You and I know each other so I'll skip the throat-clearing about my good faith and earnest intentions. I think what your piece overlooks is that the official narrative around what the vaccine does or does not do kept changing. The data you provide is compelling but we didn't have it back then and instead, the rationalization for why it's so vital that we get everyone vaccinated kept changing.
The way this all unfolded was that initially we were told that the vaccine will prevent transmission. That turned out to be largely false. Then we were told that the vaccine will drastically diminish side effects and prevent many people from ending up dead. This may have been closer to the truth but the numbers on this are also extremely difficult to deduce since it's hard to measure counterfactuals on what "would have been" had people not been vaccinated. The virus had too diverse an effect on different individuals for the data to really conclusively assert how many people would have died without it. Your analysis is compelling but it still amounts to tea-leaf reading. It's nowhere near as conclusive as what people have come to expect from vaccines. You get the polio vaccine - you don't get polio. Period. You get the chickenpox vaccine - you don't get chickenpox. Full stop. It's a much simpler story to tell and there's a lot less institutional faith needed from the public.
Then we were told that the immunity gained from actually suffering Covid offered no additional protection against it in the future (this turned out to be false). Then we were told that children (who were basically immune to Covid) had to be vaccinated, even as whatever minuscule side-effects from the vaccine (which in super rare instances can be deadly) were about as dangerous as just getting the virus (and we already established that the vaccine didn't preclude transmission).
I haven't googled any of this to refresh my memory - I'm speaking as a layperson who is a strong supporter of science and of vaccines and of any efforts to reduce the harm that nature subjects us to.
I'm reasonably confident that anyone who tried to follow the news in the least partisan and most data-based manner will recall things unfolding approximately as I've just detailed above and obviously, that story isn't a story that would leave anyone with strong confidence in the bureaucracy that was responsible for its outcomes.
What I've been saying since around 2021 is that Covid was kind of the worst of all worlds. It was deadly enough to cause massive disruption in our very finely tuned and balanced supply chains where suddenly removing 3% of the workforce for weeks or months at a time and clogging up all our medical institutions is disastrous, but where any individual is largely spared from personal catastrophe and 99% of the people are looking around and saying "I really don't see what's so special or terrible about this disease". People are not good at data and when you add the culture war to a situation where the mortality rate is so low, you inevitably get what we got with everyone just taking sides and refusing to consider any evidence that contradicts their sacred cows.
I'm positive that if Covid had a mortality rate of 50% (or higher) then everyone would have put on 10 masks and huddled in their basements until such time as they could inject every possible concoction that held any promise of protecting them against such a scourge and anyone who had the audacity to question "vaccine efficacy" would have been beaten to death with a shovel by the mob.
So - yes - we're in a terrible place now where the overblown urgency and constantly shifting goalposts that our leaders subjected us to left them with very little credibility and if something like the bird flu starts to develop an infection capacity akin to Covid tens of millions of people will die in a very short while as the public, now filled with luxury beliefs about government overreach or whatnot, will refuse to take things seriously until an obscene number of them has perished and given how dry the powder currently is, perhaps civilization has collapsed.
The entire phenomenon of vaccine resistance, as we are seen it today is because of the rapid dissemination of disinformation by some and misinformation by others (including the government) through the antisocial media.
We are seeing the same phenomenon with the newest battle in the war on water fluoridation and coming from the same political actors.
I don’t think it was so much that people distrusted the vaccine as they distrusted the people telling them what to do during Covid. Anthony Fauci gave mixed messages. Randy Weingarten gave terrible commands for young children and teachers. So we lost a whole generation of education for our young ones. It surely became political, but that doesn’t mean some of the advice and requirements were not trustworthy.
I don't like writing in stark terms like this, but what we're talking about now is dead children. The likely outcome of confirming brain-worm guy is that many children will die of easily preventible diseases.
I was going to quibble that the mainstream media destroyed its own credibility with its relentless and obvious lefty bias. That Fauci clearly spoke out of both sides of his mouth. That the attempts to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis were nakedly political. Those are easily confirmed facts that created a trust vacuum. Unfortunately a lot of Internet nonsense filled it.
But all that seems petty now that we're confronted with the real possibility of dead children.
Hi Robert.
