Biology - and ecology and economics and all the complex systems sciences - are full of unintended consequences. It is just extremely hard to know what will happen in biology without actually running the trials. We ran trials, but the timeline was very short. Yes, there are potential long-term risks of corona which we also don't know. But we know the risks weigh heavily towards the old and unhealthy (overweight, high BP, diabetic etc...). The higher risk you are, the clearer the equation. The lower risk, the more value in waiting to see what happens to the higher risk. It looks like lower risk people won't have any choice but to wait.
As a micro-example. there were no pregnant women in the trials. But they will get the vaccine. Do we expect any problems? No. In fact, we're pretty sure about it. But the unexpected happens in biology all the time.
The Australian Cane Toad is a great ecological example.
I do believe it will be fine. I'll just be more confident with more time.
They expect >60s in Israel will have their second dose by the end of January. They also expect that by the time the >70s are done, potential fatalities will have been cut by 75%.
Even so, countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia weren't hit nearly as hard as countries in the West. There is some other factor at force. Of course they could have extreme censorship too but I doubt Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam could pull it off.
On extensive testing: They have a few months of follow-up, at best. A normal vaccine goes through five years. We know it is perfectly safe for a few months.
I expect I *will* be willing. Just gonna let the higher risk groups - for whom the downsides happen to be lower - go first.
As I understand it the basic difference is this: the mRNA gets your own cells to create a protein on themselves that resembles the tell-tale 'spike' of the coronavirus. Our body recognizes those cells as the enemy (even though they are harmless) and it triggers the immune response (and programming).
The conventional vaccine introduces a neutered version of the virus itself which the body then learns to fight.
The mRNA approach might be perfect and awesome and amazing. It might cure all sorts of other ailments. But our human trial follow-up data lasts only a few months (at best) and excludes certain groups - like pregnant women.
I'd categorize people like this:
Shorter expected lifespan (e.g. old): fire away.
Above childbearing/fathering age: step up next (that's me).
In child-bearing/fathering age: watch what happens to others.
Younger: there's no rush - the virus is very little danger to you.
As far as immunity from the vaccine is concerned, we still don't know that it prevents infection or spread. All we know is that symptomatic infections are dialed back.
I know lots of people who voted for him who did not consider him a reliable source of information - or a good man for that matter. He just successfully tapped into what was once called a 'reactionary' movement.
I think maybe people got sick of being told what to think and Trump grabbed that and ran with it. The problem the "tell you what to think" crowd has is that their *belief* in their own connection to the truth extends far further than it actually does. They took it too far and in the process they lost credibility. King Solomon was the wisest of men but ran ancient Israel into the ground.
Sadly, instead of seeking leaders with an awareness of their own limits, people chose Trump - whose had almost no awareness of his own very substantial limits. I say 'almost' because he didn't actually centralize power as most such people do. He generally pushed deregulation, greater state self-determination, the US pulling back from the affairs of other nations and so on. His words were the words of a know-it-all idiot but his *actions* were far more modest.
That all said, read the papers of any country afflicted by the virus and you'll see the same 'news'. Where the government is not in line with the media elite, the leadership will be attacked for being responsible. Where the government is in line, then the *opposition papers* will attack the leadership for being responsible. It is the same story in the UK, France, Israel etc... The exceptions are those places where the population can't name their own leaders or those places where criticism comes with jail time or worse (e.g. Russian, Iran).
How many Americans actually got/get their news from Donald Trump? How many will actually get their news from Joe Biden. Or Barack Obama. Presidents are politicians and only in very short and sharp encounters do Americans rely on politicians for anything related to truth. At this point I imagine most Americans don't think their government knows more than the public about any major issue. Even the partisans rely on their partisan news sources rather than a President.
Anybody paying attention knew this was dangerous from January or February onwards.
As far as scientists are concerned, scientists dealing in highly complex models are not very good at getting it right. The highly touted (early on) Imperial College study was written by a guy who predicted 150 million could have died from the bird flu (among numerous other fundamentally flawed predictions). Just because a person has the word 'scientist' in their job description doesn't make them useful or right. As stated above, sciences vary wildly in their predictive power based on the complexity of the system being scienced.
