The vaccinated and infected are rare. — hypericin

The vaccinated infected make up about 40% of all covid-related hospital admissions (source - https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/60-people-being-admitted-uk-hospitals-had-two-covid-jabs-adviser-2021-07-19/).

Assuming this reflects the proportions infected, that's a mighty odd definition of 'rare' you've got there. I've never heard 40% of all cases being referred to as 'rare'.

Unless you're wanting to say that a vaccinated person is more likely to need hospitalisation once infected than an unvaccinated one, to such a huge extent as to bring that 40% figure down to something any normal person would call 'rare'.

the vaccine is approved on Tuesday it does not become safer than it was on Monday. — Fooloso4

Safety is entirely about uncertainty. — Isaac

It is safer on Tuesday because by Tuesday we'll be less uncertain about it's effects than we were before Tuesday, because the FDA will have finished checking the safety data. Or are you saying that checking something has no impact on safety? That planes are just as safe going into the air without pre-flight checks as they are with them.

I am simply saying that the evidence from the millions of vaccine shots supports the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. — Fooloso4

In direct contradiction of the expert I cited explaining how those millions of shots do not provide the level of safety information the FDA require.

you said that despite their main work being about ensuring the safety and efficacy of medicines, their current work is not related to safety and efficacy. — Isaac


And yet again! I said no such thing. We have been through this already. — Fooloso4

You said...

At this point it is a matter of bureaucracy rather than safety or efficacy — Fooloso4

Again, I'm beginning to think you just don't know what 'rather than' means...

rather than
conj.
And not: "Gibson guitars—with their carved tops and necks that are fitted and glued to the body, rather than bolted on—are expensive to make"

.."rather than safety or efficacy" you said, ie 'and not safety and efficacy'. You've directly said that the matter the FDA are attending to now is not safety and efficacy.

why would I believe them as opposed to the official consensus? — Janus

I don't have any interest in you believing them. You do you. What bothers me is that the fact that I don't is being used to paint me (and others of my opinion) as selfish, stupid, or uninformed. It's not me attaching any epithets to you. I think you're perfectly justified in believing the consensus of scientists. As you say, why wouldn't you.

what I meant was that if the virus is everywhere through the community then if you get out at all there is a fair chance you will come into contact with it. — Janus

Indeed. But then I don't see an argument for any moral imperative to not come into contact with the virus. The moral imperative is to not put too much strain on your community's health services and to limit your transmission of the virus to others who might be more vulnerable. The first can be satisfied by keeping healthy in general, the second by taking non-pharmaceutical distancing measures. I don't see a moral case for taking the vaccine.

if the vaccines stop the virus replicating then it seems to stand to reason that the vaccinated will, on average, carry a lower viral load than the unvaccinated, and thus shed less virus and be less infectious. — Janus

That's yet to be adequately demonstrated. Much of the viral load is carried in the nasal mucosa (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2001737) and viruses there are unaffected by the adaptive immune system (https://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/fulltext/S1931-3128(21)00098-6). It's not clear how much less virus a vaccinated person will shed compared to an unvaccinated healthy individual - ie whether vaccines reduce viral load in transmissible areas faster or more effectively than a normal healthy immune system is, as yet, unknown.

No, I'm advocating it because it seems to be the expert consensus motivating the official advice, and I don't have anything else to go by. — Janus

The question isn't who we go by, it's why advocate anything at all. I think there's a serious misunderstanding among the public about what this 'consensus of experts' consists. With regards to, say, the issue of advocating vaccination of the under 25s, there's been (by my count) four studies in the world, two of which are contested. About 15 people in the entire world know what the evidence is first hand and not all of them even agree. The studies have been hurriedly put together...

There's no question we've seen a lot of rushed studies. People who are doing the minimum they can to get something published, it’s hard to go through the normal academic rigor that it takes to really vet something scientifically. — Stanley Perlman, a microbiologist who studies coronaviruses at the University of Iowa.

...why would we actually advocate anything at all on the basis of that kind of certainty - it's madness.

Again, they are not my chosen experts, but the majority expert consensus. Or are you denying this? — Janus

No, not at all. I'm denying the moral imperative to agree with the consensus, and I'm denying that consensus among a very small group arrived at over a very short period of time is sufficient ground to carry out a mass intervention on the whole human race. I mean, am I sounding mad here? A handful of people (literally a handful) in the space of a few weeks reach a narrow consensus that something is safe, in an environment we know for a fact to be heavily lobbied and funded by the industry providing that solution, and on that basis alone we advocate that it should be given to the entire human race - does that really sound sane?

If we followed your argument and applied it to global warming we might discard the majority expert consensus, and follow the minority that deny it on account of the fact that doing anything about climate change will hurt the economy and might cause more suffering and death than global warming will. — Janus

We might - but then we'd investigate further. What have the pro-warming scientists got to gain, who funds their research, how much time has been spent gathering data, how well established are the theories on which they're basing their data, what is to be lost if we take their advice...? Then we'd do the same for the anti-warming scientists... All this seems normal practice and has already been done with global warming. The issue I'm raising here is why it's not being done with vaccinations.

