Very well done. You make a good argument for rational cost/benefit analysis.
Unfortunately no cost/benefit analysis was even allowed to be discussed throughout the lockdowns/remote learning/mandated vaccines/masking etc etc. Any risk was unacceptable then. Relative risks could not be examined, such as the huge risk differential between children and the elderly. I won’t question your figure of 1600 children dead in 3 years. How many of those were healthy prior to COVID, and how many had comorbidities?
It is true that people no longer trust experts as they once did. The experts brought that on themselves with their conduct during the pandemic, culminating in Dr Fauci claiming that anyone who disagreed with him was disputing The Science. Not sure of the number, but I believe it was thousands that signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Both Dr Fauci and Dr Collins moved quickly to squelch any reasonable discussion of it.
I liked the world better when we had confidence in experts to guide us. They destroyed that trust with their hubris. If experts want to understand the proliferation of vaccine mistrust, they should look in the mirror. They encouraged the very behavior you talk about- fear of any risk.
I must admit to being somewhat of a “COVID skeptic” after the first couple of weeks of lockdowns. 2 reasons:
I’m old enough to remember Dr Fauci from the early 80’s when he tried to spread panic that we would all die of AIDS.
Having had a casual interest in the fight against disease outbreaks, (reading “general interest" books on the topic)I knew that Neil Ferguson had made wildly inaccurate predictions about Mad Cow Disease.
When I heard that Dr Fauci was leading the response, and the projections came from Neil Ferguson, my BS detector was immediately activated.
And, of course, the orgin, which in high probability came from the very geniuses who scoff at distrust. They deserve nothing but scorn (and jail should a true investigation yield guilt). I've had people argue, "even if true, there was no ill intent" (right). And, "well the Europeans brought over diseases with no immunity", as if unleashing a worldwide, Bond villain-esque catastrophe and covering it up becomes an excusable offense in light of historical misdeeds they refuse to study beyond a 200 character tweet. With such sentiment, we will never get a true swing at anti approaching the sobriety this event deserves. That's the greatest shamrock of all
Eric Feigl-Ding often provides useful information, and I’ve never seen him provide false information, but personally I could do without the “Holy Mother of God” and “OMG” and phrases like “thermonuclear bad” even if he really thinks those are true assessments.
I think he’s built his brand by riling up covid-fear. Covid-fear might even have been appropriate very early on, but an expert should project calm and confidence.
If there were a fire in my house and I had young kids in the house, I would be the “expert” on getting them to safety. Giving them simple clear instructions and telling them “come with me, it’ll be fine,” is probably a better approach than screaming “omg children run for your lives or we’re all gonna die!” — I think that’s true even if the situation is serious enough to warrant a little hysteria.
If you’re someone to whom people are looking in a crisis, for any reason, you owe it to them to give them information calmly and build their confidence and trust.
No, limited to Bjorn Lomberg and Michael Shellenberger. But I'm old enough to remember that these predictions have been made since the 70's. Google "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. They have been spewing the same alarmist stuff for a very long time.
Jan 8, 2023·edited Jan 8, 2023Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
I remember staying somewhere in Europe, and I was talking to some people who didn't speak English as their first language. One guy was explaining how there was a local beer brewed by monks. The other guy was like, no, you're lying, that's impossible. The first guy eventually showed him a picture, and the other was like ooooh, I thought you meant "monkeys"
I'd take antibiotics in a pinch if prescribed, not just because I generally trust doctors with that kind of thing - but also because we have many years of experience with them and we know for sure they don't cause you problems later on down the line.
Although Covid vaccines are relatively new (obviously!), the concept of vaccines is not, and we also know that they generally don't do more harm than good many years later, either. (Nor do they cause autism.)
The one thing that still worries me though is the "trust medical experts" heuristic might have given the wrong answer to an important question a couple of years back in the UK. Imagine you're a parent and your child comes home from school one day and tells you they're transgender and want to go on puberty blockers. You panic at first, but decide you're going to apply the "trust experts" heuristic. The website of the National Health Service tells you that puberty blockers are safe, fully reversible, and have no long-term negative effects - more or less as safe as antibiotics. But the NHS was later forced to change that wording after a court case, where among other things they had to admit that there were no long-term studies because these drugs had not been in wide use for long enough to tell (except for specific, rare, non-gender-related conditions). The guidance has now been changed to "Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria."
If you'd gone along and got your child referred to the Tavistock clinic - the national "gender identity development service" so surely that's where you'd find genuine experts, as opposed to online - you would have been told by everyone you asked there that all experts agree on the "gender-affirming" model of care. Except that "the Tavistock" has now all but been shut down (they're not accepting new referrals) and they're facing a lawsuit.