As an aside, BLM crowded people into massive rallies. I would imagine more massive and more sustained rallies. The movement was broadly supported - given a pass, if you will.
What I found most disturbing was that, just because Trump mentioned something, people immediately rushed to discredit it. The UV therapy comes to mind. A real company was working on a real therapy *prior* to coronavirus and they got shut down because of all the bad publicity related to a Trump comment.
This is not useful, folks.
I hope we remember for the future: Presidents, except in cases of short and sharp national emergencies, are not sources of news or information. They are politicians.
Extended families? In Belgium and France? France has one of the highest percentages of old people living alone. Belgium is on par with the US. In neither place are families large.
Here are cumulative rankings at this point by country: Belgium, Italy, Peru, Slovakia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Spain, UK, Czechia, US, Bulgaria, France, Argentina, Mexico, Armenia.
The US is in the top 10.
I hadn't checked in a while, I got Chile and France wrong.
The right choice is not always obvious. Arguing about which 'agenda' is right is also a constant reality. There are straight up wrong agendas (self-dealing), but people tend to follow them in the margins. Debates and struggles on weighing the the economy vs. saving lives vs. freedom are important to have and support.
Long-term, the belief that there are people 'in-charge' who can be as competent as we sometimes expect them to be is itself suspect. 'Sciences' in highly complex fields full of feedback (think economics as an example) very often get things very wrong. At the other extreme we might have the sciences physics or chemistry which are quite predictable. Most things are in the middle. The practice of medicine is more towards the science end - but as we march outwards towards even something as seemingly simple as pandemic modeling we end up closer to the 'science' end of things.
We didn't focus on the technocrats, in countries like Belgium or states like New York, who also got things terribly wrong. And, of course, we ignore the victims in the third-world who were never actors to begin with.
It seems like terribly wrong is often unavoidable.
Latest Comments
Vaccines And Their Impact
Biology - and ecology and economics and all the complex systems sciences - are full of unintended consequences. It is just extremely hard to know what will happen in biology without actually running the trials. We ran trials, but the timeline was very short. Yes, there are potential long-term risks of corona which we also don't know. But we know the risks weigh heavily towards the old and unhealthy (overweight, high BP, diabetic etc...). The higher risk you are, the clearer the equation. The lower risk, the more value in waiting to see what happens to the higher risk. It looks like lower risk people won't have any choice but to wait.
As a micro-example. there were no pregnant women in the trials. But they will get the vaccine. Do we expect any problems? No. In fact, we're pretty sure about it. But the unexpected happens in biology all the time.
The Australian Cane Toad is a great ecological example.
I do believe it will be fine. I'll just be more confident with more time.
Vaccines And Their Impact
They expect >60s in Israel will have their second dose by the end of January. They also expect that by the time the >70s are done, potential fatalities will have been cut by 75%.
Vaccines And Their Impact
Even so, countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia weren't hit nearly as hard as countries in the West. There is some other factor at force. Of course they could have extreme censorship too but I doubt Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam could pull it off.
Vaccines And Their Impact
On extensive testing: They have a few months of follow-up, at best. A normal vaccine goes through five years. We know it is perfectly safe for a few months.
Vaccines And Their Impact
Thanks!
Vaccines And Their Impact
I expect I *will* be willing. Just gonna let the higher risk groups - for whom the downsides happen to be lower - go first.
As I understand it the basic difference is this: the mRNA gets your own cells to create a protein on themselves that resembles the tell-tale 'spike' of the coronavirus. Our body recognizes those cells as the enemy (even though they are harmless) and it triggers the immune response (and programming).
The conventional vaccine introduces a neutered version of the virus itself which the body then learns to fight.
The mRNA approach might be perfect and awesome and amazing. It might cure all sorts of other ailments. But our human trial follow-up data lasts only a few months (at best) and excludes certain groups - like pregnant women.
I'd categorize people like this:
Shorter expected lifespan (e.g. old): fire away.
Above childbearing/fathering age: step up next (that's me).
In child-bearing/fathering age: watch what happens to others.
Younger: there's no rush - the virus is very little danger to you.
