[HN Gopher] Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Kariko an...
___________________________________________________________________
Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman
Author : OskarS
Score : 488 points
Date : 2023-10-02 09:50 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nobelprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nobelprize.org)
| gadders wrote:
| This feels a bit premature to me.
|
| I'm not convinced that the vaccines are 100% bad but they were a
| novel technology and I'm not sure we're far enough along to judge
| them objectively yet.
|
| Regardless of how good they are, they were definitely over-sold.
| thfuran wrote:
| The covid vaccines are the trendy thing to talk about with lay
| people, not the underlying thing the award is for.
| gadders wrote:
| If it's for the underlying technology, rather than a specific
| implementation, then I'm all for it and it's well deserved.
| tgv wrote:
| IMO (but I'm barely more than a layman), mRNA already offers a
| safer delivery mechanism than previous vaccination methods, and
| the massive COVID campaigns have revealed much about the virus,
| but nothing about the vaccination method.
|
| The number of deaths due to COVID has been estimated at over 5
| million. The fact that it didn't get much higher, and we can
| stroll about like nothing happened, is already a miracle.
|
| Edit: didn't finish...
|
| So what is your worry? Sure, there is the possibility of
| abusing the tech, like any tech. But healthwise?
| gadders wrote:
| I misunderstood. I thought the award was for the vaccination,
| rather than the underlying technology. The technology is
| definitely worth an award.
|
| I think that there is enough "noise" over COVID vaccine side-
| effects that we don't yet know whether long term it is safe.
| I also think that given the politicisation of COVID (for
| instance even discussion of the lab leak theory was gas-lit),
| I don't think politicians would admit to an issue even if
| there was one.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| My understanding is that almost all side-effects of mRNA
| covid vaccines originate in the fact that the body produces
| a part of the virus. If that part of the virus can damage
| the body, so can the vaccine. This is the mechanism for the
| myocarditis after vaccination. But it also means that the
| probability to get myocarditis from an actual infection is
| much higher because of the exponential growth of the real
| virus.
|
| If that understanding holds up against scrutiny in the
| future, mRNA vaccines are an extremely safe and capable
| platform to deliver vaccines.
| gadders wrote:
| If that is what happens, then I agree with you.
| the-rc wrote:
| To think of it in programming terms: the original
| vaccines had code with a length of 4000-4300 nucleotides.
| Yes, that protein might trigger reactions after
| injection. But, then, what would you expect from the
| virus, which has almost 30,000 nucleotides, encoding an
| additional 28 proteins, including those involved in
| replication and camouflaging?
|
| The only scenario in which you have better chances not
| taking the vaccine is by making sure you never get
| exposed to the virus, for years.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I figured there'd be a Nobel Prize for the mRNA vaccines. This is
| deserved and the further impacts of this are going to be felt for
| decades.
|
| Some background: for many years, the flu vaccine has had what's
| called the "egg problem". The vaccine is cultivated in chicken
| eggs in a sterile environment. The US government pays billions
| every year to maintain these production lines. It takes about 4-5
| months to go from choosing what flu strainsa are likely to be
| prevalent to there being a vaccine. The production line can't
| scale up quickly either.
|
| Also, people who are allergic eggs can't generally take the flu
| vaccine. That's why they ask you.
|
| For decades the US government has funded research to get away
| from this system and that resulted in the mRNA vaccine. It
| doesn't require chicken eggs to produce and the lead time for
| producing a vaccine goes to almost immediate. we saw this with
| Covid where the candidate vaccines were produced in days. This
| fed into conspiracy theories about it being unsafe because it was
| rushed but it was nothing more than the culmination of decades of
| research where fast vaccine turnaround was the entire point.
|
| In future years we'll see mRNA vaccines turned to diseases that
| have thus far we've been unable to produce vaccines for.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I'm hopeful that you're right about the future of the
| technology.
|
| > This fed into conspiracy theories about it being unsafe
| because it was rushed but it was nothing more than the
| culmination of decades of research where fast vaccine
| turnaround was the entire point.
|
| That's one interpretation. I wonder if you'd apply that same
| interpretation to the first few viable aircraft. Surely flight
| was studied for millennia at the point that the wright brothers
| got their plane flying. Would you hop in and try to cross the
| Atlantic on one? Or would you fall prey to conspiracy theories
| that maybe they hadn't worked out all the kinks yet?
|
| edit: I suppose I'm being downvoted for spreading Big Wheel's
| antiwinger talking points.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > edit: I suppose I'm being downvoted for spreading Big
| Wheel's antiwinger talking points.
|
| I downvoted you for complaining about being downvoted.
| foogazi wrote:
| I still think about this when flying, ultimately it's a
| choice and you have to trust a whole chain of humans (
| pilots, techs, controllers, engineers, suppliers ) doing
| things the right way - makes you realize flight is really a
| miracle
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I dont mind getting in a plane these days (aside from all
| the bullshit you have to deal with on either end of the
| trip). I would be a little hesitant to be strapped into
| Flyer I or even Flyer II. I wonder if there was stigma for
| that position back then? Maybe if it had the right
| marketing budget.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > I suppose I'm being downvoted for spreading Big Wheel's
| antiwinger talking points.
|
| No, for an absolutely abysmal analogy.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| I'm responding to the argument that decades of research is
| enough to feel safe using a technology. Maybe there is a
| better argument, but OP didn't make it.
|
| How long have we studied the fountain of youth? The cure
| for baldness? Penis enlargement pills? Would you trust any
| of today's solutions to those problems?
|
| Research time is necessary but not sufficient. What I and
| many others care about is time in production usage.
|
| What's so abysmal about this line of thinking?
| jmyeet wrote:
| As an example, fear of flying is more prevalent in the
| population than fear of driving. This is despite flying
| being demonstrably safer by any metrics you choose. It,
| like pretty much any fear, is irrational. That's fine.
|
| This only becomes a problem try to rationalize their
| fears and make them seem logical. Again, if that's purely
| an internal struggle that's fine. But if your fear of
| flight led you to push policy and legislation to outlaw
| planes and airports using junk science about noise,
| pollution or safety then your fear of flyijng has become
| a problem that needs to be addressed. And you need to be
| ignored.
|
| Which brings us to mRNA vaccines and the "evidence" of
| them being unsafe. Trust me when I tell you that what
| motivates you here is your feelings, not anything
| rational. I would strongly encourage you to figure out
| why that is.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > Which brings us to mRNA vaccines and the "evidence" of
| them being unsafe.
|
| Who said anything about that? Wrong thread maybe?
| jmyeet wrote:
| No, right thread. Your original comment immediately
| pegged you as an anti-vaxxer. You might try the slightly
| better label of "vaccine skeptic" but it's the same
| thing. This was entirely obvious.
|
| Perusing your comments confirms this pretty quickly eg
| [1][2][3][4][5][6].
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37669756
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37579999
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37579906
|
| [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37525788
|
| [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37217411
|
| [6]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516071
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| The comparison you made was not accurate. We have a
| pretty good handle on the science of how the body builds
| up immunity to pathogens (most lay folks can tell you
| something about white blood cells). I think a more apt
| analogy would be prop planes are to dead virus vaccines
| as jet planes are to mRNA vaccines. And I do think we
| were jumping into jet planes fairly quickly after
| inventing them, because at that point we already
| understood the principles of flight well, jet turbine
| engines were just another mechanism of delivery.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| What does pretty good handle mean to you? We obviously
| know some things - we have various models that are
| predictive. We seem decent at figuring out if I do X,
| then Y will happen with some frequency. And thats the
| sort of thing that will sell a drug like hot cakes.
|
| We don't seem good at knowing that it doesn't also cause
| Z, A, B, C, etc, and by the time you figure any of that
| out, the checks have already been cashed and spent.
|
| I don't think lay folks being able to regurgitate some
| terminology says much. Lay folks could tell you that
| birds flap their wings long before we had controlled
| manned flight.
| whoisthemachine wrote:
| Maybe I'm not tracking the argument. Are you saying that
| because we can't completely model the body's response to
| a drug or immunization through to the body's eventual
| death, we shouldn't trust it or use it?
| 77ko wrote:
| This was a good interview with her:
| https://josephnoelwalker.com/147-katalin-kariko/
|
| She had a very interesting life, I hope she writes a memoir.
|
| Edit: She has a memoir out 10th Oct:
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706251/breaking-thr...
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| In this very moment, Penguin is getting quotes on getting
| "Nobel Prize Winning Author" stickers for the books.
| queuebert wrote:
| I have a special hatred for "Now a Major Motion Picture"
| littering book covers.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| Even worse is when they put a picture from the movie on the
| book cover
| pciexpgpu wrote:
| Fantastic interview. Always love great branching off points
| from HN.
| swyx wrote:
| her journey to mRNA was full of adversity too. the NYT podcast
| with her was great coverage of this:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/podcasts/the-daily/mrna-v...
| (my excerpt https://x.com/swyx/status/1490363488824627200?s=20)
|
| i cant imagine how it must feel to have her own vaccine
| injected in her, and know she saved so many lives through her
| persistence and the rare few that believed in her through her
| lowest moments.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| mods: typo in title "Price" -> "Prize"
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Is that always that clear in the press release?
| Pixie_Dust wrote:
| [flagged]
| epistasis wrote:
| This sort of pathetic political misinformation should have no
| place on HN
| jacquesm wrote:
| Unfortunately it does.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Is this the first practical, mass deployable remote code
| execution in a human? Or was there something earlier?
|
| I particularly enjoyed the unreasonably effective antivirus
| bypass achieved by slight modification of the payload by
| introducing pseudouridine (Ps), which the antivirus had never
| seen before and therefore ignored. Such a bypass definitely
| deserves a Nobel Prize!
| [deleted]
| xorcist wrote:
| The computer term "virus" was chosen because it has
| similarities with a virus.
|
| Not the other way around...
| happytiger wrote:
| It's kind of exactly what it is tho
| ceejayoz wrote:
| RCE, yes. The first ever, no.
| aredox wrote:
| All viruses are "remote code execution" - including vaccines
| made from weakened viruses or repurposed viral vectors.
|
| mRNA tech is just cutting out a lot of cruft and mass-producing
| and delivering tiny mRNA strands directly.
| gniv wrote:
| I don't think weakened viruses go through our protein-making
| machinery (aka code execution), but directly cause immune
| system reactions.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected.
| jeltz wrote:
| Viral vectors on the other hand are.
| ralusek wrote:
| Attenuated/weakened viruses still infect cells and go
| through normal protein-making machinery. Inactivated
| viruses and subunit/recombinant vaccines, however, just
| directly expose our immune system to the antigen(s) of the
| pathogen.
|
| mRNA/viral vector/attenuated all involve some degree of
| "code execution."
| sampo wrote:
| > I don't think weakened viruses go through our protein-
| making machinery (aka code execution)
|
| Yes they do. They are live viruses, and they attack cells
| and hijack their protein-making machinery for making more
| viruses. But the attenuated vaccine viruses are not capable
| of causing a severe disease, so in time the body's immune
| system cleans them out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attenuated_vaccine
| Beijinger wrote:
| Kind of. Yes.
|
| The real question is now: When will it be used in doping?
| Honestly, I suspect it might be already.
| xdennis wrote:
| Wasn't Robert Malone the inventor of mRNA vaccines? He's kinda
| kooky now, but I thought his mRNA vaccine work was real.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I think we need to recognize that sometimes (often?) innovators
| are "kinda kooky" sometimes. In a different field, folks are
| surprised that a guy trying to send rockets to Mars is kinda
| kooky sometimes.
