On 12/01/2021 21:26, Jim H wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 12:29:52 +0000, in ,
> The Natural Philosopher  wrote:
>
>> Life is risky.
>>
>> In the end cost benefit analysis is all we can use.
>>
>> Perhaps pregnant women should avoid it, but people are dying *already*.
>>
>> It was very unfortunate with thalidomide that the effects showed up in
>> foetal poisoning only.  The medical profession simply hadn't seen that
>> one coming.
>
> Yes they did! The problem is that the medical professionals involved
> in the testing didn't have to report all the side effects at the
> time... and they didn't. Even before any tests in humans the
> teratogenic effects of Thalidomide were seen in animal testing. But
> only in some species and not others.
>
Well I didn't know that and wont argue that point. I do know that Big
Pharma likes to sell expensive drugs and is somewhat economical with the
truth in so doing.

Just as Boeing likes to sell aeroplanes.
Are we seeing a 'pickle fork ' crash....(google it) in Indonesia?

The point is that regulators are always one step behind, and that's how
quality management goes., You don't fix problems that haven't occurred.

> Would you want your wife or daughter of child bearing age, with a
> likelyhood of becoming pregnant, to use a drug that caused serious
> fetal deformity in say rats, but not hamsters? Does it make a
> difference in your answer that the problem was with taking the drug
> during the first 3-4 weeks of pregnancy when few know for sure that
> they're pregnant and so won't know to stop taking it in time to
> prevent defects?
>
Dont have either. Pass.

> Life is risky, but it doesn't need to be that much of a risk for yet
> another drug that did the same thing as many other drugs available at
> the time. Not to mention that use to prevent morning sickness was an
> "off label" use.
>
Well that is of course a value judgement. In terms of COVID 19, we have
a proven lethal virus, and an unproven but definitely far less
immediately lethal vaccine.

We have national and global economic crises caused by the reaction to
that virus.

Even if the vaccine proves ineffective, there is, as I have said enough
to bore you, the problem of public *perception*. Politically people vote
their *understanding*, not any objective 'reality' - simply because they
have no idea. And at this point in time there is a round, as Stephen Fry
is wont to say of 'General Ignorance'

I dont know what et right answer is, I do know that if I were in a
position of authority I would probably be doing exactly what TPTB are
doing, locking down when the death rate goes up, and hoping that they
have a reasonably effective vaccine, banging it in as many arms as
possible and pushing the boundaries of a free society to do do, in the
hope - and it will be only a hope - that this gets the world back to
work, and not economic meltdown and or a global pandemic that clears
2/3rds or more of its population.

And maintaining a false face of total optimism, because pessimism will
just make it worse.



--
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early
twenty-first century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a
globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age.

Richard Lindzen

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05