PJShannon
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“You’re both forgetting the ‘Dark Ages’ …”
I wasn’t. My understanding is that historians nowadays don’t use the term Dark Ages, as it wasn’t particularly dark, in terms of historical records or in terms of what went on – much of it was quite peaceful.
“– As is the term “medieval” in the first place, assuming a period of stagnation between the two “civilised” ones of Roman empire and “Renaissance.”
A bit off-topic, but isn’t ‘medieval’ a reasonable description of a fairly dark western European period of migrations, invasions, wars, collapses, total loss of knowledge, and, er, multiple plague pandemics?
“Anyway, it was still Edward Jenner who made the breakthrough…”
For a different take on this, see Pathfinders, May 2010: “Jenner arguably got the credit for somebody else’s discovery, in this case the Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty.”
Well they’re already making hay with this ‘foot-rot’ story, about a woman who took part in a vaccine trial (but only got the placebo) and then developed a nasty looking foot condition – as told by the BBC’s ‘Specialist disinformation reporter’, no less.
“A search warrant issued against scientist and whistleblower who published the real data about Covid 19 in Florida”
That Sun-sentinel link goes to a holding page that says this:
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
I would have said this story looks like fake news anyway. If it’s not, you should be able to find the same story from a reputable and verifiable source.
“By capitalist medicine I mean medicine controlled by the profit system, including unnecessary casualties and deaths as a direct result of it. Have you forgotten Thalidomide, and numerous other cases?”
Problem is, this is not an argument for socialism but for more state regulation in capitalism. Besides which, the naïve inference would be that there would never be medical or industrial accidents in socialism, because socialists never make mistakes.
“From having no vaccine we now have several, with each state saying its one is the one.”
Actually the UK is rolling out the German/US vaccine first, rather than its own Oxford vaccine.
Why are there so many vaccines? With teams worldwide working flat out to develop vaccines, using four separate approaches, it would be astonishing if there was only one viable result. There could well be dozens.
“I don’t think they know yet how long immunity will last or whether being vaccinated will mean you can’t be a carrier again.”
Yes, only time will tell and you can’t fast-track that.
The other unknown is whether the vaccines work at the advertised effectiveness for older people, whose immune systems are weaker and therefore don’t respond to vaccines as well as young people’s. Most of the volunteers in the trials have been low-risk people under 40 and none of the trials have provided age-breakdowns. The predictable anti-vaxxer concern about side effects is to my mind a much lesser consideration for older people than whether the vaccines will even work. If you take a vaccine on the assumption it’s going to work, you are likely to relax your guard, which could get you into big trouble. But on balance I would say that if you’re offered a vaccine you’d be taking a bigger risk by refusing it than by accepting it. And of course there is the argument of social responsibility…
“So guess which the government is ordering most of? That’s right, the cheapest. Which happens to be the 70% one.”
This is inaccurate on several levels. Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine doses (the 70%) were pre-purchased before any results at all were in. In fact, governments have been pre-buying multiple vaccines in gigantic quantities (ie not skimping on costs) in order to be first in the queue, before any results were known. Second, the Oxford vaccine can be stored in a normal refrigerator for 3 months, as opposed to minus-70C as first reported for Pfizer (though this might not now be correct) or Moderna at minus-20C, making it the most practical especially for poor and hot countries. Third, comments here have overlooked the interim nature of the results. The Oxford Phase 3 trials also included a sub-group where they tried giving subjects only half a dose to see what would happen, and found that effectiveness then jumped to 90%, a counter-intuitive result they are investigating further, see: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2260588-oxford-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-may-be-up-to-90-per-cent-effective/.
This is a very fast-moving field and drawing any firm conclusions at this stage is risky. We don’t want to fall into the facile trap of blaming everything bad on capitalism, and reading the very worst motives into every situation, because if we do that we could come off as ill-informed truculent finger-pointers, rather than people whose conclusions ought to be taken seriously.
Robin said “How do we get round this dilemma?” (ie of opposing authority yet appearing to side with the government on Covid). I don’t think there is any dilemma. Sometimes, inevitably, the interests of government and working class may coincide, as for instance with the establishment of the welfare state in 1948. Should socialists have opposed the welfare state because it suited the interests of big business, even though it probably added 20 years to the lifespan of the average worker? That would be a nonsensical and indeed anti-working-class position to take. The fact that government-imposed restrictions coincide with the scientific evidence and with the health interest of the working class creates no dilemma for us and does not require any kind of special pleading. The pandemic is a highly unusual situation that can’t be understood through the normal workings of capitalism.
December Pathfinders also looks at some of these issues.
The site owner describes himself as a constitutional conservative ie a Republican, so fairly mainstream, but seems to have an average of 39 downloads per podcast so not immense, however there are no podcasts predating January 2019 which means the site is fairly new.
I only just saw this. It has been flagged up for action. Perhaps under ‘Forum’, we should have a ‘Join the Forum’ option. Please be patient while it all is worked through.
I keep expecting to see something about Marx and automation in this thread.This is Hardy from 1965 on our website and also below,https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/automation.htmThis is on Medium .com, if you sift through the nonsense.Did Karl Marx Predict Artificial Intelligence 170 Years Ago?
Quote:Steve-SanFrancisco-UserExperienceResearchSpecialist wrote:Can someone link to a policy or topic thread for me to continue this discussion where it might be more relevant. I'm sincerely interested in the phillosophy and implementation of SP'GB's "right to be forgotten" if there is such a policy can I read more about it's philosphy and implementation here?No. Nothing that fancy as 'Right to be forgotten' anyway.Just (little understood) functions and consquences of the CMS software the Mod was helpfully cautioning the poster about.
moderator1 wrote:MBellemare wrote:Dear Moderator1…please delete my SPGB account and anything tied to this account…ASAP! Consider this a formal request for account deletion.In order to have your account deleted you need to formally approach the Admin who will deal with your request. However, I need to inform and warn you that by taking this drastic action all your past posts then appear has 'Anonymous' on the forum. Which effectively deprives you of ownership of those posts should you wish to mention them or refer to them in any publication or on any other social medium/platform as the author.
I sent him a private message as 'admin' asking if he wished me to do so in light of some moderator advice to him on the Forum."Hi Micheal . Do you still wish your account deleted in light of the moderator's comments to you about your postings etc."He didn't reply.I have now deleted this account permanently.
