WHO Warns of 'Chaos' if Individuals Mix Covid Vaccines (theguardian.com) 195
The World Health Organization's chief scientist has advised individuals against mixing and matching Covid-19 vaccines from different manufacturers, saying such decisions should be left to public health authorities. From a report: "It's a little bit of a dangerous trend here," Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing on Monday after a question about booster shots. "It will be a chaotic situation in countries if citizens start deciding when and who will be taking a second, a third and a fourth dose." Swaminathan had called mixing a âoedata-free zoneâ but later clarified her remarks in an overnight tweet. "Individuals should not decide for themselves, public health agencies can, based on available data," she said in the tweet. "Data from mix and match studies of different vaccines are awaited -- immunogenicity and safety both need to be evaluated."
A step forward. (Score:2)
We must be making progress if we've moved from "barely getting the second dose" to mixing and matching.
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For example in Denmark the use of AZ and JJ was discouraged nationally and a focus was put on mRNA vaccines, but as the stocks freed up and the govt wanted more coverage they allowed for younger persons to take AZ/JJ ahead of the planned schedule AGAINS'T the medical communitys wishes.
Now these people that got it early might now be considering taking later shots of mRNA vaccines to g
Too much conflicting information (Score:5, Insightful)
First they say that mixing vaccines is untested. Later they come out with reports that suggest that mixing vaccines may provide more robust and enduring protection than getting a second dose of the same vaccine. Now they are saying that it is problem again.
I got two of the same vacciine, but I know a *LOT* of people who got Astrazenica first and then either Pfizer of Morderna second because at the time they started rolling out second doses here, that was actually the recommended policy for people who got Astrazenica in their first dose.
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I think this is only correct for AstraZeneca because it uses the same vector for both shots and the body develops a partial immunity to the vector after the first one, lowering the second shot efficiency.
Re:Too much conflicting information (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding.
"such decisions should be left to public health authorities"
Who the hell do you think told us to mix doses? Here in Ontario, Canada those of us who had the first dose of CrapaZenenca don't even have the option of not mixing if we want a second dose.
A little anecdote, a week after I got my first shot at the advice of Public Health about not being picky, they stopped giving out AstraZeneca saying it wasn't as effective and that people should wait for Pfizer or Moderna. I was like what the hell? Now a few weeks after I get my SECOND dose, we hear that 1. oops, sorry we were wrong about the effectiveness and 2. You shouldn't be mixing.
Misinformation is hard enough to wade through, but when it comes from your own seemingly competent health officials, us plebes have no chance!
Yo Grark
Re:Too much conflicting information (Score:5, Informative)
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There is more than one 'authority'. Obviously, they do not always agree in lockstep.
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A lot of Brits are in that boat. I got 2 AstraZeneca jabs but would like a mRNA jab since the science says that's more affective.
Re:Too much conflicting information (Score:4, Informative)
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Why? Because we're all to stupid to listen to scientific advice? I'd take an mRNA jab if I could since I've only had 2x AstraZenica jabs and those aren't as affective against the Delta variant.
The scientists have said mixing works, so why ignore that?
Chief scientist at WHO should know what the fuck the current studies say before proclaiming there is no science on mixing jabs.
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Re: Too much conflicting information (Score:5, Informative)
No it hasn't been studied. There hasn't been enough time to perform studies of mixing and matching vaccines. The vaccines haven't been out long enough and the mixing of them has not been done long enough for a controlled study.
Err actually there has been a controlled study by Oxford University and there's already been published results. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/hea... [bbc.co.uk]
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It's kind of pointless to implement a trial of something if you have no intent on collecting the results of the trial in the hope of coming to some kind of conclusion.
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You are fucking stupid if you mix and match vaccines at this point.
Not really.
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Next week. There's some preliminary evidence on what happens [youtube.com].
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You mean like how COVID hasn't been out long enough for them to have come out with a vaccine that was determined to be safe and effective for general use by the population only 12 months after news of this virus came out to the world?
Oh, wait....
