"Lack of suppression" doesn't mean "being fine" — neomac

So you're not fine with how Sy Hersh's story has been treated. Good. We agree on that.

Hersh made his point in a substack article but anybody in the West could learn of its existence — neomac

I didn't ask you where one can read about Sy Hersh's story. If you don't want to answer my questions just don't. There's no need to answer a different one.

If there is a relevant delta of credibility between BBC and TASS in favor of the former, and Hersh gets mentioned only by the latter, this is not a boost of Hersh's credibility. I guess. Unless one assumes that Hersh is the relevant meter by which one can assess BBC vs TASS credibility. — neomac

This is either deliberately obtuse or childishly naive. A broadcaster like TASS will give its eye teeth to publish a story which reflects badly on the US. Their doing so, therefore, has no bearing whatsoever on its credibility. Do you think they'd avoid anti-US stories because they're true. I mean its just dumbfoundingly stupid. A non-credible news agency like TASS doesn't actively seek out fake news. They publish news which promotes their agenda, true or not. So a news article appearing in TASS doesn't indicate it's false. It indicates that it's good for Russia. I hate to blow your tiny mind, but some things are both true and good for Russia, and Russian propaganda will publish those thing with no less enthusiasm than they publish flashhoods.

No idea how you can possibly infer such conclusions from the claim of mine you quoted. — neomac

I literally spelled it out for you. I'll try again. The agencies whose investigations you claim are relevant fall into two camps; governments and journalists. Governments will not report honestly their own collusion so you cannot trust a government to report on its own behaviour. You yourself pointed to the untrustworthiness of TASS.

So you're left with journalists.

But you've said that independent journalists lack sufficient credibility to be taken seriously.

So who's left?

Mainstream media.

You're saying that if the mainstream media don't report it, it doesn't deserve any credibility.

So I asked, if the.mainstream media have a problem, how do we hear about it?

it — Janus

it — Janus

it — Janus

'It' has sure done a lot of 'appearing' to you for something which is other than it appears.

Similar review in the Jacobin recently...

https://jacobin.com/2023/03/martin-heidegger-nazism-payen-wolin-book-review/

I see things when I am asleep. Some people have defects where they cannot. Are you one of them? — I like sushi

If what you think you see is the same as what you actually see, then when, at the opticians, you think you see a 'W', but the optician tells you it's a 'V' what exactly are the glasses he prescribes you aimed at modifying. Not your ability to see, it seems, since you 'saw' the 'W' fine.

You should be able to memorize my counter arguments — schopenhauer1

There are no counter arguments.

All you've said is that you think the yet-to-be born ought benefit from exactly the same moral treatment as the already living (particularly in respect to personal autonomy).

You haven't provided any argument at all as to why we ought make that change.

Because progress isn’t always apparent immediately nor maybe ever. — schopenhauer1

That doesn't answer the question. If 10 million people thinking something is the case is nonetheless unpersuasive, then why would you expect one person thinking it's the case to be persuasive... ever.

It's not about progress, it's about your argument. What do you imagine is persuasive about it, why would you just saying "I think X" persuade people of X when all of humanity ever clearly do not think X?

Slavery wasn't always the case, nor racism. Whole communities of people did not practice either and considered them an abomination. Arguments against them appealed to common beliefs.

Literally no one believes that yet-to-be-born imaginary people should have the same rights to autonomy as actual living people. So your argument doesn't appeal to any common belief, it just claims that the beliefs of all of humanity since the dawn of time, in that respect, are wrong. And are wrong solely because you think so. Nothing more.

For a long time, most of humanity thought that the sun revolved around the Earth. It's lack of perspective. — schopenhauer1

It's lack of accuracy, in that case.

if you were to deign yourself to be a type of person who believes in certain principles, this too would fall under those principles (non-harm, autonomy, etc.). — schopenhauer1

No it doesn't. That's the point. Those two principles, in most people, apply to the living. They don't apply to the dead, they don't apply to rocks, and they don't apply to the yet-to-be.