You and I know each other so I'll skip the throat-clearing about my good faith and earnest intentions. I think what your piece overlooks is that the official narrative around what the vaccine does or does not do kept changing. The data you provide is compelling but we didn't have it back then and instead, the rationalization for why it's so vital that we get everyone vaccinated kept changing.
The way this all unfolded was that initially we were told that the vaccine will prevent transmission. That turned out to be largely false. Then we were told that the vaccine will drastically diminish side effects and prevent many people from ending up dead. This may have been closer to the truth but the numbers on this are also extremely difficult to deduce since it's hard to measure counterfactuals on what "would have been" had people not been vaccinated. The virus had too diverse an effect on different individuals for the data to really conclusively assert how many people would have died without it. Your analysis is compelling but it still amounts to tea-leaf reading. It's nowhere near as conclusive as what people have come to expect from vaccines. You get the polio vaccine - you don't get polio. Period. You get the chickenpox vaccine - you don't get chickenpox. Full stop. It's a much simpler story to tell and there's a lot less institutional faith needed from the public.
Then we were told that the immunity gained from actually suffering Covid offered no additional protection against it in the future (this turned out to be false). Then we were told that children (who were basically immune to Covid) had to be vaccinated, even as whatever minuscule side-effects from the vaccine (which in super rare instances can be deadly) were about as dangerous as just getting the virus (and we already established that the vaccine didn't preclude transmission).
I haven't googled any of this to refresh my memory - I'm speaking as a layperson who is a strong supporter of science and of vaccines and of any efforts to reduce the harm that nature subjects us to.
I'm reasonably confident that anyone who tried to follow the news in the least partisan and most data-based manner will recall things unfolding approximately as I've just detailed above and obviously, that story isn't a story that would leave anyone with strong confidence in the bureaucracy that was responsible for its outcomes.
What I've been saying since around 2021 is that Covid was kind of the worst of all worlds. It was deadly enough to cause massive disruption in our very finely tuned and balanced supply chains where suddenly removing 3% of the workforce for weeks or months at a time and clogging up all our medical institutions is disastrous, but where any individual is largely spared from personal catastrophe and 99% of the people are looking around and saying "I really don't see what's so special or terrible about this disease". People are not good at data and when you add the culture war to a situation where the mortality rate is so low, you inevitably get what we got with everyone just taking sides and refusing to consider any evidence that contradicts their sacred cows.
I'm positive that if Covid had a mortality rate of 50% (or higher) then everyone would have put on 10 masks and huddled in their basements until such time as they could inject every possible concoction that held any promise of protecting them against such a scourge and anyone who had the audacity to question "vaccine efficacy" would have been beaten to death with a shovel by the mob.
So - yes - we're in a terrible place now where the overblown urgency and constantly shifting goalposts that our leaders subjected us to left them with very little credibility and if something like the bird flu starts to develop an infection capacity akin to Covid tens of millions of people will die in a very short while as the public, now filled with luxury beliefs about government overreach or whatnot, will refuse to take things seriously until an obscene number of them has perished and given how dry the powder currently is, perhaps civilization has collapsed.
Have a lovely weekend! :)
The entire phenomenon of vaccine resistance, as we are seen it today is because of the rapid dissemination of disinformation by some and misinformation by others (including the government) through the antisocial media.
We are seeing the same phenomenon with the newest battle in the war on water fluoridation and coming from the same political actors.
I don’t think it was so much that people distrusted the vaccine as they distrusted the people telling them what to do during Covid. Anthony Fauci gave mixed messages. Randy Weingarten gave terrible commands for young children and teachers. So we lost a whole generation of education for our young ones. It surely became political, but that doesn’t mean some of the advice and requirements were not trustworthy.
I fear that tiny coffins will be a part of this tragedy.
I don't like writing in stark terms like this, but what we're talking about now is dead children. The likely outcome of confirming brain-worm guy is that many children will die of easily preventible diseases.
I was going to quibble that the mainstream media destroyed its own credibility with its relentless and obvious lefty bias. That Fauci clearly spoke out of both sides of his mouth. That the attempts to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis were nakedly political. Those are easily confirmed facts that created a trust vacuum. Unfortunately a lot of Internet nonsense filled it.
But all that seems petty now that we're confronted with the real possibility of dead children.
Vaccines will save the world!