This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
As a matter of fact, we had vaccine candidates on March 9 (2020), and had confirmed immune response in mice and started testing them in humans by April 23.
As a matter of law, it was simply illegal to give or sell the vaccines that we did have to non-test-subjects before efficacy testing finished, and on top of that it was illegal to recruit test subjects with a plan of "expose healthy volunteers to Covid deliberately and immediately under medical supervision" rather than "wait for six or seven months for a decent sample size to be exposed to Covid incidentally and unexpectedly out in the wild", so efficacy testing wasn't finished and mass manufacturing couldn't even be begun until cumulative world excess mortality was well over a million and rapidly growing.
As a matter of deduction, totalitarianism did not outperform freedom here. It killed millions, and got away with it only because it had already managed to strangle the globe so thoroughly (even in the United States!) that freedom was never tried.
What was stopping a pharma company from declaring their vaccine open to the public, as long as you signed up for their trial*?
*requires a deposit equal to the retail price of the vaccine
The FDA, obviously...?
Right, why couldn’t they just have expanded their trial?
The obvious reason is that the government would come down on them like a ton of bricks, even if they found a way to violate the spirit of the law while adhering to the letter.
But the legal reason is ... harder to find? There's a lot of letters of the law, so I'd think "you can't weasel out of testing requirements by declaring that your 'test' subjects might include half the country" has to be covered by one of them somewhere, but a quick skim didn't show me where.
Ah, wait, AI to the rescue; I was looking at the wrong parts.
21 USC 355 says "No person shall introduce or deliver for introduction into interstate commerce any new drug, unless an approval of an application filed pursuant to subsection (b) or (j) is effective with respect to such drug."
Then 21 CFR 312 talks about the "Investigational New Drug Application (IND)" exemption to that, but part one of the exemption process is basically begging the FDA to approve your proposed trial protocols so you can run the trials you need to get the final approval. If your trial protocol is "give it to anyone who pays" or even just "give it to anyone who wants it", good luck getting that "trial" approved, and "A sponsor shall not begin a clinical investigation subject to § 312.2(a) until the investigation is subject to an IND".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Regarding challenge trials, 1Day Sooner came into being as a result of our clear failure here. COVID was a ridiculously good candidate for challenge trials: a disease that spreads quickly, so every day matters, and which is dangerous to one segment of the population but relatively harmless to everyone else. Our global failure here doesn't speak well for our prospects if a genuinely dangerous plague comes along. (Imagine if the disease had a 30% fatality rate to everyone. Challenge trials would be even more important, and a lot harder to justify ethically.)
I guess the most optimistic take is that if a real threat to society comes along (i.e. a plague which doesn't mostly just replace the "cause of death" for unhealthy seniors), we might actually be spurred to take appropriate measures. It's "only" the threat of creeping totalitarianism which we utterly failed at, enthusiastically cheering on lockdowns and unpersoning anybody who said "uh, wait a minute".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link