You think they ought to. Everyone else disagrees.

What I'm asking you is why, if you think 10 million people can all be wrong, anyone will find it remotely persuasive that you happen to think this.

I liken it to vegetarianism. It may be right, but it takes a long time for people to catch on to things. Slavery was around and condoned as part of life for thousands of years before the last couple hundred years. Some conventions are easier to slough away than others. Clearly, slavery was an easier one to universally condemn (but even that took wars, legislation, and the like). — schopenhauer1

Again, I'm not confused about might not making right, I'm confused about why you think "I think so" is a persuasive argument where "10 million people think so" is not.

Providing some popular concept of morality as the justification for action, isn't cutting it either. So where does that leave your argument other than the fact that "most people" think X, when it is wrong? — schopenhauer1

This is such a bizarre counter. You're saying here that virtually the entire human race thinking something is right still doesn't make it right, but in the same breath you're trying to suggest the mere fact that you think something is wrong might actually make it wrong.

If the entire human race can't make something right or wrong just by thinking it is so, then what superpower do you have that makes you think that you alone thinking it wrong might be a compelling argument?

Red herring and ad hom, you’re right, it is. — schopenhauer1

No @Manuel has it right here. You've spoken at length about wanting to find a 'community of catharsis' These posts are exactly about you and your feeling, not any deeper moral point. Indeed when the moral argument is countered you invariably dismiss that counter with something along the lines of "you've had your say, I want to hear from others", a 'casting around' for agreement, and disparaging all others as 'trolls'.

You've plumbed the depths of the moral argument, it's apparent to anyone even taking a passing interest in these threads that they all reach the same point. A disagreement about the moral significance of the fact that the person-to-be is not yet born. You claim that it's not significant and as such making decisions for them leads to a slippery slope (or a contradiction). The rest of the world think the difference is significant and as such taking a decision for them (because they can't) is a perfectly moral thing to do and faces no such contradiction with their moral behaviour toward persons who already exist.

That there is a difference between persons who are yet to exist and persons who already exist is undeniable. So all we're left with is how we handle that difference morally. Since there are no other examples in life, you can't appeal to consistency, and since there are no objective moral laws, you can't appeal to authority.

Were you to be interested in the arguments one might expect that to be and end to it. But these threads just seem to come back again and again. Fishing for people who agree with you is not the same thing as showing an interest in the arguments. It's an emotional, not an academic activity.

I don't think there's anything wrong with seeking catharsis (I don't think it's healthy, but then I'm not your therapist, so that's no concern of mine), but it is unpleasant to dismiss as 'trolls' anyone taking, at face value, an appeal to mutuality dressed up as a moral investigation.

Then progress must include all. Perhaps we can do better. That this has been undoubtedly the case in the past leads conservative thinkers to conclude that it must always be so. But must it? — Banno

I think certain types of progress (the type forming the bulk of Pinker's evidence-bank) are quite inextricably tied to exploitation since they rely on some form of excess in the energy budget - either that excess is taken from the exploitation of labour, or from the hoarding of resources, or from debt to future generations in terms of pollution and environmental degradation.

There may not be Malthusian limits to growth (that much I agree is arguable), but there are clearly limits to the rate of growth. we cannot develop faster than human minds can come up with sustainable ways to extract more value form the same limited resources (the earth and it's environs).

The problem, therefore, that I find with Pinker's "Let's not slide back" argument is that it encourages us to continue with the unsustainable growth (innovation which expands value at the expense of others) whilst we're waiting for sustainable growth (innovation which doesn't). I can't see a justification for that.

I think this is the harm of 'the myth of progress'. It takes progress as the primary objective and sustainability as a kind of 'nice to have' icing on the cake. But sustainability, and equality, should be the constraints on any progress bar none, meaning no 'progress' which doesn't meet these criteria should take place.

