1094 replies to this topic

[Daniel Cooper]

Maybe he is a moron, but if what he's saying is correct, then he's not.

 

I'd share your skepticism if I had a specific reason to be skeptical (like I had with fomite and droplet transmission and the efficacy of masks), but I don't and I kind of doubt that nearly every scientist that has studied this issue and concluded that there's no link between autism and vaccines is mistaken. The only people who seem skeptical are anti-vaxxers like RFK.

 

Whether vaccines do or do not cause autism is really not the point.

 

What he's said is that he is not open to giving a fair hearing to new evidence. That's not science. As Mind points out, that's more like religion. This issue is not akin to the earth being flat. How many drugs have we previously thought were safe only to later find out otherwise?

 

Every drug that has ever been granted FDA approval that was later pulled from the market at one time had evidence that it was safe, only to later to have new evidence show that it was not.  Vioxx, Fen-Phen, etc.  

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 14 April 2025 - 08:13 PM.

[Florin]

Whether vaccines do or do not cause autism is really not the point.

 

What he's said is that he is not open to giving a fair hearing to new evidence. That's not science. As Mind points out, that's more like religion. This issue is not akin to the earth being flat. How many drugs have we previously thought were safe only to later find out otherwise?

 

Every drug that has ever been granted FDA approval that was later pulled from the market at one time had evidence that it was safe, only to later to have new evidence show that it was not.  Vioxx, Fen-Phen, etc.  

 

Anyone can claim that vaccines cause whatever, but why should I give them the time of day? Has anyone claimed that some drug caused disease X and it was pulled from the market because it caused disease X, even after it was previously shown not to cause disease X after studying millions of people over a long period of time? Should we run a bunch of never-ending, taxpayer-funded studies based on anyone's paranoid beliefs? Do you really think that the vaccines-cause-autism people will stop believing just because RFK will "prove" for the millionth time (according to Marks and probably almost every other expert) that vaccines don't cause autism? Some might but others (probably most, if flat earthers are any guide) will just say that RFK sold out.

Edited by Florin, 14 April 2025 - 11:28 PM.

[Daniel Cooper]

Anyone can claim that vaccines cause whatever, but why should I give them the time of day? Has anyone claimed that some drug caused disease X and it was pulled from the market because it caused disease X, even after it was previously shown not to cause disease X after studying millions of people over a long period of time? Should we run a bunch of never-ending, taxpayer-funded studies based on anyone's paranoid beliefs? Do you really think that the vaccines-cause-autism people will stop believing just because RFK will "prove" for the millionth time (according to Marks and probably almost every other expert) that vaccines don't cause autism? Some might but others (probably most, if flat earthers are any guide) will just say that RFK sold out.

 

I think you fail to appreciate the corrupting influence that money has had in our medical and pharmaceutical industry which has consequently spilled over into our FDA for some decades now.

 

There are literally billions and billions of dollars riding on the outcome of vaccine studies - which are largely being run by the vaccine makers themselves - providing a particular result. Therefore a prudent person would exercise a lot of skepticism regarding these studies.

 

Does that necessarily mean that vaccines cause autism? Of course not. It does mean that I can no longer accept the results of these studies at face value like I used to. We live in the world generated by the Scientific Revolution. Consequently science has become big business. And where business and science come into conflict it's generally business that is going to win. Science is the handmaiden of business, not the other way around. 

 

And anyone like Dr. Marks that says unequivocally that he's not willing to consider new evidence is telling me clearly which side he's working for on the Business - Science divide.  

[Florin]

I think you fail to appreciate the corrupting influence that money has had in our medical and pharmaceutical industry which has consequently spilled over into our FDA for some decades now.

 

There are literally billions and billions of dollars riding on the outcome of vaccine studies - which are largely being run by the vaccine makers themselves - providing a particular result. Therefore a prudent person would exercise a lot of skepticism regarding these studies.

 

Does that necessarily mean that vaccines cause autism? Of course not. It does mean that I can no longer accept the results of these studies at face value like I used to. We live in the world generated by the Scientific Revolution. Consequently science has become big business. And where business and science come into conflict it's generally business that is going to win. Science is the handmaiden of business, not the other way around. 

 

And anyone like Dr. Marks that says unequivocally that he's not willing to consider new evidence is telling me clearly which side he's working for on the Business - Science divide.  

 

That's like saying if you're not willing to accept new evidence that the earth is flat, you're working with the devil. Maybe you don't agree with that analogy, but people like Marks would agree with it. If there was some evidence that the MMR vaccine caused autism, don't you think that at least some experts would be foaming at the mouth about it regardless of what the FDA said? And what about regulatory bodies and experts in other countries? Did pharm bribe almost every expert and there has been a conspiracy of silence for decades? Unless you're a paranoid nutcase, the more you think about it, the less it makes sense.

