But everyone was determined to learn absolutely nothing from it, and just go back to normal but even worse.
Yep, I had no problem finding remote jobs before Covid. Now I get no interviews, every application rejected due to competing with literally thousands of remote "applicants" per job.
I would work on the same laptop at an office that I do at home. I doubt they would even provide me an ultrawide 2nd monitor that I also use at home.
We saw how fragile our entire system is from infrastructure to food. We saw how quickly a bit of fear turned an entire political party (at least in the US) from vilifying big pharma to putting it on a pedestal, handing over mountains of money, and creating legal cover for any and all liability. We saw how strong of a grip the news media has over society, turning public opinion on a dime as new recommendations/talking points came down. We saw how intertwined social media and the government really is.
WFH feels like a quaint novelty to me in the context of what all went wrong and what lessons were missed during the pandemic response.
For clarity on my end, the american Democratic party was going after big pharma and the Sackler family specifically for the opioid epidemic. In comes concerns over Covid (or CoV-2) and the same party completely embraced big pharma and vaccines developed under EUA. Hell, the President tried multiple times in televised speeches to push everyone to get vaccinated for fear of killing the elderly and dying over Christmas holiday.
Or is it that you don’t see going after gouging American consumers for the same drugs that other countries get a lot cheaper?
The first Covid vaccine wasn’t approved until December 11, 2020 after Trump had lost the election and wasn’t available widely until March or April of 2021.
I didn't say there are no differences, of course there are. I also wasn't talking about all vaccines, or even vaccines at all really. I was trying to point out that just before the pandemic we had Democratic politicians and much of the media demonizing big pharma companies, and just a few months after all of that disappeared and those same companies were being handed billions of dollars, given even more legal liability cover, and were being talked about as saviors of us all.
> Or is it that you don’t see going after gouging American consumers for the same drugs that other countries get a lot cheaper?
There are some politicians going after this and that's a good thing, I don't see it as the most important problem with big pharma though, and the progress here has been slow to nonexistent.
> The first Covid vaccine wasn’t approved until December 11, 2020 after Trump had lost the election and wasn’t available widely until March or April of 2021.
Agreed, that's the correct timeline. Trump was still in office when Warp Speed began and he was originally the one pushing for a vaccine. Many Democratic leaders were on the record calling it Trump's vaccine and implying or directly saying they wouldn't trust a vaccine he rushed through the process, effectively calling it a political move to get something out and claim that he fixed it.
You realize that operation Warp Speed was championed by Trump right? Even if that weren’t the case, the company controlled by the Sackler family had nothing to do with the vaccines that came to market.
> given even more legal liability cover, and were being talked about as saviors of us all.
This was also championed by Trump…
And the entire idea about saying that Democratics were going after abuses by Big Pharma was saying they were against medicine is like saying when they were going against the manufacturer of the Pinto they were against cars.
I'm not sure if you read my full comment before replying, I specifically called this out in my last paragraph.
Edit: to include that I'm also not supporting Trump or saying he did things well. I'm only making a comparison of the Democratic party leaderships' opinions and statements before and after Biden took office. What was Trump's vaccine and had to go through standard safety tests before they would consider it became Biden's victory with a vaccine rushed through EUA, required for all federal employees, and recommended for everyone including children who were never even studied (unless you consider a test population of 30 statistically significant).
It was approved before the inauguration. No one thought it was “Biden’s victory”
Biden and his campaign would disagree with you though he frequently spoke highly of the vaccine and his administration's role in it. Prior to the election Biden was one of those calling it Trump's vaccine and raising concerns over rushing it and the safety of it in general.
Then it all flipped on it's head, and 1984 style, no one seems to remember. Liking vaccines was always progressive. We've always been at war with east asia (but don't mention where in east asia the virus came from).
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/political-party-affiliat...
> Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Democratic speaker of the United States House of Representatives, has said any vaccine must meet safety standards before being released if it is to be accepted by the public.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/23/gop-voters-vaccines...
> Among Democratic voters, 76 percent said they “care more about potential health benefits than the potential health risks of vaccines.” But among Republicans, it’s split evenly: 51 percent care more about the potential health risks, while 49 percent care more about the benefits.
This alone is a big flip in what they ultimately supported though. The Covid vaccine was rushed through with limited, and flawed, studies and didn't meet any existing safety standards. The studies that were done were extremely limited in duration and only tested for the most severe safety issues that may show up within days of getting the vaccine. The studies also didn't cover a broad enough range of ages or preexisting conditions to support a blanket statements that it was safe for everyone to take.
It's also worth noting that they never did any meaningful safety studies to validate the idea of taking more than the original one or two shots. Safety of booster shots, which were initially were said to not be required at all, was never studies and the recommendation was based only on the view that the original shots were safe and they weren't aware of reasons why a booster wouldn't be.