Of course this consensus might turn out to be wrong; there is always some risk, however small. But it is a matter of risk assessment — Janus

Exactly. And are the experts you cite here experts on risk assessment? No. They're experts on vaccination. Nothing about their expertise tells us what risk we should or should not take.

frankly you are sounding somewhat hysterical — Janus

Yes. A vaccine is about to be approved (and is already being encouraged) for children who often have no say in the matter, on the basis of a handful of experts hurriedly putting together a few contested studies to achieve a level of protection that they're not even sure will help. I'm absolutely hysterical.

This vaccine rollout, in the absence of any future evidence of likely significant negative outcomes, will proceed, and if you are unvaccinated your activities may be severely curtailed and you will have to make a decision based on whether you are prepared to give up eating out, travel, sporting and musical events, cinema and so on, just so that you can protect yourself against what seems to be the very minor risk of a serious negative outcome from vaccination. — Janus

It has nothing to do with protecting myself. I'm too old to suffer from any of the consequences at a significantly greater risk than the risk of Covid complications. For me I could take it or not, I think my risk profile would be barely any different either way. I'm cross about the moralising, and the treatment of children as lab rats.

---

I wasn't going to reply at all, but your response was carefully thought out and measured, despite disagreeing with me. Thanks

There was an antivax movement that lead to a measles outbreak on the island of Samoa that would serve as evidence if the casual implications aren't obvious enough for your tastes. As a follow up, try and guess how many covid cases they have today. — Cheshire

Why would evidence of the effectiveness of the measles vaccine have any bearing on the effectiveness of the covid-19 vaccines? We're not discussing the general point that vaccines work. We're discussing this one specific situation. Otherwise you could just generalise it to 'all medicines'.

It may be rendered more safe if the FDA makes recommendations for changes with regard to labelling, packaging, identification of groups for whom the vaccine has greater risk because of age or health conditions or other things, but without making changes approving it does not render it more safe. It simply confirms that it is safe and effective. — Fooloso4

Reducing uncertainty (confirming) is making it more safe (not to mention the possibility of all those other things you mentioned). Safety is entirely about uncertainty. If we knew for certain it would cause x side-effect in person y we just wouldn't give it to person y. It's unsafe to the exact extent that we don't know if it will cause x side-effect in person y. The FDA work reduces that uncertainty, thus increasing the safety.

Evidence of what? The motives of experts who advocate getting the vaccine? — Fooloso4

Yes. It's not the general motivation (concern for the health of the population) you're making the argument that their specific motivation is not the EUA but the evidence from millions of vaccine shots (despite me posting a direct quote from Marks to the contrary, but hey, evidence seems to be irrelevant on this thread, so...)

Why would you think that I know what is going on right now at the FDA? — Fooloso4

Because you said that despite their main work being about ensuring the safety and efficacy of medicines, their current work is not related to safety and efficacy. I'm asking how you know that unless you know what it is they're currently doing.

f the virus is circulating through the community then everyone has an equal chance, statistically speaking, of coming into contact with it. — Janus

Simply untrue. The more isolated have a lower chance, those practising more non-pharmaceutical interventions have a lower chance.

if you get vaccinated and you are exposed to the virus, your chances of infection are reduced, your chances of symptomatic infection are reduced, your chances of hospitalization are reduced and your chances of death are reduced. — Janus

Do you have any evidence for this? Or do you expect me to just argue against whatever you reckon?

I see no reason why this would not apply to the unhealthy, smokers, the obese, alcoholics, drug addicts, the healthy, athletes, fitness fanatics, and so on. — Janus

Unbelievable! How does one argue against such insanity? You're advocating injecting the entire population of the world with a chemical that had not even been invented a few years back on the basis of the fact that 'you don't see any reason not to...' Not on some evidence you've got immediately to hand.

And this despite the fact that I've presented evidence the contrary which I know for a fact you've read - evidence which shows a strong possibility that for the under 24 year old age group, hospitalisation might actually increase as a result of mass vaccination.

if you do come into contact with it your chances of a good outcome are increased greatly if the experts are to be believed.. — Janus

No, if your chosen experts are to be believed. I've presented evidence from experts who believe that vaccination does not significantly increase the chances of a good outcome. You've chosen to ignore them in favour of some vague notion that 'the experts' say it will without even having any evidence to that effect which you can cite.

If your chances of infection, symptomatic infection, hospitalization and death are reduced, then chances are you will, if infected, carry less viral load and thus be less infectious. — Janus

Again, simply not proven, and I've even posted a link to the evidence showing reduced transmission on average to show that it does not prove what you claim here.

So, on average, vaccination will reduce transmission. — Janus

No one is arguing against vaccination reducing transmission on average, that much has been quite well demonstrated.

All of this is assuming that what we are being told by the medical authorities, which is, or at least should be, assuming good will, the dominant expert consensus, is true. If we reject that then what do we have to guide us? — Janus

Other experts? Do we all have to have the same opinion nowadays? Has difference become such an anathema in our new polemic world that we all have to have exactly the same opinion or else we're lost at sea?

Honestly. I give up. It's pointless me troubling to make a fully cited case for a nuanced approach in a difficult to navigate circumstance, only to have it ignored in favour of polemic sound-bytes from the media. This is people's lives we're discussing here, actual real people who may or may not face a greater risk of being harmed by the intervention you're all advocating and you can't even be bothered to actually look up any evidence at all, let alone analyse it, before publicly condemning anyone who fails to toe the party line. It's a disgrace.