Taking sustainability and equality seriously means remaining in our apocryphal 'mud huts' for ten thousand years if necessary until we innovate the centrally heated, air conditioned bungalow in a form which is available to everyone, regardless of their status, and does not take more from its environment than it can sustain in its lifetime.

I don't think many are really willing to concede that.

Yep, you don’t have to stay in the Ukraine thread if you don’t feel like it — Jamal

That's all very well, but how do we know who won?

I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

I didn't realise we were allowed to do that. I thought we ran 'last man standing' rules...

As far as I can tell, Hersh’s article is not subject to censorship nor is Hersh prosecuted/jailed because of that. — neomac

That's a ridiculously low standard for what qualifies as a lack of suppression "if you're not banned of in jail, you're fine". No wonder Western countries are utopias to you.

Maybe Hersh’s article doesn’t enjoy as much visibility in the mainstream outlets as one could find desirable. But this is part of Hersh’s article credibility problem. — neomac

If visibility in the mainstream dictates credibility, what happens if the mainstream become corrupt? Who points that out and to whom? Who holds mainstream media to account? Or are they Gods?

the Western news platform credibility — neomac

...oh, turns out they are gods. Well, that answers that question.

On the other side, Rupert Murdoch’s channels, and pro-regime news outlets from China, Russian and India, which can give more visibility to Hersh’s article, don’t improve Hersh’ article credibility since I believe that those sources can be fake news dispenser more likely than the Western outlets for political reasons. — neomac

Do you think the mainstream press doesn't have a politics? Over 90% of Washington Post readers are Democrats. You're suggesting that's a coincidence? They're reporting the news unbiasedly and just happen to be liked overwhelmingly by one side?

the Nord Stream 2 blasts are object of a wide investigation involving several countries, related governments, intelligence services, news outlets — neomac

You've given a list which involves only two independant agents - governments and news agencies. You've dismissed results of half of the news agencies, and governments are not going to incriminate themselves, so you're basically saying the mainstream media are inviolable and we need never concern ourselves with the possibility that they may be biased.

I appreciate the apology for missing my moderation. I might have preferred a charitable assumption it was present in the first place... but we take what we can get.

The dissenters were framed as "wappies" though; which often worked due to them having idiotic opinions on unrelated issues (like Chemtrails, WEF reset conspiracy and other crap). — Benkei

Exactly. Only they didn't did they. Because Vinay Prasad dissented, and last I checked he had a fairly normal view on chemtrails. Jay Bhattacharya dissented, and I'm pretty sure he's as convinced as the next man that the earth is round. Mark Woolhouse dissented and I'm 99% convinced he's happy with the government explanation for 9/11. Martin Kuldorff dissented, and I haven't heard much from him about UFOs. Paul Offit, Norman Fenton, Wes Pegden, John Ioannidis, Pete Doshi.... All experts in their fields, none (to my knowledge) with the slightest trace of tin-foil in their headgear, but every single one vilified for their views and every single layman repeating them treated like a flat-earther.

And yes, exactly the same is happening with Ukraine. Legitimate, qualified experts treated like lunatics because they disagree with mainstream narratives.

What scares me about all this is that what's being undermined here is faith in the scientific process (the one which brought us the vaccines in the first place). We have a system in place which, although flawed, is pretty good at ensuring that if you have the qualification (doctorate, usually) you are at least competent enough to be taken seriously in public debate over policy in your field. If we lose that, we just have rule by social media algorithm.

Yeah.

This is how it's gone since Covid. Literally any criticism of government policy (that isn't saying they ought do even more of the brilliant stuff they're doing) is labelled as arising from some unhinged anti-government ideology. It instantly pours cold water on any genuine criticism of government or corporate agendas, basically leaving them unopposed.