| Geekette wrote:
| _" While Malone promotes himself as an inventor of mRNA
| vaccines,[1][7] credit for the distinction is more often given
| to the lead authors on the major papers he contributed to (such
| as Felgner and Wolff), later advances by Katalin Kariko and
| Drew Weissman,[3][19] or Moderna co-founder Derrick Rossi.[13]
| Ultimately, mRNA vaccines were the decades-long result of the
| contributions of hundreds of researchers, including
| Malone.[3][20][21] In April 2022, Davey Alba, writing for The
| New York Times, said that "[w]hile he was involved in some
| early research into the technology, his role in its creation
| was minimal at best", citing "half a dozen Covid experts and
| researchers, including three who worked closely with Dr.
| Malone."[7] "_[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Before you get downvoted to oblivion. I think it is a fair
| question.
|
| Yes, Robert Malone could be seen as initiating the journey in
| 1987 [0] but there are a lot of landmark contributors who
| refined it to the mass-produced mRNA platform of today.
|
| As with other Nobel Prizes, it is a far outdated award of the
| late 19th/early 20th century in which honoring single
| individuals made some sense.
|
| In today's scientific enterprise the high-frequent
| collaborative effort of different teams all over the world is
| the norm, so over time it becomes pretty hard to single out
| individual scientists.
|
| The prize winners of today are just widely recognized
| representatives (and therefore mostly older folks) of a
| particular successful scientific endeavor so that the public
| can still relate to the achievements via a personal story what
| would be otherwise a history lesson involving a lot of
| important people - and in this case I think Kariko's
| extraordinary perseverance throughout her science career fits
| this bill very well without ruffling up some too many feathers.
|
| [0]https://archive.ph/xgmnv
| kreskin wrote:
| The first few minutes of this video goes over what he
| contributed to the mRNA vaccine technology. The rest of the
| video debunks some claims he made on Joe Rogan.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjszVOfG_wo
| ralusek wrote:
| The viral vector vaccines are a very similar development as the
| mRNA vaccines, and I'm curious as to why they've received less
| attention as a technological wonder.
|
| Brief summary:
|
| Goal of vaccine is to get antigens in body in order to stimulate
| immune response to antigen, ideally at a lower risk than via
| infection from associated pathogen.
|
| - "Traditional" vaccines inject a dead or weakened pathogen.
| Protein subunit vaccines inject just the antigen(s). Antigen
| directly put in body
|
| Both mRNA and viral vector vaccines, however, are genetic
| vaccines. Rather than injecting your body with the antigen
| directly, they inject your body with code (mRNA and DNA,
| respectively), with the goal of having your own body produce the
| antigen(s).
|
| - mRNA vaccines deliver a snippet of mMRNA via lipid
| nanoparticles to your cells' cytoplasm, where your ribosomes pick
| it up and produce and express the antigen themselves
|
| - viral vector vaccines deliver a snippet of code via living
| virus (in the case of COVID vaccines, a living adenovirus
| delivering a DNA payload) to your cells' nucleus, where your
| cells reads the DNA, produces mRNA in your cytoplasm, after which
| it behaves the same as the mRNA vaccines
|
| Basically, both the mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines are
| genetic in nature and rely on delivering code to your body rather
| than antigens. The analogy I've used before is that traditional
| vaccines are SSR, and the genetic platforms are SPA. I'm just
| curious as to why mRNA as a platform has been so much more hyped
| than the viral vectors; they're novel in fundamentally the same
| exact way.
| nyc wrote:
| The 4th paragraph in the Nobel Prize press release suggests
| that it's because mRNA based vaccines are easier to scale up
| and mass produce in response to a pandemic:
|
| "Producing whole virus-, protein- and vector-based vaccines
| requires large-scale cell culture. This resource-intensive
| process limits the possibilities for rapid vaccine production
| in response to outbreaks and pandemics."
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Likely due to the limitations and challenges with the viral
| vaccines. Perhaps the biggest limitation is that the virus used
| as the vector must be one to which you don't already have
| immunity. For instance the adenovirus used by the Chinese and
| Russian vaccines is pretty common in the west, with something
| nearly half of all Americans have some immunity to it.
| ralusek wrote:
| Yes, the delivery system definitely has that drawback.
| However, the lipid nanoparticles as a delivery system have
| problems of their own, which I laid out in a sibling comment
| to your own.
|
| But my question is more related to the pop-science perception
| of mRNA vs viral vector. mRNA were presented as new
| technology, but on media publication after media publication,
| the viral vectors were presented as the "old"/"traditional"
| way of doing things. 9/10 people have that understanding of
| the mRNA vs vv vaccines. The truth is that both are radical
| departures from existing technologies and they're both
| genetic platforms very similar in nature, and both completely
| novel being deployed at this scale.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On the popular press I can imagine three reasons.
|
| One is that the mRNA vaccines were brand new, while VV was
| old enough that most people have already taken a few shots
| using it. The media has a very non-linear response to
| novelty.
|
| Another one is that the most profit-seeking laboratories
| were working with it. And they are the ones with closest
| relation to the media.
|
| Finally, it may be some reflection of the experts hype.
| People were very rationally hyped due to the lack of
| restrictions, easiness to ramp-up new vaccines, and the
| bare beauty of the idea. It's possible that journalists
| perceived that, even if they couldn't understand or explain
| the reasons.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Neither mRNA nor viral vector vaccines were new. mRNA had
| a vastly better safety and efficacy profile. AstraZeneca
| had the clots, the Russians had the issue with
| replication (and use Ad5), and the Chinese exclusively
| used a virus that nearly half of all Americans are immune
| to. And IIRC the mRNA vaccines were still more effective
| against the variants.
| ralusek wrote:
| As another note, the mRNA platform has a few concerns that the
| viral vector vaccines do not.
|
| In particular, the delivery of the mRNA payload is done via
| lipid nanoparticles that are not in any way targeted to a
| specific cell type.
|
| The European Medicines Agency released a report on the
| distribution of the mRNA found in various organs:
|
| https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/assessment-report/spi...
|
| > "Besides injection site [muscle] and lymph nodes [proximal
| and distal], increased mRNA concentrations (compared to plasma
| levels) were found in the spleen and eye. Both tissues were
| examined in the frame of the toxicological studies conducted
| with mRNA-1273 final vaccine formulation. Low levels of mRNA
| could be detected in all examined tissues except the kidney.
| This included heart, lung, testis and also brain tissues,
| indicating that the mRNA/LNP platform crossed the blood/brain
| barrier
|
| A similar 2017 study was conducted using mRNA coded for
| luciferase as a tracking mechanism:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5475249/
|
| And it, likewise, found the protein was produced in the
| muscles, lymph nodes, spleen, liver, heart, bone marrow,
| kidney, lung, stomach, rectum, intestines, testes, and brain.
|
| One of the main draws of using the lipid nanoparticle as a
| delivery mechanism for other payloads in the past has
| specifically been that the lipid nanoparticle can readily cross
| the brain-blood barrier (BBB). And the EMA paper/quotation
| referenced above seems to verify that this is, in fact, the
| case.
|
| A question that both platforms have to contend with is: "what,
| if any, risks are associated with having your cells producing
| and expressing a pathogenic antigen that your immune system is
| to identify and attack?" But one that the lipid nanoparticle
| delivery system has to contend with is the same question, but
| in the context that it has very little differentiation WRT
| where it is going to be deployed and expressed.
|
| With the viral vector vaccines, the delivery mechanism is a
| living virus, and has much more predictable infection pathways.
| For one, our bodies have millions of years of evolution for
| dealing with viral infection, and particularly safeguarding the
| parts of our body least desirable for infection. Viruses have a
| very hard time crossing the blood brain barrier, whereas lipid
| nanoparticles do not.
|
| There are, meanwhile, concerns associated with the viral vector
| vaccines which are not associated with the mRNA vaccines, but
| I've yet to see this sufficiently addressed as a major
| shortcoming of the mRNA platform. Targeted delivery is a very
| important topic in the world of gene therapies, and seems to
| have been completely neglected in the available platforms.
| fanf2 wrote:
| Isn't the non-specificity a good thing for a disease like
| COVID that attacks the whole body?
| ralusek wrote:
| No, the immune response would be systemic no matter where
| the antigen manifests. You don't want the antigen being
| produced everywhere.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > As another note, the mRNA platform has a few concerns that
| the viral vector vaccines do not.
|
| E.g. the target patient might already have a good immune
| response to the vector hull. I.e. the patient's immune
| systems would destroy the vaccine before it can do its work.
| One of the vector vaccines against covid did use two
| different vectors because of that. But repeated usage of the
| same vector might decrease its effectiveness.
| haunter wrote:
| [flagged]
| briffid wrote:
| It's you who brought Orban here first, quoting something he
| didn't say, then refute it. Are you from some kind of
| propaganda school? Orban posted this in fact: "My
| congratulations to the first Hungarian woman winning the Nobel
| prize. We are proud!"
| rurban wrote:
| Here you have it: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/budapest-
| mural-pays-tribut...
|
| "The future is written by Hungarians"
|
| Also related to the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
| Geekette wrote:
| Dr. Kariko's experience makes me wonder how many other
| potentially groundbreaking research nodes are being ignored and
| whether organizations like YC actually have adequate mechanisms
| to identify such potential bio-science startups.
|
| _" Dr. Kariko's struggles to stay afloat in academia have a
| familiar ring to scientists. She needed grants to pursue ideas
| that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more
| mundane research was rewarded. "When your idea is against the
| conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is
| very hard to break out," said Dr. David Langer ... Leading
| scientific journals rejected their work. When the research
| finally was published, in Immunity, it got little attention. ...
| "We talked to pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists.
| No one cared," Dr. Weissman said. "We were screaming a lot, but
| no one would listen.[1]"_
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-
| mrna-k...
| hintymad wrote:
| "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its
| opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its
| opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
| familiar with it" -- Max Planck
| m463 wrote:
| Makes me think of that Feynman commencement speech -
| hopefully we can get better:
|
| _We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle
| some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan
| measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with
| falling oil drops and got an answer which we now know not to
| be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the
| incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to
| look at the history of measurements of the charge of the
| electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of
| time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's,
| and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the
| next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they
| settle down to a number which is higher.
|
| Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right
| away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this
| history--because it's apparent that people did things like
| this: When they got a number that was too high above
| Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they
| would look for and find a reason why something might be
| wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they
| didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that
| were too far off, and did other things like that. We've
| learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that
| kind of a disease._
|
| https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
| bsder wrote:
| While it's a nice story, I seem to remember that it _isn 't
| true_.
|
| There was some article a while back that talked about the
| fact that measurements from the oil drop experiment pretty
| much moved as the input data got better.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Of course they are.
|
| Almost every groundbreaking idea that surfaced went through a
| period of obscurity and dismissal.
| thomasahle wrote:
| Are you saying this is a fact of life, or that it is true by
| definition? Like, "any idea, to be truly groundbreaking, can
| not be easily distinguished from noise / crackpot theories".
| whatisyour wrote:
| It's surprisingly difficult to look at an idea and figure
| out from first principles if its any good. Most of the
| scientists (and people really) rely on comparing it with
| what they have already seen and using their experiences
| from things they know to judge the new idea.
|
| So, its really difficult to judge a revolutionary theory.
| Crackpot theories are easier to judge however. They often
| have very provable falsehoods.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "any idea, to be truly groundbreaking, can not be easily
| distinguished from noise / crackpot theories"
|
| This is an interesting insight. Yeah, I think you are onto
| something here.
|
| Groundbreaking _ideas_ , as opposed to new _technologies_ ,
| tend not to have obvious real world applications/results
| for years. As such, they aren't easily distinguishable from
| random crackpottery.
|
| We tend to validate ideas by their later applications, or,
| at the very least, a heap of corroborating evidence. Both
| takes a lot of time to aggregate.
