Covid: Did Pfizer's boss cast doubt on his own vaccine? | Hacker News Reader

Covid: Did Pfizer's boss cast doubt on his own vaccine?

bbc.com

3 pointscolinprince2 comments

Honestly I don’t blame people for being fed up and confused. In March 2020, masks were not effective but then they were. In March 2021, vaccines prevent infections (until they don’t). In September 2020, schools can’t open because we need to save the kids! In September 2021, kids are low risk and we need to accept it. In April 2020, the risk is so great that business, schools and transit need to cease. By September 2020, a cloth mask ameliorates all risk. By December 2021, cloth masks are shit, N95 are what works.

Here’s the thing, N95 has always been superior. Children have been known to be low risk since summer 2020. Vaccines were never intended to protect against all infections. The virus doesn’t give a shit if your restaurant is at 50% capacity or 75%, it’s airborne.

Now it can be argued, and effectively, that public health officials said things with nuance that the media took as gospel. But, if you are going to scream “we trust the science!” and then treat every pre-print or pithy tweet as gospel, don’t be surprised when you create heretics to your religion.

There is more nuance in this. It is possible that kids were important infection vector from the beginning but it was under tested. It can also be that the first variant of the virus really affected them less.

During the delta wave the school children were very important infection vector and controlling infection in schools (by rapid antigen tests) has played important role in controlling the epidemic.

It is also possible that containment of viral load was relatively sufficient before also with cloth masks but is not anymore with omicron because of even higher viral load it creates.

Vaccines still limit spread but by smaller degree and it has been possible to increase (no, especially increase, not restore) the control to higher level but even here we have limitations. We could not expect one vaccine to perfectly control the virus that has evolved too far.

And so on.

I trust science or more precisely the scientific process. I think it is the best tool that we have to finally come to closest to the truth.

But it does not mean that I take every preprint or even print as truth. Far from it and I believe all of us should stay sharp and critical.

It does not mean that I believe only published things that confirm my prejudice. No, I read what the study has actually done. How much can we conclude from it? What are its limitations?

I think too few popularizers of the science help people to understand the limitations of the science. It should be done more. I think it is the cornerstone of the science.

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