It's a masterstroke of social control

Remember when the Democratic party actually spent millions promoting Trump because they thought he was so ludicrous he'd guarantee a Republican loss? That's the policy ever since. Set up an obviously ludicrous clown who'll take up any policy opposed to yours. Associate all of your opponents with that clown (who are obviously also opposing your policies) and suddenly all opposition looks less serious.

My hat goes off to whomever came up with it. Sociopathic, but brilliant.

On an unrelated note, anyone know what the old Cambridge Analytica team are up to now...?

I would think would finally give room for more balanced discussions but instead it's like a pendulum swinging the other way. It's not very pretty to be honest. — Benkei

Oh, and this from my first comments in this latest instance...

To be clear, I think a general policy of mask wearing was a sensible public health precaution in the face of uncertainty. — Isaac

What the Cochrane review shows is not that masks are useless, nor that governments were wrong to mandate their use. — Isaac

Not sufficiently prostrate for you? Do I need to wax any more lyrical about how amazing our governments were in order to qualify as 'balanced' in your eyes?

Perhaps I should have recommended Matt Hancock for a knighthood...

actively preventing critical voices from being heard by wider audiences is censorship, especially in today's day and age.

And this didn't extend only to opinions. When research was done that showed results at odds with the narrative - voided, or simply swept under the rug by barrages of sweet nothings like "99% of doctors agree..."

My impression is that people who do not consider that censorship, in fact just thought it was fine for critical voices to be silenced. — Tzeentch

Exactly. Saying "Oh well, they got a slot on Tucker Carlson" is not the same as a lack of censorship. Many eminent, qualified, and well respected academics with dissenting views were driven to independent publishing and right-wing media platforms, just to get a voice.

Letting your opposition speak, but only on platforms which make that speech seem less authoritative than it deserves (according the the qualification of the speaker) is censorship by another name, if not censorship proper.

And indeed, it's no surprise that we see the same tactics used in relation to Ukraine, as you mentioned. Once something has been shown to work...

I think I said: "would finally give room for more balanced discussions" not "let's forget about it". — Benkei

I wasn't necessarily only using what you said in judgment. As you've pointed out in my analysis, my singular focus on the negative would belie any claim to balance I might make verbally.

Lots of things went badly wrong and thousands are now dying, or in desperate poverty as a result. I don't think the minor, and very obvious successes really need any amplification, but if need be...

An excellent vaccine was created in really short time which worked to reduce symptom severity.

Some places, like Australia closed borders quickly and gave health services vital breathing space.

... That's about it.

Then there's...

Scientific dissent was censored and where not actively censored, severely disparaged to the point of ridicule. The effect has been devastating on academic research in many fields, including my own.

Lockdowns were pursued even when they could be shown not to work and cause tremendous harms to the most vulnerable in society - but, more important than that mere policy mistake, they were pursued because of a social media induced hyperbole in favour of them among key demographics.

Masking was mandated without doing any randomized control trials even through the second year, children's vulnerability during language acquisition and learning was ignored, mental health effects were ignored, again, not just because of policy error, but because of social media driven tribalism creating a big political incentive to pander to extremest groups.

The vaccine was advised (and in some cases mandated) for people who it is absolutely clear now did not need it. This kept supplies short for the most vulnerable and risked not only an increase in side effects (and associated hospital pressure), but a concomitant loss of faith in vaccines in general which may still have a considerably greater impact on health (Measles particularly) than Covid ever could.

And again, this wasn't a simple policy error, but a policy driven by pharmaceutical corporations and social media campaigns who we allowed to dictate policy above general scientific consensus building.

And all of this has resulted in a social environment which now either distrusts health institutions (with good reason), or treats government sanctioned views as the word-of-God and everything else as 'disinformation'.

And we're now so much in debt that poverty reduction has been set back by decades, millions more are on the brink of starvation and no-one is interested in doing anything about that because the social media tribes created to service this crisis are too easily distracted from anything which doesn't serve corporate interests.