As far as immunity from the vaccine is concerned, we still don't know that it prevents infection or spread. All we know is that symptomatic infections are dialed back.
Opening Up The Economy, Case By Case
I know lots of people who voted for him who did not consider him a reliable source of information - or a good man for that matter. He just successfully tapped into what was once called a 'reactionary' movement.
I think maybe people got sick of being told what to think and Trump grabbed that and ran with it. The problem the "tell you what to think" crowd has is that their *belief* in their own connection to the truth extends far further than it actually does. They took it too far and in the process they lost credibility. King Solomon was the wisest of men but ran ancient Israel into the ground.
Sadly, instead of seeking leaders with an awareness of their own limits, people chose Trump - whose had almost no awareness of his own very substantial limits. I say 'almost' because he didn't actually centralize power as most such people do. He generally pushed deregulation, greater state self-determination, the US pulling back from the affairs of other nations and so on. His words were the words of a know-it-all idiot but his *actions* were far more modest.
That all said, read the papers of any country afflicted by the virus and you'll see the same 'news'. Where the government is not in line with the media elite, the leadership will be attacked for being responsible. Where the government is in line, then the *opposition papers* will attack the leadership for being responsible. It is the same story in the UK, France, Israel etc... The exceptions are those places where the population can't name their own leaders or those places where criticism comes with jail time or worse (e.g. Russian, Iran).
It is all just political football.
Opening Up The Economy, Case By Case
How many Americans actually got/get their news from Donald Trump? How many will actually get their news from Joe Biden. Or Barack Obama. Presidents are politicians and only in very short and sharp encounters do Americans rely on politicians for anything related to truth. At this point I imagine most Americans don't think their government knows more than the public about any major issue. Even the partisans rely on their partisan news sources rather than a President.
Anybody paying attention knew this was dangerous from January or February onwards.
As far as scientists are concerned, scientists dealing in highly complex models are not very good at getting it right. The highly touted (early on) Imperial College study was written by a guy who predicted 150 million could have died from the bird flu (among numerous other fundamentally flawed predictions). Just because a person has the word 'scientist' in their job description doesn't make them useful or right. As stated above, sciences vary wildly in their predictive power based on the complexity of the system being scienced.
As an aside, BLM crowded people into massive rallies. I would imagine more massive and more sustained rallies. The movement was broadly supported - given a pass, if you will.
What I found most disturbing was that, just because Trump mentioned something, people immediately rushed to discredit it. The UV therapy comes to mind. A real company was working on a real therapy *prior* to coronavirus and they got shut down because of all the bad publicity related to a Trump comment.
This is not useful, folks.
I hope we remember for the future: Presidents, except in cases of short and sharp national emergencies, are not sources of news or information. They are politicians.
Opening Up The Economy, Case By Case
Extended families? In Belgium and France? France has one of the highest percentages of old people living alone. Belgium is on par with the US. In neither place are families large.
Here are cumulative rankings at this point by country: Belgium, Italy, Peru, Slovakia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Spain, UK, Czechia, US, Bulgaria, France, Argentina, Mexico, Armenia.
The US is in the top 10.
I hadn't checked in a while, I got Chile and France wrong.
That said, it isn't all about Trump.
Vaccines And Their Impact
The right choice is not always obvious. Arguing about which 'agenda' is right is also a constant reality. There are straight up wrong agendas (self-dealing), but people tend to follow them in the margins. Debates and struggles on weighing the the economy vs. saving lives vs. freedom are important to have and support.
Long-term, the belief that there are people 'in-charge' who can be as competent as we sometimes expect them to be is itself suspect. 'Sciences' in highly complex fields full of feedback (think economics as an example) very often get things very wrong. At the other extreme we might have the sciences physics or chemistry which are quite predictable. Most things are in the middle. The practice of medicine is more towards the science end - but as we march outwards towards even something as seemingly simple as pandemic modeling we end up closer to the 'science' end of things.
We didn't focus on the technocrats, in countries like Belgium or states like New York, who also got things terribly wrong. And, of course, we ignore the victims in the third-world who were never actors to begin with.
It seems like terribly wrong is often unavoidable.