(I don't disagree with your sentiment, fwiw)

For 1.5 years we had the notion of "1 death is 1 too many" shoved down our throats at every turn to justify some pretty heinous encroachments on personal freedom.

Is that really it? Over 1 million American's have died so far. That seems like it warrants some efforts to mitigate.

I never said that any mitigation was unnecessary. There is a such thing as going overboard. There are still outdoor areas that are closed off despite there being no credible cases of outdoor transmission. https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...

I’m not jumping the gun - the net deaths can be negative yet it is still the case that what we witnessed was a massive, arguably unprecedented failure of medical ethics, the defense of body autonomy, the scientific process, the culture of healthy skepticism and debate, and basic decency and opposition to dehumanization campaigns. All due to fear and righteousness, as it often is.

If the numbers come out that net deaths are sharply negative, do you think we should similarly condemn those that spread fear and misinformation about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine? Or are "skeptics" immune from repercussions for their actions in this case?

Did their stances actually contribute to public health policy, if so then they bare responsibility unfortunately. Armchair biosecurity advocates should be left off the hook.

The former group has been condemned, banned, ostracized, and dehumanized. To the degree any of them were acting on bad faith or in violation of their oaths, yes they should be condemned.

But the deepest crimes lie elsewhere, by those in power who coerced others into taking drugs they did not want, who used ends-justify-the-means reasoning to violate ethics as physicians or public health officials, and who now continue to try to suppress, deflect, and gaslight us from recognizing the real events which actually occurred and which we are morally obligated to correct for our children.

Agree to disagree, I guess. I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt to those acting on the best information available at the time rather than "influencers" raising "concerns" based on nothing but their gut instincts.

Or to put it another way, how many vaccine skeptics were pushing for the heavy use of masks, better HVAC systems in buildings, and social distancing when possible? Because I've noticed a large correlation between those that spoke out against vaccines and those that spoke out against any preventative measures at all - regardless of how benign.

You’re just cherry picking - there have been plenty of people raising basic concerns about the bioethics of mandating an emergency use medicine using a new technology for a rapidly evolving respiratory virus. There have also been prominent public officials saying things like “the unvaccinated cannot be trusted.” You should not let tribalism get in the way of seeing the full picture of what happened.

I would agree with klipt: why were so many influential figures allowed to spread disinformation based apparently on misunderstanding mathematics, the scientific process, and just caring about general health and welfare?

It was said once that 5 deaths is a tragedy, but 500k is just a statistic (as a justification of genocide). This is possibly why the 5 deaths in the article possibly from the vaccine is apparently more terrifying.

The age stratified risk was known almost a year before needles entered the arms of teenagers.

> If vaccines save 10,000 people and kill 10 people, that's still a net positive.

You need to take age into account, no?

In this study the ages ranged from 46 to 75 For those who died.

Yes but does the government have the ability to coerce or force you to do something with a '1 in 1000' death rate, if not, what is the number we are allowing in the name of public health.

That's good, but what about forcing people to take it?

The vaccines confer an antibody response, which isn't all that important in terms of combating disease: "Antibodies that offer protection'? Let’s pause right here. When was it ever proven that antibodies offer protection? In fact, the opposite has been observed. Don’t we remember another prominent scientist (and a Nobel Prize winner in 1960) Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet telling us the following regarding the role of antibodies (or rather lack thereof) for immunity in children who lacked antibody production due to a genetic condition called agammaglobulinemia:

“To everyone’s surprise [children with agammaglobulinemia] showed a normal measles course with a typical rash which faded at the normal time and was followed by just as substantial immunity against reinfection as would be shown by any other convalescent. Antibody production is therefore not necessary either for recovery from or for the development of immunity to measles.” (Burnet and White. Natural History of Infectious Disease. Cambridge University Press, 1940) "

https://www.tetyanaobukhanych.com/blog/should-you-be-afraid-...

FDA could have used T-cell expression as a standard of efficacy but chose not to despite knowing antibodies were being over sold as hallmarks of immunity.

Tetyana Obukhanych is a doctor of immunology from Rockefeller NYU. Pharma companies spun up multiple "blogs" to smear her when she started speaking out.

If what you are saying is true, then the whole mechanism of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humoral_immunity is not working. So the human body maintains a complete system that produces useless antibodies?

What he is saying is not true. The large vaccine trials have always been about testing the effectiveness at combating disease directly (measuring rates of reported illness or hospitalization), with antibody titers used as a quick secondary check. His comment assumes the reverse happened. We still know surprisingly little about how long antibodies are measurable in the blood and for how long and how effective they are at what prevalence rate, etc.