| maronato wrote:
| "It's true because it has always been true"
| Lionga wrote:
| It mostly shows that gov. funded research grants are broken and
| just fund echo chambers.
|
| Even if it was not easy pharmaceutical companies finally did
| invest.
| deepsun wrote:
| > She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and
| fanciful.
|
| You cannot even realize how many people in academia are running
| for wild and fanciful ideas. Don't blame the scientists, they
| are probably the most open-minded to the new ideas. But
| filtering out bad ideas is a part of their job, and they grew
| thick-skinned from constant bombardment of fancy ideas, we
| cannot pursue them all.
|
| So I'd say this story is pretty traditional in the history of
| revolutionary ideas (e.g. a similar story of John Snow vs.
| cholera -- how many years and lives it took).
| sn9 wrote:
| As an aside, this is maddening: "Published April 8, 2021
| Updated Oct. 2, 2023, 9:59 a.m. ET"
|
| The original article is gone!
|
| Just an constantly evolving page that likely has things deleted
| for reasons other than accuracy (e.g., like narrative
| coherency).
|
| Just write another article! Damn!
| manicennui wrote:
| YC is basically a non-entity when it comes to such startups.
| jononomo wrote:
| Interesting -- I just got my fourth covid vaccine, along with a
| flu shot, yesterday. I got two shots in 2021, one in 2022, and my
| fourth yesterday. Vaccines are a godsend. Also, I have never had
| covid.
| trauco wrote:
| A good reminder that academic institutions often fail to
| recognize the best in their ranks. From this NYTimes article:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-k...
|
| About Dr. Kariko:
|
| "But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania
| was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior
| scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than
| $60,000 a year"
| specialist wrote:
| > _often fail to recognize the best in their ranks_
|
| I know it's a dumb cultural cite, but I keep thinking of the
| "12th man" scene from the movie (book too?) "World War Z". The
| Israeli is explaining that his job is to disagree with the
| consensus. Just in case. Who is then given charter and
| resources to plan accordingly. Just in case.
|
| I hope there's many buckets of research funds. With a modest
| bucket for long shots. And perhaps a smaller bucket for loonie
| tunes. Where by formalizing that model would preempt all the
| reactionary "omgherd golden fleece!?" outbursts.
|
| As a taxpayer, I'd be thrilled if researchers, artists,
| journalists, musicians, and misc crazies got some kind of UBI,
| to do their work without starving. Considering the scale of all
| the usual waste and pork, genius grants wouldn't be more than a
| round-off error.
|
| With a payout of 1:1000, it'd be a bargain for society.
| Smartest investments ever.
| f6v wrote:
| > A good reminder that academic
|
| Unlike industry, where there's no internal politics and
| everything is merit-based.
| arbuge wrote:
| The class of people who seem to do well in academia these days
| are those focused on grinding out masses of papers on
| incremental advances. Professors good at writing grant
| applications do well too, because with those grants they can
| afford to hire lots of graduate students to help with those
| incremental advances and masses of papers.
|
| Individuals focused on real discovery and not publishing much
| until they really have something significant to say don't fit
| into this well.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Yes, or in the social sciences, those who just make up fake
| data and come up with catchy, media-friendly summaries! See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37714898
| queuebert wrote:
| This is especially true in U.S. health sciences, where to get
| money from the NIH, you must plan and describe the outcome of
| the next 3-5 yrs of research. It's not acceptable to say,
| "We're going to explore this area for 5 years and see what we
| find and hope for a surprise."
|
| Obviously, you then only get very incremental, low-risk, low-
| reward research, but high-profile scientists who mainly serve
| on the committees at the NIH and dole out funding get to keep
| their small business (err, I mean lab) going with minimal
| disruption in funding.
| didntknowya wrote:
| yeh unfortunately most of the best professors spend the
| majority of their time applying for grants for their
| students, going to conference, doing admin etc rather than
| work in a lab
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Just for context, what experience is that based on? What
| fields in academia? Do you work there or have friends there?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I wonder if there's a way to measure the proportions of
| impactful science coming from private companies versus
| universities. Perhaps measure by field, too, since the
| proprotions may differ in genomics vs electrical engineering,
| for example.
|
| I don't have any idea how to calculate those proportions, but
| it's an awesome puzzle.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Many companies, unfortunately, go out of their way to _not_
| produce meaningful science in the sense of publicly
| available (trade secrets) or publicly usable (patents)
| knowledge. Biotech especially.
| radus wrote:
| How is that different from any profit seeking endeavor?
| You could write the same company about software companies
| that don't open source all of their code..
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Fundamentally, it isn't. Practically, some industries are
| more open about their work than others--computer graphics
| (both game and cinematic) come to mind as an example on
| the opposite end of the spectrum from the secretive
| worlds of biotech or (say) semiconductor manufacturing.
|
| My point was only that (by the definition I think makes
| the most sense here) they are doing science to the exact
| extent they give up the intellectual-property monopoly,
| whatever that extent happens to be.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Private companies are interested in profitable science, not
| impactful science. In fact it can have negative impact:
| Discovering a way to extend intellectual property rights
| for an expiring patent, or a formulation that they can
| charge more for. Discovering a cheap cure for cancer
| wouldn't help profits.
|
| And have their own internal politics - they want science
| that does not disrupt the VP/CEO's plans, or make the chief
| scientist look bad.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Discovering a cheap cure for cancer wouldn't help
| profits.
|
| Hence patents. The new Hep C treatments are hundreds of
| thousands of dollars cheaper than older treatments, but
| were still researched and developed.
| kiba wrote:
| Maybe we should bring back the concept of the
| gentleman(gentleperson for the modern era) scientist, who are
| both independent and wealthy.
|
| Charles Darwin, for example, was born into wealth and doesn't
| really need to work for a living.
| AlexErrant wrote:
| Musk and Bezos have their science/engineering
| experiments... and Gates through his investments. Hell, if
| we look at this broadly, many investments are being made in
| science - just through through (and to) institutions.
|
| Basic science funding seems sparse though. Investments tend
| to favor commercial entities.
| heyoni wrote:
| Yes but they mostly direct stuff and wouldn't know how to
| calibrate a pipette if their life depended on it
| tetrep wrote:
| According to this data, at least in the US, wealthy people
| are already "gentlepersoning" us in many elite fields: http
| s://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/03/18/289013884/who-...
| 2devnull wrote:
| It's international. The global elite are not constrained
| by borders.
| maven29 wrote:
| There aren't a lot of places where going into academia
| has significant opportunity cost (like for example,
| losing out on the prospect of a yacht paid for by reactjs
| work).
| dekhn wrote:
| There are several SROs ("Scientific Research
| Organizations") funded by extremely wealthy folks
| (typically made their billions in tech). They can offer
| scientists a number of nice things that universities can't-
| for example, Arc Institute, created by Patrick Collison
| among others, has plenty of lab space and computing for its
| members, compared to the space and computing available on
| campuses like UCSF and Stanford.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| [dead]
| edanm wrote:
| There's no need to "bring it back" because we never "got
| rid of it". It's just a natural part of some people being
| wealthy - they have more time/resources to spend on various
| pursuits, including art and science.
|
| This is still true, although to a lesser degree, because
| _everyone_ is much better off. 500 years ago, you could
| _only_ pursue some things if you were born rich. Today, the
| field has greatly expanded, to everyone 's benefit.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That never went away. We just have multiple avenues:
|
| 1. Government funded research
|
| 2. Private industrial research
|
| 3. Private personal research
|
| Usually, those involved in #3 are made fun of constantly by
| the lumpenproles. Before someone in category #3 makes it
| they look like Bryan Johnson doing Blueprint. That's the
| defining characteristic, actually. If you were to look at
| Ms. Kariko before she was successful, the majority of HN
| users would have made fun of her.
| f6v wrote:
| Yes, I'm willing to accept donations to become
| multimillionaire and do science. Cash or check from you?
| chpatrick wrote:
| I think in obscure unprofitable fields that's already the
| case.
| Kranar wrote:
| Funny you bring up Charles Darwin, since Darwin was never
| an academic.
| esafak wrote:
| Rich people today fund the people that do the work, rather
| than do it themselves. I'd say the new way is more
| productive.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| While we're at it let's bring back the monarchy!
| badcppdev wrote:
| Well at the moment the UK could really benefit from tax
| revenue from a certain prosperous former colony so that
| sounds good to me. Not sure about the benefit for the
| colony.
| kevmo wrote:
| And her daughter won 2 Olympic gold medals! That family must be
| intense!
| xattt wrote:
| The perspective from the inside is pretty different from the
| outside. High-functioning families see their achievements as
| "normal" while the rest of the community looks around in awe.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I know a family of a nobel prize winner, and everyone in it
| is just insanely talented -- like, if you were to
| caricature the experience of a super genius family you'd
| actually probably get pretty close to them. And, your point
| is spot on. For them, the sheer creativity and output (in
| writing, science, and music) of the whole family was kind
| of seen as table stakes and something rather unremarkable.
| Whenever I was over for dinner I felt like a kid in class
| who hadn't done the reading haha (just in terms of how hard
| it was to keep up... they were all super gracious and I
| have many many cherished memories from the time we hung
| out)
| sdfghswe wrote:
| Yes. That's because "high-functioning families" compare
| themselves with those who are better, not those who are
| worse. They go "sure I got 2 olympic medals, but bob and
| suse also got 2 each. It's not a big deal". They never
| dwell in thoughts like "I got 2 olympic medals, and look at
| the billions of people who got zero."
|
| It's just a culture of self-improvement.
| anonporridge wrote:
| It's just what happens whenever you rise in the ranks of
| any domain.
|
| People in the 99th percentile aren't super happy and
| satisfied that they've outcompeted 99% of the
| participating population who look at them with awe and
| envy. They're comparing themselves to the 99.9th
| percentile who leave them in awe and envy.
|
| I think it's important for any high performer to
| occasionally step out of their narrow perception of the
| world and really grok how far ahead they are compared to
| everyone else. This is definitely something a lot of my
| high income tech friends could learn to appreciate when
| they get caught up feeling like a loser for _only_ making
| $250k total comp.
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| And misery if done wrong. I have to temper my
| perfectionist temperament to avoid the self flagellation
| that comes with small failings.
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. Being in a state of constant
| fear of failure doesn't enable one to do great stuff.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Absolutely. Becoming world class at anything, especially
| anything competitive, also involves failing about a
| million times on the way up. In coaching chess one of the
| first things one tends to ask is what the student wants
| to achieve. And the typical response has something to do
| with winning. But they don't need you for that. If they
| just want to win, then they but need to never play
| anybody better than themselves!
|
| Improving involves blood, sweat, tears, and defeat. Only
| to come back ever stronger.
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| That's maybe the essence of a growth mindset. I want to
| play. Winning is secondary.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Building a business is the same way. Just constant
| punches in the face you have to persevere through.
| darkwater wrote:
| You can fail or have success on many dimensions. There is
| probably some skill you are good innately, or better than
| a large chunk of population. On that dimension you will
| have probably have built a pretty good self-esteem over
| the years, but you know that you can still improve (hence
| comparing yourself with who got 4 medals if you have 2)
| but fear of failing will not completely block you, only
| stress you more to raise the bar. On the other hand, in
| domains where you are not so good by default, if you are
| a perfectionist you can totally risk being paralyzed
| until you think you are "good enough for it".
