Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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You can't trust what I haven't presented. I could do so, and I strongly expect to be correct, but I already do enough trawling of medical literature when I'm being paid for it.
It's your child, and I have some respect for your right to make decisions on their behalf, even if I think they're bad decisions.
My man, you're going from wrong to confused. There's good reason why you don't see doctors or nurses pull out dose calculators to account for body weight when giving every vaccine I can think of it. It's because it doesn't matter. If little Tommy is 4'6 and 35 kilos or 4'9 and 45 makes next to no difference, and this holds true once you're past the size of a premature infant on death's door, going to a land whale who needs a mobility scooter. Vaccines aren't like paracetamol, the dose-response curves are VERY different when it's the immune system we're talking about. Someone with a peanut allergy isn't twice as likely to die if you give them two peanuts versus one.
You're not doing a good job at probabilistic reasoning, but an eczematous rash is a minor vaccine reaction, and of very little consequence. If it was life threatening, I presume you'd have pointed that out, and even then, you'd be better off consulting your pediatrician about whether they could narrow it down to a particular constituent of the two common rotavirus vaccines in the States (fetal bovine serum or porcine circovirus, if I had to guess from looking at composition), and take precautions when administering future vaccines with similar compositions. Believe it or not, most doctors would be happy to answer those questions and offer reassurance if warranted, especially if you're paying them.
I think you can use this sort of pseudo-science to justify vaccines post hoc. You can also use the same pseudo-science to justify not taking them at all.
I know quite a few people who got lasting side effects from the Covid vax, and it’s nearly heretical to talk about it. (These are people I know IRL, not internet reports) That alone makes me extremely skeptical about anyone saying how there are ~zero risks from any and all vaccines. Why is there a giant propaganda campaign to cover up the risks? Am I just some crazy statistical outlier who knows 3+ people very closely who’ve been vaccine maimed, even though it “hardly ever occurs” in the general population? I wouldn’t bet on that
People win the lottery despite the odds not being in their favor.
If you've bought a ticket, and then you find a million pounds in your bank account, then congratulations, knowing that the odds were stacked against you doesn't mean you've not won.
I know literally zero people who have been "vaccine maimed". I used to be responsible for a COVID ICU before vaccines too, and I can definitely tell you that I saw plenty die of it.
It is far more likely that you are either:
Lying. On the internet, anyone can be a dog, or claim to be one.
Mistaken.
Surrounded by people who are mistaken or lying.
Assuming 150 people you could "closely know" (Dunbar's number as a first approximation), then someone, somewhere, out there in the world will find 3 people who were harmed by vaccines. Because vaccines are not perfectly safe, and I've never claimed that. If you consider people who are mistaken about their illness being caused by a vaccine, then the number skyrockets.
I don't know one single person who had lasting adverse effects from the vaccine. This includes professionally. I do know many with acute effects (including myself).
I've also met a few people who have made claims of adverse effects but they've all been clearly mistaken (typically it involves active mental illness, or sometimes other clear medical causes of the problem which they attribute to COVID).
I'll be real with you, I find the fact that you're being downvoted so heavily rather frustrating.
We're both doctors, and we're not perfect. Most doctors aren't perfect either, but I would expect you'd agree with me when I say the majority of our colleagues are smart, conscientious people who genuinely want to do right by the people who see them.
We've conceded that vaccines have risks. We've pointed out scenarios where vaccination might be technically net positive, but of such minuscule effect that people shouldn't run around screaming because they've missed a shot. We've pointed out circumstances where the calculations change, and that vaccination schedules are made for the whole population, and not just for conscientious upper middle class nerds who take care of their health.
If I was being paid at US rates, you'd bet I'd walk any neurotic person through an entire questionnaire that ticks off boxes and adds up net QALYs for any given vaccine. This isn't really feasible at scale, and mass media is necessarily something that must scale and reach the LCD.
Yet I see more FUD than I want to here. Somehow the whole profession is discredited by covid, even though quite a few doctors would happily tell you that the way the pandemic was handled was far from perfect.
It all strikes me as a gross over-correction. The public should trust the medical field and the US government less because of our errors, but some people are throwing out the unvaccinated baby with the bath water.
I know we've got more than our fair share of contrarians, the Motte encourages their presence, but damn.
We agree mistakes were made.
What follows? And then what?
One option is that people just straight-up stop trusting experts. You don't like that option, for what seems to me to be a number of fairly solid reasons. What's your proposed alternative, and where do you see it being implemented?
Doctors go through lengthy training, but while you can't just walk into a hospital and ask to become an intern, the textbooks are free, and so is most of the research and literature (if you know how to use libgen).
If you can't parse the literature and weigh up the risks and benefits with confidence, then I'm afraid the only solution is to look at people you think are trustworthy and do as they suggest.
There's a reason that doctors tend to be highly paid professionals in almost every country, and it isn't all regulatory capture. (British doctors make above median wages, but nowhere near a free-ish market would settle as we're victims of regulatory capture).
This is because medicine is difficult. It's also the easiest it's ever been, now that so much knowledge and resources are available to anyone with an internet connection. If you've taken high school biology and have an LLM, there's practically nothing you can't theoretically learn given the time and will. This is often impractical, hence why you want to pay someone who doesn't need to do this.
I think a sensible reaction to covid pandemic measures would be to demand governments provide far more evidence to justify a lockdown longer than a month. If it's not abundantly clear that you're dealing with a disease that kills upwards of several % of the population, by the time that period is over, then demand the lockdowns end or violate them in public protest.
You should trust doctors very slightly less, trust governments and government medical bodies quite a bit less, but IMO, if you're at the point where vaccines seem net-negative to you, you've over-shot the mark.
If you really want to, there's always the option of litigation against government officials if you can prove they willfully lied. If they encouraged lockdowns when it became clear it wouldn't help, or overstated the benefits of vaccination (without the benefit of hindsight), then they should be accountable for the harm.
My concern at this point is not justifying a lockdown more than a month. I believe there is now sufficient backlash on that particular subject.
My concern at this point is what other thing that might be demanded next time.
If I have a pilot who forgot to put the landing gear down, went through remedial training on the subject, and was reinstated, my concern is not so much the pilot forgetting to put the landing gear down a second time. That particular item has been well-established. My concern is moreso "what other things might the pilot have forgotten that weren't covered in the remedial training?" Same idea.
(This is why remedial training often covers far more than just the specific incident.)
Government officials often have immunity.
The burden of proof lies the wrong way for this to help in practice, as all of these are nigh-unfalsifiable.
Of course, if your intent is for this to be a bureaucratic tarpit then your job is done here. I sincerely hope that is not your goal.
Do you have better alternatives? At the end of the day, if you're unhappy with the government, then you need to elect a better government. I presume that it wouldn't be impossible to strip bureaucrats of their immunity if the laws was changed to reflect that. What else could I really advise, that someone shoot Fauci?
In a way, the new Republican government reflects the deep unrest with previous medical policy. RFK isn't a fan of vaccines.
The reason I advocate for governments having the ability to impose lockdowns and quarantines is because pandemics can be highly dangerous. Covid was initially believed to have a ~1-10%% CFR for the first few weeks, and on the higher end, the serious possibility of several hundred million people dying justifies some action be taken. I think a month is enough to narrow the CFR down, leaving aside the primary benefit of reducing spread.
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