No, no, and no. They should have realized and accounted for the limitations of their knowledge at the time.

“Safe and effective” is never 100% either safe nor effective but it’s a trade off.  Let’s say you have a vaccine that is 99% effective preventing you from getting a disease that has a 1 in 3 death rate, but the vaccine has a 1 in a million chance of killing you.  That would be a no brainer. You’d be a fool not to get the vaccine.
 numbers for your demographic then make a decision.
…

I want the bare facts. The truth. Once I feel like they’re playing us, they lose all credibility.  That doesn’t mean I suddenly think the vax is 0% effective and 100% deadly.  It does mean I mistrust everything anyone tells me.  Once something is in two polarized camps it becomes difficult to find truly objective information.

Some very good points here.

Firstly, the vast majority of people are not able to meaningfully interpret highly simplified statistics appropriately, let alone the raw data. This is particularly true in cases where the calls are closer, as in this case.

Given how the infection fatality rate for Covid-19 depended heavily on age, and with a 1 per 100k rate of serious adverse events, the flip over point for a positive risk-benefit ratio was likely around age 29. But it was not really likely worth the discomfort, inconvenience, and cost (which was never seen by the patients) until older, like around 65. Given the closeness of the call, it also very much depends on individual factors and judgement.

In cases like this, patients normally rely on experts to help make the decision. But with government funding of many of these experts, the advice given becomes biases toward statist solutions.

Oh well, I hope people learned the lessons to never try lockdowns and that masking with cloth masks and the like is futile against a highly infectious respiratory flu.

Would be awfully nice to see people who want to discuss aviation subjects and don’t like PoA and it’s ridiculous moderation come on over to http://FlyersForum.org . Come on in, the water’s fine.

Guy goes in a pet store and buys a parrot. Takes it home, and immediately the parrot starts using vulgar language and insults. 

Day after day, every time he walks past the parrot, it hurls vulgar insults. 

Finally one day, this fellow can’t take it any longer.  As the parrot is hurling insults, the owner grabs him, opens the freezer door and shoves it in, and slams the door. 

After a few minutes, guilt overcomes the owner.  He walks over and opens the freezer door.  Amazingly the parrot calmly walks out, looks at the owner, and says

“Sir, I wish to apologize for my behavior.  I shall not use insults or vulgarities any longer in your home”

Then the parrot looks at the owner, and quietly ask “So, what did the Turkey do to anger you?”

Good one Lucifer! I am copying it to FlyerForum.

Most people don’t face guns or abortions on a daily basis but they do face high food and gas prices and wages that don’t keep up. 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and using credit cards to buy groceries. They face this all day long every day and that is what Trump needs to leverage. He needs to focus on energy specifically because fuel costs are a major underlying cause of high prices.  He needs to campaign on stopping the flow of dollars to Ukraine as another cause because we are printing money we don’t have, and he maybe needs to address the pandemic’s role in hurting the economy.   Just say the pandemic hurt the economy but it would have been worse if I hadn’t gotten it so good by 2019.

Very true. The other thing I suspect Trump should stay absolutely away from is "the 2020 election was stolen from me". That is related to many of his indictments and frankly most people don't think fraud was a significant factor in the outcome and that it makes him look like a sore loser. I don't see any upside for him because while this riles up his base, they are going to stand behind him anyway. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to be able to stay away from that subject. I imagine it really bothers his ego and he just can't help himself.

Finally someone with the right political views but who also objectively assesses facts.

Having said that my two concerns about your pursuit of facts are:

1. I understand that bias is now beginning to affect peer reviews.  We already know that “science” is now heavily compromised on the subject of climate change. I have no reason to trust the science anymore on any other subject. Scientists are now being incubated in universities which have become 90% politically biased in one direction. And even if they aren’t, after we just found out that the Feds had infiltrated and coerced social media to propagandize by censorious omission, how do I know they’re not also pressuring scientists to publish or not, or what to conclude or omit in a peer review?

2. I seem to recall most of the studies on ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were done in hospital settings.  Once you have been hospitalized you’ve missed the window where those treatments work. You have to take them very early, preferably the first or second day of symptoms. If the Covid test doesn’t even turn positive until day 3, I doubt any of those studies actually used them properly. Correct me if I’m wrong.  I don’t have time to actually dig into it right now.

Thanks for the kind words.

I have to agree that wokeness has certainly started to infiltrate peer-review. I had a paper on the neural effects of the race of a perceived face. We spent two years getting it through peer-review at the Proceedings at the National Academy of Sciences. At the end of that process it was sent to a new special political correctness review and rejected. We spent another year shopping it down the chain and and finally got it published at a non-indexed, though peer-reviewed, journal. https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4087/3/3/31.

From this I think we can conclude that no matter how politically incorrect your result, you can likely publish it in some peer-reviewed journal if it is a sound study. It may take a while and be frustrating. And if you are a young investigator, that may actually make your career very difficult or impossible.

In terms of Covid-19, I think the site Jim mentioned shows that actually there are a lot of published studies showing an effect of ivermectin on treating Covid-19. You can publish them. It is just that when one examines the papers carefully, as was done in the Cochrane review, the randomized controlled trials do not show a case for that use. So I don't think one can argue that it is strongly biased in this case by some malign political motive.

I do understand that for the average person, it is difficult to know who to trust on this. Unless you are an expert, you can't really well judge the quality of the studies. That is why I say lay people should rely on peer-reviewed reviews.

Thus I would not simply blanket say one should disregard properly performed randomized controlled trials. Biomedical science is harder than say the social sciences or probably even climate science.

OTOH, I would not recommend trusting any government employed health official or politician on these subjects. They either have no real training to judge, as in the latter case, or their paycheck literally depends on what the government wants. Note this does not mean that everything such people say is wrong, just that I would verify rather than trust. And if you are a lay person, you essentially have to trust.

In terms of the limitations of these studies. Firstly, I believe a number of them have looked at use outside the hospital and in reasonably early timeframes. I am not aware of any good evidence that earlier use somehow works. Of course, one can always argue that if one had just looked earlier, or in a different dose regime, or with some other agent added, then perhaps that would provide evidence of efficacy. Literally one can always do that. But research resources are limited and need to be focused on the likely productive questions. I think the evidence is strong enough that ivermectin does not work to treat Covid-19 to not bother with further investigation at this point. But if those who strongly believe to the contrary want to privately fund or perform a proper study, I certainly have no objection!

I remember the Hong Kong flu.  It was a thing but we didn’t go bat shit crazy and commit economic suicide over it.

Well, of course, it didn’t come from bats ;-)

OK, I paid for a copy and was able to download a copy of the video using Video Download Helper in Firefox. Thus set to watch it on the long flight on Sunday.