Here's a funny thing... when you have a pandemic that is killing people at an alarming rate, health research suddenly gets a lot more funding to
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So, you are saying that long-term studies (say five years) have actually been done in the last year?
So, if you want to find out the effects of a fall on the human body, you throw a person off of a 20 story building. You examine them after 15 stories and they are still healthy. So you extrapolate that a 20 story fall is safe.
Sorry, but baking cookies for 12 minutes at 350 F does not mean that you can cook them for two minutes at 2,100 F.
I REALLY want to know what the LONG TERM effects of a vaccine are befo
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I believe that is called "moving the goalposts"
The allegation was that there have been no studies at all regarding mixing vaccines, not that there have been no long term studies.
There are, of course, no long term studies of *ANY* covid19 vaccine in the first place, that does not mean that studies were not done, nor does it mean that those studies were not thorough enough to satisfy the criteria that medical health professions consider it safe and effective enough for wide distribution.
And of course,
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First, I got the 2x dose Pfizer shot.
But you simply cannot say that we know the vaccine does not cause any damage.
We've seen cases of some of the younger folks getting it, have heart inflammation amount other problems.
Some people have had some VERY bad reactions to the vaccines.
Thankfully, in large numbers, these occurrences are relatively rare...but you simply cannot say that va
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What is the difference between an individual deciding on mixing doses or a health official telling you to?
Besides the fact the health official having solid data behind their decision and specific recommendations like only mixing certain vaccines? Seriously do you think they roll dice and give you a recommendation like in D&D.
They have no special knowledge in this case because it has not been studied.
Health officials have no special knowledge over the subject areas they spend their entire lives studying? What do you smoke?
And no, I am not an expert, I just have common sense.
And yet you are arguing that other people should not listen to the experts. If you read the summary, they explicitly say people should not take third and fourth do
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Total BS. I can't believe you believe this. There is NO SOLID DATA. That is my entire point. IT HAS NOT BEEN STUDIED.Who studied mixing AZ and Pfizer? AZ didn't. Pfizer didn't. Who did? No one.
Oxford University, the organisation who created the AZ vaccine did so yes it has. Oxford University in the UK has done a study and trials. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/hea... [bbc.co.uk]
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Public health agencies jumping the gun (Score:2)
The Netherlands has already said mixing is safe though I don't see that they have adopted it as a policy yet. The UK has published studies on AstraZeneca + Pfizer though it's yet to be peer reviewed. At least that's what the press release said which didn't actually mention which study :-/
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While I know it is an emergency, we really need to let these studies to be done methodically. Having a 1 in 100,000 problem is a big deal.
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Doh, Eh? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Doh, Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
For chrissakes.
1. AZ IS safe. It's certainly much safer than actually contracting COVID.
2. While the risks of AZ should be more than acceptable, we were starting to get more doses of Pfizer anyway, due to better manufacturing.
3. Getting 2 different vaccines was deemed better than NOT getting a second dose. Because of the supply situation, it was looking more likely that we would be forced into that position. Pfizer and Moderna were always considered basically interchangeable.
4. As it turns out, mixing AZ+mRNA seems to produce even better immune responses than AZ+AZ or mRNA+mRNA. That wasn't clear at first, but there's more evidence for it now. At first it was deemed merely not dangerous. (Mixing vaccines is common, it's just that we've never paid attention to vaccine brands until now.)
5. Any timing delays imposed by the government about how long you were supposed to wait for your second dose were largely based on availability, not efficacy. After some study, it looks like 12+ weeks is actually quite a sweet spot, but right now the advice is 4 weeks to strike a good balance between getting shots into arms and the best possible protection.
The government's available data changed, and it has responded well to the data as it arrives. It's been a remarkably smooth vaccination campaign considering we don't manufacture any of these vaccines inside the country.
You should only complain or worry if the government sets a policy and absolutely refuses to budge from it when there's new information.
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Same... got AZ first, then Moderna second... It was a little bit chaotic at one point with the AZ saga in Canada...