 

Newer vaccines like the mRNA stuff are for another discussion.

[Daniel Cooper]

That's like saying if you're not willing to accept new evidence that the earth is flat, you're working with the devil. Maybe you don't agree with that analogy, but people like Marks would agree with it. If there was some evidence that the MMR vaccine caused autism, don't you think that at least some experts would be foaming at the mouth about it regardless of what the FDA said? And what about regulatory bodies and experts in other countries? Did pharm bribe almost every expert and there has been a conspiracy of silence for decades? Unless you're a paranoid nutcase, the more you think about it, the less it makes sense.

 

Newer vaccines like the mRNA stuff are for another discussion.

 

Equating the level of scientific certainty with respect to vaccines to whether or not the earth is flat is absurd.

Edited by Daniel Cooper, 18 April 2025 - 03:49 PM.

[Florin]

Equating the level of scientific certainty with respect to vaccines to whether or not the earth is flat is absurd.

 

When would it be absurd to ask for more evidence or even any evidence? What about vaccines causing childhood cancer, the common cold, influenza, RSV, bacteria infections, strep throat, and scarlet fever? Maybe they cause long-term psychological effects such as teenage rebellion. Don't you think we should look into all of that, and while we're at it, why shouldn't we see if anything causes anything bad even though we have good reasons to think that it doesn't. That would probably only take an infinite amount of time, resources, and people.

Edited by Florin, 18 April 2025 - 07:53 PM.

[Mind]

COVID inquires and FOIA requests are finding that in country after country after country, COVID policies were NOT determined by science or pre-panic guidelines. The (mostly useless) COVID restrictions were almost always based upon political consideration and in Australia apparently pushed through by one person without any scientific/health advisement.

 

An incredible number of people are still under the mistaken impression that all of the COVID restrictions were carefully considered, scientific, and rational. All of the evidence revealed in the aftermath thus far shows this was NOT the case.

 

It did not take a genius to figure out that the 6 foot distancing rule was made up on a whim. There was zero robust evidence in the whole history of medical/disease research that specifically pointed to 6 feet as being a magical distance to prevent respiratory illness spread.

 

After the COVID debacle, the distrust in medical authorities is a well-earned well-founded distrust. David Zweig's book highlights the distrust and contains this passage.

 

 

 

Without sufficient acknowledgment of the harms of school closures or adequate planning for unwinding this intervention, officials showed that their decisions to close were simply reactive rather than carefully considered. The decision makers set a radical project in motion with no plan on how to stop it. In effect, officials steered a car off the road, threw a cinder block on the accelerator, then jumped out of the vehicle with passengers still in the back. No one was in the front or even knew how to unstick the pedal.

 

Nowhere was this analogy more applicable than in the mask guidance. The "experts" and politicians who were claiming that general masking/face-coverings were a sure-fire way to end the COVID pandemic panic real quick, were the people who "jumped out of the car" (as Zweig would put it). As was detailed over and over and over and over again in the big mask thread, the experts and politicians were caught ALL THE TIME not wearing masks, even caught on camera/mic saying it was "all theatre". The rest of us had to obey the mask ordinances while they flouted them constantly.

[Florin]

COVID inquires and FOIA requests are finding that in country after country after country, COVID policies were NOT determined by science or pre-panic guidelines. The (mostly useless) COVID restrictions were almost always based upon political consideration and in Australia apparently pushed through by one person without any scientific/health advisement.

 

An incredible number of people are still under the mistaken impression that all of the COVID restrictions were carefully considered, scientific, and rational. All of the evidence revealed in the aftermath thus far shows this was NOT the case.

 

It did not take a genius to figure out that the 6 foot distancing rule was made up on a whim. There was zero robust evidence in the whole history of medical/disease research that specifically pointed to 6 feet as being a magical distance to prevent respiratory illness spread.

 

After the COVID debacle, the distrust in medical authorities is a well-earned well-founded distrust. David Zweig's book highlights the distrust and contains this passage.

 

 

Nowhere was this analogy more applicable than in the mask guidance. The "experts" and politicians who were claiming that general masking/face-coverings were a sure-fire way to end the COVID pandemic panic real quick, were the people who "jumped out of the car" (as Zweig would put it). As was detailed over and over and over and over again in the big mask thread, the experts and politicians were caught ALL THE TIME not wearing masks, even caught on camera/mic saying it was "all theatre". The rest of us had to obey the mask ordinances while they flouted them constantly.