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| I don't think there is a "good by default" dimension.
| Maybe a "learning easier" dimension. I'd argue that in
| such advanced spheres comparison becomes secondary. First
| an foremost it's about the activity. Like friends
| competing in a game of cards. It's about having fun with
| friends. Winning is for having a purpose to play.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It seems more as a status issue to me:
|
| Kariko had a PhD from Hungary, was a post-doc at Temple U. -
| not an elite pedigree. At Penn, an elite school:
|
| _" It was a low-level position, research assistant professor,
| and never meant to lead to a permanent tenured position."_
|
| and after that boss left,
|
| _" Dr. Kariko was left without a lab or financial support. She
| could stay at Penn only if she found another lab to take her
| on. "They expected I would quit," she said.
|
| Universities only support low-level Ph.D.s for a limited amount
| of time, Dr. Langer said: "If they don't get a grant, they will
| let them go." Dr. Kariko "was not a great grant writer," ..._
|
| Kariko was slotted into the non-tenure / adjunct role, and it
| didn't matter what they did. It happens in private industry
| too. The problem is elitism overlooking talent and production.
| It's a brazen, obvious flaw.
|
| The US long had the culture - imperfect, of course - of an
| active rejection of elitism, class, etc. 'All men are created
| equal', 'every man a king', meritocracy, hard work, you can
| accomplish anything if you work hard enough, the land of
| opportuity, the American Dream, etc. That equality, the respect
| for others, is the foundation of voting - you respect
| everyone's right to have input and its value.
|
| The dominant fashion, a sort of neo-reactionaryism, is to
| reject that, deride it, rather than aggressively moving it
| forward. Many people look for ways to justify prejudice, to
| exclude, to embrace personal ego and greed and to mock public
| good. I think that's because if you embrace universal rights,
| opportunity, equality, etc., you can't avoid 'liberal' ideals
| too, and those are the target of reactionaryism.
| fatherzine wrote:
| "active rejection of elitism". Not really. In US 'elite'
| means money wealth, whereas in historical Europe 'elite'
| means martial nobility. Anecdata: the very concept of 'legacy
| admission' is overtly classist, and simply does not exist in
| continental Europe. US is very much elitist, it's just that
| its manifestation of elitism is less obvious to the
| unsuspecting eye.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Is there any non-elitist country out there? Humans tend to
| socially stratify even in relatively modest conditions
| (such as tribal life).
|
| What really matters is if the elite is closed or relatively
| permeable, and how it treats the non-elite.
|
| What the founding generation of America rejected, was
| _inheritance_ of elite status, but I don 't think they were
| completely egalitarian either. After all, people like
| Jefferson and Washington were highly regarded by their
| peers.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Survivor bias. This is what often mentioned in any thread about
| business success, yet nobody has mentioned it here.
|
| Institutions also often don't recognize researches that end up
| going nowhere. What we can say is that finding a gem is hard
| because of abundance of noise.
| elashri wrote:
| To be honest and in this context. Nobel prize committees
| doesn't do any better and have history of failing in
| recognizing great scientific achievements until long time
| passes [1] (and sometimes scientists die before that which
| disqualify them from the prize)
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03086-3
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| They only give one per year and there's probably more than
| one nobel prize worthy achievement every year on average, so
| they end up with a backlog. Unless something huge happens in
| a given year like the Higgs, they're probably going to reach
| back as far as they can for a worthy award to make sure
| people get the awards before they die.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| In that vein what institution in the history of mankind ever
| been fair and objective more than this?
| pokepim wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| She was also demoted at U Penn. She is now working at a
| university in her homeland.
| esafak wrote:
| https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-
| cov...
| [deleted]
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| [flagged]
| j7ake wrote:
| Much deserved and really inspirational story.
|
| I wonder if she would have survived today's even more competitive
| academic environment. If not then we must wonder how many future
| Karikos have been silenced by our current academic system.
| cies wrote:
| [flagged]
| xkbarkar wrote:
| [flagged]
| mellosouls wrote:
| Please don't use praise to smuggle in vaccine misinformation.
|
| The vaccines were a (successful) strategy for the population as
| a whole; their use on low-risk groups was a part of that
| strategy.
|
| While the usefulness of some of the tactics and groups targeted
| can be debated, isolating them out of that context to push your
| anti-vax message is extremely misleading.
| stormfather wrote:
| [flagged]
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Such can be, and has been, said about every vaccine throughout
| history. Why this one became such a political/religeous issue
| is beyond me.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| > What took us out of lockdown in the end was not the vaccines
| or the billions spent on them. Not even the dumb masks and the
| draconian asinine distancing rules. It was Omicron. Plain and
| simple.
|
| The Nobel Prize in vaccine disinformation goes to:
| Garvi wrote:
| It's not hard spotting people that broke quarantine rules for a
| tiny ego boost. A lot of people died strictly because of it.
| With all the censorship on other topics on HN, I truly wonder
| why such medical disinformation is being tolerated and even
| upvoted. HN is becoming more like Reddit by the day now.
| Garvi wrote:
| Being cowards and downvoting me on a dead post without having
| the guts to state your opinion in trembling fear of outing
| yourself as corona-deniers in a sick society where this is
| actually acceptable, none the less, one can tell that this
| kind of opinion is really only held by the worst our species
| has to offer and their boot lickers.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| > What took us out of lockdown in the end was not the vaccines
| or ht billions spent on them. Not even or the dumb masks and
| the draconian asinine distancing rules. It was Omicron. Plain
| and simple.
|
| But on the other hand, how much did the vaccination campaign
| accelerate the emergence of Omicron? I don't think there's any
| way to tell.
| urduntupu wrote:
| [flagged]
| strangesmells02 wrote:
| Like the Oscars and Grammy's, the Nobel Prize is based as much on
| cultural significance as it is on the quality of the product.
|
| Lobotomies also won the Nobel Prize because they were a cultural
| phenomenon of the day. JFKs sister got a lobotomy.
|
| So even if these one and a half year old treatments prove to have
| significant long-term side effects there's still the recognition
| of the cultural and historical significance.
| [deleted]
| brutusborn wrote:
| Their seminal paper was desk rejected by nature - when thinking
| about this I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| They'll dine out on that story for the rest of their lives.
| "Let me tell you about the time Nature desk-rejected my
| research..."
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I remember a story that the guys that developed PCR presented
| their results at a conference and no one was interested. The
| last day some guy walked up, looked at the title to their talk
| and asked, 'does it really work' and when they said yeah it
| works and he went 'holy shit'
| swyx wrote:
| non academic here - what is a "desk rejection"?
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| Immediate rejection. Not even worthy for sending out to
| referees.
| fooker wrote:
| Rejected without review.
|
| Like a recruiter rejecting screening you out without an
| interview.
| marsa wrote:
| a desk rejection is when the editor in chief (or managing
| editor, or whoever is the one first receiving the submitted
| paper) decides to reject the submission without sending it
| out for peer review
|
| basically a judgment call by the person in charge of a
| journal that the paper is not interesting or impactful enough
| to warrant going through with the rest of the
| review/publishing process
| swyx wrote:
| ouch. but also, surely that has to happen to the majority
| of papers, meaning the snap judgment call of effectively
| one person greatly colors the quality of the whole process.
| as a conference organizer this is something i worry about.
| is there a better process proposed out there - that
| respects the constraint that high value people have limited
| time to review things?
| marsa wrote:
| sadly no, it is an unsolved problem of scholarly
| publishing imo. on the one hand you have the reputable
| journals following the traditional publishing process
| that take pride in their high rejection rates -- these
| require a large percentage of desk rejections to avoid
| flooding their reviewers with sub-par papers. thus
| they'll inevitably have some quality papers fall through
| the cracks + some flashy sub-par papers making the cut.
|
| on the other hand you have the pay-to-publish journals
| that have a financial incentive to push as many papers
| through peer review -- these thrive on sub-par papers
| that are technically just barely 'good enough', but the
| upside is that the real good ones will also make it
| through. however, they inevitably face reviewer fatigue,
| and the most valuable ones will quit reviewing if they
| often send them low-quality papers. so basically once in
| a while they'll publish top notch research without being
| aware of it.
|
| i'm not aware of any middle-ground solutions out there
| and it certainly feels like a tough problem to solve.
| blcknight wrote:
| Title needs fixing: Nobel prize.
| sabujp wrote:
| good! predicted this would happen 2 years ago
| mtalantikite wrote:
| For those that know more than I do, out of curiosity, why would
| this Nobel go to these two and not also Ozlem Tureci and Ugur
| Sahin? The four of them shared earlier awards, and it was Ozlem
| Tureci and Ugur Sahin's BioNTech that got the vaccine to market
| (after their decades of research).
|
| The couple are billionaires, so I'm sure they're doing just fine,
| but that's gotta hurt to be overlooked for such a major prize
| when they did so much for that discovery and technology.
| dekhn wrote:
| Nobel Prizes in Medicine don't award people getting medicines
| to the market. They exist to reward fundamental discoveries
| that have high impact.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Absolutely, and this is more along what I was asking. What
| about their discovery was deemed the most important part out
| of this long chain of work that led up to mRNA vaccination
| and this Nobel? Nature's news section had a history of
| discoveries a while back [1], and it seems like there is a
| lot of disagreement about who deserves what credit.
|
| Personally, it seems like everyone's contribution is
| important, but we as humans irrationally want to point to a
| single thing/event/team and say "this was the cause" rather
| than stand back and notice how interdependent the whole thing
| is. In the end I think things like Nobels are pretty silly.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
| dekhn wrote:
| Humans are even more irrational! For CRISPR most people
| expecfted the prize to go to 3 people- Doudna, Charpentier,
| and Zhang. But Zhang was ommitted and many people think it
| was because the head of his institution wrote this:
| https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674%2815%2901705-5
| (the establishment hates Eric Lander, and this was a
| particularly egregious example of his behavior).
|
| But the original discoverer of CRISPR, Francis Mojica, was
| not awarded the prize. That's because, in my opinion (as
| well as the Nobel Committee), Doudna and Charpentier played
| the _greatest_ individual roles in the process of turning
| the original discovery of CRISPR into a powerful tool
| (CRISPR /cas9), that is much more general than CRISPR the
| process that occurs in bacteria. I still think Mojica
| should have been given the prize, and if 4 recipients were
| possible, also Zhang.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Nathaniel Comfort has a good take [1], which Lior Pachter
| likes to cite, on exactly why Lander's intervention was
| so egregious.
|
| [1] -https://genotopia.scienceblog.com/573/a-whig-
| history-of-cris...
| heyoni wrote:
| The discovery being rewarded was made before biontech.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Well yes, clearly -- 2005 is before 2008. But it's
| interesting to see who gets selected when so many other
| researchers end up being involved with these major
| technologies before and after a single paper.
| heyoni wrote:
| lol what a stupid response. Don't blame me for answering a
| simple question simply
| [deleted]
| mtalantikite wrote:
| No disrespect meant. However, I don't think it's a simple
| question.
| heyoni wrote:
| Sorry I just think this is actually one of the simpler
| Nobel prizes and I'm fairly certain they weren't even in
| the picture when the discovery was made.
|
| I worked in a lab with "Nobel winning lineage" and the
| ego fights always come up so I get kind of tired of it
| coming up lol. Sorry I responded so harshly.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks for recovering your balance so quickly. I posted a
| moderation reply to the GP comment and then saw this and
| realized it wasn't necessary!
| heyoni wrote:
| I was being stupid, sorry.
|
| You might not believe this but I actually forgot to put
| on my nicotine patch this morning.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks for reacting so neutrally and in the intended
| spirit of the site:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. That's
| not always so easy!
| epistasis wrote:
| Well deserved. I've been following mRNA vaccines since long
| before the pandemic because of an interest in cancer therapeutic
| vaccines, and the technology is amazing and it took sooooo much
| fight to bring it forward to production. The speed and
| flexibility of the tech really is a huge advancement.
| daft_pink wrote:
| At least in medicine the nobel prize still goes to people who
| actually did something good.
| Octokiddie wrote:
| Title ("Price") is misspelled.
| lynx23 wrote:
| [flagged]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think the peace prize is a totally separate decision-making
| groups - it's a political award.