So as a parent, going with the experts would be good advice for antibiotics, covid vaccines (and other kinds of vaccines like MMR), but the best I can say without openly taking a side is it's to early to say if the same is true for puberty blockers.
Thanks so much for jumping in! You know what, Spruce, these are such good points that while I was creating a (rather long) reply, I decided it deserves its own post instead. So I’ll try to get that done in the near future.
The TL;DR version would be, the “trans medicine“ mess is an example not of true information being misleading (the topic of this post) but false information being misleading.
And when trusted experts get something very very VERY wrong, like the trans stuff, it’s no wonder that they stop being trusted experts in very short order.
Lack of trust -- deserved lack of trust -- is a big part of why we’re in this mess, and I appreciate you mentioning that!
It depends on the vaccine, how well it works, what exactly you mean by mandate, and for what purposes.
Generally, required vaccines have served us well. I support the childhood vaccine series as a prerequisite to enroll in school. Not every kid is required to get every vaccine though (it depends on their health conditions).
If there were a highly effective pancoronavirus vaccine that stopped 300 Americans/ day from dying and stopped the constant disruptions we’ve had in health care, in travel, in supply chains, and so on, yes, I would support that.
Even if there were a highly effective _annual_ vaccine that did those things (akin to the flu vaccine) yes, I’d support that.
But re the current vaccines with the current viruses: I don’t think they are effective enough that a mandate would make enough of a difference to force it on people who are foolish enough to refuse it.
It was worth a try, pre-delta, to require vaccines to get into certain crowded indoor venues. Now that we’ve experienced delta and omicron, and the virus gets spread around with or without the vaccines, no, it doesn’t make sense.
I do think people who are otherwise eligible to get the vaccines and choose not to get them are making an unwise choice for themselves, and usually it’s based on fear, ignorance, or incorrect information (or true information that is misleading) but I’m not in favor of forcing them to have the existing vaccines.
Jan 10, 2023·edited Jan 10, 2023Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
Thanks for the reply! That's a fair answer, but I would ask you how you qualify "effective enough" in your judgement as to whether or not a vaccine should be mandated. This is the question I am struggling with as it doesn't seem like there is a non-arbitrary answer. Does any amount of efficacy warrant a mandate, and if so why don't we mandate flu shots?
As an additional comment on your work, I can agree that seeking out a specialist for advice is almost always the best move. That said, it goes without saying that people throughout history have abused their power and influence and I don't think it's a bad thing to be skeptical of authority. It becomes a problem when people start denying basic facts and observations of course.
It depends right? I can’t say X percent isn’t effective enough but X+1 percent is.
But you might agree that before we had childhood vaccinations, kids died or were damaged, and now with childhood vaccinations, we don’t see that.
Also you might agree with the new vaccines, and the original (pre-delta) virus, when it looked liked the vaccines were going to wipe this thing out (or nearly), it was worth a try to try to get everyone vaccinated and on board.
But... it turned out not to work out that way because of the new variants. So, what we decide to do depends on what we have to work with.
I agree about being skeptical of authority, especially today when so many of our leaders have let us down. It’s more important than ever to be discerning about where we get our information, and to try to keep that very separate from emotion, fear, team-loyalty or politics. There are always going to be trusted experts but we have to choose them wisely.
Your analogy with antibiotics is brilliant. The one I like to use is driving: Nearly every parent in the US readily accepts the risk of driving their kids everywhere, but some of them are afraid of vaccines? It makes no sense to me.
And, as someone who got J&J for a very good reason (Switzerland’s vaccine roll-out was slow, so I flew to the US at the end of March 2021 to get J&J), I was so disappointed that the FDA took it off the market instead of, say, recommending against its use for women on oral contraceptives. A one-shot vaccine could have been such a useful tool in the early stages of the pandemic, especially for people who were reluctant or whose jobs prevented them from having time for the two shots.
That's a great comparison to driving, Mari -- of course the comeback might be, "We need to drive!" -- but your point is a really good one: it's far more dangerous to drive than to give your child the vaccines or antibiotics. No parent is obsessing about the dangers of car travel.
Re the J&J vaccine, yes -- indeed I thought at the time: We know exactly who is at risk for these rare bad outcomes. It would have been better, I think, to keep the vaccine available and be more careful about who got it.
I think because there was so much public fear and skepticism about vaccines that were rolled out "too quickly" (in many people's minds), there was an abundance of caution from our leaders, to make a show of how cautious and careful they were being. So I think the J&J response was an overreaction, but I do understand it.