Some vaccines are better than others... (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone with family members who got the J&J shot (prior to the catastrophic decision to suspend giving it out), they're now looking at situations where people (such as the NY Yankees) are getting Covid while those who got Pfizer/Moderna are not. I received my 2 Moderna shots, and now my family is wondering if it makes sense to get that one as well.
So the issue is that some vaccines (AZ, J&J) are performing worse than others. The Chinese vaccine especially seems to be almost useless. Who can blame folks for wanting to upgrade their vaccination status?
If the concern is that it's tough for CDC/WHO to tease the data apart as to which vaccines are working, individuals won't care. They should be allowed to push for their maximum level of protection.
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We'll be getting boosters and vaccinations for this virus for a long time.
I'm sure this will happen regardless of the science.
Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2, Insightful)
While it is technically true that the question of whether covid can be transmitted telepathically through 5g cell towers has not been definitely answered by a double-blind randomized control trial designed to deliberately sample the entire zodiac, and spanning the necessary time period to ensure that Mars is in retrograde in every celestial house, it is even more true that there is no plausible mechanism by which this happens and it is safe to say that it doesn't.
Similarly...if a vaccine works the same way.
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Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:3)
That's not true in this case. Every single one of the dna/rna vaccines as well as the Novavax vaccine introduces the sars-cov2 spike protein into the human body by delivering genetic material into muscle cells that cause them to present the spike protein.
Killed virus vaccines directly inject all kinds of viral proteins including the spike and the Novavax vaccine directly injects the spike.
Again: what is the rationale for thinking they are not interchangeable? "I don't understand how it works therefore I wil
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That's not true in this case
Stop right there. If some of the vaccines are not like other vaccines, you have defeated your own argument.
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
No I haven't.
Some vaccines aren't like other vaccines:
Live virus polio vaccines given orally are not like inactivated virus vaccines given as injections. One doses you with the real thing in a small amount and the other injects inactivated virue into you.
How exactly does that defeat any argument at all?
Do people really not understand how disease spreads and how the immune system works?
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:3)
They also have different names and come in different sized vials. That's not the point. The point is whether these differences in packaging are at all relevant to the functioning of the vaccines once delivered into the human body.
Everything I know about the theoretical operating principles of vaccines in general and these covid vaccines in particular tells me these differences are irrelevant.
If you have specific concern or reason for why it is relevant, then please share with the world.
Appeals to your own i
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:3)
No, it's not common sense.
It's the same phenomenon as wearing a mask by yourself in the middle of the woods because "masks prevent covid. It is superstition and fetishization of rituals to ward off evil in the absence of information and understanding.
Rational thought is the antidote to this pathology. So again: given how they work and what they do...what is the rationale for not mixing vaccines from different manufacturers?
I repeat: "I don't know" only means "I don't know." It does not mean "you don't know,
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
No it's not anti-science; it's anti-obtuseness.
When I write a piece of software, am I required to use a specific text editor for the whole thing or can I switch between emacs, gedit, and vi on the grounds that they're all text editors that save the same ascii characters on disk?
When I build electronics, am I required to use the same manufacturer's resistors for each component on each unit or am I allowed to trust that a 1% 1k resistor from Manufacturer A is interchangeable with a 1% 1k resistor from Manufac
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
No...I'm not an IT guy, I'm an aerospace engineer who's married to a medical doctor with trained biologists and mathematicians and all kinds kinds of educated and intelligent people with relavent know-how in my family and social circle.
Sometimes it's like a Mitchell and Webb skit, but often it's like of we're thinking people who have scientific and technical training and more than three brain cells to rub together.
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
Look how far away from the top post we've gotten without an answer to the original question: given how these vaccines work, what reason is there to think mixing them for prime and boost isn't sensible?
We've had a bunch of accusations of not knowing what the other guy is talking about, some assertions that there is no possible way for the other guy to know, and lots of "I don't know, therefore no one can know" solipsism, but no answer or hint of an answer.