We lurch from one crisis to the next because corporations have seen how profitable crises are and how easily they can create and manipulate sufficient social media movements to sway any politicians they haven't already paid off.

__

There.

How's that for balanced?

Things have quieted down significantly with regard to Covid-19 — Benkei

So we just forget about it? Don't look, don't learn any lessons?

How are healthcare workers dancing aligned with big-pharma — Benkei

Social media creates narratives which tribalise groups dissenting from the preferred narrative that presents covid as a very, very dangerous thing that require extreme measures to combat which directly benefits those corporations poised to profit from the extreme solutions. In this case, big pharma.

Healthcare workers dancing perpetuates that narrative by telling a story about uniquely extreme circumstances, coming together (but only of those who don't dissent), and overcoming (but only using profit-making solutions).

why make it appear as if you hold a particular opposing view, when in fact your view is "we don't know"? — Benkei

I've already explained, we speak against power. Balance just serves the interests of the powerful. "We don't know" is useless if powerful agencies are pushing in a direction which might be wrong. "Don't know" is performatively the same as consent in those circumstances since the objectives of the powerful will be met absent of equally powerful opposition.

if we don't know, why is a risk-averse and low impact policy such as mask wearing the wrong thing to do? — Benkei

Mask-wearing is neither risk averse, nor low impact. But it's not about the policy. It's about the debate. If scientific debate is stiffled by political tribalism then we will make mistake after mistake. Scientists opposed to masking were literally banned from taking part in the scientific debate. Even now, there's smearing and aspersions which artificially weigh one side above that which there is good statistical evidence for.

If you seriously can't see how the intense polemicism of the covid policy response debate harmed scientific progress then I doubt there's anything I could say now that would persuade you.

Think of a convergent progression in math. — frank

A convergent series tends to a limit, gets closer and closer to a given number as the set increases.

What is 'progress' converging on, if it's like a convergent series.

one wonders why you consistently only air one side of the debate. — Benkei

That's very simple. One side of the debate is responsible for enriching the most powerful people in the world in the largest transfer of wealth ever recorded. I really don't think it needs any more air, and I find it, by default, less compelling on those grounds alone.

When speaking to power one only need oppose that which seems wrong. That which seems right (but aligns with the objectives of the powerful) is happening anyway and needs no help from us.

Containment isolation and eradication could have worked in the early stages, but there's no point in half the world containing and eradicating. So we had the unedifying scramble for vaccines, and let it rip amongst the poor. — unenlightened

A fair summary. One of the issues with policy here (masking is a good example) is how policymakers deal with the absolute known fact that the policy won't be enacted flawlessly. One of the main criticisms leveled by Peter Shergold at Australia's policy was an inability to adapt to the situations where early containment failed. People are flawed. Policies which assume they're perfect are destined to fail.

That said, I think policy failures had a lot more to do with lining wealthy pockets than technical errors. To think otherwise would require us to believe the powerful got richer by coincidence.

The issue goes beyond government though. There needs to be some account of the effect social media trends had on influencing policy. We can see from the leaked communications from Matt Hancock that ministers were implementing policies they themselves didn't even believe in, so the question is what social environment made them think such policies would be politically astute.

I don't see a compelling reason why I should ignore those results. — Benkei

Is anyone suggesting you should? I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory. I don't see anyone accusing mask-wearers of having 'blood on their hands'. I don't see anyone associating mask-wearing with conspiracy theory...

You, it seems, are quite free to believe the Bangladesh study. It is those who believe the Cochrane study who are constrained.

Just means development. — frank

Then you're not distinguishing between progress and merely 'change'.

So how can anything be seen as 'slipping back', and not just more change?

that meta-study by Cochrane is flawed in many ways. — Benkei

Indeed.

