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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 25, 2025

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the COVID vaccines are highly imperfect and not that important for young, healthy adults or children

And yet public health officials keep pressing for COVID vaccines for young, healthy adults and children.

There is no concerted effort to suppress a spree of cardiac myopathies

Maybe there isn't such an effort ANY MORE.

When promising cures for things like aggressive pancreatic cancers are caught in the cross-fire

Are they? Or is that just marketing, because the mRNA producers are looking for applications that sound really good? What I find when searching for that is particularly unpromising -- it's a personalized mRNA vaccine to be used after surgery. Even it works, it'll be eleventy-billion dollars a dose, and you still have to have the surgery.

And yet public health officials keep pressing for COVID vaccines for young, healthy adults and children.

Sure, but what do I have to do with that? As it stands, the side effect profile from the jab is so minimal that the harm is negligible, even if that's the case for the benefits in that age group. If the government was mandating that every human alive take a dose of a single spoonful of sugar, it wouldn't be the best for diabetics, but it wouldn't kill them either.

Maybe there isn't such an effort ANY MORE.

Sigh. If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions. If civilization was that good at organization, we'd have a Dyson sphere by now.

I have worked in two countries adding up to probably 1.5 billion people and change. There was no coverup there, you can take it from someone who worked in a COVID ICU and ran the vaccination programs. The UK grabbed onto the same Moderna and Pfizer vaccines used in the US at about the same time, India opted to use a different mRNA made by Gennova, but AstraZeneca's and another indigenous "normal" vaccine came first.

The sheer scale it would take to run cover for significant mRNA vaccine related adverse effects.. In that many countries, over such a long period of time. It's ludicrous.

Are they? Or is that just marketing, because the mRNA producers are looking for applications that sound really good?

  1. The whole point of the FDA is to hold manufacturers accountable and to ensure that their drugs *work, . If it doesn't pass every single trial phase, it won't make it to consumers.
  2. Pancreatic cancer is one of many potential treatments mRNA-based care provides. You can Google that yourself. At the absolute bare minimum, it allows for a velocity of gene therapy development that is staggering compared to previous options.

What I find when searching for that is particularly unpromising -- it's a personalized mRNA vaccine to be used after surgery. Even it works, it'll be eleventy-billion dollars a dose, and you still have to have the surgery.

https://www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrna-vaccines-fight-pancreatic-cancer-msk-clinical-researchers-are-trying-find-out

Pancreatic cancer consistently gets a podium finish in World's Worst Cancer To Get competition. A cousin of mine, now long gone, proves that. Every patient I saw admitted with it in the Oncology ward weren't there to bid me goodbye when I quit my job. Even the best existing treatment only ensures a 13% five-year survival rate. You die very badly, in a lot of agony.

So fucking what if it's expensive? Drugs tend to get cheaper over time. It is not an intrinsic property of mRNA vaccines that they must be expensive and personalized, they can be spammed by the shipload when circumstances demand.

I only raise this as a specific example of a highly promising treatment that is now derailed by the sheer stupidity of US politics. There are more, and there would be even more if funding wasn't cut. This isn't merely eating your seed corn, it's using it as fuel for the fire during a heatwave.

If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions

Steelman: the mistake is the assumption that you need a coordinated coverup. What about uncoordinated one?

Scientific literature has no shortage of results that don't hold up. If you take proponents of Bayesian statistics seriously, vast majority of statistical methods in all published literature use subpar methodology (NHST p-values) which is often misinterpreted. Does this need coordinated malice? No, incentives are sufficient to yield uncoordinated malice. I see similar stuff everyday at my work.

What is the one largest possible incentive? Find out that the institutions made a mistake, nearly everyone was pushed vaccine that has harmful side-effect, young adult males most at risk.

It is only a steelman however. Personally, my problem is that no anti-COVID-vaccine skeptic has ever pushed a study that attempts to there is prominent rise of side-effects and they can be attributed to vaccine, not COVID itself. Secondly, when vaccines really do cause notable increase of major side effects, people have previously noticed relatively quickly.

(Anti-anti-steelman, which makes me nervous: Swedish-Finnish pandemrix-narcolepsy case is about as well established as such causal relationship can be. It is notable that publications by anglosphere institutions like CDC and NICE and WHO seem to downplay it, presumably due to risk of fueling perceived fake vaccine scares?)

If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions.

What do you think the consequences would be, if the populations of the countries that were forced to take this stuff (and strongly encouraged to give it to their children) were to find out that it was even somewhat harmful?

Rivers of blood my man -- this is not a game.

And if that is not worth covering up (on an individual prospiracy type basis; not overarching organization is needed because the incentives are the same everywhere), I don't know what would be.

I feel that this is rather unlikely. We did not have "rivers of blood" for ineffective and ridiculously prolonged lockdowns. We did not have a mere stream for when the vaccines turned out to be ineffective at reducing transmission (while working okay for reducing the actual damage of an infection).

Then there's the fact that Russia and China adopted mRNA vaccines several years after the West. Why would they set themselves up for failure, if they knew it was a bad vaccine and they already had their own? Why wouldn't they take their perfect opportunity to screw over the West by boosting claims that mRNA vaccines cause novel harms, or harm more than they help?

If a conspiracy needs buy-in from your worst enemies, for years.. Being a conspiracist is not the idea career choice for such a bureaucrat.

"First do no harm," my guy -- "not that effective" is a very different from "may have killed my wife/kid".

Then there's the fact that Russia and China adopted mRNA vaccines several years after the West.

Russia and China didn't adopt MRNA vaccines in any serious way at all, unless I'm missing something?

Why wouldn't they take their perfect opportunity to screw over the West by boosting claims that mRNA vaccines cause novel harm

Who says they aren't?

And yet public health officials keep pressing for COVID vaccines for young, healthy adults and children.

Sure, but what do I have to do with that? As it stands, the side effect profile from the jab is no minimal that the harm is negligible, even if that's the case for the benefits in that age group.

You're still defending it, that's what you have to do with that. And I disagree; the typical flu-like symptoms from the COVID vaccines are already not "negligible".

Sigh. If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions. If civilization was that good at organization, we'd have a Dyson sphere by now.

We had a pan-national shutdown of a vast array of normal activity. Civilization is clearly that good at organization; Dyson spheres are just harder. That said, the myocarditis coverup was clumsy by comparison and mostly consisted of public health officials lying a lot.

Pancreatic cancer consistently gets a podium finish in World's Worst Cancer To Get competition.

Yes, which is why it's good marketing for boosters to claim any given new technology has a chance of curing it.

So fucking what if it's expensive?

Yeah, that's the attitude that's making health care costs rise.

Drugs tend to get cheaper over time.

This isn't a single drug, it's a specific new drug for each patient.

It is not an intrinsic property of mRNA vaccines that they must be expensive and personalized, they can be spammed by the shipload when circumstances demand.

It IS an intrinsic property of this pancreatic cancer treatment that they must be personalized.

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