And everyone still manages to walk away more certain
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
I once encountered a graduate student of a fairly accomplished academic at a very prominent university (you've certainly heard of the school and you might have even heard of the professor).
Anyway, the professor makes a glib remark to the crowd about the delicate art and perils of communicating specialized technical information to a lay audience via mass media.
About half an hour later, his student and I are having a conversation...and in response to a counterpoint to the aforementioned glib remark I made in
Re: Intentional obtuseness from former premeds (Score:2)
Ingredients donâ(TM)t matter.
But Mars is never in retrograde. (Score:2)
So how will we ever know?
XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
Experiment Results (Score:2)
Remember kids (Score:2)
WHO says if you mix vaccines, somewhere Nurgle laughs.
What happens when you get all 5 COVID vaccines? (Score:2)
Government agencey says ... (Score:2)
Government agency says government agencies, not individuals, should make the decisions. (Film at 11:00.)
Why am I not surprised?
Data free zone? (Score:2)
Now they tell me (Score:3)
I'm one dose of AstraZeneca short on my Covid-19 Vaccine Bingo card [mfbc.us]
Chaos? For whom? The non-existent stats people? (Score:2)
What will the result of mixing be? That the people who aren't collecting statistics won't be able to isolate non-working vaccines?
Is the WHO person one of those people who don't like it when food on the plate touches other foods on the plate?
Let anti-vaxxers have their way (Score:2)
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The evidence is what doctors are reporting across the nation. So which is more likely: there's a cabal among doctors to all report the people dying from covid are unvaccinated, or that nearly every person dying from covid really is unvaccinated?
Same thing here. They will determine what we get to see and hear so they
Competing Trackers from multiple vaccines (Score:3)
The RF signals from the competing tracking chips in the vaccines will cause interference and the grand plan will fail. Also, it is possible that the kill switches will be disabled if the wrong combination of shots is given.
Taiwan (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember when Tedros, the WHO Chief and Marxist politician by background, hung up the Zoom call when somebody asked him about Taiwan.
These are mendacious politicians, not serious scientists, that we're hearing from. There are surely decent scientists in the WHO's employ, but they don't get to talk to the population of this planet.
The US funding ought to be re-directed to Doctors without Borders (MSF) which actually does good work. Except the US bombed their hospital instead, found itself "not guilty" and offered $6000 condolence payments to the families of each person murdered in the hospital.
So that might not work out.
I know only one thing.. (Score:2)
I'm here to kill Chaos
Johnson and Astra here... (Score:2)
Conflict (Score:2)
The source was an NPR interview, transcript here. https://www.npr.org/sections/h... [npr.org]
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Hey! They are consistently wrong, you can't just jump in there and mess with it when we FINALLY have something in the whole fucking mess that is consistent!
Re:Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know there is a bid difference from a prediction vs a forecast right?
What these officials give you is a forecast. If citizens had kept their masks on, social distanced, and avoided unnecessary contact the Covid level would be at that low lever they had forecasted. If everyone did nothing and just went on like normal then the levels would be at the high levels they had forecasted.
However giving 90% of the population a Normal Distribution chart forecast will go over their heads. So they try to predict where the median may be, to give an estimated number.
But lately the Stupid People seemed to have been granted a lot of power and sway. So FUD about the Vaccine, and using it as a political weapon is stopping a lot of people from using it.
We had the resources to get most people Vaccinated by the 4th of July. But so many realy Stupid people who just want to make sure those Experts and Democrats are wrong, just refused to take the Vaccine, they rather die than have a democrat be right.
Also especially amongst the GOP and Red States there seems to be this War against the experts. Like how 5 minutes of searching on their Echo chamber of choice is better than people who have spent decades on that topic.
Yes these experts may not be the smartest people in the world, but they know a good amount in the field they are experts in. You should trust your auto mechanic to fix your car. However you probably won't trust them to manage your 401k. Also you may not want your Accountant to fix your car.