It is the entire basis for the argument I've made — Cheshire

Your argument is that everyone in America should get vaccinated even if they live rurally, are healthy, socially distance etc. Thus using up precious stocks, taking them away from those that really need them in other countries.

Forget 70%. Forget anyone who isn't vulnerable. Forget the mad anti-vax brigade who'll never take them anyway. Forget mandates. Forget the doubters. They're an irrelevance compared the truly needy whose doses they'll be using up just to save you from having to do so much non-pharmaceutical intervention.

The ethical matter is whether excluding yourself from the 70% is fair to the others in the population making the same choice. — Cheshire

Yes, that's what I said.

Is another's safety less valuable than yours without any known reason for qualification other than your willingness to doubt it? — Cheshire

No, that's not the choice is it. If I said to you "wearing a hat will kill you", you're not then deciding whether your fashion choice is more important than your life. You're deciding whether your belief that wearing a hat is fine outweighs my assertion that it isn't. If you're referring to people who completely believe the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies, but still don't get vaccinated then yeah, fuck 'em. But I don't know anyone in that position, so it's simply not a part if any ethical dilemma.

when a group is asked to function together for a common end then a consensus is the best it can rely on. — Cheshire

Is it? On what grounds?

It is a case where being wrong negatively effects others; made worse by distribution to others that might have otherwise decided correctly. — Cheshire

Evidence. Honestly, we can't have a proper discussion if you're just going to make shit up. I could just say "the vaccine is poisonous anyway so no one should take it". His does that constitute an argument. Cite your fucking sources! It's like arguing with children.

It is not regarded as safe and effective because of the EUA, it is regarded as safe and effective because of the evidence, including the evidence of millions of shots that were made possible by the EUA. — Fooloso4

None of that has any bearing on the matter of whether it will be rendered more safe by the work being done to complete the BLA approval. It's just a load of bizarre psychologising about the motives for advocacy without, again, a shred of evidence.

Fourth time...

What are the FDA doing, right now, and how is it that you know (when seemingly even experts in public health don't even know)? — Isaac

Empirical observations from local nurses. — Cheshire

What good is localized data for speaking to an international matter. — Cheshire

...?

Human nature is fairly consistent when it comes to avoiding discomfort. — Cheshire

Maybe, but if I disagree with you about the causes, then the consistency of human nature doesn't help arbitrate between our positions does it?

Your position remains tied to your population. But, your argument generalizes to others. — Cheshire

It's funny how important it seems to be that everyone gets vaccinated in whatever country you're in. Apparently, completely healthy people are either selfish, or scared, or deluded, for not getting a vaccine in one country regardless of the rest of the world. The myopia is shocking.

You're at about 50% and rising still. You'll be fine. You can stop wringing your soft first-world hands about it.

You're also at 14% of your stock...which constitutes most of the world's stock. If you were truly worried about people's health, you'd be preserving stock for those who need it most around the world, most third world countries are barely at 10%. But no, much more productive to wag a disapproving finger at your co-nationals...the ones who could still infect you.

If vaccination is roughly 90% efficacious at preventing hospitalization compared to lack of vaccination then it would be far less likely for the unvaccinated compared to the vaccinated in all of those categories, most likely. — Janus

I don't follow you. Why, if it's on average 90% efficacious would it be less likely in all categories? If, on average drunk people are more likely to have a car accident, does that mean drunk people are more likely to have a car accident even among those who don't drive? Averages don't apply to all groups unless the criteria are random, which, with susceptibility to hospitalisation with covid-19, we know they're not.

But that's an aside because I asked about transmission, not hospitalisation. The same applies here though. The fact that on average, transmission is halved for those who are vaccinated it doesn't mean that transmission would be halved in the subset, say, of those who live in rural areas, or those who wash their hands frequently, or those who are better at any of the non-pharmaceutical measures. The reason I posted the study is to show that the study did not account for these factors.

It is simply false to say that vaccines reduce transmission of the virus in all cases. They have been shown, by one study, to reduce transmission, on average, in a limited number of cases, for a specific cohort.

To have a moral case that someone ought to take the vaccine to protect others you'd have to show that the vaccine was more capable of protecting others than other methods that that person might be willing to adopt. There is no evidence of this capability to date, and so absolutely no moral case that anyone ought to take the vaccine to protect others.

Nor is there a moral case that anyone ought to take the vaccine to help eradicate the virus. As Prof Pollard told the All Party Parliamentary Group only yesterday

Herd immunity is 'not a possibility' with the current Delta variant.
He referred to the idea as 'mythical' and warned that a vaccine programme should not be built around the idea of achieving it.
He predicted that the next thing may be 'a variant which is perhaps even better at transmitting in vaccinated populations', adding that that was 'even more of a reason not to be making a vaccine programme around herd immunity'. — APPG - coronavirus

So with no moral case for protecting others and no moral case for eradication - what is the moral case that any individual ought to take the vaccine?

In general if it is true that vaccination greatly reduces transmission of the virus then it is obviously in society's best interest that as many people as possible be vaccinated. — Janus

I don't disagree with that. I think vaccination is an excellent public policy response in general.

I don't know your circumstances, so I can;t comment about that. — Janus

Exactly. And yet...

the deliberately unvaccinated are acting only out of self-interest — Janus

...is commenting on individuals, isn't it? Do you know their circumstances?