And here are the flaws in the Bangladesh study you cited.

https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-022-06704-z

Upon reanalysis, we find a large, statistically significant imbalance in the size of the treatment and control arms evincing substantial post-randomization ascertainment bias by unblinded staff. The observed decrease in the primary outcome is the same magnitude as the population imbalance but fails significance by the same tests (see Fig. 1 and Table 1). This reanalysis thus complicates drawing any causal link between masks and the observed decrease in population-rate of symptomatic seropositivity.

Do you see what's happening here? Scientists are disagreeing.

I can think of a compelling reason not to go along with the "let's take pot shots at people having fun" but I'm sure you can figure that one out by yourself! — Benkei

Nothing's coming to mind, no.

Sometimes people having fun is just that, other times it's an unhealthy expression of ingroup/outgroup exclusory reinforcement.

I'm not seeing this compelling reason to always assume the former over the latter.

Also on masking: — Benkei

Do you understand what a meta-study does?

The idea that it's only progress if it's toward something good is the reinsertion of values after we've already seen that we're just accidents doomed to oblivion. — frank

Then toward what is it progressing?

Or... Or... Just maybe it was an outlet for people strung out on death and stress? — Benkei

Sure. Maybe.

Can you think of a compelling reason why I ought to accept one possible interpretation over another?

Any* who wish to has the capacity to leave. Very few make that choice. There is a performative tension for any who choose to live in a technological dependent society and yet deny that such a society is better than an less dependent society. — Banno

At the risk of further bruising from this wall I appear to be banging my head against here, this still ignores the very real possibility (one might even be tempted to use 'fact' here) that the prosperity of some nations is bought at the expense of others. The prosperity of some communities, even within nations, is bought at the expense of others.

The fact that one lucky enough to be born on the winning side does not want to move to the losing one doesn't indicate that humanity as a whole is progressing, only that the lives of the losers are so miserable that one would not choose them even against one's moral judgement of the life of the winners.

Progress often comes at a cost and the cost is not always borne by the beneficiaries of that progress. Pinker's substantial error is to look only at the beneficiaries and assume (quite offensively) that those who bear the costs of our progress are in their lowly position, not because we put them there, but because of some fault in their thinking.

Lessons learned so far? — jorndoe

If you put your fingers sufficiently far in your ears and squint enough that you can't read properly, you can continue to believe whatever your Facebook feed tells you. Good lesson.

Im interested in how well you’ve understood the sources. If you don’t follow them, I can make it a high school essay. — Joshs

I see. Well then we're not going to have a very productive conversation. We are, at best, peers. You're not my teacher. If we disagree about sources, we disagree. It is no more my failure to understand them than it is yours, because you are no more an authority on their interpretation than I.

It seems best we leave it there.

You write as if handing in an undergraduate essay. I'm not particularly interested in how well you've understood the sources, I'm not grading you. I want to know why you find those positions persuasive (or not).

All you've given me above is that some sources say X and that you agree. I get nothing from that.

I would look at the facts and the opinions they have — ssu

Yes...and you'd judge those facts and opinions using what skill, that those sources themselves presumably lack?

Professor Joe Bloggs says X, you look at the "facts" and decide Prof Bloggs is talking nonsense. I'm asking what skill you think you possess which our Professor Bloggs lacked when he looked at "the facts" and reached a different conclusion to you.

Are you cleverer, less biased, more knowledgeable...? I'm just trying to establish what your special superpower is.

You have to check the sources — ssu

you have to be critical about them — ssu

understanding history and how the states operate — ssu

knowing how they operate and reading history of past events is very valuable — ssu

I've not presented a single argument here that isn't backed up by academics with relevant qualification in their fields.

So are you claiming that qualified academics lack critical skills you possess?

Are you claiming qualified academics lack knowledge you possess?

Are you claiming qualified academics lack a level of understanding you possess?

In other words, are you claiming that you surpass these experts in your critical skills, knowledge and understanding?