People specialize in skills for a reason, and people higher specialist because they are really good at that particular thing they need. If you are just going to dismiss any expert because they know stuff you don't, you are going to spend your life in ignorance and and not gaining any of the benefits from these experts.
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WHO is right to be alarmed by individuals making up their own uncontrolled experiments. It will be chaos. They are currently conducting controlled investigations to give reliable information on the safety/effectiveness of mixed vaccine use.
Individuals who go rogue on this risk their own safety (and public safety) and contribute nothing valuable to science.
Unfortunately, it has become politicized (particularly in the US) so we have a lot of people who don't trust science on COVID (and many other areas). One
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Your post is a good example of politics infecting science.
Science has consistently shown it did not come from a lab. It has been thoroughly investigated. Politics doesn't want to believe the science.
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Your post is a good example of politics infecting science. Science has consistently shown it did not come from a lab. It has been thoroughly investigated. Politics doesn't want to believe the science.
Absolutely false. We have shown that it wasn't genetically engineered. We also have not been able to prove it was from nature. Since we have always been able to track down a natural source before, this seems to indicate that it probably came from a lab but wasn't genetically engineered. One of the biggest reasons that people don't trust health officials right now is because of this. Someone asks a question about it being from a lab and you give an answer to a completely different question (that questio
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If it wasn't genetically engineered then it came from nature.
It is difficult to find the natural origins of most diseases. We still have only a vague idea of where modern diseases such as ebola and HIV came from. Older diseases no idea.
It wasn't genetically engineered. It didn't come from a lab. It came from nature. We will probably never know exactly where in nature it came from.
Re:Public health officials? (Score:4, Informative)
That's simply not true.
Neither Moderna nor Pfizer, the first companies with a usable vaccine, participated in that ridiculous "warp speed" initiative. Donnie also spent the last 9 months of 2020 fueling covid conspiracy theories and refusing to wear a mask.
Trump made this pandemic a lot worse that it should have been. He made it worse while also dividing the nation and fueling right-wing extremists.
Fuck off.
Re:Public health officials? (Score:5, Informative)
"We got the vaccine cuz of Trump"
For one to think that any current sitting president "got" the population the vaccine is utter nonsense. Every sitting leader in the entire world that had money, ponied up for their lots of the vaccine.
Are folks in Germany saying, "We got the vaccine cuz of Merkel!"??
The people that "got" the vaccine are these large bio-chemical conglomerates. Every government around the world was itching for a vaccine. The tech was there. These companies created something that folks wanted.
This was all about opportunity. People needed a vaccine. These companies made one.
Sounds more like supply/demand/free market to me.
--
I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them. - George H. W. Bush
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We also don't have any long term data on covid-19. Why are these people so confident that the long term side effects of mRNA vaccines are going to be worse then the long term side effect of covid-19?
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1. devise a new treatment from inexpensive, all-natural ingredients.
2. make a claim of efficacy.
3. get called out by main stream scientists and doctors for never performing controlled studies or trials. Clearly they're influence by Big Pharma to stop little guys from offering cheap effective cures.
If there is no regulation. Then people can make ultra dilute tinctures and drip them onto sugar pills and sell them to people as if it were actual medicine. That's fraud and a public health hazard. In short: chaos
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was alive the entire pandemic. I went to fewer concerts and watched more movies at home. Luckily I was able to do my job remotely and stay out of public places. Allowing those with more critical jobs to have less exposure to people during a pandemic.
And this is why you don't understand the anger of the public on this issue. You felt no pain. Many many others had their entire lives rearranged. Millions of small business owners in the US are either now or soon will be bankrupt. Millions lost their jobs, and you enjoyed your time at home. How lovely, maybe you should say something about the rest of us eating cake. Its beyond insensitive you clod. People that really felt economic pain from this will likely be angry for a long, long time over the lockdowns. Ask yourself, how do you think they will vote in the future?
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And this is why you don't understand the anger of the public on this issue. You felt no pain.