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| Hopefully they're being objective. I don't think they should
| not recognize it because of a few loud and obnoxious fringe
| conspiracy theorists.
| anonu wrote:
| So this is the 2005 paper that started it all:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16111635/
|
| I often wonder if, as a lay person, I would be capable of
| understanding the significance of really technical papers like
| this if I were to randomly start reading. Probably not without
| the right foundation.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| See if you're able to read the original Yamanaka iPS paper
| here. https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(06)00976-7
|
| I read this as an undergrad and had a blast (inside joke lol).
| I am considering starting a YouTube channel explaining such
| breakthroughs while going through the original research. If
| you're interested I'll ping you as focus group when I have
| some!
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| 2017 lecture by Shinya Yamanaka[0] is really good, much
| easier to digest too.
|
| [0] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=PTkCDDUbsBc
| [deleted]
| mnw21cam wrote:
| FWIW: BLAST: Basic Local Alignment Search Tool
| https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi
| felipemnoa wrote:
| I would love to watch your channel!
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I'll make sure to invite you then :)
| Metacelsus wrote:
| I read that one in undergrad, it's a great paper.
| anuvrat1 wrote:
| You can get a rough idea with the right use of chatgpt and
| Wikipedia while reading any paper, you should give it a try
| anyway.
| ortusdux wrote:
| You might like https://fermatslibrary.com/
| j7ake wrote:
| Crazy that it has only been cited about 2000 times over 20
| years. Surprising given its impact.
|
| This is an example where even citations fail to recognise
| significant papers.
|
| The Doudna Charpentier paper, by contrast, has been cited 17k
| times and publishes only 12 years ago.
|
| As a fun exercise, the journal immunity should provide the
| reviewer comments to see how things have changed in light of 20
| years.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Typo in title! Nobel Pri _z_ e
| xeonmc wrote:
| Noble Price
| nojvek wrote:
| Very well deserved. The more we understand how RNA/DNA are able
| to build proteins, which then assemble into cell parts, into
| cells into rest of biology, the more we control our future.
|
| I wish I'm alive to see the day when we have cheap DNA compilers
| and molecular assemblers. Design in CAD and a machine grows it
| out from a mixture of molecules in water.
| gergely wrote:
| yet another hungarian nobel prize winner who managed to get it
| while left hungary long ago. yet hungarians going to be proud of
| her. this country such a shame.
| [deleted]
| reqo wrote:
| Are COVID-19 vaccines the first successful mRNA-based vaccines?
| Seems to me there should be some other successful application of
| mRNA when it comes to vaccines/medications even before COVID-19.
| In that case, how much more complex was it to create a vaccine
| for COVID-19 specifically?
| dbcooper wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but Onpattro, an siRNA medication
| encapsulated in a similar formulation of lipid nanoparticles,
| for the treatment of ATTR was approved in 2018.
| dd36 wrote:
| https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-v...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Other mRNA vaccines for human diseases had been under
| development for years before the pandemic, but none had yet
| reached approval. Vaccine development is normally slow, partly
| because nobody wants to put up the money for large human trials
| until they're relatively confident the vaccine will work.
|
| During the pandemic, however, governments gave financial
| guarantees that allowed vaccine trials to go forward right
| away, so SARS-CoV-2 is the first human virus with an approved
| mRNA vaccine.
|
| > how much more complex was it to create a vaccine for COVID-19
| specifically?
|
| It's not necessarily more complex. A number of different
| approaches ultimately worked, including one of the oldest
| technologies: growing virus in eggs and then chemically
| inactivating it. However, mRNA vaccines worked the best, and
| had less side-effects than most other approaches.
| ggm wrote:
| Which do you think will come first? Has rapid worldwide scale
| deployment of mRNA made the barrier to entry easier for the
| following vaccines?
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Yes, the production capacities do exist now. mRNA vaccines
| have proven relatively safe and effective. That should
| motivate pharma companies to invest in them.
| pavlov wrote:
| The Covid-19 vaccine was the first mRNA vaccine brought to
| market. That's part of why there were so many conspiracy
| theories surrounding it.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Even if they were market established, there would always have
| been conspiracy theories about any vaccines. It's about a
| worldview shaping your reality
| logicchains wrote:
| It's about incentives: vaccines are one of the only
| products where manufacturers are completely immune from
| liability, and given big pharma's historical willingness to
| priotise profit over lives, it's hard to just trust them.
| Especially when the reason big pharma lobbied for that
| liability immunity was because they claimed they'd be sued
| into bankruptcy without it.
| chimprich wrote:
| Every single company in the world tries to minimise their
| legal liability, for every single product.
|
| That's even more crucial when you're trying to vaccinate
| literally billions of people. Even for extremely safe
| vaccines (like these are), very low percentage bad
| outcomes can mean a lot of people willing to sue.
|
| Billions of people also means a lot of cranks willing to
| call conspiracy theories in a lot of jurisdictions.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| Is there a reason the manufacturers shouldn't be liable
| in these cases?
| chimprich wrote:
| Yes, in order to save tens of millions of lives globally
| - which is exactly what happened. You really don't want
| to discourage that.
|
| But leaving aside pragmatics, you're assuming that the
| manufacturers wouldn't be liable. If they'd e.g. hid bad
| results from some study, they'd presumably still be
| criminally liable.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Vaccines, however, are usually not that profitable. If
| anything, I'd expect more conspiracy theories about
| pharma companies suppressing vaccines on the grounds
| that, while prevention may be better than cure, it's
| generally less profitable.
| fooker wrote:
| > Vaccines, however, are usually not that profitable.
|
| That's exactly why the idea was to get the government to
| pay for it and then force everyone to take it.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Willful negligence resulting from economic incentives are
| endemic and I agree a major problem in every industry. It
| could be the long-term side effects of these vaccines
| prove more harmful than the side effects of multiple
| COVID infections... time will tell.
|
| But it's a big leap to go from "Pharma is driven by
| profits, therefore they should be put under more
| scrutiny" and "Pharma is driven by profits, therefore
| they are injecting us with 5G-enabled nanobots to enable
| mind control by the Council of Rome"
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| > But it's a big leap to go from "Pharma is driven by
| profits, therefore they should be put under more
| scrutiny" and "Pharma is driven by profits, therefore
| they are injecting us with 5G-enabled nanobots to enable
| mind control by the Council of Rome"
|
| They are put under way more scrutiny than other
| industries. Or where is the FDA equivalent demanding
| phase I, II, and III trials for so-called self-driving?
| Or imagine a pharma company embracing the slogan "Move
| fast and break things."
| astrange wrote:
| GenX "big whatever" / "evil corporations" leftism is
| completely dead at this point. People should drop it
| since it only ever brings them to incorrect conclusions.
|
| If you want an evil corporation, it's the small ones that
| are usually the worst.
| emkemp wrote:
| Counterpoint: Oracle Corporation.
| sytelus wrote:
| In the times when so many people are up in arms against covid
| vaccines, we keep forgetting how things were and how these
| vaccines allowed to open up en-mass. Yes, there were problems but
| number of lives saved is just awe inspiring.
| dalore wrote:
| [flagged]
| Lutger wrote:
| Any sources or data to back that up? Or is this just your own
| hypothesis you came up with yourself?
|
| There is an enormous body of knowledge proving vaccines did
| reduce transmissions, you can easily find them online. So a
| claim that goes counter to the outcome of hundreds of studies
| should have some backup, otherwise it no better than saying
| 'here is a snowball that proves 100% of climate scientists
| are wrong'
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| You also are not providing any sources or data...
| d0100 wrote:
| From my time of internet arguing about vaccines, most
| "reduce transmission" claims started at 70% and last I
| remember ended up being only 30%
| someuser2345 wrote:
| Here is a paper that claims that there was no correlation
| between vaccination rates and an increase in covid cases:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8481107/
| aredox wrote:
| They did reduce transmission. We have actual data from US
| prisons.
|
| If you want to look at dodgy science, anything around "moral
| hazards" is on very shaky grounds...
| sod wrote:
| If you have an interest in making your point, I suggest to
| reference trusted sources one can read through so people on
| the fence can educate themself.
|
| Blaming and labelling has the opposite effect though.
| nicman23 wrote:
| the fact that antivaxers never source data but instead
| require normal sane people to do so will never not make
| me laugh
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| Lutger wrote:
| Respectfully, I believe you are in the wrong here.
|
| Covid and climate science denial can be strengthened by
| having a 'discussion'.
|
| This is because conspiracy thinking is actually immune to
| evidence. The denialist will subvert your evidence in a
| way that it proves the conspiracy. In here they will
| probably complain that 'correlation is not causation' or
| some other methodology 101 trope, whereas the audience
| will think "oh, yeah, this is complicated, smart people
| are debating it, I guess the jury is still out and we
| don't know for certain if climate change is real or not,
| and the vaccines are not a silver bullet either, lets
| just wait until the debate is over'.
|
| But, in fact, the debate _is_ over.
|
| So no, in this case the onus is one the person attacking
| a vast body of scientific literature proving beyond
| reasonable doubt that vaccines are effective to come up
| with something supporting those _wild_ claims. It is not
| up to me to provide a literature list that nobody will
| ever read anyway, and anyone who is even remotely
| interested in finding the truth can google such a list in
| 5 min.
| kuerbel wrote:
| Thank you for your post. And I mean it. I've fallen into
| this trap so often myself, because nothing grinds my
| gears as conspiracy theorists do. I think next time I'll
| stop before I answer, think of your post and maybe
| copypaste it.
| sod wrote:
| All I did was asking for information. After all, science
| is about studies and data, not about opinion.
|
| It would just be nice to get a finger pointing in a
| direction, not the middlefinger.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| At this point, anyone _still_ "asking for information"
| knows full well where to find it. It's not March 2020 any
| more.
|
| "Actual data from US prisons" took me about 20 seconds to
| find a reputable source for
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37736396), likely
| less time than your comment asking for it took to type.
| sod wrote:
| > At this point, anyone still "asking for information"
| knows full well where to find it. It's not March 2020 any
| more.
|
| Do you really think that behavior will improve the
| knowledge gap?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I don't think any behavior will help the _willfully_
| ignorant.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-shots-previous-
| inf...
|
| > Unvaccinated, infected inmates had an estimated 36%
| risk of spreading the virus, compared with 28% among
| infected vaccinees. After adjustment, any vaccination,
| previous infection alone, and both vaccination and
| previous infection cut the risk of SARS-CoV-2
| transmission by 22%, 23%, and 40%, respectively.
|
| > Booster doses and more recent vaccination further
| lowered infectiousness among vaccinated inmates, with
| each dose conferring an 11% risk reduction; the risk of
| transmission rose 6% for every 5 weeks that had elapsed
| since the last shot.
| dalore wrote:
| I don't know about you, 8% sounds a rounding error and
| probably within the error margins. It certainly wasn't
| enough to open the country en-mass like the OP believes.
|
| And now we have the opposite situation with those who
| have had the most boosters and now more likely to catch
| the new variant that is out.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I don't know about you, 8% sounds a rounding error and
| probably within the error margins.
|
| It is not. The study is available for you to review if
| you like.
|
| > And now we have the opposite situation with those who
| have had the most boosters and now more likely to catch
| the new variant that is out.
|
| I'd like to see _that_ study. Cite, please.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >I'd like to see that study. Cite, please.
|
| Sure:
|
| www.NewEarthTimes.com/publications/VaccinesKill/New-
| vaccine-makes-more-infections.html
|
| /this is a joke
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| _> 8% sounds a rounding error and probably within the
| error margins.
