This musing about vaccine safety is quite obviously not some rigorous rationality, it is a simple dog-whistle to attract the rabid anti-vaxxers while not immediately alienating those who rightly view this as an unacceptable position. Vaccine safety is being tracked, and there is no indication whatsoever of any harm from vaccines except for mild symptoms immediately after injection and extremely rare more serious events. The research is done, there is nothing more to discuss.
The latest anti-semitic accusation is also more serious than you make it out to be. He explicitly claims that Covid-19 affected Jewish people ("Ashkenazi Jews") and Chinese people less than others, and talks about that as "targeting". His exact words are that "there is an argument that Covid-19 was ethnically targeted", repeating that it is "targeted to affect Caucasian and Black individuals". He softens it a bit by saying that we don't know if it was deliberately targeted, but he then goes on to talk about how both the USA and the Chinese are working on ethnically-targeted bio weapons, so the implication is more than clear.
I will say that it's not necessarily clear that he is being anti-semitic here, but he is clearly being sinophobic and very very clearly implying that Covid-19 was an ethnically-targeted Chinese bio-weapon, a preposterous claim.
What is a more favorable interpretation of what he said?
If he doesn't want to imply Covid-19 was a bio-weapon, why does he bring it up out of nowhere in the middle of some musings on bio-weapons? Why does he keep using the words "ethnically targeted" if he doesn't want to imply it was, well, ethnically targeted?
The poster attempts to present evidence that credence should be high that China is able to, and would, make bioweapons that are ethnically targeted. At no point does he suggest they have already done so.
That this is insufficient evidence for China's capabilities is likely the more reasonable discussion to have. I don't think they're there yet, and the lab leak from Wuhan shows they're still a bit sloppy in how they handle these things.
1. RFK Jr claims he has been doing research on bio weapons and he claims that the advancements in this area are mind-blowing
2. He then starts talking about how Covid-19 allegedly targeted certain groups less (Jewish and Chinese people), and certain others more (Caucasian and Black people).
3. He then says we don't know if it was intentionally targeted
4. He then goes back to talking about how both the USA and China supposedly have research programs into ethnically-targeted bio-weapons.
The best possible interpretation of this is that he uses the Covid-19 example to only to show that a virus can affect certain populations more than others. However, he uses the word "targeted" for this, and explicitly mentions that it's possible that it was intentionally targeted [by someone]. So, the more plausible read is that he is implying Covid-19 may well be an example of such a bioweapon created by the Chinese to attack Caucasian and Black people.
I will note that I am highly skeptical of his base claim that Covid-19 had some genetic preference for Caucasian and Black people. Any such claim is highly suspect, since it typically conflates ethnicity with genetics without actually doing any actual genetic testing to check. While it is of course true that there are certain genetic differences between ethnic groups, there are also huge social and behavioral and wealth differences between all such groups, which can also explain differences in disease outcomes.
Also, especially when looking at these groups inside of multi-ethnic countries like the USA, the exact genetics of any specific individual may or may not match the general group genetics, since they have different heritability, and inter-group marriages are common. Just because someone has inherited darker skin tones (and would thus be part of the ethnic group "Black people") doesn't mean they also inherited a predisposition to sickle-cell anemia, for example.
Thank you for laying that out. I took your comment to mean that it was the second-level poster, and not RFK Jr., making those claims, but this clarifies things.
As for any ethnic preference of SARS-CoV-2, I've not seen any evidence for that either. We do know that it affects men worse than women, which is explained by XY instead of XX chromosomes (women are better at fighting it off as their immune systems begin the work sooner). The comorbidities in the US just happen to be because we have higher tendencies toward type II diabetes (poor diet, lack of exercise). That's not anything special about the virus, though.
Here is the paper where he got the claim about the ethnic preference of SARS-CoV-2. It was produced by the Cleveland Clinic and mentions differences in the cleavage sites depending on race.
Pfizer vaccinated their control group from the initial vaccines, so that long-term study was squashed by Pfizer. And the adverse effects data are still being collected and examined in light of reporting criteria and classification. Yet, the blanket policy to vax everyone without prioritizing by harm-benefit analysis and ignoring the science was not just negligent but intentional to push a social policy over the data. Memory-holing natural immunity was another. If you were engineering a virus to not affect one group, say Chinese, it doesn't mean another group may be unintendedly less affected too, say Ashkenazi Jews. Calling that racist would make genetic testing among Hassidic Jews for genetic predisposition to specific diseases before marrying and producing offspring, what? Science. Given the homogeneity of a large portion of the genetic makeup of China, the Han people, it would be easier to target other races than say it would for Americans to exclude the majority of its diverse population from an engineered virus. And if you truly believe bio-weapon research is not being done by most powerful nations you are naive.
Pfizer wanted a license to sell their COVID vaccine in India.