But that display of caution wasn't enough to allay the fears from the crowd whose social media algorithms call the mRNA vaccine "gene therapy" and imagine a "They" who is trying to get everyone to take the vaccine for... what reason exactly? No one can produce a sensible answer. Some people just "know" the motivations must be evil, but can't describe who would benefit from it and how.
The situation has been so badly mishandled by our leaders. It's hard to imagine they could turn it around at this point, even if they had any wish to do so, which they don't. Having everyone on both "teams" frantic that "the other side" is the cause of the mess allows everyone off the hook. It's those bad guys over there who are responsible for the bad outcomes.
I feel compelled to point out an obvious reason why pharma might want everyone to take their vaccines (and make sure that boosters are needed every few months) - money.
Yes, but Pharma is not in control of whether the vaccines get removed from the market. The J&J one that causes clots was removed. If it’s just money, why didn’t that one continue to be sold? And if the J&J one was quickly removed, why wouldn’t other vaccines be removed if they were causing problems?
It just doesn’t make sense, unless you look at the data and see that the one problem it causes at low rates (myocarditis) is much more likely to be caused by a covid infection itself. And all other sorts of bad consequences are likely to be caused by a covid infection itself -- like dropping dead of a cardiac event.
If people were fully aware of the long-term risks of a covid infection, even after they recover from the respiratory symptoms, they’d probably be a lot more worried and demanding that their leaders do a lot more to protect them other than “pretend it’s a cold.”
I’m afraid I don’t understand your argument. We know that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission- although we were told initially that they did prevent transmission. They don't even prevent infection. Now instead the benefit is that the vaccines prevent serious illness. After 3 years of circulation, how many young people have not already been exposed to the virus? Have we even tried to determine that? The whole discussion at this point seems akin to locking the barn door after the horse is already out.
Very well done. You make a good argument for rational cost/benefit analysis.
Unfortunately no cost/benefit analysis was even allowed to be discussed throughout the lockdowns/remote learning/mandated vaccines/masking etc etc. Any risk was unacceptable then. Relative risks could not be examined, such as the huge risk differential between children and the elderly. I won’t question your figure of 1600 children dead in 3 years. How many of those were healthy prior to COVID, and how many had comorbidities?
It is true that people no longer trust experts as they once did. The experts brought that on themselves with their conduct during the pandemic, culminating in Dr Fauci claiming that anyone who disagreed with him was disputing The Science. Not sure of the number, but I believe it was thousands that signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Both Dr Fauci and Dr Collins moved quickly to squelch any reasonable discussion of it.
I liked the world better when we had confidence in experts to guide us. They destroyed that trust with their hubris. If experts want to understand the proliferation of vaccine mistrust, they should look in the mirror. They encouraged the very behavior you talk about- fear of any risk.
I must admit to being somewhat of a “COVID skeptic” after the first couple of weeks of lockdowns. 2 reasons:
I’m old enough to remember Dr Fauci from the early 80’s when he tried to spread panic that we would all die of AIDS.
Having had a casual interest in the fight against disease outbreaks, (reading “general interest" books on the topic)I knew that Neil Ferguson had made wildly inaccurate predictions about Mad Cow Disease.
When I heard that Dr Fauci was leading the response, and the projections came from Neil Ferguson, my BS detector was immediately activated.
And, of course, the orgin, which in high probability came from the very geniuses who scoff at distrust. They deserve nothing but scorn (and jail should a true investigation yield guilt). I've had people argue, "even if true, there was no ill intent" (right). And, "well the Europeans brought over diseases with no immunity", as if unleashing a worldwide, Bond villain-esque catastrophe and covering it up becomes an excusable offense in light of historical misdeeds they refuse to study beyond a 200 character tweet. With such sentiment, we will never get a true swing at anti approaching the sobriety this event deserves. That's the greatest shamrock of all
*anything *shame
Great essay -- couldn’t fault any of the logic.
Out of curiosity, what do you think of Eric Feigl-Ding? And his recent “thermonuclear bad” tweet about China.
Also it’s well known capuchin monkeys are assholes
Eric Feigl-Ding often provides useful information, and I’ve never seen him provide false information, but personally I could do without the “Holy Mother of God” and “OMG” and phrases like “thermonuclear bad” even if he really thinks those are true assessments.
I think he’s built his brand by riling up covid-fear. Covid-fear might even have been appropriate very early on, but an expert should project calm and confidence.
