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Comment by empthought | Hacker News Reader

How would fleshing out the point continue to fare in two years? Don't know? Sounds like we are testing some sort of hypothesis with observation.

The point is that the inability to predict the future does not necessarily imply that some action is "experimental," despite your insinuation that it does.

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Until we are learning only second order impacts about these vaccines then I'd argue we are still in the experimental phase. Perhaps you have seen enough yourself that the case is closed, but others take a much longer view on things.

Then every approved medicine is in experimental phase after approval continuously till everyone ever has taken it has died. Then we can compare final numbers and make final conclusion.

Or we take data we already have and make the conclusion already today - vaccines we currently have save more people from severe illness and death than they possibly put into risk.

Depends on your definition of primary and secondary effects. I count future efficacy as a primary effect, wouldn't you? Do we know what vaccine efficacy will be in 2 years? Answer: No, exhibit: Omicron. Most drugs don't have to fight a moving target.

Antibiotics do, so do antivirals and antifungals.

Huh? What about all other vaccine, antibiotics and antivirals? When would you say is the "experiment" concluded. I mean I could always say: yeah it fared well for 40 years but what about 50? Do you know? Ergo still an experiment according to you.

Are you claiming we don't know the primary impacts of those? Do we have good reason to believe they will change at year 50? My point is that we don't know primary impact even short distance out and we have reasonable evidence that the nature of our opponent is the problem, not the technology.

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