The Indian government asked them for local clinical trials first.
This should have been an easy win, prove the vaccine is safe and effective in a controlled trial and you can sell it into a market of 1.38 billion people.
Pfizer declined. Why do you think that is?
Let me give you a hint, here is the CEO of Pfizer admitting that he never took his own COVID vaccine. Isn’t that odd? [0]
Funny that your Twitter link happens to leave out when the Pfizer CEO made that comment. Initially all doses were supposed to the elderly and front-line workers. He mentions that the vaccine wasn't recommended for his group as he isn't a front-line worker. Do you have any evidence he still hasn't taken it?
> Do you have any evidence he still hasn't taken it?
No I don’t have any evidence he still hasn’t taken it. Do you have any evidence he has?
I agree with your recall of the initial recommendation, but I also know how much pressure was put on me and many others outside that group to take the vaccine. I would have been prevented from flying to my home country or working for many companies had I not taken two doses of an experimental vaccine approved under emergency use authorization.
I learned only recently that the CEO of the leading vaccine developer chose not to take it himself at the time. As a result, I feel I was mislead.
When I read about the significant increase in all cause mortality among the vaccinated and learn that no trials were conducted related to fertility or pregnancy related side effects and consider that my wife and I were trying for a baby at that time, if I am being honest - I do feel like I was deceived.
When was the video taken? If it was during the initial time, why do you use it as evidence that the Pfizer CEO hasn't taken the vaccine? Why didn't you mention that, instead making it seem like the CEO hasn't taken the vaccine for other reasons than he literally stated in the video?
And let's consider you were right, the Pfizer CEO doesn't trust the vaccine and still hasn't taken it. Why the hell would he ever admit he didn't take it? Why wouldn't he say "yeah, I took the first dose"?
I don’t know when the video was taken. It could have been early in the pandemic. I saw that video and found it odd that the CEO didn’t take his own vaccine in the middle of a pandemic - that’s all.
What does concern me, is the reason why Pfizer would be willing to give up on a market of 1.38 billion people. That single local trial could have doubled their potential global market.
I don’t understand the logic of foregoing so much profit. Why do you think they would do that? Any explanations?
How was it misleading? By his own admission he didn’t take the vaccine.
Do you agree it is fishy that a for profit Pharma company would choose to forego a market of 1.38 billion customers simply because they would have been required to do local clinical trials? I find that troubling. Why don’t you?
> How was it misleading? By his own admission he didn’t take the vaccine.
You posted the video as proof the Pfizer CEO hasn't taken the video, without mentioning when it was taken, and without mentioning that he followed public health recommendations. You made it seem like the CEO decided not to take it because he doesn't trust it, but he didn't take it as to not be selfish. Do you now admit that you posted this in a highly misleading way?
I will admit that when I initially posted the video I did not know when it was taken.
Do you admit it is highly suspicious for a for profit Pharma company to forego the profits on a single market that is larger than both the US and the EU combined?
Can you explain your hypothesis for why they would do that?
I disagree. There, proven wrong. Happy? I'm not going to engage with your argument until we've cleared up your initial point.
Now, back to my question: Then we are in agreement that the Pfizer CEO acted fully correctly and you shouldn't take this video as any evidence he hasn't taken the vaccine yet?
On what basis do you disagree? What is your explanation?
> Then we are in agreement that the Pfizer CEO acted fully correctly
No, the CEO did not act fully correctly. In fact he lied to the world when he implied that the vaccine prevented infection.
He knew at the time that it had not been tested for its ability to prevent infection but he implied we should take it to protect our loved ones. [0]
> and you shouldn't take this video as any evidence he hasn't taken the vaccine yet?
Yes, I already agreed several comments back that I hadn’t checked the date of the video when I first posted it. I also agreed that it isn’t evidence he hasn’t taken the vaccine since the video was taken.
You were being intellectually dishonest by repeatedly ignoring the core point of my argument about the Indian market, even after I openly acknowledged the error about the date on the original video.
I’m genuinely sorry this argument got so heated. I just get frustrated when people who accuse me of being dishonest behave in a dishonest way.
your response tells me everything though, you think one thing is "rightly viewed as an unacceptable position", neither nuance or complexity is allowed, my original paragraph spoke on tradeoffs, on nuance itself. if you don't address that then you yourself are dogwhistling, how are you better than the strawman you paint of RFK?
regarding the anti-semetic bit, not only did you completely avoid the main point of what was being said by both RFK and me, which is the potential for ethnic targeting, you've quoted his statement yourself with "there is an argument...", its not "i support the idea that...". its like people can't even speak hypotheticals without baseless accusations coming around every corner, what's the point of dialogue if we act like this? let's just settle presidential elections in a wrestling ring.
I think the issue is that the "I'm just asking questions!" technique is used to express opinions without taking responsibility for them.
