English Chess Forum

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:10 pm

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:34 pm

Here we go :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56278140

You won't learn this on Google, but Ian Brown has never questioned the principle of vaccination. He has queried whether whether we can be sure that these vaccinations can be guaranteed as safe after being tested for three months rather than the traditional minimum of three years.

There is obviously no answer to this question, so the only alternative is to shut it down.

This is just a classic anti-vaxxer trope
1. The vaccines use well established medical concepts which are known to be extremely safe. They are not novel biotechnology.
2. The way vaccines work mean that if someone suffers side effects, their symptoms would be much worse if they contracted the virus itself.

For what it is worth I agree that search engines shouldn't censor what you read, but fighting for the right to receive your medical advice from the lead singer in an eighties rock band is a tough sell.

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:05 pm

1. The vaccines use well established medical concepts which are known to be extremely safe.

Quite probably the current crop of vaccines are safe, but I have lived long enough to have heard many such claims. In fields where I have expertise, I know that things which we are assured are impossible happen on a regular basis. I doubt that medicine is different, and it's not as though "totally safe" vaccines have never turned out be less than that.

I must add that the trial would normally take about a year to get approved as the committees have to meet to approve the trial, and then nit pick over some detail and meet again 3 months later (etc.), and scheduling meetings is tricky. This time, everyone was (a) at home and (b) eager to get going and do something. So part of the reason for speed of producing vaccines is that everyone (whether committee or manager or person in laboratory, or people funding the research) got on with it. So I wouldn't worry too much about getting something quickly. It should be like that all the time. There is always the possibility of a nasty side-effect in ten years time of course. But you have avoided death now...

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:54 pm

There is always the possibility of a nasty side-effect in ten years time of course.

That strikes me as a reason at least to exempt the young. In the event of something that our scientists have somehow failed to foresee - because they are not, as they believe, omniscient - there will be a generation that is scarred neither by the virus ( because it doesn't get them ) nor by the vaccine.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:10 pm

John Upham wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 2:34 pm

Here we go :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56278140

You won't learn this on Google, but Ian Brown has never questioned the principle of vaccination. He has queried whether whether we can be sure that these vaccinations can be guaranteed as safe after being tested for three months rather than the traditional minimum of three years.

There is obviously no answer to this question, so the only alternative is to shut it down.

Incorrect. The answer to that question is that no vaccine can ever be "guaranteed as safe", because vaccines aren't supposed to be safe. They're supposed to make you slightly ill so that you don't get very ill. They're supposed to be better than the alternative. If by "safe" you mean it doesn't cause serious adverse reactions in 1 person out of 10,000, nothing is safe. Everything causes serious adverse reactions in 1 person out of 10,000. 1 person out of 10,000 has a serious adverse reaction to their own sweat.

By three months, none of the vaccine is left in your body. If you can afford to recruit 12 people, it is obviously better to give the vaccine to 12 people and watch them for three months, than to give it to one person and watch them for three years.

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:54 pm

I must add that the trial would normally take about a year to get approved as the committees have to meet to approve the trial, and then nit pick over some detail and meet again 3 months later (etc.), and scheduling meetings is tricky.

On the face of it, they've taken short cuts on the legal side. As part of the paperwork with the Oxford vaccine, I was given what describes itself as a "Package leaflet" which states the vaccine to have been "given authorisation for temporary supply"

Later in the leaflet it reassuring says "None of the ingredients in this vaccine can cause COVID-19".

Chris Goodall wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:16 pm

it is obviously better to give the vaccine to 12 people and watch them for three months, than to give it to one person and watch them for three years.

You say such extraordinary things with such total confidence. Are you hoping one day to be the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser?

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:25 pm

On the face of it, they've taken short cuts on the legal side. As part of the paperwork with the Oxford vaccine, I was given what describes itself as a "Package leaflet" which states the vaccine to have been "given authorisation for temporary supply"

My understanding is that this is mostly avoiding loads of unnecessary procedural waits (see what Kevin Thurlow said earlier), or committee paperwork box-ticking, but implies no difference to the actual safety and efficacy trials that get done, or to the safety appraisals derived from them. The only major difference to normal procedure l've read about is that the companies (Pfizer and AZ) asked the UK govt to give them a greater level of indemnity than is usually applied with vaccines, on the grounds that the govt was pushing them to do things faster than usual. The UK govt agreed. The EU didn't, leading to more protracted negotiations, which is one major reason the EU vaccination programmes have taken longer to get started. But all the real-world data now emerging from the vaccination programmes (i.e. data from mass vaccination of large groups of people, incl, many older folk, rather than just from trial populations) back up that the vaccines are safe and effective.

