PJShannon
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Given these sorts of whopping profits, I can’t understand why conspiracists, instead of claiming the virus is a hoax and vaccines a vehicle for mind-control, haven’t touted the far simpler plot that the virus was manufactured by drug companies in order to sell vaccines. Or maybe they’ve said that as well? Do conspiracists have to be consistent with each other?
‘The anti-vaxxers are not being listened to.’
You’d hope that’s so, but I’m not so sure. As of December a third of Britons didn’t want the jab. ‘The primary concerns of people reticent [sic] to take a jab is that it will not be safe (48 per cent), effective (47 per cent) or could have side effects (55 per cent) – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-poll-b1766767.html
Anti-vaxxers are never going to be listened to by people like us. But for this third, it could be quite a different story. Even taking your more recent statistic, that’s still a quarter of the population who are not on board.
One other point Panorama makes, which bears on the question whether to ban such videos, is that social media platforms are overrun with disinformation and that neither they nor official medical authorities are doing anything like enough to combat it.
Our position against censorship presupposes that both sides have a fair and equal say in open court. This is very far from being the case in social media, where bubbles shut out unwanted opposing views and fake news can proliferate unchallenged.
I just saw the BBC Panorama programme on vaccine disinformation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000scy8/panorama-vaccines-the-disinformation-warIt was quite hard to watch, for two reasons. First, the utter psychopathic ruthlessness of some antivax propagandists who put out well-produced and plausible-sounding videos featuring apparently bona-fide scientists and medical experts (although one of these was listed as a homeopath). I know what our position on censorship is, but as far as I’m concerned these individuals are actively trying to kill people, either to amass ‘likes’, a tactic which doesn’t work anyway because the videos eventually – and I’m glad to say – get pulled, or through some twisted sense of self-gratification.
Second, the lack of basic science awareness, which is to say, a reasonable idea of what science can do and what it can’t do. If people had a sense of scientific bearings, these propagandists would never have anywhere near their level of success. What’s even worse is the learned helplessness. People on the programme despair about how they don’t have ‘the right information’ about vaccines, yet have no conception that it is in their power to find this information out for themselves. They are used to being spoon-fed, and now are panicking because they don’t trust what’s on the spoon.
Depressing stuff, in a way. But Panorama were quite selective about who they interviewed, choosing only among the ‘don’t knows’. There must be a lot of workers out there who are a lot more proactive and on the ball than this sorry lot. At least I hope so.
Well I’d have to read it before making any sort of comment. The wiki entry does say this: ‘Some have seen the publication of Against Method as leading to Feyerabend’s isolation from the community of philosophers of science, who objected to his view that there is no such thing as the scientific method’.
Challenging indeed!
A truce is fine with me. It is Valentine’s Day after all.
If there are any specific philosophical criticisms of science that Wez would like to raise I’d be interested to hear them. I might actually agree with some of them, as I am not as uncritical of science as Wez seems to think. Nevertheless it is surely a no-brainer that, flawed though it might be especially in capitalism, we’re a lot better off with science than we would be without it.
‘I’m surprised by your naïve belief in the ‘international scientific community’ which you seem to have elevated into a religion.’
If you don’t want insults, don’t dish them out, comrade.
‘I simply asked you if you denied the existence of a scientific establishment and if you trusted information within a capitalist context.’
Actually, you didn’t ask either of those rather silly questions. What you did was equate all science with the establishment, a view that’s common among antivaxxers and red-top journalists. Let me remind you what you said:
‘Our sources of information are the pharmaceutical companies and their scientists, the tory government and their scientists and the NHS. The first two have little credibility and the NHS is in its usual chaos. I find it surprising that a comrade is so ready to accept the establishment’s word on anything since our whole case is that capitalism corrupts everything.’
There is no mention here of another source of information, the existence of an international scientific community with rigorous fact-checking procedures as well as a lively press which is able to offer an evidence-based perspective largely independent of national governments or big corporations. Much of this journalism is very accessible and of a far higher quality than anything you can read in BBC reports. Lots of ‘nuanced analysis’, indeed. If you were to read any of it you would soon realise how absurd it is to suggest that all science is establishment science and therefore none of it can be relied on.