When anxiety-producing questions keep getting "asked" by a politician when they already have rigorous, data-backed answers, they are being used as a political tool, disguised as skepticism or genuine scientific inquiry.
There are questions where looking for nuance detracts rather than add to the conversation. The earth is round, there is no need for nuance there. Similarly, vaccines work and have been proven to be better than not getting vaccinated in every single case in the last, say, 20 years. Adding nuance to that only serves to muddy the waters.
The same sort of thing happens with hypotheticals. Sure, they are important and not every hypothetical should be read as an affirmation. But then there are cases like OJ Simpsons "If I had done it" - where the hypothetical framing is such an obvious fig leaf that it's ridiculous to pretend. And saying "there's an argument that" in the middle of a discussion about bio weapons, bringing up highly disputable facts like the supposed ethnic differences in Covid-19 effects, and then not spending even another second to acknowledge that there is 0 evidence for this supposed hypothetical - that all brings it to a level where it's comical not to recognize what was actually being said.
> The earth is round, there is no need for nuance there.
Clearly there is _some_ need for nuance there since the Earth isn't exactly a sphere. Even calling it an oblate ellipsoid isn't a perfect model. There is nuance everywhere, and clearly some models are more wrong than others; modeling the Earth as flat is much less accurate than a sphere, which in turn is less accurate than the somewhat flattened spheres common today, which in turn is less accurate than whatever the true shape of the Earth is.
But the takeaway from that shouldn't be creating a dogma that "the Earth is round" and moving on, just to own the guys that claim its flat (who are by and large just trolling you).
even if a vaccine has passed all the required clinical trials for america's FDA to certify it, if and when you release it on a population you can still find things to be wrong with it, or effects its having that weren't understood. this is how all of medicine works, to try and dismiss the complexity of biology is a detraction from honesty itself. long term safety studies of vaccines, especially those given in early childhood, need to be used to determine that they don't cause harm, worse than the disease they're meant to prevent, 10-20 years down the line.
can you explain what i've detracted from this conversation? the nuance is appropriate. the complexity belongs as a natural part of the conversation.
your oversimplifications are more dangerous than the so called "detractions" that you haven't given a proper example of.
Why do you keep implying that such studies are not already being done? Most vaccines we use are by now decades old, and adverse effects of all medicines, especially serious adverse effects, are reported, there is a whole system for this.
Vaccines, by and large, have proven to be some of the safest medicine we take. Will the mRNA vaccines prove different? I hope not, but it is of course relatively early in their existence. But thing like the MMR vaccines and the polio vaccine have been administered on a huge scale for decades, and all the possible data has been collected - they are effective and safe.
RFK has suggested they're locked in bureaucratic problems, which I agree with, because of regulatory capture.
and you keep framing things as if i'm saying all vaccines are terrible, that's insane, i've not said that once. and you also want to argue this laser-focussed agenda on whether ALL vaccines are good or bad, but we're literally MAKING them bad by going after the livelihoods of people who don't want to get it. and there are vaccines, much like other drugs, that have been recalled before. you have every right to be skeptical. otherwise we're not living in a free society.
there's literally people being denied life-saving surgeries because they haven't gotten a covid vaccine. it should be your choice whether you get vaccinated or not. someone in canada needed a kidney transplant, and had multiple brothers as compatible donors willing to give one to him, but he was denied the right to a surgery all over a covid vaccine.
is this what vaccines are supposed to be? something you hang over other people's heads in order to passive aggressively kill them for their beliefs? getting covid and gaining immunity offers all the same herd immunity (better, even) than you would get from a vaccine. there's no moral high-ground for denying someone life-saving surgery anymore and we're still playing this stupid game.
literally 8 years ago i would be arguing every point you're trying to make, but after being in the pharmaceutical industry for longer than that, after watching clinical trials of drugs i've contributed to myself, i know the flaws of this system. i'm not a moron and i'm not a lunatic. there is a lot to be worried about and if RFK wants to raise these issues in the federal political arena, i'm willing to believe it will bring benefit to the flaws i've become familiar with.
The latest anti-semitic accusation is also more serious than you make it out to be. He explicitly claims that Covid-19 affected Jewish people ("Ashkenazi Jews") and Chinese people less than others, and talks about that as "targeting". His exact words are that "there is an argument that Covid-19 was ethnically targeted", repeating that it is "targeted to affect Caucasian and Black individuals". He softens it a bit by saying that we don't know if it was deliberately targeted, but he then goes on to talk about how both the USA and the Chinese are working on ethnically-targeted bio weapons, so the implication is more than clear.
I will say that it's not necessarily clear that he is being anti-semitic here, but he is clearly being sinophobic and very very clearly implying that Covid-19 was an ethnically-targeted Chinese bio-weapon, a preposterous claim.