Australia of COVID through a vaccinated population. Everyone caught it over the course of a month, the vaccines did basically nothing to stop the spread. They were pretty much only useful on an individual level which means there was never a requirement for any coercive measures.
I am from Australia and this is all nonsense.
a) Vaccines are not designed to prevent transmission. They are designed to stop people from getting seriously ill and dying.
b) Vaccines and lockdowns were vital in high-density areas like Victoria and NSW which saw health care systems almost instantly overwhelmed. This was then causing mass deaths for both COVID and non-COVID cases. It was a public health emergency by every definition.
c) COVID was only allowed to spread once enough of the population was vaccinated. And that was because instead of needing to go into hospital people could stay at home for a few days. And even then it has taken years for the system to recover.
I hate to nitpick but as you called the previous comment nonsense
> Vaccines are not designed to prevent transmission. They are designed to stop people from getting seriously ill and dying.
Vaccines are commonly designed to prevent transmission. For example it is a critical aspect of the measles vaccine [1]. If a magic wand could've been waved the covid vaccines would've worked that way too, and that is why they were sold to the public as reducing transmission.
> Vaccines and lockdowns were vital in high-density areas like Victoria and NSW...
There are enough counterexamples of people and places where different trade-offs were chosen. e.g. Brisbane. To say they were vital is injecting your own opinion.
c) COVID was only allowed to spread once enough of the population was vaccinated... instead of needing to go into hospital people could stay at home... it has taken years for the system to recover.
The overwhelming majority of people were always just going to need to stay at home for a few days, even pre vaccine. The reason the system has taken so long to recover is due to the suboptimal approach we took where we elongated the period of reduced throughput through the hospital system. The effect here was threefold:
1) The backlog of surgeries needed to be cleared.
2) Many patients had worsened over covid and now required more intense treatment.
3) Preventable disease was not being caught in routine checkups etc.
The public policy for individual pain management and the public policy for highly contagious diseases can be different, for logical reasons that I hope are obvious.
Yeah, pain management is even more important and they got that wrong. COVID was just a flash in the pan then it seems to have settled down into the background as an issue, while chronic pain is an ongoing thing that is easier to study.
So even if we assume that they weight their efforts by importance that isn't particularly impressive for the COVID authoritarianism.
Well, yes. We have a society built around concepts of individual liberty and respect for basic human rights. So all the rules were rolled back. The question is why they were rolled out in the first place. Even to this day there is a distinct lack of evidence that any given rule was helpful. We successfully transitioned from a world where everyone was eventually going to get COVID to a world where everyone eventually got COVID and in hindsight it is hard to see what the authoritarian slant of the policies earned anyone. Except perhaps earmarking the people who should be kept out of positions of power.
Contagious diseases aren’t compatible with the fantasy that individual liberty is always the highest good. That is why decades ago our society realized the need for public health authorities that can temporarily override individual liberties to protect society.
Undoubtedly not all the COVID measures were perfect. Some ineffective measures were imposed, and some effective measures were not imposed. You can hindsight armchair quarterback that all you want, but there’s no question the authority to impose such measures is needed. And somebody (who thank heavens isn’t you or me) has to exercise that authority with only the information available at the time, and the highest possible stakes.
I don't think anyone is questioning the existence of the institutions; armies can do what armies want for example and there isn't much anyone can do about it unless the army agrees with their plans. Can't get rid of armies though, we just do what we can and live with the residual risk.
The issue is more that in this case the institutions did act, in a panicky and random fashion that seems to, on balance, not have helped but rather violated a large number of human rights and good principles for no particular gain. The only policies that seemed effective were quarantines, light contact tracing, removing red tape and funding R&D. We can do all those things without unduly coercing anyone, they're pretty minor inconveniences compared to the madness that was actually unleashed.
It seemed like you were questioning the need for the institution, but public health is as needed as defense, so maybe you’re equating them.
You left out vaccinations (obviously effective) and mask mandates (somewhat effective but certainly falls under minor inconvenience) — which are pretty standard public health playbook, so I’m assuming those aren’t considered part of the madness.
The lockdowns were pretty crazy, but recall their goal was mostly to avoid the breakdown of the entire health care system pre-vaccination. There wasn’t any precedent for how to do that.