Would you advocate the same for smoking, drinking eating red meat, not exercising enough, practising sports, doing office work, foreign travel, insufficient handwashing... — Isaac


Those activities do not enjoy pandemic status and are unlikely to overwhelm hospitals, so probably no. — Janus

Beds occupied by Covid-19 patients currently stand at about 2,500 out of 115,000 beds (source https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/), about 2% of activity. About 20% of those 115,000 beds are occupied by those with avoidable illness (source https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/avoidablemortalityinenglandandwales/latest). Over a the short period of time the pandemic will run for, making vaccination mandatory would, at best relieve just under 2% of the pressure on health services for a few years. Making the lifestyle choices that cause avoidable illness prohibited would relieve nearly ten times that. Hospital admissions for Myocardial Infarction alone are at about 280 a day (source https://www.bhf.org.uk/-/media/files/research/heart-statistics/bhf-cvd-statistics-uk-factsheet.pdf) - every day, every year crisis or no crisis.

So it's simply false to say that lifestyle choices which lead to avoidable illnesses don't put the same pressure on health services that Covid-19 hospitalisations do. One of the main reasons why hospitals can't cope with Covid-19 is that they're overwhelmed by those other cases caused by avoidable lifestyle choices.

Not to mention the fact that the vast majority of severe hospitalisations with Covid-19 are the result of underlying commorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, caused by the very lifestyle choices you're relegating the harm of.

The problem here seems to revolve around two things;

Firstly the confusion between medical advice as to the safety of the vaccine and ethical decisions as to what risk it is fair to take (for what gain).

Secondly, this new idea which has emerged that one must believe whatever the consensus, or majority or official, scientific opinion is, not simply that one ought to have their beliefs suitably supported by scientific opinion.

The first case is simple to lay out. Let's say that the FDA, or equivalent body, are such experts on vaccines with such a wealth of data that they are 100% right all the time. Say we can measure safety on a scale of 1 to 10. Using their data and 100% accurate analytical skills they determine that the vaccine is exactly 9.675 safe. Now...where, in all their expertise, did they learn that 9.675 is the level of safety at which we ought to take a new medicine? How has their expertise in vaccines conferred upon them an ability to judge ethics?

The second I've no idea on. Even two years ago it wasn't the case. I've presented a post full of actual qualified experts who think there are problems with the vaccine that the FDA are not addressing, but for some reason, in this new world, that's insufficient to justify forming a view based on their expert opinion. Not just insufficient, but "acting only out of self-interest and against what is best for all". You'll have to tell me what you think the advantage to society is in stifling proper scientific differences of opinion.

Essentially your perceptual 'world', which includes your own body, and other people, functions as a sort of internally generated self/world model, which is theorized to be caused by the brain/nervous system of something unknowable ("hidden state"). Its a kind of solipsism. — Inyenzi

I'm not seeing the 'trouble' you started out claiming was there.

I would imagine a "good match" (I don't even know how a good match would even be possible between hallucination and the unknowable..) is irrelevant in terms of our evolution, and the content of our 'hallucinations' would evolve towards what is useful in an evolutionary context (survival, gene replication, etc). — Inyenzi

You may well imagine that, yes.

Firstly the vaccinated are far less likely to spread infection, even though it is acknowledged to be possible. — Janus

Far less likely than whom? The unvaccinated? The unvaccinated but masked? The unvaccinated but healthy, the unvaccinated but rural dwelling, the unvaccinated but young, the unvaccinated but non-smoker...

Here is the PHE study showing reduced transmission in the vaccinated...you tell me.

the vaccinated are following the medical advice in doing what is judged to be best for society as a whole, whereas the deliberately unvaccinated are acting only out of self-interest and against what is best for all. — Janus

Where does medical advice suggest that getting vaccinated is best for society as a whole? Give me one single medical advisory that suggests I should get vaccinated, in my circumstances.

And how much less so if they are also much more likely to become sick and burden the hospital system perhaps thereby denying a bed to someone else who needs it for some Covid unrelated emergency condition. — Janus

Show me the evidence that I am much more likely to get sick enough to need a hospital bed if I don't take the vaccine. Any scrap of evidence at all will do.

if you want to remain unvaccinated would you agree to sign a waiver relinquishing your right to hospitalization if you became infected with Covid and sick enough to require it? — Janus

Would you advocate the same for smoking, drinking eating red meat, not exercising enough, practising sports, doing office work, foreign travel, insufficient handwashing...

I know vaccine hesitancy is a catalyst for unnecessary death and suffering that is happening in real time. — Cheshire

Interesting. How is it that you know this?

The vaccine you aren't taking now will be the vaccine I wager you won't take then. I thought about not enduring an immune system response. It sounded unpleasant. I believe this is the reason people want to have a reason not to take it. — Cheshire

What you believe is irrelevant. why would your guess as to the reasons of others have any bearing on the matter?

My population needs uptake to increase in order to curb an uptrend in suffering. — Cheshire

The people who believe that have already taken the vaccine. We're talking here about the people who don't believe that - what should they do? Are you suggesting that other people should act, not on what they believe is right, but on on you believe is right? How would you feel if it were the other way round?

So confused.