If there were a fire in my house and I had young kids in the house, I would be the “expert” on getting them to safety. Giving them simple clear instructions and telling them “come with me, it’ll be fine,” is probably a better approach than screaming “omg children run for your lives or we’re all gonna die!” — I think that’s true even if the situation is serious enough to warrant a little hysteria.
If you’re someone to whom people are looking in a crisis, for any reason, you owe it to them to give them information calmly and build their confidence and trust.
Edited to fix typos
Memo to climate change alarmists...
Do you follow Roger Pielke on substack?
No, limited to Bjorn Lomberg and Michael Shellenberger. But I'm old enough to remember that these predictions have been made since the 70's. Google "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. They have been spewing the same alarmist stuff for a very long time.
Also: thanks!
Also: capuchin monkeys give capuchin monks a bad name.
I remember staying somewhere in Europe, and I was talking to some people who didn't speak English as their first language. One guy was explaining how there was a local beer brewed by monks. The other guy was like, no, you're lying, that's impossible. The first guy eventually showed him a picture, and the other was like ooooh, I thought you meant "monkeys"
Hahahahah! Love it!!
I'd take antibiotics in a pinch if prescribed, not just because I generally trust doctors with that kind of thing - but also because we have many years of experience with them and we know for sure they don't cause you problems later on down the line.
Although Covid vaccines are relatively new (obviously!), the concept of vaccines is not, and we also know that they generally don't do more harm than good many years later, either. (Nor do they cause autism.)
The one thing that still worries me though is the "trust medical experts" heuristic might have given the wrong answer to an important question a couple of years back in the UK. Imagine you're a parent and your child comes home from school one day and tells you they're transgender and want to go on puberty blockers. You panic at first, but decide you're going to apply the "trust experts" heuristic. The website of the National Health Service tells you that puberty blockers are safe, fully reversible, and have no long-term negative effects - more or less as safe as antibiotics. But the NHS was later forced to change that wording after a court case, where among other things they had to admit that there were no long-term studies because these drugs had not been in wide use for long enough to tell (except for specific, rare, non-gender-related conditions). The guidance has now been changed to "Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria."
If you'd gone along and got your child referred to the Tavistock clinic - the national "gender identity development service" so surely that's where you'd find genuine experts, as opposed to online - you would have been told by everyone you asked there that all experts agree on the "gender-affirming" model of care. Except that "the Tavistock" has now all but been shut down (they're not accepting new referrals) and they're facing a lawsuit.
So as a parent, going with the experts would be good advice for antibiotics, covid vaccines (and other kinds of vaccines like MMR), but the best I can say without openly taking a side is it's to early to say if the same is true for puberty blockers.
Thanks so much for jumping in! You know what, Spruce, these are such good points that while I was creating a (rather long) reply, I decided it deserves its own post instead. So I’ll try to get that done in the near future.
The TL;DR version would be, the “trans medicine“ mess is an example not of true information being misleading (the topic of this post) but false information being misleading.
And when trusted experts get something very very VERY wrong, like the trans stuff, it’s no wonder that they stop being trusted experts in very short order.
Lack of trust -- deserved lack of trust -- is a big part of why we’re in this mess, and I appreciate you mentioning that!
I completely agree, and I'm looking forward to the post.
Excellent article! I would like to know your opinion on COVID vaccine mandates. Do you support them?
Thanks!
It depends on the vaccine, how well it works, what exactly you mean by mandate, and for what purposes.
Generally, required vaccines have served us well. I support the childhood vaccine series as a prerequisite to enroll in school. Not every kid is required to get every vaccine though (it depends on their health conditions).
If there were a highly effective pancoronavirus vaccine that stopped 300 Americans/ day from dying and stopped the constant disruptions we’ve had in health care, in travel, in supply chains, and so on, yes, I would support that.
Even if there were a highly effective _annual_ vaccine that did those things (akin to the flu vaccine) yes, I’d support that.
But re the current vaccines with the current viruses: I don’t think they are effective enough that a mandate would make enough of a difference to force it on people who are foolish enough to refuse it.
It was worth a try, pre-delta, to require vaccines to get into certain crowded indoor venues. Now that we’ve experienced delta and omicron, and the virus gets spread around with or without the vaccines, no, it doesn’t make sense.
I do think people who are otherwise eligible to get the vaccines and choose not to get them are making an unwise choice for themselves, and usually it’s based on fear, ignorance, or incorrect information (or true information that is misleading) but I’m not in favor of forcing them to have the existing vaccines.
Tl;dr it’s complicated.
Edited to fix typos
Thanks for the reply! That's a fair answer, but I would ask you how you qualify "effective enough" in your judgement as to whether or not a vaccine should be mandated. This is the question I am struggling with as it doesn't seem like there is a non-arbitrary answer. Does any amount of efficacy warrant a mandate, and if so why don't we mandate flu shots?
