We’ve completely transformed human civilization in a desperate attempt to slow down the spread of this virus that kills 1 in 200 people, and now we don’t want to use one of the miracle cures because of a literal one in a million chance of issues.
People are absolute garbage at thinking about scale.
It kills less than that in the demographic in question, not to mention that is only of those who contract the virus.
> People are absolute garbage at thinking about scale.
I don’t think it is that, I think it is that for better or worse humans tend to view wrongs through inaction as less atrocious than wrongs through action. Additionally - they already have better alternatives and plenty of supply in the US (Moderna and Pfizer vaccines) so they are opting to just use those at the moment.
Second, there’s evidence that even if people don’t die, there can be long term neurological effects [2].
Third, even if we accept your number, 1 in 200 would still be 1.5 million Americans dead, not even considering the rest of the world. I am personally not comfortable doing nothing to stop that number.
I agree that being super worried about a 1 in a million blood clot might be short sighted, especially since the death rate from catching the virus is 2 in 100.
That's probably true, so maybe the 2% death rate is too high, again, let's assume that the OP's point of 0.5% is accurate.
As I said, that still implies that if everyone in the United States got it, 1.5 million of them would die (320,000,000 * .005). That's a lot of people.
If a government did nothing to prevent a terrorist attack that killed 1.5 million people, most people would (rightly) be pretty upset.
EDIT:
Also, forgot to mention, it's totally disingenuous to only look at "deaths". We do not fully know the long term health effects, but as I stated there's potential neurological effects, potential risks of type 1 diabetes, and people permanently losing smell.
While I can appreciate where you are coming from, countering a terrorist attack typically has something that we don't have with COVID and that is information. The world was introduced and expected to react to this disease without any sort of "tactical" knowledge. Even if you include the other four variants of coronavirus, the availability of information can still be considered sorely lacking. Discounting government-provided information, even medical sources had a harder time providing a consensus on how the disease was transmitted during the first few months. That the larger questions like why we have such a large population that appears to be asymptomatic remains unanswered while we are still being pushed to "one-size-fits-all" remedy (and a remedy that appears to only be there to debase the severity of symptoms) doesn't help. Unfortunately, we need information, and information is going to take time. The long term arguments for health side effects are on both sides of the coin here.
It's also similarly absolutely disingenuous to use any other number that's not based on measured (or measurable) facts. CFR is the only one we have right now, what else do you suggest?
This is absolute and total BS. 2% death rate? Who comes up with this total garbage?
You have 100M infected in US as the estimate. A 2% death rate is 2M deaths from COVID alone. I've not seen anything like that as credible death rates - it's at least half if not a quarter of this rate - more like 0.5% or less. Do the same thing in countries with 70% infected rates - if fatality was really 2%+ death counts would be insane.
You really start to understand how people start to doubt the crap COVID "experts" put out when basic math shows it is garbage.
Johns Hopkins University. I don't feel like that's typically considered a bad source. Maybe it's a bit high or they're looking at different data sets.
But again, and I cannot overstate this enough, even if I accept the 0.5% number, that's still a lot of deaths, about 1.5 million if everyone in the US gets it.
According to the NYTimes [1], there's been about half a million deaths from COVID. If your provided number of 100M infected people is correct, then that would be consistent with 1.5M dying if everyone gets infected (US population ~= 3 * 100M, 3 * 500,000 = 1.5M).
It’s not a sim city decision. In young healthy people the risk of covid death is much lower than 1/200 , so you gotta see why this would make people hesitate.
As a young healthy people myself, I'm not tremendously concerned about either risk on a personal level, but I'm very concerned about getting vaccinated as fast as possible so I can do what I'd like without spreading disease. (To their credit, the agencies seem to have evaluated this and concluded the pause won't have a huge impact on vaccination timelines - but that won't do much for the people who were hoping to get it today!)
Deaths from COVID aren't seen as the direct 'fault' of the regulatory bodies. Deaths from a vaccine will be... and fundamentally, regulatory bodies aren't really incentivised to take risks anyway.
If they follow your line of thinking and it's all fine... no-one's going to be writing articles praising them.
If they follow your line of thinking and more people die form blood clots... people will write articles attacking them. Questions will be asked, and careers may be harmed. Etc.
1 in 200 people? Maybe if you're above the age of 75 and have significant comorbities. If it was 1 in 200 for all age groups you wouldn't have to convince people that lockdowns and maskwearing isn't all theater, they'd be so scared you wouldn't have to convince them of anything.
> If it was 1 in 200 for all age groups you wouldn't have to convince people that lockdowns and maskwearing isn't all theater, they'd be so scared you wouldn't have to convince them of anything.
Not really. 1 in 200 is fewer than how many die a year anyway of all causes.
I don’t think the parent comment meant to downplay the virus. I read it more like “we had to make great sacrifices to contain a 1 in 200 death problem but now we’re turning our noses at a cure that has a 1 in 1M serious side effect rate”.
Why only this 2 companies? Why don't we mobilize all pharma of the world to produce more mRNA vaccines quickly? Intellectual property? I think it's an extraordinary time so we should all agree to vaccinate all earthlings quicker is much higher priority than commercial interests.
intellectual property is one reason[1] but for the mRNA vaccines, the technology/machinery required to mass produce them is also part of the bottleneck along with raw materials[2]
> Novartis announced today that it has signed an initial agreement to leverage its manufacturing capacity and capabilities in order to address the COVID-19 pandemic by supporting the production of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. The agreement will see Novartis utilizing its aseptic manufacturing facilities at its site in Stein, Switzerland.
> On March 2, we announced a partnership with Johnson & Johnson to expand manufacturing capacity and supply of its COVID-19 vaccine. Under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) agreement, our company is adapting and making available some of our existing manufacturing sites to accelerate manufacturing efforts for the vaccine and enable more timely delivery and administration.
> Under the terms of the agreement, the companies plan to establish manufacturing suites at Lonza’s facilities in the United States and Switzerland for the manufacture of mRNA-1273 at both sites. Technology transfer is expected to begin in June 2020, and the companies intend to manufacture the first batches of mRNA-1273 at Lonza U.S. in July 2020.
> AstraZeneca and IDT Biologika also intend to strengthen Europe’s vaccine manufacturing capability with a joint investment to build large additional drug substance capacity for the future. Details of the agreement are to be finalised. Both companies plan to invest in capacity expansion at IDT Biologika’s production site in Dessau, Germany to build up to five 2,000-litre bioreactors capable of making tens of millions of doses per month of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. The new assets are estimated to be operational by the end of 2022.
People are absolute garbage at thinking about scale.