Will Trump be Charged with Treason

[FFC Mariner]

As a numbers guy I find it amusing that people can't do simple maths.
You have more chance of harm from the disease than the vaccine.
End of.
Life, the universe and everything (42) is built on maths not feelings.

 

[marinermick]

Well for starters let’s just look at the decision to use a novel technology delivery method and then cut the testing time down to a tenth of that for a conventional vaccine, then add on top that it uses gene expression to generate a response, with strong evidence of systemic distribution not localised, something that previous trials of the technology had clearly shown.

For all of those reasons and more, it should have been required to meet a higher standard of testing and scrutiny if anything but you know.

Had they elected to used an attenuated live virus and then apply the safest demonstrable delivery adjuvant, then maybe an argument could be made for circumventing the normal testing protocols but no one seemed to even consider that approach (well apart from those crazy Chinese and dangerous Russians).

Then they unblinded the RCT (as limited as that was in any event) after just three months and vaccinated most of the unvaccinated volunteers anyway.

Notwithstanding the above, no-one should have been forced to take something so potentially risky and it should always have been left to everyone as an individual to make the choice they felt most comfortable with.

By the three month stage, because of the huge sample size, they had all the data needed to evaluate the efficacy and safety data needed to go ahead with rolling out to the community. All subsequent studies since has not altered those early findings.

This time frame was necessary because we were faced with a pandemic and an urgent response was needed.

As for unblinding and crossover, this is common practice in clinical studies these days. With the assurance of the data it would have been unethical to keep people on the placebo.

 

[Ozhammer]

It’s not the unblinding that is the key issue though Mick, it is the loss of the control group in large part for those that took the vaccine after just three months, as that impairs the ability to do meaningful comparisons over a reasonable period time of time, as not all reactions are immediate or short-term as you know.

Plus, adverse reactions for any drug are generally underreported historically, so that is also a confounding factor.

 

[marinermick]

It’s not the unblinding that is the key issue though Mick, it is the loss of the control group in large part for those that took the vaccine after just three months, as that impairs the ability to do meaningful comparisons over a reasonable period time of time, as not all reactions are immediate or short-term as you know.

Plus, adverse reactions for any drug are generally underreported historically, so that is also a confounding factor.

I hear what you are saying but the data was in. The sheer numbers in the studies provided significance of results. Blinding or unblinding would not have mattered by then. If anything, unblinding would have encouraged people to report AEs once they know they are definitively not on the control arm.

As mentioned subsequent trials and extensions didn’t unearth any unknown or already seen side effect.

Anyone who understands the pharmacokinetics of this vaccine, the dosing and the short amount of time it is washed out of the body knows that any side effect will emerge in those first few months. The fact that there is bugger all serum left in the body after these few months should give everyone the assurance that new long term side effects just won’t happen.

They have been studying mRNA vaccines for decades now so there is lots known about them. It’s not as if the Covid vaccines were new mode of actions and unknown.