I already admitted that I had it better than most. That in itself should demonstrat my level of understanding. I will add on top that I have lost one close family member and have three others that are extremely vulnerable due to immune disorder and raspatory disorders (CPOD). While I have not been inconvenience as much as others, the worry and pain is quite real.
Millions of small business owners in the US are either now or soon will be bankrupt.
Is this the pandemic's doing or is it the lack of a robust economic system unable to handle catastrophic events? What would happen in a war or if c
Re: Public health officials? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Emergency Use Authorization for Vaccines Explained [fda.gov]
A uniquely American problem (Score:4, Funny)
Very soon COVID in America will be a completely preventable disease that will primarily kill Trump Republicans. I don't believe this virus was engineered by the Chinese, but fact is they could not have done a better job even if they had tried.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to try to abuse a few synapses, and disentangle your not unjustified distrust of government officials, from the medical professionals who created, tested, and are distributing the vaccine.
You might be smarter than the government officials. You might even be smarter than the medical professionals-- but they have more experience and knowledge than you.
Go ahead. Roll the dice! You're only facing possibly crippling damage to your lungs and brain** if you're wrong. If you live.
** I know some very good scientists who have been reviewing MRI scans of individuals with "serious" covid. There are dramatic, noticeable, and so far, undefined changes before and after.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
First it's "friends." Then you switch to just one friend with the problem.
But sure, I guess it's possible you personally know one of the few DOZEN people who developed blood clots out of the MILLIONS of people who've taken the J&J vaccine.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health... [nbcnews.com]
Pretty sure you also probably know at least one person who's died or had serious complications from COVID-19. 624,240 Americans dead so far. Millions with some lingering effect after recovery.
Yes, vaccines sometimes have side effects. Yes, those side effects can be severe for a relatively small number of people. No, the vaccine is not more dangerous than the disease it's intended to prevent. Not even close.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't bother. He's a self-righteous fuckwit.
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I have friends who rolled the dice and can not take more than 15 steps because the J&J vaccine riddled her legs with blood clots. She has been in a wheel chair for a month ongoing with pain. She is 31 and her relative risk for Covid was essentially nil, especially since she already had acquired immunity from exposure early on. Take it or not, both are rolls of the dice, and both were made under the guise of governments (China made this virus in a lab, that much is painfully obvious now). Without them; we wouldnt have had a pandemic to begin with. So fuck yourself with your indignation for another persons right to the decisions governing their own body, fucking Nazi.
Is your anecdote supposed to convince somebody? Actual side-effect data and the percentages are pretty clear.
If you are expecting vaccines to not ever hurt anybody, welcome to dying of decease, cause that hasn't and won't happen, ever.
So go fuck YOURSELF.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have friends who rolled the dice and can not take more than 15 steps because the J&J vaccine riddled her legs with blood clots. She has been in a wheel chair for a month ongoing with pain. She is 31 and her relative risk for Covid was essentially nil, especially since she already had acquired immunity from exposure early on.
If her risk for COVID were as low as you say, the vaccine wouldn't have affected her like that. It is likely that the people with the most severe reactions to the vaccine (with the possible exception of the people who experienced anaphylaxis) would have also had very severe reactions to the virus itself.
She's actually very lucky. The blood clots in her legs should eventually resolve themselves. They'll probably want to put in a vena cava filter in the meantime, and the discomfort sucks in the short term, but it could have been a *lot* worse.
Had your friend gotten an actual case of COVID, by the time those blood clots formed, she would probably have already been lying incapacitated in a hospital bed, which means the blood clots would have been much greater in number. Odds are good that one of them would have ended up in her lungs before they could do anything about it, and acute pulmonary embolisms caused by blood clots have about a one-in-ten chance of killing you.
Take it or not, both are rolls of the dice ...
Yes, they are, but it's the difference between trying to avoid rolling a six on a D6 and trying to avoid rolling a six on a D6000. If you honestly believe that the vaccine is something to be scared of while faced with the risk of COVID, then I'm going to assume that you skipped elementary school math where you learned that the one in twenty odds of "long COVID" are a higher risk than the one in several million odds of long-term vaccine side effects.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
When did Experts in particular fields stop being trusted?