 

You're getting it wrong, again. The 6-foot rule and the use of poor-quality masks was based on the droplet transmission theory, not whims. This stuff was based on scientific and pre-panic guidelines, but they just didn't weigh all of the evidence equally. AFAIK, there were two camps: one believed in the droplet/fomite transmission theory while the other believed in aerosol transmission. The former was the largest, and that's why it's policies were implemented. This could have been avoided if they followed the better-safe-than-sorry principle (take measures against aerosol transmission, just in case) but it seems that humans generally don't care to prepare for worst cases scenarios, especially if seem unlikely to happen in one's lifetime.

 

The moral of this story is to prepare for worst-case scenarios today and grab a respirator while you still can.

[Mind]

We got unscientific politicized policies during the COVID panic because the US health bureaucracy, US national media, and various science organizations were completely infected with political actors. Even now with new ethical leadership in place at NIH, these agitators continue their attacks on reason and science.

Edited by Mind, 14 May 2025 - 05:03 PM.

[albedo]

Instructive and again on lesson learnt:

https://royalsociety.../rsfs.2021.0017

Edited by albedo, 14 May 2025 - 09:34 AM.

[Florin]

Instructive and again on lesson learnt:

https://royalsociety.../rsfs.2021.0017

 

Almost all of that is correct, but what it gets wrong is that it got stuck on masks (which at that time [2021] didn't work) instead of advocating for upgrading to respirators and getting rid of all of the other NPIs.

[albedo]

Instructive and again on lesson learnt:

https://royalsociety.../rsfs.2021.0017

 

While of 2021 and not really definitive on the particular topics of masking, I found the paper interesting to me as, since the beginning of the pandemics, I also considered it a full exposure of the people to the inner working of science, scientific policies and institutions. Philosophically (epistemology) theory always precedes data (Popper between others).

 

"...philosophical explanation in terms of which mental models of reality prevailed and the extent to which scientists and policymakers favoured data over theory. In the more recent example, ideological movements in the West drew—eclectically—on statements made by scientists, especially the confident rejection by some members of the EBM movement of the hypothesis that facemasks reduce transmission..."

[Florin]

While of 2021 and not really definitive on the particular topics of masking, I found the paper interesting to me as, since the beginning of the pandemics, I also considered it a full exposure of the people to the inner working of science, scientific policies and institutions. Philosophically (epistemology) theory always precedes data (Popper between others).

 

"...philosophical explanation in terms of which mental models of reality prevailed and the extent to which scientists and policymakers favoured data over theory. In the more recent example, ideological movements in the West drew—eclectically—on statements made by scientists, especially the confident rejection by some members of the EBM movement of the hypothesis that facemasks reduce transmission..."

 

Yeah, I read the paper, and I've noticed the tendencies to defend bad policies (which themselves have little basis in reality) by appealing to the "follow the data" mantra before. I call this abuse of empiricism "empiricitis."

 

But, as I mentioned before, another thing that irritates me is that the authors, who presumably know better, didn't take their own advise seriously enough and follow it to its logical conclusion.

Edited by Florin, 15 May 2025 - 06:15 PM.

[albedo]

Is this true? How can you counter this opinion from Callaway? Is the new Administration taking care of the preventative pathogen surveillance network? I am not aware of any serious initiative elsewhere though, so I am not blaming and ranting on US which has all skills, power and resources needed to lead. China?

 

"...Yet some researchers worry that the opportunities
presented by SARS-CoV-2 research are
now being squandered, particularly in the
United States after the election of President
Donald Trump. With cuts to federal funding
for public health and research, the intention
to pull out from the World Health Organization
and other upheavals, his administration has
limited scientists’ ability to track and respond
to infectious disease and to share information,
they say. “If you look at the policies that
are being implemented, we’ve actually gone
backwards,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist
at the University of Saskatchewan in
Saskatoon, Canada.
In the early days of the pandemic, it seemed
as if politicians were open to the lessons to
be learnt from SARS-CoV-2. In 2020, world
leaders, including those in the United States,
looked ready to establish a global pathogen
surveillance network, Holmes says. “The
politics have mired it down,” he says. “We’re
actually in a worse place in terms of pandemic
prevention than we were before the
pandemic started.” ..."

 

https://www.nature.c...586-025-00730-y

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Part of the quote in post #1094:

 

"With cuts to federal funding for public health and research, the intention to pull out from the World Health Organization and other upheavals, his [Trump's] administration has limited scientists’ ability to track and respond to infectious disease and to share information, they say."

 

That claim is not substantiated with citations. The "they" are not identified other than as being "researchers". Who are these researchers?

 

“If you look at the policies that are being implemented, we’ve actually gone backwards", says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada.

 

Are there links to these "policies that are being implemented" found anywhere in the article? No. With no citation to actual policies it's impossible to assess her claim.

 

In the spirit of Hitchens's razor, I'll just say that the article is just another "Orange Man Bad" hit piece.

Edited by Advocatus Diaboli, 16 May 2025 - 02:07 PM.