Roger de Coverly wrote:Later in the leaflet it reassuring says "None of the ingredients in this vaccine can cause COVID-19".

I suspect that's been put there because some internet University-of-Google types will have been making hay saying stuff like "You know vaccines are the virus that causes the disease but that they've SUPPOSEDLY weakened. Supposedly." This is true of some older vaccines (technically called "attenuated virus vaccines"), but it's not true of either the BioNTek/Pfizer or Oxford/AZ Covid-19 ones.

Speaking as one of those University scientist types and the spouse of an NHS doctor who works in Occupational Health (who give out vaccines...), I will only say that we've both been vaccinated and we took the first appointment we were offered with the first available vaccine. My 83-yr old mother has had two doses of Pfizer's magic elixir. I'm looking forward to my second dose next month, after which I might fancy the odd chess game in a park somewhere.

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:45 pm

Chris Goodall wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:16 pm

it is obviously better to give the vaccine to 12 people and watch them for three months, than to give it to one person and watch them for three years.

You say such extraordinary things with such total confidence. Are you hoping one day to be the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser?

Go on then, tell me what side-effect you think will be apparent after three years of testing but not three months? The big vaccine controversy of the 21st century was the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine causing narcolepsy in an extra 1 patient out of 18,400 relative to unvaccinated people, one to two months after they got the vaccine. Three years of testing didn't catch that, nor would thirty years have caught that. What would have caught that, is a much larger group of test subjects (a group of 294,400 subjects, going by the Rule of 16).

Kevin Thurlow wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:54 pm

I must add that the trial would normally take about a year to get approved as the committees have to meet to approve the trial, and then nit pick over some detail and meet again 3 months later (etc.), and scheduling meetings is tricky. This time, everyone was (a) at home and (b) eager to get going and do something. So part of the reason for speed of producing vaccines is that everyone (whether committee or manager or person in laboratory, or people funding the research) got on with it. So I wouldn't worry too much about getting something quickly. It should be like that all the time. There is always the possibility of a nasty side-effect in ten years time of course. But you have avoided death now...

Not just that Kevin, but a lot of volunteers to go on the trial, mainly healthcare workers like my girlfriend; recruitment was swift, whereas presumably usually it takes months to find enough volunteers for a vaccine trial

Chris Goodall wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:03 am

NickFaulks wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:45 pm

Chris Goodall wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 04, 2021 6:16 pm

it is obviously better to give the vaccine to 12 people and watch them for three months, than to give it to one person and watch them for three years.

You say such extraordinary things with such total confidence. Are you hoping one day to be the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser?

Go on then, tell me what side-effect you think will be apparent after three years of testing but not three months? The big vaccine controversy of the 21st century was the Pandemrix swine flu vaccine causing narcolepsy in an extra 1 patient out of 18,400 relative to unvaccinated people, one to two months after they got the vaccine. Three years of testing didn't catch that, nor would thirty years have caught that. What would have caught that, is a much larger group of test subjects (a group of 294,400 subjects, going by the Rule of 16).

Chris,
It really is better to challenge anti-Vaxxer nonsense with science. You are really inviting Nick to sound more credible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opin ... trump.html

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:13 am

Chris,
It really is better to challenge anti-Vaxxer nonsense with science. You are really inviting Nick to sound more credible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opin ... trump.html

Nick sounds credible because he is Nick. We are chess players, we can entertain ideas without accepting them.

and more on the same theme :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56289054

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 9:13 am

anti-Vaxxer

I wondered how long that would take you.

I have had numerous vaccines over the years, because either I or my parents thought it a good idea. The same is true of my children. I am in no sense an anti-vaxxer ( although I do defend the right of others to be so ).

I do consider that I have the right to ask why it is that the testing process deemed necessary for these vaccines is so radically different from the standard previously accepted by the scientific community. Is it just that we are far more clever today, and have brilliant ideas that everyone had previously assumed made no sense? Like smart motorways?

By simply flinging epithets, you lower yourself to the level of a UK Government Minister.

John Upham wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:55 am

and more on the same theme :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56289054

Cyprus will let me in, but my own government won't let me out. 'Nuff said.