Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Should I be worried about bird flu?
Can you list out the specific things that you would do differently if you were worried vs if you were not? The answers to some of them ("have an emergency kit, at least a week's worth of food an water", "have the sort of PPE you probably should have anyway if you ever do home improvement projects", "get and use an air filter") are "yes", the answer to others (e.g. "get a homestead that is robust to the end of civilization", "spend a lot of mental energy on panic but don't do anything") are "no", and then there are ones in the middle like "bet on increased volatility/ in the market" to which the answer is "maybe useful if you know what you're doing, but if you have to ask how to do it you're probably unsophisticated enough that playing the market is -EV".
I just wanna know the chances of another Covid Era
It's down to chance: will it mutate to become human to human transmissible (in deadly form) before mass vaccination of animals used for human consumption is in place? It has spread a hell of a lot in animals due to heedlessness and greed already, so I don't like this game of chance.
Anyone have any inside knowledge on this? I remember the stories about how the COVID vaccines were essentially completely created very early on in 2020 and that the delay in getting it to the masses was primarily caused by the insane testing protocols required. Presumably, the testing regime for animals is less bad? Anyone know how much less bad? Is it still pretty bad if they're specifically animals for human consumption? What is a reasonable timeline for all of this to ramp up, and what are the blockers?
There's a lot about the COVID response that could fairly be described as insane, but I don't think the vaccine testing protocols were one of them. They are required to conduct multi-phase randomized double-blinded clinical trials to prove safety and efficacy, just like every other treatment marketed to the general public. For the COVID vaccines, the process was considerably accelerated by things like permitting the planning and organization of later trial stages before the results of earlier stages were fully analyzed and approved, which consists of things like setting up all of the trial sites, recruiting the necessary trial subjects, manufacturing and distributing the doses, etc.
It's possible to argue that the trial requirements should have actually been weakened. But considering the plans to effectively force virtually the entire population to take the vaccines right away, the new technology several of the vaccines used, and the widespread skepticism and resistance that was in fact present for the vaccines despite the standard testing protocols being followed, I think that's the last thing in the world we'd want to do. Pharmaceutical history is littered with the corpses of promising medications that turned out to have horrific side-effects and/or little to no efficacy against the thing they were supposed to be treating when they were actually properly tested. The backlash against the whole industry was bad enough as-is, just imagine how much worse it would be if one or more of the vaccines did in fact prove to be seriously dangerous.
Right off the bat, this is the part that you could just not do. It's amazing how just not threatening to do something even more damaging and dumb if you're not allowed to do something else damaging and dumb sort of just fixes the problem. This reasoning would be akin to saying, "If you don't let me impose onerous zoning and building regulations, I'll mandate that everyone lives in a shanty, so you better let me do what I want, even though it's dumb and damaging." There is an alternative; you could just not do either.
In any event, what do you know about vaccine development timelines for animals?
First off, I agree that, in my overall estimation of the disease and results, the vaccine mandates were a terrible idea.
In the larger picture, I want to agree with the overall Libertarian idea that it would be nice if we could both have individuals not be legally barred from taking any drug a company felt like selling at their own risk, clinical trials conducted and evaluated by one or more independent entities, and individuals can choose to pay attention to or ignore the recommendations of any of those trial entities on their own when deciding which drugs to take. But for better or worse, we're so far away from that world in the way our society currently runs that it's just not viable to cherry-pick one or two things from that world and try to just apply to them to ours.
The mandates certainly exacerbated the problem, but I think even without them, allowing such a vaccine to be let out into the world with no trials at all would still potentially be a monumental disaster. Who would take such a vaccine in a world with no mandates at all by anyone ever, including private entities free to choose their own policies? The Covid-maxxers, of course, the ones so radically terrified of it to be hiding indoors, wearing multiple masks, etc. They would jump to take it as soon as possible, as many millions of people did in fact do once they were released. And what then if it turned out to be far more dangerous than Covid itself, or even helped it spread faster, as quite a few drugs have in fact been discovered in trials to actually do? Now that would be one hell of a mess.
In any case, I don't know much offhand about animal drug approval process. A little googling turned up that the FDA claims to regulate regular drugs and medical devices for animals, but not vaccines for them, which apparently falls to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They seem to have a FAQ page about it. I found a PDF of "New Firm Informational Packet for Live and Inactivated Vaccines", and the process listed there sounds broadly similar to the process for human drug and vaccine approval. I'm guessing it's probably somewhat faster than the approval process for human drugs, but not dramatically so.
