Hypothetically: Let’s say you manufacture Volkswagens, and your small engine diesels include a defeat device that allows your cars to pass emissions tests by enabling pollution controls only during emission tests.

When the world learns of your treachery, you sponsor scientific research in which monkeys are exposed to your modern VW diesel tail pipe emissions and also model year 1990s Ford diesel fumes, to show that you’re really pretty harmless compared to old pickup trucks. Your research is trash, the conclusions meaningless, and scientists cash your checks.

Hypothetically: you manufacture cigarettes..

Hypothetically: your fracking is injecting heavy metals into my groundwater..

Hypothetically: you manufacture margarine..

I mean. For God’s sake. Think for just a moment.

Are we allowed to mention pharmaceuticals in this context or not?

> What reason does a corporation have to pay for science that they know will not work?

Profit. The only reason a company does anything. You see it when companies pay for research so that they can get "X product may reduce risk of cancer" in the headlines, or when they want to put "Scientifically proven to Y" on their product labels. Even if it takes funding 100 studies to get the results they're looking for they can just bury the results of the first 99 that contradict their soundbite or ad copy.

The tobacco industry paid off scientists to lie about the cancer risks of their products so that they could continue profit from killing their customers. DuPont did the same thing. The company knew about the dangers of PFAS for decades, but they went around funding research on it and pulling that funding the minute research showed results that their product was harmful. They also paid off a scientist whose job was peer review to protect their interests while hiding his ties to the company.

There are a ton of ways lies disguised as actual science can make money for those with no morals and corporations don't have morals, just shareholders.

With current Covid pandemic. I could be wrong but it seems most studies are looking at effectiveness of vaccines and little to nothing on effectiveness of natural immunity. I say this as someone who was one of the first to get vaccinated. Not that I am saying the pharmaceutical companies sponsored the studies. So to answer your question sometimes it is what is not funded that is probably more telling.

It seems even more like there are groups of people who are dead-set on certain catchphrases (like "natural immunity" or it used to be "herd immunity") no matter what facts they are presented with.

There are studies on "natural immunity" and even how it compares with the vaccines. (here's an example: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...)

A lot of the antivax folks cling to the idea of natural immunity being better somehow, but who in their right mind would choose immunity from getting infected with a virus that can make you very very sick (or dead) and cause you to infect many others around you if they could otherwise get immunity from a free vaccine with none of those problems?

I am in South Africa. We initially struggled to get the vaccine and first phase was literally a clinical trial for health workers. We eventually did get stock but it seems by then a significant number of the population got Covid. Omicron variant doesn't seem to have affected us as much and surveys have shown that up to 80% South Africans have natural immunity from having had Covid. Yes there are some papers on the topic but government policy does not feature anything related to natural immunity. It wasn't a case of get intentionally infected rather it was a case of getting vaccines later than other nations.

It's certainly not good that so many people were forced to roll the dice initially because of lack of access to a vaccine that already exists. As new waves of variants get spread around data has been being collected so we can learn more about the immunity given by both vaccines and prior infection. Your comment mentioned a lack of research being done, but said nothing about government policy. How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?

From what I've seen a prior infection may give stronger protection than vaccines which is great for people who caught the virus and survived without long term health issues, but that's no comfort for the people who didn't. I hope that access to vaccines has improved in South Africa since whatever degree of protection we get from either an infection or a vaccine doesn't last very long. I'll be trying to get my 4th shot in a couple months.

> How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?

This is my own opinion based on my observations in South Africa. Yes it is unfortunate we could not get access to the vaccine at the quantities and time we would have liked to but the lesson is we need to improve our ability to manufacture vaccines. There are some promising initiatives in this regard. I digress though. South Africa keeps an eye on weekly deaths[1] and can then work out excess deaths. The excess deaths during the recent Omicron wave which peaked at the end of December were significantly lower than the deaths during previous waves. Government continues to encourage vaccination but the restrictions to reduce spread Covid are at the lowest we have had. Even during the peak of the Omicron variant over New Years restrictions were being lifted [2]. So without coming out and saying it, it looks to me that SA government acknowledges that natural immunity seems to be helping keep hospitalisations and deaths low. This is because most of the research in SA anyway tends to place less emphasis on natural immunity but focuses on the vaccine. So all communication from government continues to stress need to vaccinate yet restrictions continue to fall. It could be that I have not read enough but government's attitude has been welcomed.

[1]https://www.samrc.ac.za/reports/report-weekly-deaths-south-a... [2]https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/435601/government-lifts-...