|
| It is not._
|
| Erm yes it is ... from the study:
|
| _> In adjusted analyses, we estimated that any
| vaccination ... reduced an index case's risk of
| transmitting infection by 22% (6-36%)_
|
| CI is much wider than 8pp and the estimated absolute
| transmission risk CIs actually overlap at 31%. So the
| study results are consistent with there being no actual
| difference, also.
|
| If this is the best evidence of a difference in
| transmission it's not very good.
|
| Also this is Omicron which hardly matters. The
| justification was the earlier variants.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| This is a classic example of the way conspiracy theorists
| shift goal posts and demand more and more evidence, while
| waving away any evidence provided. It's _boring_ to
| engage with people like you. You have no idea what you're
| talking about, and demand that people who _do_ know what
| they're talking about give you an education that you
| don't actually want. You're just _performing_, you aren't
| having a genuine conversation with people.
| shrubble wrote:
| Out of 111,000 inmates, 31 were hospitalized and none
| died. Is there a small city with equivalent population
| where approximately the same numbers held?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I very much doubt there's a small city with total gender
| segregation, people living in large buildings they're not
| permitted to leave, and single-source universal
| healthcare.
|
| (That's what makes it such a good observational study
| population; a whole bunch of variables are controlled
| away by default.)
| aredox wrote:
| Why should I do it, to "do your own research" types like
| you?
|
| Do your own research.
| zo1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| noarchy wrote:
| >I'm one of those people "on the fence".
|
| Versus
|
| >I can tell you now that honestly a good study won't
| convince me to trust the prevailing narrative.
|
| You're not on the fence.
| zo1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Ensorceled wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ggm wrote:
| You may want to avoid casting all questions through this
| lens. Some people seek to leverage this sense of loss of
| trust to promote other arguments, in politics and the
| economy.
|
| I appreciate that loss of trust is real, happens fast,
| and takes longer to recover. Recovery itself demands some
| acceptance that not all evidence is unequivocal, or
| comprehensible.
| dd36 wrote:
| Good thing we have data that proves lives were saved and you
| don't have to guess.
| dalore wrote:
| Good thing you're 100% convinced, I'm still looking for the
| proof
| [deleted]
| urduntupu wrote:
| [flagged]
| chimprich wrote:
| Please don't post this nonsense on HN. This is a joke,
| right? It's a crank website, not a serious medical
| journal.
| blumomo wrote:
| Can you say something constructive about the study
| instead of insulting the messenger who published it?
| logicchains wrote:
| What data is that? That data on lockdowns suggests that
| they didn't reduce overall excess mortality:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737
|
| >Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries
| and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths
| following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place
| (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S.
| states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower
| excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess
| deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies,
| even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Causality. The only thing this survey demonstrates is
| that government orders have weak effects on actual
| population behavior.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Ultimately, none of the societal restrictions really helped
| reduce the portion of the population that caught covid --
| given enough time, it ended up rounding up to 100%, almost
| worldwide. Restrictions and masking really just bought us
| some time and slowed the process of getting to "everyone got
| infected". Even China, New Zealand, Australia, etc failed at
| zero-covid given enough time, and covid raged once it got
| out. Different states in the US with vastly different
| policies ended up with the same final outcome. According to
| the NY Times, Florida and New York both have 35k cases cases
| per 100k population -- obviously there are substantial
| differences in data quality, but we are clearly not looking
| at an order-of-magnitude difference between these two
| massively different responses.
|
| Given that lens, the ultimate outcome of the pandemic is
| "almost everyone eventually gets covid." As a result, the
| vaccines -- in reducing mortality -- saved an absolutely
| immense amount of lives.
| dekhn wrote:
| Are you a scientist, or otherwise qualified to make
| judgements like this?
|
| I see a lot of armchair quarterbacks making statements about
| public health, but it ussually ends up being poorly informed
| speculation.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The vaccines massively reduced mortality and severe disease
| in the vulnerable populations. That is a big win.
|
| They also could have stopped the spread for the early
| variants, but the later ones were simply too contagious.
| There simply was no chance to keep transmission fully down at
| that point.
| kibbi wrote:
| > The vaccines massively reduced mortality and severe
| disease in the vulnerable populations.
|
| By how much, in numbers?
| koolba wrote:
| > The vaccines massively reduced mortality and severe
| disease in the vulnerable populations. That is a big win.
|
| That's changing the goalposts. The vaccines were not
| necessary for the vast majority of the population or
| society as a whole to "open up".
|
| That's assuming you analyze only physical harm from the
| spreading virus. After months of brainwashing, they were
| definitely required for large swathes of the population to
| given them a mental protection to come out of their shells.
|
| > They also could have stopped the spread for the early
| variants, but the later ones were simply too contagious.
| There simply was no chance to keep transmission fully down
| at that point.
|
| There was never a chance to keep transmission fully down.
| It was like trying to prevent a cold or the flu from
| spreading.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The criteria for the original license were the reduction
| in deaths and disease. Transmission wasn't even tested in
| the original phase III trials. The vaccines achieved
| their primary purpose, they prevented death and severe
| disease.
|
| COVID was a major threat to a significant part of the
| population. The vaccines were effective and reduced the
| threat to those people enormously.
|
| It would have been very nice and useful to stop
| transmission and achieve herd immunity. But even without
| that the vaccines were a huge win and saved a lot of
| lives.
| [deleted]
| somenameforme wrote:
| Moderna seems to have moved, or removed, their initial
| testing results but you can still find an archive here.
| [1] The pharmaceutical industry was initially claiming
| that vaccination would completely prevent infection, as
| it typically does, let alone spread:
|
| "There were 11 COVID-19 cases in the Moderna COVID-19
| Vaccine group and 185 cases in the placebo group, with a
| vaccine efficacy of 94.1% (95% confidence interval of
| 89.3% to 96.8%)."
|
| It's easy to create false memories because the
| politicians and pharma industry simultaneously swapped
| the narrative to stopping hospitalization and death once
| it became completely clear the vaccines were not stopping
| infection, but that is not what their initial purpose
| was.
|
| [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210202223626/https://
| www.moder...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Your quote: "Some of the vaccine group still got
| infected."
|
| Your summary: "They claimed vaccination would completely
| prevent infection."
|
| Perhaps you just can't read?
| somenameforme wrote:
| The efficacy rate was not being measured based on
| death/sickness, but on any infection at all. It was
| supposed to be 94.1% effective in terms of completely
| preventing infection.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Again, I think you're having trouble reading. From your
| link:
|
| > The median length of follow up for efficacy for
| participants in the study was 9 weeks post Dose 2. There
| were 11 COVID-19 cases in the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine
| group and 185 cases in the placebo group, with a vaccine
| efficacy of 94.1% (95% confidence interval of 89.3% to
| 96.8%).
|
| > Cases of COVID-19, starting 14 days after Dose 2, were
| defined as symptomatic COVID-19 requiring positive RT-PCR
| result and _at least two systemic symptoms or one
| respiratory symptom_.
|
| A SARS-CoV-2 infection and a COVID-19 case aren't the
| same thing, for the same reason a HIV infection is not
| the same as having AIDS. The 94.1% number comes from
| counts of _actual sickness_ , despite your assertions to
| the contrary.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Feel free to change the above to claim they stated it
| would create a negative PCR test or a PCR test with less
| than 1 one respiratory symptom or 2 systemic symptoms. It
| does not meaningfully change the issue whatsoever. The
| asterisk by infection went, without skipping a beat, from
| a 'PCR test and symptoms' to 'hospitalization/death.'
| These are very different things.
| fabian2k wrote:
| The virus the vaccine was first tested is quite different
| than the version we faced later. The virus is not a
| static target, but a quickly evolving one. And the later
| variants were far, far more contagious than the initial
| one.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > After months of brainwashing
|
| When you say stuff like this, it makes me think you have
| the wrong idea about who was the victim of brainwashing.
| somenameforme wrote:
| It sounds hyperbolic but look at any poll on how deadly
| people thought COVID was compared to how deadly it
| actually was. This study [1] found people believing that,
| on average, about 16% of people infected (diagnosed or
| not) with COVID died. In reality, there were a _measured_
| total of around 700 million cases and 7 million deaths.
| And vast numbers of cases went undiagnosed and so would
| never have ended up being tracked. In any case, the real
| IFR was well less than 1%. Brain washing is an
| unnecessarily loaded and divisive term, but it is safe to
| say that the media (and politicians) actively went out of
| their way to make people believe things that were not
| true, and they succeeded.
|
| [1] - https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.
| 2021.6191...
| jf22 wrote:
| Public perception and reality are often at odds, but it
| doesn't mean the difference in perception is because of
| brainwashing, it's because humans are bad at measuring
| risk.
| koolba wrote:
| If the ones who are supposed to be informing the masses
| are deliberately feeding them information that leads them
| to inaccurately measure said risk, then that's
| brainwashing.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'd argue you're creating a bit of a false dichotomy
| there. I completely agree that the public is bad at
| measuring risk. But do you disagree that the
| media/politicians were actively working to exaggerate the
| impact of the disease? And really this even applied to
| organizations like the CDC. Read this [1] page and tell
| me how long you think it'd take the average person to
| realize they're talking about child hospitalizations
| _with_ COVID and not child hospitalizations _from_ COVID?
|
| The "summary" of the article is that "COVID-19 can cause
| severe illness in children and adolescents" followed by
| numbers talking about a shocking increase in rates. The
| fact it's talking about people hospitalized _with_ COVID
| is hidden in a wall of text written in language that most
| people wouldn 't be able to decipher. That more people
| tested positive for a more contagious variant, in any
| setting, is the most unremarkable news imaginable - spun
| into a terrifying headline, by the CDC no less.
|
| I see no way to imagine that article was written in good
| faith. And it's been the absolute norm for the past 3
| years now.
|
| [1] - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7036e2.htm
| Lutger wrote:
| > That's changing the goalposts.
|
| You complain about that, but proceed to doing it
| yourself, and you don't even address the point unlike the
| person you responded to.
|
| > It was like trying to prevent a cold or the flu from
| spreading.
|
| Which is funny, because even the very mild measures we
| had here in the Netherlands totally succeeded in
| preventing the flu from spreading. Haven't had a cold or
| flu in 1.5 years whereas normally would be sick at least
| 2-3 times. One strain of the flu was completely
| eradicated.
| notacoward wrote:
| Related: https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-
| regression-analy...
|
| There was a discussion here too, but it was hot garbage so
| I'm not linking to it.
| SamBam wrote:
| The conclusion of that paper:
|
| The higher the vaccination rate in a state, the lower the
| deaths _after_ the vaccine was introduced. This is
| unaffected by the age of the state.
|
| The fact that this shift only emerges _after_ the
| introduction of the vaccine means we can pretty much rule
| out any demographics-based causes. The "low vax" and "high
| vax" states were pretty much even before the vaccine. The
| only reasonable conclusion is that high vax rates directly
| caused lower death rates.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Oh there's certainly moral hazard for all of the muppets that
| fell in line with the interlocking "reopen" astroturf
| campaigns that cropped up during the lockdown, but it isn't
| due to false or misleading claims about vaccine efficacy. It
| was made clear from jump that 1. the vaccines did not confer
| perfect immunity and 2. continuous mutation meant the
| goalposts for protection were moving. Individuals that chose
| to accept either the narrative that we were all perfectly
| safe once vaccinated or that there was nothing to worry about
| in the first place because it was all a giant conspiracy are
| collectively responsible for Covid making the transition from
| pandemic to endemic.
| astrange wrote:
| It's impossible that covid could ever have not become
| endemic. It can transmit through animals, we're not going
| to vaccinate or kill all the animals, and we haven't found
| the source it actually came from.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Bullshit. There was a window of time where hard
| quarantine could have prevented it. Instead we got
| politics.