And what part of their forecasts were so off, for any of those people who actually read the full report vs you Fox News headline.
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Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, on slashdot it was in the last ten years that every damn reader assumes that because they read some articles on the internet that they are smarter at a particular narrow topic than those who make their profession dealing with that topic. Ie, they are smarter than MDs when it comes to medicine, they are smarter than academic physicists when it comes to physics, they are smarter about climate scientist than literally anyone who is not also on slashdot, etc. It's an amazing shift in nerd culture that has gone from geeks being interested in how things work towards geeks arrogantly demanding that they already know literally everything. Combine that with a influx of extremist political ideologies that everyone who has ever talked to a member of government or gotten a science grant is untrustworthy and likely corrupt.
Skepticism is gone and been replaced by contrarianism, and they probably don't even know the difference.
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When did Experts in particular fields stop being trusted?
What advice do you follow when experts disagree with each other?
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The statements were prescriptive on no data.
"Don't mix vaccines because we have no data" is not very helpful in a world where supply is limited in many places.
"We have no data to know what happens when you mix vaccines. You are taking an unquantified risk if you do. We expect to have data in the future," would be an honest statement that respects the intelligence of the individual.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:2)
Thing is we do have data on mixing vaccines, and it is positive. OK it might not have been generated in the USA, but it exists.
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"When did Experts in particular fields stop being trusted?"
When FOX found out it could sell conspiracy "theories" to their clientele.
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When did Experts in particular fields stop being trusted?
And what part of their forecasts were so off, for any of those people who actually read the full report vs you Fox News headline.
There's a certain level of justifiable mistrust for the WHO since it was the WHO that originally said COVID wasn't airborne (despite the fact it was absolutely logical to expect it would.)
Mind you that most people who distrust experts are just idiots fishing for any reason to justify their mistrust (err, biases.) But we need to be honest also how some officials did screw up when communicating about this pandemic (and I'm looking straight at the CDC's decision to announce vaccinated people could remove the
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Re: Public health officials? (Score:2)
Uh, you couldn't even find toilet paper for a while. When it comes to relying on the populace to do the right thing, I don't think you've thought your plan all the way through. It was absolutely necessary to lie to them (us).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Bull [cdc.gov] f**king [plos.org] s**t [healthaffairs.org].
Go away, troll.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:3, Insightful)
They later retracted the paper but not before Fauci and the WHO held it up as evidence that chloroquine was ineffective and/or dangerous. We can be pretty sure why chloroquine came under attack. Trump spoke positively. The establishment, faced with the awkward situation of agreeing with orange man, chose to beclown themselves. The Lancet of all publications behaved like spiteful teenagers.
Re: Public health officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Fucking, finally. When did government officials suddenly start being so trusted? The errors they made during this pandemic have been insanely obvious and stupid. Never trust them. Do your own reading. Research.
It says "such decisions should be left to public health authorities"
Health authorities =/= idiotic government officials appointed by members of Trump Administration which
- continually denied there was a problem
- said that Covid-19 was no more dangerous than the flu [reuters.com]
- said that everything was under control [cnbc.com] and one day soon infections would go to zero [washingtonpost.com]... likely in April as the heat comes in [factcheck.org]
- said that we can fight off infections by injecting bleach [politico.com]
- and that because they're doing such a great job [forbes.com] we will have a very good ending [politico.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that is also known as Mount Stupid
https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
ugh...not sure how that plus got on the end. Trying again:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/... [wikimedia.org]
Too much confusing information from Health Orgs (Score:2)
Too many people are smart enough to think they know stuff but not smart enough to know they dont know anything.
A big part of the problem is the information passed from the various health organizations on the efficacy of the different vaccines, the length of time between doses and what happens when you mix.
So much of what's released by the government health organizations is tainted by political considerations - I can see why people think they know more than the health organizations.
Sadly, most people are definitely smarter than the politicians they've elected. They just don't have an understanding of the reasons