> You left out vaccinations (obviously effective) and mask mandates (somewhat effective but certainly falls under minor inconvenience)
The authoritarian tactics used to impose both of those were ineffective, or at least can't be justified on the evidence. Otherwise all the people trying to justify their brush with their inner Nazi would be able to put up a good argument for what they advocated for.
Both measures failed to stop the spread of COVID, the evidence they had any effect on the number of people who eventually caught it is hard to some up with even as a thought experiment (elsewhere in the thread Retric theorised that the change in viral load would be significant, which is a weak attempt but the best I've seen so far, and also sounds hard to test for). In many cases the vaccines explicit weren't checked for effects on transmission.
There was a crisis, they banded together, identified the enemy withing and started a campaign to strip them of their rights. They knew they can't get their way with persuasion so they go straight to coercion and might-makes-right logic. Call them what you want, they aren't principled people.
Very much a scum rising to the top scenario. We saw the illiberals making a power play during COVID, they're cut from the same cloth as all the other authoritarians. They were even using the old "you're killing us" logic and people making up a you-struck-first narrative is a reasonable precursor to some really terrible things.
If the plan is to defend authoritarianism, I might just observe that "well they're targeting the right groups this time" is not a line that is going to get much traction with me. The problem here is not a group of people you've decided to dehumanise to the point where their basic rights aren't a factor. The problem is authoritarian tactics being visibly and enthusiastically used by people who's role is to uphold the opposite values.
If you put people in charge who only believe in using one bad tool, they eventually use it on everyone because they don't understand how to do things in a morally reasonable way.
I don't want to argue with you about whether it's authoritarian, I just want to say "Nazi" is overblown and ridiculous in this context.
> "the right groups"
It's not about which groups, it's about how the groups are defined that makes the analogy so broken. Attacking in certain ways based on any nationality is worth a Nazi comparison, while attacking based on mundane choices is not in the same category.
> If you put people in charge who only believe in using one bad tool, they eventually use it on everyone because they don't understand how to do things in a morally reasonable way.
Does this describe what happened? What is the "one bad tool"? I hope you don't mean "authoritarianism" because that's a circular argument.
That legal exemption was made possible by a law passed in 2005 which, at the time, was completely non-controversial. It's only after vaccines have become politicized that it suddenly became problematic for the government to take steps to protect its citizen's lives.
Potential for misuse is sort of a different outcome than traditional approval processes. That said, we have known this about opioids forever. And as far as I know, no one is suggesting there is any kind of addiction mechanism for vaccines.
Remember that the fast tracking of the development of the vaccine was a project of the administration in power at the time. The shifting political narrative has diminished this very important part of the discussion.
> I recall a lot of the manufacturers have a legal exemption from any liability for damage done by vaccines.
Without a liability exemption, no company would manufacture vaccines, the government would need to step in as a manufacturer. With the liability exemption law, the private sector makes the vaccines while the government assumes the liability, which is a pretty good solution in my opinion.
> In the United States, low profit margins and an increase in vaccine-related lawsuits led many manufacturers to stop producing the DPT vaccine by the early 1980s.[4][unreliable source?] By 1985, vaccine manufacturers had difficulty obtaining liability insurance.[10] The price of the DPT vaccine skyrocketed as a result, leading providers to curtail purchases, thus limiting availability. Only one company was still manufacturing pertussis vaccine in the US by the end of 1985.[10] Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) in 1986, establishing a federal no-fault system to compensate victims of injury caused by mandated vaccines.[11][12]
a) Nobody has ever said that pharmaceutical companies should be blindly trusted.
b) The companies only have an exemption for COVID and similar emergencies and only when the damages are not caused by wilful misconduct. The idea being that getting the vaccines out sooner would save more lives than any side effects.
Right hand. There are these opioids have been around for decades and somehow they reached this huge level of damage. Largely the same cultures of people involved.
I still think the authoritarian policies used during COVID were a mistake. The level of compartmentalisation needed to look past scandals like this one and still force people to trust big pharma unconditionally is pretty extreme. People should be allowed to make their own mistakes based on their own flawed judgement, rather than the flawed judgement of the likes of McKinsey & Perdue. It is bad enough when everything is voluntary.