All of their work is to establish safety and efficacy. — Fooloso4

In this case we have a clear view of the safety and efficacy ahead of approval. — Fooloso4

They must complete their review. — Fooloso4

...They must complete the thing they've actually already done - because all their work is about safety and efficacy which they've already established.

You've still not answered the very simple question I've asked three times now. What are the FDA doing, right now, and how is it that you know (when seemingly even experts in public health don't even know)?

Marks and other experts...recommend getting the vaccine — Fooloso4

I don't think you understand what a EUA is. It's when the FDA decide that the risks from a new medicine are outweighed by the risks from the emergency - meaning that they think people ought to take it. It would have been rather foolish of them to give it EUA and then not endorse taking it, wouldn't it? So obviously Marks is going to recommend getting it, the crisis whose risk outweighs the risk from the vaccine is still going on. None of this has any bearing on the lower threshold of risk the full approval requires.

So perception isn't veridical, rather its a hallucination controlled by the world based on the brain estimating what's out there, which is updated from the stream of sensory information? — Marchesk

Yeah. But we want to minimise surprise, so a good match between the probability function of the model and the distribution of the hidden state is something we evolve toward, purely by energy efficiency.

Also we're a social species, we invest quite a lot in making sure your model matches my model to a good degree of similarity.

Nowhere do I say that "the work they're doing is other than safety and efficacy work". — Fooloso4

The delay in approval is at this point a bureaucratic problem rather than a problem with the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. — Fooloso4

If you're a BIV, then you're not perceiving anything. It's all a generated hallucination — Marchesk

That's what perception is. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-42986-7_5

Nowhere do I say that "the work they're doing is other than safety and efficacy work". — Fooloso4

At this point it is a matter of bureaucracy rather than safety or efficacy — Fooloso4

Are you unsure what 'rather than' means?

But then what is your model of where these perceptions come from? Do you simply not have one? — hypericin

I believe the source of the data for each of my inferences is external to the model doing that inferring. I also believe that the source of the sensory data I model is external to me (everything I detect by interoception). That's about as far as it goes.

But these are models of a single perceptual event of a single object. — hypericin

I think that BIVs are more significant for you, perhaps, for this reason.

I don't believe the object is out there in the 'real world' in the first place. I believe we construct the objects of our perception, so for me, the means by which the data we use for this construction arrives is of fairly minor importance.

Proving the capacity for inquiry doesn't speak to the state of affairs. Because I was speculating I selected the number that errored against my position. The assumption of a .05 Alpha isn't exactly what I would call grabbing numbers out of the sky. — Cheshire

Indeed. And you'd have a perfectly reasonable and well-evidenced support for your position if you were to believe that.

The point is that there are other positions. Also well-supported by expert opinion and good evidence. As I've clearly shown, a substantial number of experts in vaccines, epidemiology and immunology do not think the FDA should approve the vaccine at this current level of evidence. They believe that more data is required before it can meet the higher threshold of safety the BLA approval confers.

So you have a good, well-supported view that the safety of the vaccine is, currently, near sufficient for BLA approval, and so little will be gained on meeting that threshold.

I have a good, well-supported view that the safety of the vaccine is, not currently, near sufficient for BLA approval, and so much could be gained on meeting that threshold.

What we used to do is maintain a difference of opinion without assuming our opponents were lunatics, sociopaths or liars. That seems too much to ask these days.

You repeatedly conflate the question of whether the vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective enough to get vaccinated now with the issue of full approval. — Fooloso4

Safe and effective enough is an individual judgement. Do you expect the government to tell you if you'll personally find riding a motorbike to be safe enough? It's safe enough for some people, too unsafe for others. Safe enough is a personal judgement and can only be made by the individual taking the risk.

The FDA are not even in the businesses of telling people what risks they should and should not take, their job is to determine if a medicine is safe enough according to strick legal definitions. They determined it was safe enough to be given a EUA. Marks also thinks it's safe enough for him to advise it. None of which has any bearing on what my, or anyone else's, personal threshold of risk happens to be, or should be.

Marks is an expert on vaccines, this doesn't confer him with any expertise at all on what level of risk any individual should be willing to take.

None of which had any bearing on the actual point at issue, of course, which remains...

What they are doing is exactly what I said they are doing, reviewing and evaluating the data. — Fooloso4

...data relating to safety and efficacy, hence you are wrong to say the the work they're doing is other than safety and efficacy work, which is the sole point of disagreement.

Speculating, I would suppose you are waiting for reductions of uncertainty concerning the last 5% which simply comes with time. — Cheshire

We can all speculate, that's the point of each individual being left to decide for themselves (on proper scientific advice, of course).

In both the latter two cases our model of the object of our perception is that of a software construct, which is an aspect of software hosted on a physical computer. So in both cases it is linguistically meaningful and useful to designate the objects of perception as "simulations", as opposed to the rest of the physical world which hosts these simulations. — hypericin

OK, I see where you're coming from. When I model, both the front ends are just 'Hidden State', so they're equal, to me.

One last fling...

Even in the last two, does it not really go;

Tree-> reflected light -> eye -> brain signal -> perception of tree (in the mind of the coder/programmer) ->computer -> simulation software -> software state of tree -> electrode -> brain signal -> perception of
tree (in the mind of the BIV).

Still coming from a tree, but going a long way round?