But if you’re going to take the extreme view and argue that you can’t believe any information that derives from ‘a capitalist context’ then you are obliged to reject the validity of all information from all sources, which means you can have nothing useful to say on any subject, and no opinion worth hearing.
Of course – hasn’t that been our case for 100 years? [That capitalism corrupts everything]
No, I don’t think that’s ever been our case. It’s a meaningless statement.
‘Nuanced analysis’ is an argument our opponents have always used against, for instance, our view of the class struggle.
So you’re against nuanced analysis? Good to know. I’m against truculent denigrations and blanket dismissals.
‘I find it surprising that a comrade is so ready to accept the establishment’s
word on anything since our whole case is that capitalism corrupts everything.’So science = establishment does it?
And capitalism corrupts everything, does it?
Whatever happened to nuanced analysis?
‘The entire reason for such a hurry was and is people dying by the thousands.’
I very much doubt that.WTF?
‘Anyway we now know that some of it is useless for combating the new variants and for the over 65s.’
None of the above statement is true.
‘Knowing the system as we do it would be hard to refute that part of the reason for such a hurry was driven by competition and profit.’
The entire reason for such a hurry was and is people dying by the thousands. Is everything in capitalism to be denigrated simply because it takes place in capitalism? I daresay if they’d taken their own sweet time developing these vaccines instead of hurrying, people on here would be criticising capitalism for that too.
‘The chances of such confusion in a socialist society would hopefully be far less through more rigorous testing of vaccines and the like.’
There wasn’t time for rigorous testing. Would socialism wait an extra year and a million more deaths before approving a vaccine? Hardly. If you want a vaccine fast, you have to accept some unknowns. That would be just as true in socialism as now.
Alan said ‘i may have to pay the full commercial price of a vaccine.’
It may not be that bad, Alan. AstraZeneca, the one with the fridge-temperature vaccine, is proposing to sell at cost, which equates to around 30 GB pounds for two doses, but more to the point, Moderna and others have waived IP rights for the duration of the pandemic, so it’s quite possible for third-party manufacturers to come into play, especially in poorer areas accustomed to making their own knock-offs, such as South America and south-east Asia. So I think chances are good that affordable vaccines will become available, especially as all governments realise it’s in their own interest to back this. You may have had to pay full wack for a rabies shot, but people don’t tend to catch rabies off each other so there’s no global rabies crisis. People also don’t catch malaria off each other, which is why globally governments are happy to leave the matter largely to the Gates Foundation.
If I were you I’d sit tight and wait, and worry more about fake vaccines, which will also be proliferating in your part of the world, thanks to the good old capitalist profit motive.
This suggests that the rational attitude that an individual should take in their own personal interest is not to rush to be at the head of the queue for a new vaccine but to wait for millions to have had it first. Then we will know more about the adverse affects and who is likely to suffer them. I expect the new vaccines will be safe but they won’t be perfectly safe. So, unlike Alan, I am going to be wait to be done. I’d also prefer one where you only need one jab not two and for it to be done in a hospital not some local surgery unequipped for emergencies.
Problem with this ‘rational attitude’ is, if it’s rational for you to wait and see what happens to other people, it’s also rational for them to wait and see what happens to you, ergo, it’s a quasi-antivaxxer argument. It also presupposes you’ll have a choice in the matter. States may not force people to take vaccines when offered, but they’d be pretty stupid not to make a note of who’s refused. That could well have consequences later, especially if you subsequently get Covid.
Obviously everyone would prefer a single-jab vaccine, on grounds of cost and also because people won’t come back for the second dose, but they are technically difficult to produce and have a long history of failure, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-020-00238-8#Sec4 .
One is currently in trials, but don’t hold your breath. Usually the way it works is, first you have to prime the immune system to start producing antigens. Then, once it’s woken up and knows what to do, you give the booster to ‘explain the urgency’ and ramp up production. The only known way to shortcut this two-step process is with a ‘slow release’ formula, but here’s where the tech difficulties lie. Even if a single-jab vaccine was developed that could send the immune system into high gear without overwhelming it in the process, chances are it would only work in young people with strong immune systems.
Personally I propose to take what’s offered, whenever it’s offered, continue to take precautions nonetheless, and not expect the moon on a stick.