| amelius wrote:
| https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths-by-vaccination
| raverbashing wrote:
| Reducing transmission is a bonus, and very hard to measure
| initially. It is not the main (measured) goal of new vaccines
|
| Nobody will worry about transmission when it provably reduces
| mortality
|
| > So I don't think they saved lives at all
|
| Thank deity we have data proving otherwise
|
| And even bigger thanks to Darwin who rarely disappoints
| usrusr wrote:
| What would have been the alternative? Go endemic Bergamo-
| style? Remain in soft lockdown for a decade or two in order
| to go endemic at a very slow pace? At the time vaccines were
| widely available, chances of making the virus die out had
| already been at exactly zero for quite a while (well, zero,
| plus wherever the chances are for a sudden all life ending
| meteor strike). It was vaccines that allowed us come to where
| we are now with the amount of inconvenience we had on the
| way. Any path without vaccines would have been worse, one way
| or the other.
| lumb63 wrote:
| [flagged]
| xxs wrote:
| So the millions of death cases were a welcome purge?
| K0SM0S wrote:
| Most discussions around depopulation get bogged down in
| emotional or ethical arguments. To clarify, ethical
| considerations aren't distractions; they drive the
| pragmatic actions of all parties involved. It's even
| feasible to consider the most ethical--perhaps fully
| democratic--means of implementing such plans. However, it's
| worth noting there's a historical tolerance limit beyond
| which future generations may not be kind to the architects
| of such initiatives.
|
| The real crux isn't whether some advocate for lower
| populations--clearly, many do--but the operational aspect:
| who executes, under what authority, and how? For instance,
| if a group of biologists and engineers aim to reduce
| Earth's population to 4 billion by 2400, the implications--
| like fewer children and potential space colonization--are
| vastly different than a group of anthropological
| philosophers striving for the same population count by
| 2033, which could necessitate more drastic measures.
|
| These logistical issues, whether it's stealth tactics
| versus open methods or the necessity of opportunistic
| partnerships, remain conspicuously underexplored.
| logicchains wrote:
| Sweden never locked down and has one of the lowest covid
| death rates overall now.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Sweden has twice the death rate as its closest neighbors
| (both geographically and culturally), Norway and Denmark.
| Note that the differences in policy between Sweden and
| other European countries were largest early on in the
| pandemic, and the differences in Sweden's death rate then
| were even more extreme.
|
| In a broader international comparison, Sweden (and Europe
| generally) did not fare well. Countries that took a zero-
| CoVID approach, such as China, Taiwan, Australia, New
| Zealand, Vietnam and Singapore ended up with much lower
| death rates, because most of them vaccinated their
| populations before allowing the virus to spread.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think you've made this point at least 50 times in as
| many COVID threads and you've been refuted at least as
| many times, why do you keep doing this?
| Lutger wrote:
| I highly recommend everyone who wonders why people do
| this to read the 'Conspiracy Theory Handbook'. Unlike
| what the title suggests, it is a very brief primer into
| the psychological research done by Cook and others on
| conspiracy thinking, mostly from the perspective of
| climate science denial:
| https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/handbook/the-
| cons...
|
| One of the key traits of conspiracy thinking is immunity-
| to-evidence:
|
| "Conspiracy theories are inherently self-healing,
| evidence that counters a theory is re-interpreted as
| originating from the conspiracy. This reflects the belief
| that the stronger the evidence against a conspiracy
| (e.g., the FBI exonerating a politician from allegations
| of misusing a personal email server), the more the
| conspirators must want people to believe their version of
| events (e.g., the FBI was part of the conspiracy to
| protect that politician)"
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-31/sweden-
| cov...
| aredox wrote:
| They just had a very sparse population and the highest
| rate of single-occupancy housing...
|
| And socialized medicine.
|
| Really, what a fine example for e.g. New York to follow!
| prohobo wrote:
| I suppose so, if you look at the exacerbation of economic
| inequality, starvation (+15 million worldwide), and deaths
| of despair caused by the lockdowns and associated
| interventions. Seemingly no one minds that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| In the US, pandemic mitigation _dropped_ poverty numbers
| drastically.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/business/economy/incom
| e-p...
|
| Going back up now.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Governments could have avoided shutting down if they had been
| willing to accept much larger numbers of deaths. In the US,
| that would have meant somewhere around a million _more_
| deaths.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| If governments cared about dead people they would regulate
| the fast food and processed food industry. McDonald's kills
| more people than covid ever could.
| misnome wrote:
| I applaud the sheer scale of this whataboutism, to the
| point I am unsure if it is a parody.
|
| The distance between topics has to be somewhere close to
| a world record!
| logicchains wrote:
| That's absolutely untrue; the data shows that lockdowns did
| not reduce deaths:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737 .
|
| >Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries
| and all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths
| following the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place
| (SIP) policies. We do not find that countries or U.S.
| states that implemented SIP policies earlier had lower
| excess deaths. We do not observe differences in excess
| deaths before and after the implementation of SIP policies,
| even when accounting for pre-SIP COVID-19 death rates.
| aredox wrote:
| Yes, we should have saturated hospitals even more, it
| would have had no effect on mortality!
|
| https://youtu.be/0P8KyaYuaTg?si=emkhsme03r9shDxE
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| This is a garbage-in, garbage-out analysis, akin to
| saying, "We analyzed 100 cities, and found that those
| with levies were more prone to flooding. Thus, we
| conclude that levies offer no protection against
| flooding." We know mechanistically why levies work: they
| block water. We know mechanistically why lockdowns work:
| they reduce transmission. Less transmission means fewer
| infections means fewer deaths.
|
| You can see this most clearly in the zero-CoVID
| countries, which had dramatically lower death rates
| during the pandemic. Taiwan and China had virtually
| _zero_ deaths for much of the pandemic, because they
| traced literally every infection chain and capped it off.
| They reopened after vaccinating most of their
| populations, which means that most people in those
| countries had a primed immune system when they first got
| infected. As we know from numerous studies, that
| dramatically reduces mortality.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| [flagged]
| lawn wrote:
| Vaccination was never about "not getting it".
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| >Vaccination was never about "not getting it".
|
| What do you base this bizarre claim on?
|
| From the package insert for the Pfizer vaccine:
|
| > COMIRNATY is a vaccine indicated for active immunization
| to prevent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by
| severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-
| CoV-2) in individuals 12 years of age and older. (1)
|
| A single indication, "not getting it". This is what the
| clinical trials tested and this is what the FDA approved.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You'll note that insert doesn't say "to prevent
| infection".
|
| As with HIV (SARS-CoV-2) versus AIDS (COVID-19), the
| _disease_ you can get _from_ the virus is not the same
| thing as the _infection itself_.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| The trials were never powered to even test for infetion
| or transmission. It is quite clear now the vaccine
| prevented neither.
|
| It was supposed to prevent the disease - basically
| postive test + symptoms. It didn't.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The trials were never powered to even test for infetion
| or transmission.
|
| You called that very statement a "bizarre claim"
| upthread.
|
| Try this: "Seatbelts prevent injury and death in car
| accidents."
|
| They don't prevent every single one of them, but no one
| calls the above statement a lie. Your standard -
| requiring a vaccine be perfect at its purpose - is an
| invented one in bad faith to win an argument.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > You called that very statement a "bizarre claim"
| upthread.
|
| The discussion was about Covid. Covid is the disease
| (infection+symptoms). The vaccine was supposed to prevent
| you from "getting it".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We have evidence of it reducing transmission:
| https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/covid-shots-previous-
| inf...
|
| That alone demonstrates the vaccine can help you not get
| it.
|
| We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for a
| non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from
| symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection
| but not COVID-19.
|
| Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this
| regard; some polio vaccines can _give people polio_ , for
| example.
|
| (The idea that "turns out it only prevents
| hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad
| result is also lunacy from the start.)
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Again, the debate started over the claim that
|
| >>>> Vaccination was never about "not getting it".
|
| Of course it was about whether the vaccine prevents you
| from "getting it" (it being Covid). The original claim
| was that it was 95% effective in preventing you getting
| it.
|
| > We have loads of evidence of it lessening symptoms; for
| a non-zero amount of people, that'll mean going from
| symptomatic to asymptomatic, i.e. SARS-CoV-2 infection
| but not COVID-19.
|
| We have loads of crappy evidence showing that (see
| below). Crappy means highly confounded observational
| data.
|
| > Vaccines have never been expected to be perfect in this
| regard; some polio vaccines can give people polio, for
| example.
|
| No one expects them to be perfect, but the original
| claims were they were supposed to be 95% effective in
| preventing Covid. Real world efficacy is no where near
| that. If there's any efficacy at all it is in the low
| teens.
|
| [BTW, there's a huge debate about the oral Polio vaccine.
| The US stopped vaccinating with it two decades ago
| because of that risk]
|
| > (The idea that "turns out it only prevents
| hospitalization and/or death, not mild symptoms" is a bad
| result is also lunacy from the start.)
|
| It would be luncay if anyone actually claimed that.
|
| The problem is that claiming that it prevents
| hospitalizations or deaths requires evidence. Reliable
| evidence.
|
| A recent NEJM correspondence demonstrates quite vividly
| how terrible much of the evidence for that claim was:
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683
|
| (the original author's response is especially hillarious)
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > to prevent coronavirus disease
|
| You can be infected with a pathogen without developing
| the disease associated with the pathogen.
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| I caught covid after getting vaccinated and I would not have
| even known I had it had a coworker not tested positive and I
| had to test to come back to the office. Symptoms were
| incredibly mild. A lot of people my age who weren't
| vaccinated ended up the in the ER. I never thought the
| vaccine would prevent disease, it was never claimed that the
| vaccine prevented catching covid, it always just reduced
| severity and mortality.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I'm not saying it didn't reduce your symptoms - it probably
| did. But there were plenty of people that caught COVID
| unvaccinated and had the same experience as you.
|
| On the other hand, I had the wonderful experience of
| catching the first virus and the delta variant. I should
| have been _more_ protected than with the vaccine by itself
| as the data clearly showed at the time but it still hit me,
| a 34 year old decently fit person, almost equally as hard.
| I had 2-3 weeks of incredibly high fever along with a bunch
| of other nasty symptoms.
|
| We're all different. My retirement age mom has never been
| vaccinated (even though I wish she would have) and she's
| either never caught it, which I doubt, or it was so mild
| she didn't realize it.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| The vaccine was never approved for reduction of symptoms
| because there was no good evidence to make this claim. And
| there's no good evidence to make it now.
|
| It was approved for the prevention of Covid (the 'D' stands
| for disease). It was supposed to prevent you from getting
| Covid, regardless of severity, and it didn't.
|
| And if we're citing anecdotal evidence. I know of no one
| who got anything more than flu symptoms, and for most it
| was mild, regardless of vaccination.
|
| That includes obese diabetic 80s year olds. I know of no
| one personally who went to the ER except for a vaccinated
| friend who panicked.
| someuser2345 wrote:
| > it was never claimed that the vaccine prevented catching
| covid The president of the United States made that exact
| claim: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-
| health-governm...
| shrubble wrote:
| The ability to do it (specification) is what is being rewarded,
| not the merits or not of what Pfizer/Moderna/Biontech did
| (implementation).
| logicchains wrote:
| Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota,
| and their death rate wasn't significantly higher. Overall
| there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hec.4737 .
|
| >Using an event study approach and data from 43 countries and
| all U.S. states, we measure changes in excess deaths following
| the implementation of COVID-19 shelter-in-place (SIP) policies.
| We do not find that countries or U.S. states that implemented
| SIP policies earlier had lower excess deaths. We do not observe
| differences in excess deaths before and after the
| implementation of SIP policies, even when accounting for pre-
| SIP COVID-19 death rates.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| South Dakota, the state that ranks 46 (out of 50) in terms of
| population density?