If we are participating in the thought experiment and imagining we are BIVs, then we must be imagining the world outside the vats. — hypericin

Tricky. None of us know the state of the world outside our Markov blanket, so we infer it. If we're BIVs (prior to any thought that we might be), then we infer the perception of a 'tree' in front of me is caused by some external state exciting sensory neurons. Aren't we in no different position once we become aware of the possibility of being a BIV? The assumption that the perception of a 'tree' in front of me is caused by some external state exciting sensory neurons, still holds. The 'external state' is just now an electrode (with perhaps a mad scientists at the controls), but the theory that some external state has excited some sensory neurons in such a way as to represent 'tree's remains unaltered.

It's only from the outsiders perspective 'seeing' the electrodes and the scientists, that these objects (electrode, scientist) are usefully distinguished from the objects they're causing to be represented in the BIV. From the BIV's perspective, they're the hidden external states they always assumed were there all along.

I was as much referring to the difficulty in understanding. — Pop

Ah, I see. It's not for the faint-hearted that's for sure.

Safety in regards to the threshold for public disbursement was met; safety beyond this threshold is literally increased incrementally following further results, studies, aggregate data expositions, etc. — Cheshire

I think this only holds if you can somehow quantify each of the safety levels (unless I've misunderstood what you mean by 'marginal', I took it to mean 'small'). The EUA threshold is one level of safety, the BLA approval is another, higher, level. To know that the difference between the two is 'marginal' we'd need some way of quantifying each. I don't think such a way exists, which is why - going right back to the beginning of this whole shambles of an argument - which was...

I am surprised to hear that you are waiting. The FDA will approve the vaccine. At this point it is a matter of bureaucracy rather than safety or efficacy, which have been amply demonstrated. — Fooloso4

... I think it's not 'surprising' at all. Only each individual can determine for themselves whether the difference in safety between EUA and BLA approval is significant for them because we each only know our own risk profile (in consultation, hopefully, with health experts - our doctor, the ample research available online...). As such only the individual can make an assessment of whether they personally need that extra margin or not.

I see. I don't think anything that anyone is doing at this level is falsifiable, they're frameworks through which we can view the data. That's not to say there aren't better frameworks than others, only that the choice is not falsifiable.

This shouldn't be confused with the notion that any of the evidence Friston uses is also speculative. As too often happens (Quantum Physics being the archetypal example) some frameworks are highlighted as being speculative or unfalsifiable and people think it's then a free-for-all where everyone and their dog can have an 'opinion' on how quantum physics works. That's not what is implied by using a theoretical framework for one's analysis of the data.

Yes but there is a distinction between the world they present and the real world. This distinction is what the word "reality" delineates, without it the word has no meaning. — hypericin

I don't see how it applies to the BIV. 'Reality' is just a word which in the computer game case we're using to distinguish between the game world and the outside world. The word is embedded in a language, and act of social communication between two people, with a context and with intent. The word is being used to do something (in this case draw a distinction). It's not necessary to apply the exact same distinction to every single time the word is used, in every context. Language isn't like that.

So the language we use when describing a computer game doesn't tell us something about what is the case, it's not a window into the mind of God, it just a tool that gets a job done.

So the point with your BIV is that the situation would simply not be described by anyone in it as anything other than 'reality'. They wouldn't need another word because there's nothing to distinguish. There's no metaphysical truth being revealed here.

Insofar as an outside observer is concerned (maybe the only person in the world who isn't a BIV) their represented world would probably be called 'reality' and the simulation a 'simulation', but that would depend entirely on how useful whoever he was communicating with found the distinction to be and what language developed around that utility.

From our perspective imagining we're the non BIVs talking about the BIVs and wondering what word to use, I'd say 'reality' and 'simulation' would be a good choice.

From our perspective imagining we are the BIVs, 'simulation' would be a silly choice of word, it doesn't distinguish anything useful yet.

All we have from that perspective is that some of our representations come to us via an electrical signal from an electrode, others from an electromagnetic signal from a light wave. Why would we label one 'real' and the other a 'simulation' at that stage?

Are simulations observer dependent? That is to say, is it possible for a simulation to exist in a universe with no minds? — RogueAI

Again, dependent on language. 'Simulation' is a construct, amodel we make in our minds of some hidden states. Those hidden states, I believe, would continue to exist without minds, but there'd be no cause to distinguish them with the label 'simulation', because such a distinction can only be relevant to the models that minds make. I doubt an ant would have any use for such a distinction either, for example.

I'd like to see Isaac's response to that. — schopenhauer1

Really? I thought is was so nonsensical as to be beneath reply (and I reply to some garbage sometimes!).

My argument is that TMF simply assumed that the proposition "life is good" can be determined true or false by argument. Nothing at all in the reply addresses that question. Simply stating that it is a proposition doesn't get us anywhere.

"Whisky is nice" is also a proposition - does that mean it's truth can be determined by argument?

Is it sufficient if what action is being taken is imposing X things on another person, and doing so unnecessarily (not ameliorating greater with lesser harm)? — schopenhauer1

I think it depends on two main factors. One is, as you say, the reason you're doing it (ameliorating a greater harm/risk might outweigh the imposition as in the emergency surgery example), the other is the likelihood that they will like it outweighs the harm (usually small in these cases - as in the surprise party example).

But neither apply to having children becasue not-having-been-born is not a choice an individual can make. Choices, preferences, states of happiness...these are all things that existent beings have, non-existent ones don't, so the analogy doesn't apply.

