goji...the whole tone is one of extreme doubt disguised as concern..." i hope they follow accepted protocols"...but if its the oxford uni vaccine...then yay...no " i hope they follow accepted protocols"...
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goji...the whole tone is one of extreme doubt disguised as concern..." i hope they follow accepted protocols"...but if its the oxford uni vaccine...then yay...no " i hope they follow accepted protocols"...
Thats not how i read Goji's comments at all - and why is it so hard to believe that we can ( and should) all NOT have genuine concern for each other as citizens of the World just rather than always our respective Countries.
We all know and agree I'm sure that ALL of our mutual governments would blatantly lie to their own citizens at any time it suited them and such is the pressure both medically, economically and world PR status wise for all of them to be the first to develop a working vaccine ALL of them would I'm sure cut corners if they thought they can ( and if they thought they'd get away with it for a while and at least then be able to go back to fix ther "mistake" later ).
So for Goji and others to express concern that the Russian appears to be jumping an entire testing schedule ( rightly or wrongly) and urging caution re that as its a different time line than the accepted one in the west isn't to me "point scoring" but more flagging up a genuine concern and helping to cut through the propaganda that we're all fed by our respective governments.
Me personally I think I'll take my chances and let a few hundred thousand people take whatever comes out before rushing off to get injected myself so I can be half sure that people aren't dropping like flies 6 months after taking it as lets not forget that that the now infamous drug Thalidomide was also prescribed for various conditions, one of which was to treat "flu like" symptoms and it took them FOUR YEARS from it's release until they withdrew before they realised it's terrible side effects on pregnant women!!
interesting article in The Economist last week castigating various (mostly western) governments about spending $10bn on pre-production of "unproven vaccines" - their conclusion being having spent $7trn on pandemic related economic and social support policies "it would make sense for the world to spend as much as $200bn on bringing forward an effective covid-19 vaccine by just one week"
Governments have been spending at risk to accelerate a covid vaccine. It would only make sense to spend an extra $200 billion if it stands a chance of being effective in accelerating the development.
Taking a few risks on the development itself would make sense to me. eg Deliberately infecting healthy volunteers, to get the sample size up quickly.
"Deliberately infecting healthy volunteers, to get the sample size up quickly."
Ah yes. 'Volunteers.' I read that Pfizer is having trouble finding enough to do the research.
Of course in countries like Russia and China, unencumbered by such niceties as human rights and pesky supreme courts they can use the incarcerated population for this.
Sorry Moses just Joking
The newspapers have, as expected, criticized Mr Putin for announcing a vaccine without a proper phase 3 trial to confirm effectiveness and side effects.
I imagine Mr Trump would be rather keen to announce a vaccination programme in the next 2.5 months, with or without a phase 3 trial completed. He's probably been advised not to. If he does so anyway, expect much more prominent criticism from the media than Mr Putin has received.
Both Putin and Trump are playing their part well in this game.
Kal's cartoon in The Economist this week:
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