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Parent comment was referring to vaccines not lockdowns.
| lawn wrote:
| In Sweden it was notably higher initially.
|
| What made a difference in Sweden was that vaccination rates
| were really high and they were administrated quickly.
|
| Had the anti-vaccine ideas spread more Sweden would be much,
| much worse off.
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > Some places never locked down, like Sweden
|
| After the first two devastating waves during the Spring and
| Autumn of 2020, Sweden in fact 'locked-down' in some ways
| more restrictively than our nordic neighbors - all of which
| made timely interventions that meant their restrictions on
| meeting en-masse in public were for shorter periods and less
| intrusive on people's everyday lives.
|
| The narrative that it was a 'free-for-all' in Sweden has been
| fostered retrospectively by neo-liberal groups that placed
| economics above human lives. In their eagerness to be 'proved
| right' after the fact, most Swedes now embrace this
| historical revisionism.
|
| The statistics that show that Swedish "excess deaths" were
| low or even lower than other countries were cooked-up by a
| journalist from a right-wing newspaper in Sweden (SvD), who
| noticed that if one discounts the downward trend in excess
| death for the last 25 years in Sweden, together with
| dispensing with demographic weighting, and then averaging the
| 3 years from 2019 onwards (which includes the period after
| vaccination), then miraculously you can squeeze the numbers
| you want from the raw figures.
| brutusborn wrote:
| How was Sweden more restrictive than it's neighbours?
| heyoni wrote:
| Yea I'm dying to hear this too because that's what I've
| seen: it was a free for all.
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > Yea I'm dying to hear this too because that's what I've
| seen: it was a free for all.
|
| If you go to:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index
|
| take away the default countries, and instead add Denmark,
| Finland, Norway and Sweden.
|
| Then make sure you also click "Align axis scales" you
| will see that Sweden only had fewer restrictions than its
| neighbors during a very short period at the beginning of
| the pandemic (during the first wave).
|
| After that, Sweden had both more stringent restrictions
| than all its neighbors, and had those restrictions in
| place for a longer period of time.
|
| The _narrative_ - the historical revisionism, the myth
| that a very large number of people want to promote, and
| which has even become some sort of amnesiac 'reality'
| for many Swedes - should not be mistaken for what really
| happened.
| heyoni wrote:
| Thanks for the source! And I'm not saying I'm 100% right
| but I do remember reading articles from the economist and
| other solid publications about them not having any
| restrictions. I won't be able to find the article but I
| will look...and also look at this one.
|
| /edit I actually found this in my bookmarks fyi:
| https://archive.ph/7y7gF
| stringsandchars wrote:
| > edit I actually found this in my bookmarks fyi:
| https://archive.ph/7y7gF
|
| But Tegnell is the architect and main proponent of the
| historical revisionism that I'm talking about. He is the
| man at the center of the controversial policies.
|
| Even while they were being enacted, Sweden was fed a
| narrative of exceptionalism by Tegnell and the mainstream
| media, who never mentioned the comparative liberality of
| the other Nordic states' policies, and maintained the
| fiction that we were still following the most liberal
| strategy (even to this day).
|
| Tegnell is massively popular in Sweden. In fact, as
| deaths accumulated and it looked more and more like he
| was following a disastrous path, his popularity increased
| exponentially.
|
| Criticism or even mildly questioning Tegnell was (and for
| a large part, still is) totally off-limits: there is
| absolutely no way I'd mention my doubts about him or his
| policies to my fellow Swedish colleagues or friends.
|
| edit: Incidentally, for those who can read Swedish (or
| use Google Translate), this series of contemporary
| articles is a really great overview of the events in
| Sweden seen from a skeptical perspective:
|
| https://floderochtekoppar.blogspot.com/2021/09/sveriges-
| hant...
| cycomanic wrote:
| As a foreigner living in Sweden during covid was just
| bizarre. I certainly appreciated that school were kept
| open and that the country never went into complete lock
| down. However the making fun of masks at the highest
| level, because there hadn't been any definite studies
| that showed they work (and after the turnaround later
| they wondered why so few people put them on), or the
| policies for medical personal who were not allowed
| protective gear (because it scares patients) even for
| ones working directly in the covid wards.
|
| And yes there is definitely a weird "Swedish
| exceptionalism", which interestingly Swedes from all sort
| of political persuasion exhibit.
| bjourne wrote:
| Well, even now, many years later there is still no
| evidence that mask mandates reduced covid infections.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/opinion/do-mask-
| mandates-...
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| The Oxford Stringency Index doesn't correlate in any way
| with COVID deaths so it's unclear what point you're
| getting at here. None of the NPIs had any effect on
| COVID.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| At the very least not practically, a lot of companies
| went WFH, for example. There might have been less
| official forcing but behavior for sure changed.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| _> the first two devastating waves during the Spring and
| Autumn of 2020_
|
| Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to
| Spring 2021, so fewer people died than expected in this
| period. These COVID waves just weren't devastating in any
| way, and yielded virtually no deaths "of" and not "with"
| COVID. It's strange that you are so convinced that Sweden's
| data doesn't disprove the effectiveness of lockdowns...
|
| _> neo-liberal groups that placed economics above human
| lives_
|
| Ah, I see.
| sampo wrote:
| > Sweden had negative excess mortality from Jan 2020 to
| Spring 2021
|
| According to this, Sweden had quite bad excess mortality
| in 2020 in April and May, and some in June. And then
| again from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
|
| There are many different ways different sources have
| tried to estimate cumulative excess mortality. Depending
| on the calculation methods, different sources have ended
| up with quite different results.
|
| What is your source, and what method did they use?
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| 2015-2019 average baseline.
|
| It can be debated what model should be used and
| governments don't always have consistent methods of
| baselining. With different models you can compute some
| excess mortality in Sweden but those have their own
| flaws.
|
| But it's worth calling out here that the reason you have
| to dive into the details of what precise baseline model
| you use is because the number of deaths was so very tiny
| on the scale of a country. A simple graph showing the
| absolute numbers puts it in perspective:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-
| of-...
|
| Alternatively, a graph of deaths per 100k people shows
| how surprisingly normal 2020 was in Sweden:
|
| https://i0.wp.com/swprs.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/04/swede...
|
| It looks initially dramatic but that's only due to the
| massive drop in 2019. In reality 2020 had the same number
| of deaths per pop as in 2015! Nothing special happened in
| 2015.
|
| Given that 2019 was an abnormally low year, 2020 would
| have been a bit higher than normal anyway even with no
| pandemic. But we're still looking at numbers pretty much
| within the realm of normal variance. If somehow you'd
| never heard of COVID, then someone had shown you that
| graph and asked "did something catastrophic happen in
| this decade" you'd probably have said no. Although 2020
| is a bit higher, it's on the order of a few thousands of
| people, not something you could have noticed in a country
| of millions short of saturation-level media coverage.
|
| That's why it's hard to say but important to hear: these
| levels of death simply do not matter. How do we know?
| Because some countries have had high and persistent
| levels of excess death since the end of the pandemic, but
| as COVID isn't the explanation hardly anyone cares.
| There's just no link between levels of death and severity
| of reaction, in our society.
| sampo wrote:
| > 2015-2019 average baseline.
|
| Many European countries have an ageing population, and
| thus the number of yearly deaths increase year to year.
| For example Finland in 2010-2019 had about 0.8% increase
| in yearly deaths every year. If the deaths followed this
| model and thus there was absolutely no excess mortality
| (and no random variation), the simple method you cite
| would compare 2020, 2021 and 2022 to the average of
| 2015-2019, and would estimate 2.4%, 3.2% and 4.0% excess
| mortality for years 2020, 2021, 2022 for Finland.
|
| Whereas Sweden doesn't have an ageing population
| structure, due to lots of immigration in the past 20
| years. And Sweden didn't have an increasing trend in
| yearly deaths in 2010-2019.
|
| This simple method overestimates the excess mortality for
| many countries, if they have an ageing population
| structure. Then you end up comparing overestimated values
| to Sweden's value that it not overestimated.
| nvm0n2 wrote:
| You can project a baseline like that and get a higher
| number for 2020, but 2019 is still abnormally low and
| those people who survived 2019 had to die at some point.
|
| I'm happy to grant a different baseline though. It goes
| from being a really small number to a really small
| number. Remember that everything that happened was
| justified by claiming a 3.something% IFR and 100%
| infection rate in a single giant wave. That never came
| close to happening and the places that used very light
| touch approaches had no different outcomes to places that
| went full totalitarian. That's the important thing here.
| chimprich wrote:
| > Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South
| Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher
|
| Many factors: different demographics, population density,
| culture, what does "locked down" mean in different countries
| / areas, what does "significantly higher" mean...
|
| One important point though is this probably confuses
| correlation and causation. Areas that were hit harder tended
| to lock down harder.
|
| > Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced
| mortality
|
| People post this occasionally, and I'm going to keep calling
| bullshit. What happens is someone posts a fringe paper that
| supports their view whilst conveniently ignoring the large
| body of established scientific orthodoxy that supports the
| obvious conclusion: that restricting human interaction slows
| down transmission of a respiratory disease that transmits
| through human interaction.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I agree that the mechanism for lockdowns helping is sound
| (less interaction -> less infection) but I still believe
| lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like
| additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less
| healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc).
|
| I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden
| did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no
| lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country.
|
| Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were
| effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
| chimprich wrote:
| > I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg
| including aspects like additional deaths of despair -
| suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise
| and socializing etc).
|
| Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone
| is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping
| health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much
| everywhere implemented them when it looked like their
| health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in
| early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared
| to the harms of lockdown.
|
| In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not
| clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did
| not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. h
| ttps://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589
| -5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic
| accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful
| effects such as secondary effects from the economic
| impact.
|
| > Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were
| effective, or are you calling bullshit based on
| intuition?
|
| There have been a number of studies concluding that
| lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will
| convince any of the sceptics in this thread.
|
| But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report?
| https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-
| non-p...
| xorcist wrote:
| We do not need to look further than excess mortality
| during the period.
|
| It's three years later now and the numbers are in. There
| is plenty of high quality data from all Western
| countries.
|
| However data driven policy decisions should be much more
| fine grained than that. We should instead identify
| specific situations where different type of lockdowns
| would make sense.
|
| But the data is clear. Prolonged periods looks bad, at
| closing schools were clearly the wrong decision on every
| time scale.
| brutusborn wrote:
| I'm skeptical but open to changing my mind. The suicide
| paper was interesting, I think it makes sense that early
| in the pandemic suicides would decrease. I would be
| interested to see a similar analysis for 2022 and 2023
| since I would expect there to be many second-order
| suicides (not a suicide during the lockdown but a later
| suicide as a result of lost social interactions,
| additional addictions and economic impacts).
|
| Are there any particular papers in the report that you
| think are evidence that lockdowns prevented health system
| collapse and were beneficial overall?
|
| I had a preliminary skim of it and decided to check the
| first relevant citation for lockdown effectiveness. It
| has the same problems as most of the studies I have seen:
| it does not include any of the second order effects. Of
| course virus transmission is reduced by limiting
| interactions but this is only one part of the story. This
| may be answered in some of the other references but I
| need to put it aside for now.
| sampo wrote:
| > Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South
| Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher.
|
| In 2020 it clearly was higher. Denmark, Finland and Norway
| avoided the spring 2020 death wave, whereas in Sweden
| mortality was 20% to 50% (well, 48%) higher during the weeks
| of April and May 2020.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-
| deat...
| TheBigSalad wrote:
| What we call "lock down" was hardly anything. And usually in
| reaction to surging cases. So the data probably couldn't show
| it working, even if it did. And it probably didn't.
| [deleted]
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