All that applies in terms of harms is that you can foresee a situation wherein a person might be harmed, you can justify bringing about that situation if the benefits outweigh the harms, or, if that situation is the default one for humanity, it makes more sense to say that to stop it one would have to demonstrate that the harms outweigh the benefits.

'Choice' isn't a relevant metric because it doesn't make any sense in terms of the decisions to have never been.

It is a matter of where they are in the process of approval. — Fooloso4

Firstly, where they are is right in the middle of their main job - full approval of a BLA for a new medicine.

Secondly, you've still not given any detail on exactly what it is you think the FDA are doing over the next stage in their work (this mysterious 'bureaucracy' which is apparently unrelated to either safety or efficacy). Nor, more importantly, provided a shred of evidence to support whatever that belief might be.

I think you really ought to share your evidence about what the FDA is doing. I mean even Leana Wen, Public Health Professor at George Washington University doesn't know, nor do any of her colleagues so the fact that you do is pretty big news...

I understand that the regulatory process is complicated, but right now, it feels like a black box. And I think this is what I and other public health experts are calling for the FDA to not make this process so opaque. I mean, it would be really important, I think, for public credibility and understanding for them to say, for example, here are the 50 steps that we need in order for full approval to occur. We already have these 30 taken care of, 10 are in process, 10 are still to be determined. — Leana Wen, Public Health Professor at George Washington University

As you admit the vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective, so why hasn't it been approved yet? — Fooloso4

Because it has not yet been shown to be safe enough. As has been explained in the three quotes cited directly from FDA staff, the full approval is a more thorough process looking at trial methodology of longer-term data sets and manufacturing processes.

The EUA checks to see if the medicine is safe enough to balance the risks from the emergency in question, the full approval checks to see if it's safe enough to use even without that risk (and without specific usage guidance). Two levels of safety, for two different purposes, one higher than the other.

I'm not just going to re cite all the evidence I've already provided for this. At this point I give up. If you think the FDA are doing something other than I describe simply cite your evidence supporting that assertion, I'm not going to respond to unsupported claims anymore.

You are arguing for marginal safety on principle. — Cheshire

It's a blessing just to hear from someone who actually understands at least the structure of the argument I'm making... at least I'm not having to explain how continuous variables work...

However, if you want to argue that it's marginal then I expect to see some evidence to that effect. It really shouldn't be too much to ask.

Why have you started from the middle of our conversation?

You said

At this point it is a matter of bureaucracy rather than safety or efficacy, which have been amply demonstrated. — Fooloso4

That is wrong. That's all I've been arguing. Your own later comment says as much. It is logically incoherent to claim that

The role of the FDA is to verify that products are safe and effective. — Fooloso4

And then claim that their main job is some other work rather than safety and efficacy work.

Still going?

How have you translated my saying that your argument doesn't make sense into me disagreeing with one of its propositions?

If I claimed trees were yellow because custard is yellow, and you said "that doesn't make sense", would I then be entitled to say "ah, so you think custard isn't yellow"?

I'm not disagreeing with the proposition that the vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective. I'm disagreeing with the proposition that the FDA work does not relate to safety and efficacy. As I explained literally in the same post you cherry-picked that quote from.

The vaccine being safe and effective does not have any bearing whatsoever on whether someone can make it more safe by being even more certain, nor whether someone can find it the less safe by finding errors in the methods used to check its safety at first. In neither case need anyone conclude that the vaccine is not safe because it's possible for things that are safe to be more safe or less safe. Safe is not a binomial measure, it's not 1or 0, safe or unsafe - there's quite safe, averagely safe, very safe, extremely safe... all forms of safe.

The FDA are expecting to take a vaccine which is safe and make it more safe. There's a very small chance they might find it to be less safe, but even in this case it might still be safe, just less so than we thought.

I can't believe I'm having to explain how continuous variables work...

What do you think causes the information to integrate. You have described a process that might recognize a pattern and shunt it to an area that might symbolize it. But what do you think causes this to occur? — Pop

I'm not sure that the integration of information is the correct teleology for the systems Friston describes. The objective is to minimise free energy (to maintain the integrity of one's form). To put it as best I can in terms of information, as that's the thread topic, free energy would be the 'information' contained in the co-occurrence of the sensory input and it's causes. If they are expected to co-occur, then information gain is lower.

So, this relies on the function distribution of the hidden causes being matched to the probability distribution of the model of them. The closer the match the less free energy. A creature which can minimise it's free energy obviously has a competitive advantage over one which is not so able. So that's what I think causes it to occur, the selective advantage gained by the lowering of free energy inherent in matching a model's probability function to the distribution of external causal states.

But, to be clear, integration is a means to an end here, that end being free energy reduction. Information is integrated only to better remove it. Models whose priors better match the posterior distributions gain less information (in terms of surprise). The goal is the reduction, the integration just a necessary tool among others.

Great video, by the way. Good find.

I think it's a bit of a leap from that to your conclusion that the risk of myocarditis from vaccination outweighs the risks from Covid. — Janus

Yes, sorry. I missed out the important analysis of the statistics - here (see chart no 3) https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-failed-to-balance-the-harms-vs-benefits-of-2nd-doses-d7d6b3df7cfb . I was rushing, thanks for picking up on that.