It's not a matter of cherry-picking. It's simply stating that things are clearly good or bad. Mandates are clearly bad. FDA testing for information purposes, mixed in with insurance schemes, is probably mostly okayish, but it's clearly bad in a pandemic (in empirical terms, just looking at how it went). Banning people from taking risky but possibly hugely beneficial actions, regardless of their situation, is clearly bad.
Probably people who highly value the potential upside. For example, if you were someone who was older, perhaps with a comorbidity, and your line of work significantly depended on your ability to have in-person interactions with a significant number of people, there's a decent chance that you'd not just want to take the vaccine, you might even be willing to pay a lot to get one. There was plenty of chatter from wealthy business people who were saying that they would absolutely pay a bundle of money to get one, if only it wasn't banned. Any product has early adopters, even if that product has risks. People wondered about, say, the fire risk of EVs, but there were still plenty of early adopters... and they provided good data for others to understand the risks and value them appropriately. (Of course, now would be a good time to check in and see how you view the HCT/RCT debate, because this is a real, live, issue that people are debating, not just cherry-picking.)
This is one of the most common failure modes, perhaps even a typical mind fallacy. Because you think, in your situation, that you wouldn't want to take it, you think that no one would want to take it (or you think they'd have obviously wrong preferences, since they don't match up with your own). Of course, this comes with the converse typical mind fallacy, thinking that once the FDA has approved it, then since you would want to take it in your situation, everyone would want to take it. Of course, neither of those things is true, empirically. This also isn't cherry-picking; it's just observing what is true and what is not true in the world.
I don't know; some people could regret doing it; some people could regret not doing it. Did the FDA evaluate the fire risk of EVs through extensive trials and testing before anyone was allowed to buy one? Or autonomous vehicles? What if they turned out to be really dangerous? I guess we have one hell of a mess. Using an analogy I've used here before, what would the world be like if we just let people work on their own cars? (I.e., this world.) We didn't make every repair procedure have to be completely and thoroughly evaluated by the FDA and only dispensed by licenced mechanics. Different people would have different risk assessments! They'd make different choices! It would be a mess!
I get that you feel like it is your personal responsibility to make sure that enough people (not even just enough; presumably you will personally ensure that it's magically the right people magically at the right time) choose to take it, but not if it's those other people, who you personally don't want to take it right now. It is your job to decide for them. I'm sorry, but it's not your job. It's not your job to decide if I should diagnose my own check engine light or not, either.
Or even, say, bitcoin. Some people were early adopters. Others still don't have any. "Who would buy bitcoin, a silly little string of numbers, with no mandates or FDA approval? The bitcoin-maxxers, of course. And what if it then went to zero and they were all wiped out financially? (It could still happen!) Now that would be one hell of a mess." Eh. Some people could regret doing it; some people could regret not doing it. It is not only literally impossible for you to prevent all regret in all people everywhere, it is not your job.
I mean, I guess it's somewhat possible for you to prevent all regret in all people everywhere; you can just mandate/ban literally any action they could take. Give them no choices. Then they can't regret those choices, because you wouldn't allow them to choose otherwise anyway. That said, they'd probably regret appointing you as the No Ragrets Czar, because you'd almost certainly make choices that are bad for them in hindsight (like, for example, not letting them get a COVID vaccine). Many people are truly regretting the trillions of dollars, years of our lives, the social development of our children, etc. that were wasted by putting folks like you in power.
Shame.
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If anything really happens, it won't be the same.
I'll echo @Pasha. There's no more 4-month runway of kumbaya like there was five years ago. People will hear the updated analogue for "two weeks to slow the spread" and they'll absolutely lose their minds over it. Then you'll see seething redditors put screenshots of the reactions at the top of Reddit, where they in turn react, and the cycle will be complete.
You'll get the flu, old people will die, and the media may even prospire to keep the hysteria at a lower level this time around.
What will likely be different this time is that young people will be killed at greater rates than old people. That will affect people's willingness to lock down and get vaccinated, especially if the cfr is higher than covid's.
Young people are famously less risk-averse than old people -- although I guess the current crop of Zoomers/late Millenials may be a bit of an exception.
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A repeat of the Spanish Flu seems unlikely to me given the particular circumstances that led to that strain disproportionately affecting young and healthy individuals i.e. an adaptation period among soldiers on the western front who were immunocompromised from extreme stress and injuries, in addition to close promixity and lack of hygiene. A more prototypical bad influenza pandemic is the 1957 Asian Flu outbreak, which is hardly a blip in the history books.
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Another Covid era is impossible exactly because of the Covid era.
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No.
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