Its important for me to note here that I'm not even saying whether they did or did not turn out to be safe, only what was studied and how decisions were made.
Again who has been the anti vax party since 2020? Trump is literally trying to appoint an anti-vaxxer to his cabinet
can send you one for every single one… GOP became “anti-vax” when they realized they can make it a political issue after they fucked up everything imaginable covid related (and paid the price for it in 2020 elections)
If you're referring to RFK as the anti-vaxxer, unless I'm mistaken he has been pretty clear that he isn't opposed to vaccines in general. I don't know all of his arguments or views, but the limited stuff I've seen from or about him indicates that he was opposed to the Covid vaccine and the process it was rushed through with little to no scientific study. I haven't seen him argue against all vaccines, my guess is he is more in favor of the more standard approach of things like attenuated virus vaccines.
> Vaccination has probably saved more lives and is better researched than most, if not all, aspects of healthcare.
It's worth noting that the fact checking article you linked to doesn't really include much in the way of fact checking. They don't include and then discredit specific studies or data points that RFK uses. They do include a few quotes from credentialed individuals like the one above, though it ultimately says nothing and includes fluffy words like "probably saved..."
With that said, I have no idea how much of a smoking gun there might be linking vaccines to autism. My point here isn't that RFK is right, but it is important to at least represent his arguments accurately and to discredit with proper data to show that his view isn't backed by the data.
His “concerns” about autism has been debunked repeatedly and not taken seriously by anyone in the scientific community. He was claiming a link between autism and vaccines for vaccines that did go through the standard approval process and have been around for years.
There is no “data” about vaccines link to autism.
Vaccine use and autism rates are pretty well correlated. In no way does that imply causation and I agree that RFK leans too heavily into thinking that link exists, but it is also the case that we don't have much good scientific data there either way.
Studies for vaccine safety generally don't follow a timeline necessary to pick up links to autism or similar conditions that either take years to develop, or show up one generation down. That isn't unreasonable, the number of confounding factors there would be next to impossible to isolate over such a long time. That still leaves us with little more than modelling and epidemiology to either prove or disprove the link though, at least as I read that the argument couldn't be settled either way.
Of course mistrust of vaccinations have been prevalent in non-white populations due to things like the Tuskeegee syphilis program and other instances of the US performing medical experiments on the populace.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna301646
Rand Paul was speaker of the House at the time.
The reason that uptake in the COVID vaccine wasn’t lower at first was because like everything else, health care is worse in the Black community.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9974364/#:~:text=By....
you do realize that even though trump lost there were few congresman and senators that were republican right?
and of course the most famous anti-vaxxer is RFK Jr - a Democrat. Democrats were anti-vaxxers before it was cool. Rand Paul was stupid enough to believe by now fully retracted study about the “link” between vaccines and autism
But yet you dismiss the then Speaker of the House of Representatives?
These are the Republican Governors who fought against vaccines
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/17/governors-covid-vac...
you are too funny mate…
it was easy to fight the vaccines in late 2021, it just became cool thing politically to rile up MAGA base. all those governors were kissing the top of the needles when that suited them politically
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/09/rfk-jr-announces-he...
So now the Republican Governors, the former Republican Speaker of the House who was against vaccines in 2015 were all anti-vax, Trump’s presumptive nominee as the Head of Health and Human Services is anti-vax, but it was the Democrats who are anti-vax?
Can you name on Democratic governor, Senator or Representative who railed against Covid vaccines after they were approved in December 2020?
“ We declare independence from the cynical elites who betray our hope and who amplify our divisions. And finally, we declare independence from the two political parties.”
You do remember that Trump also didn’t take part in any of the primary debates either?
I do remember that Trump skipped the primaries and I also take issue with that. If the Republican party had any backbone they would have made clear that only candidates taking part in the primary could be on the party's primary ballots.
We had a democratic election with two candidates that took no part in primaries. Though not unprecedented in US history, its a huge problem in my book.
it is insane you have to even write this but here we are... :)
Though not unprecedented in US history, its a huge problem in my book.
huge problem but more of a problem on a democratic party side. while trump did not want to participate in the debates, he won the primary by getting enough votes to become a republican presidential nominee. not a soul voted for kamala to be democratic presidential nominee... while many different "excuses" were made why her campaign failed this by itself was an issue that was not discussed enough. in my small personal circle 2 people specifically said they voted for trump in large part because of this
https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/27/trump-has-launched-an-al...
It is worth pointing out that plenty of Democrats, and I'll stick with party leadership here, spoke poorly of scientists who broke ranks and didn't follow the pushed narrative. The debate over where the virus came from is a great example, a small number of scientists publicly raised concerns that it was a lab leak and everyone from party leadership to Fauci, the CDC, and the FDA attempted to discredit those individuals with direct statements and pressure on media organizations to do the same.