What long term deleterious effects are you rationally contemplating that could make the vaccine the less good choice? — prothero

From the petition sent to the FDA by (among others) Peter Doshi, Associate Professor, Pharmaceutical Health Services Research,University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (also Editor in Cheif of the British Medical Journal), Linda Wastila, BSPharm, MSPH, Professor, Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and

Required studies must, at a minimum, address these concerns: i. Coagulopathy issues, including blood clots, hemorrhage, thrombocytopenia, heart attack, and strokes. According to the VAERS, as of May 21, 2021, there have been a total of 1,222 reports of thrombocytopenia/low platelets; and 6,494 (112 in 0-24 year-olds) reports of blood clots/strokes. ii. Reproductive issues, including menstrual irregularities, reduced fertility, miscarriages, and preterm births. According to VAERS, as of May 21, 2021, there were 511 reports of miscarriage and 522 reports of uterine hemorrhage (including 88 in women older than 50 years). The vaccines induce the generation of antibodies to attack spike protein, which are genetically similar to proteins produced by the placenta.30 To date, no vaccine sponsors have conducted immunologic studies of spike protein involvement with proteins involved in placental development. iii. Carcinogenesis. There is preliminary and theoretical evidence that the spike protein may promote cancer.31,32 Considering the potential for annual booster vaccinations, COVID-19 vaccines should be treated similarly to medication taken for chronic conditions on a long term basis. Carcinogenic potential is important to characterize. iv. Transmission of spike protein (or its fragments) from vaccinated individuals, such as through breast milk and associated risk in neonates and infants. According to the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, there are 921 reports of exposure via breast milk following AstraZeneca’s vaccine and 215 reports following Pfizer’s v.vi.vii.viii.Neurological disorders, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, transverse myelitis, encephalitis, myelitis, encephalomyelitis, meningoencephalitis, meningitis, encephalopathy, demyelinating diseases, and multiple sclerosis. Cardiac issues, including myocardial infarction, myocarditis and pericarditis, among others. According to the VAERS, as of May 21, 2021, there have been a total of 1,598 reports of heart attacks (24 reported in 0-24 year-olds; 501 resulted in death). Autoimmune diseases, including thyroiditis and diabetes mellitus, immune thrombocytopenia, autoimmune hepatitis, primary biliary cholangitis, systemic sclerosis, autoimmune disease for skeletal muscles (myasthenia gravis, myositis such as polymyositis, dermatomyositis, or other inflammatory myopathies) Studies should be conducted in individuals of both sexes 33 and all ages. We cannot assume that the effects of spike protein are the same across populations of all ages, sex, and across pre-existing conditions.

Also there's

Paediatrics professor Ruediger von Kries, a member of Germany's advisory vaccine committee,

practically nothing is yet known over any long-term adverse effects in adolescents

also there's the issue of Myocarditis https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X21006824 in young people which significantly outweighs their risk from Covid-19.

Of the FDA's own Dr Philip Krause who explains

Very often, it's the fact that we have that placebo controlled follow-up over time, that gives us the ability to say that the vaccine didn't cause something at a longer period of time after vaccination Continuation of placebo controlled follow-up after EUA will be important and may actually be critical to ensure that additional safety and effectiveness data are accrued to support submission of a licensure application as soon as possible following an EUA. Once a decision is made to unblind an ongoing placebo controlled trial, that decision cannot be walked back. And that controlled follow-up is lost forever.

or Dr Stepen Baral Professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins

For adults, the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination are enormous, while for children, they are relatively minor. Rare side effects from adult COVID-19 vaccination are unlikely to lead to future vaccine hesitancy whose public health impact could be comparable to the benefits of the adult COVID-19 vaccination program itself. But accelerated mass child vaccination under EUA — perhaps even spurred by school mandates and “vaccine passports” — presents a different balance of risks and benefits. Rare adverse events really could prove to be the most durable public health legacy of an EUA for child COVID-19 vaccines.

Last try.

I'm fairly sure there's no tiger in the next room. I've checked as best I can using a standard tiger-searching method. It's safe to go in the room.

Someone else then checks that I carried out the tiger searching method correctly. It is now more safe to go in the room.

I cited several authoritative sources saying that the vaccine is safe and effective. — Fooloso4

No one is denying it's safe and effective. As I said

Safe and effective are not binomial measures. They're continuous variables. Things can be safe, and then more safe. Things can be effective, and then more effective. — Isaac

As I said several times, the process takes time. — Fooloso4

No one is denying it takes time either...

I'm not sure who you're arguing against here.

That does not mean that until that time we are in the dark, left wondering whether the vaccine is safe and effective. It is. — Fooloso4

Again, not sure why you're mentioning this seeing as no one has claimed anything to the contrary.


I'm at a loss as to what you think you're arguing against but it's clearly nothing I've said so I don't see as this has anything to do with me anymore.

You claimed the ongoing work of the the FDA was not concerned with the issue of safety and efficacy. I said that was wrong. That's all. Every FDA source that has been quoted has said that it is concerned with safety and efficacy. You've refused to even speculate as to what you think they actually are doing, but rather persist with this odd campaign to insist that safety is measured only binomially (either safe or not), leaving anyone who's previously used the expression 'more safe' wondering how they'd got it so wrong all these years.