[AR] Re: ... Coronavirus
- From: Henry Vanderbilt <hvanderbilt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2020 08:23:25 -0700
On 3/23/2020 4:32 PM, Norman Yarvin wrote:
On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 12:37:48PM -0700, Henry Vanderbilt wrote:
On 3/21/2020 1:26 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
And if your prototype vaccine turned out to kill more people than the
virus? That is unfortunately *not* an unrealistic possibility.
What he said. One word: Thalidomide. Don't look for widely-distributed
vaccine in less than a year, and most likely longer than that.
So we should wait for the Chinese to develop and test the vaccine
first and find any problems, like we did with the Europeans and
thalidomide? (Pretty much all the 'flipper babies' were European;
score one for FDA bureaucratic delay.)
That'd likely work (the Chinese can be quite competent medically, are
often realistic about their cost-benefit calculations, and sure can
act fast), but the cost of delay is rather different: thalidomide was
sold as a morning sickness treatment, which was never a matter of dire
urgency.
Strawman. I said nothing about "waiting for the Chinese". One year+ is
already a remarkably accelerated schedule for developing and fielding a
vaccine, for the reason both I and my non-evil twin implied: Adequate
testing to acceptably mitigate risk of negative effects outweighing the
benefits. The Chinese are no more likely than we to shorten that period
without disaster.
Meanwhile, my point in mentioning Thalidomide was that the risk
mitigation /was/ botched, not that the risk/benefit calculations were
comparable. You accuse me of a false equivalency I did not make.
Rude. Obviously Thalidomide was aimed at a relatively narrow luxury
market, while COVID-19 vaccine will of necessity end up administered to
a very large part of the world population. And you mention the higher
cost of delay, but omit mentioning that the fact most of us /will/ end
up taking it /hugely/ increases the risk side and thus the due diligence
needed.
Henry
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