As an additional comment on your work, I can agree that seeking out a specialist for advice is almost always the best move. That said, it goes without saying that people throughout history have abused their power and influence and I don't think it's a bad thing to be skeptical of authority. It becomes a problem when people start denying basic facts and observations of course.
Edited to fix typos
It depends right? I can’t say X percent isn’t effective enough but X+1 percent is.
But you might agree that before we had childhood vaccinations, kids died or were damaged, and now with childhood vaccinations, we don’t see that.
Also you might agree with the new vaccines, and the original (pre-delta) virus, when it looked liked the vaccines were going to wipe this thing out (or nearly), it was worth a try to try to get everyone vaccinated and on board.
But... it turned out not to work out that way because of the new variants. So, what we decide to do depends on what we have to work with.
I agree about being skeptical of authority, especially today when so many of our leaders have let us down. It’s more important than ever to be discerning about where we get our information, and to try to keep that very separate from emotion, fear, team-loyalty or politics. There are always going to be trusted experts but we have to choose them wisely.
There is an interesting op-ed in today's WSJ: 'Experts' are Fueling Distrust in Vaccines by Allysia Finley.
I’ll have to check that out, Heyjude. Thanks! (How timely!)
Very good analogy.
Thanks so much for putting so much effort into research and into coming up with this creative approach in the first place.
Thanks for reading, Chris -- and thanks for the very kind comments! Happy New Year!
Your analogy with antibiotics is brilliant. The one I like to use is driving: Nearly every parent in the US readily accepts the risk of driving their kids everywhere, but some of them are afraid of vaccines? It makes no sense to me.
And, as someone who got J&J for a very good reason (Switzerland’s vaccine roll-out was slow, so I flew to the US at the end of March 2021 to get J&J), I was so disappointed that the FDA took it off the market instead of, say, recommending against its use for women on oral contraceptives. A one-shot vaccine could have been such a useful tool in the early stages of the pandemic, especially for people who were reluctant or whose jobs prevented them from having time for the two shots.
That's a great comparison to driving, Mari -- of course the comeback might be, "We need to drive!" -- but your point is a really good one: it's far more dangerous to drive than to give your child the vaccines or antibiotics. No parent is obsessing about the dangers of car travel.
Re the J&J vaccine, yes -- indeed I thought at the time: We know exactly who is at risk for these rare bad outcomes. It would have been better, I think, to keep the vaccine available and be more careful about who got it.
I think because there was so much public fear and skepticism about vaccines that were rolled out "too quickly" (in many people's minds), there was an abundance of caution from our leaders, to make a show of how cautious and careful they were being. So I think the J&J response was an overreaction, but I do understand it.
But that display of caution wasn't enough to allay the fears from the crowd whose social media algorithms call the mRNA vaccine "gene therapy" and imagine a "They" who is trying to get everyone to take the vaccine for... what reason exactly? No one can produce a sensible answer. Some people just "know" the motivations must be evil, but can't describe who would benefit from it and how.
The situation has been so badly mishandled by our leaders. It's hard to imagine they could turn it around at this point, even if they had any wish to do so, which they don't. Having everyone on both "teams" frantic that "the other side" is the cause of the mess allows everyone off the hook. It's those bad guys over there who are responsible for the bad outcomes.
I feel compelled to point out an obvious reason why pharma might want everyone to take their vaccines (and make sure that boosters are needed every few months) - money.
Yes, but Pharma is not in control of whether the vaccines get removed from the market. The J&J one that causes clots was removed. If it’s just money, why didn’t that one continue to be sold? And if the J&J one was quickly removed, why wouldn’t other vaccines be removed if they were causing problems?
It just doesn’t make sense, unless you look at the data and see that the one problem it causes at low rates (myocarditis) is much more likely to be caused by a covid infection itself. And all other sorts of bad consequences are likely to be caused by a covid infection itself -- like dropping dead of a cardiac event.
If people were fully aware of the long-term risks of a covid infection, even after they recover from the respiratory symptoms, they’d probably be a lot more worried and demanding that their leaders do a lot more to protect them other than “pretend it’s a cold.”
I’m afraid I don’t understand your argument. We know that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission- although we were told initially that they did prevent transmission. They don't even prevent infection. Now instead the benefit is that the vaccines prevent serious illness. After 3 years of circulation, how many young people have not already been exposed to the virus? Have we even tried to determine that? The whole discussion at this point seems akin to locking the barn door after the horse is already out.