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis? — Jamal

At 1)

If something improves, e.g., the eradication of guinea worm disease, it happens in time, going from worse to better. The past condition is worse, closer to the beginning of a progressive development and thereby primitive. — Jamal

Judging whether something is an improvement is itself a time-constrained activity. New techniques have consequences which reach far into the future (think climate change), and so the very act of declaring something an 'improvement' involves two aspects..

a) the timescale over which the supporting evidence is collected
b) the confidence in the assessment of any future consequences.

Both are lacking in Pinker's assessment of 'progress'

We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt...

... We were mesmerised by the once-in-a-century scale of the emergency and succeeded only in making a crisis even worse. In short, we panicked. This was an epidemic crying out for a precision public health approach and it got the opposite. — Professor Woolhouse, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Edinburgh University, previously Scottish Covid-19 policy advisor

The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared — Member of UK SAGE - wishing, quite rightly, to remain anonymous talking to the Telegraph

implementation was often too harsh, too inflexible, too slow to adapt and too dismissive of basic rights...

... the balance between the costs and benefits of lockdowns swung towards costs long before governments were willing to lift them.

... Political calculation was never far from the surface of COVID-19 decisions. This had a negative effect on economic activity and national morale. Leaders routinely claimed to base policy on expert advice. It is true that some CHOs favoured harsher measures. But it became clear that experts (both within and outside government) often differed in their advice — Fault lines: An independent review into Australia’s response to COVID-19

No strong reason against [masking children] in corridors etc, and no very strong reasons for. ...not worth an argument — Chis Whitty, UK Chief Medical Officer in leaked Whatsapp message

In reality we haven’t found shielding easy or very effective first time round and I don’t think anyone else has either. — Patrick Vallance, the UK chief scientific adviser in leaked Whatsapp message

Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference — Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses

A large study in the UK and another that surveyed people internationally found that people with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection experienced greater rates of side effects after vaccination. Among 2000 people who completed an online survey after vaccination, those with a history of covid-19 were 56% more likely to experience a severe side effect that required hospital care.

Patrick Whelan, of UCLA, says the “sky high” antibodies after vaccination in people who were previously infected may have contributed to these systemic side effects. “Most people who were previously ill with covid-19 have antibodies against the spike protein. If they are subsequently vaccinated, those antibodies and the products of the vaccine can form what are called immune complexes,” he explains, which may get deposited in places like the joints, meninges, and even kidneys, creating symptoms.

Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells. “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.” — https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

Vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about... Regulators of the medical profession have censored public discussion about adverse events following immunisation, with threats to doctors not to make any public statements about anything that ‘might undermine the government’s vaccine rollout’ or risk suspension or loss of their registration — Dr. Kerryn Phelps, former chair of AMA

Since the pandemic began, there have been just over 30,000 excess deaths involving heart disease - on average over 230 additional deaths a week above expected heart disease death rates.
...
, Covid infections are no longer a driving force behind the excess heart disease death rate.

...significant and widespread disruption to heart care services has driven the ongoing surge in excess deaths involving heart disease in England. — British Heart Foundation

The COVID-19 pandemic has reversed years of global progress in tackling tuberculosis and for the first time in over a decade, TB deaths have increased, according to the World Health Organization’s 2021 Global TB report.

In 2020, more people died from TB, with far fewer people being diagnosed and treated or provided with TB preventive treatment compared with 2019, and overall spending on essential TB services falling.

The first challenge is disruption in access to TB services and a reduction in resources. In many countries, human, financial and other resources have been reallocated from tackling TB to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services.

The second is that people have struggled to seek care in the context of lockdowns. — World Health Organisation

...and in case anyone was thinking this was an unexpected side-effect...

Even temporary disruptions can cause long-term increases in TB incidence and mortality. If lockdown-related disruptions cause a temporary 50% reduction in TB transmission, we estimated that a 3-month suspension of TB services, followed by 10 months to restore to normal, would cause, over the next 5 years, an additional 1⋅19 million TB cases (Crl 1⋅06–1⋅33) and 361,000 TB deaths (CrI 333–394 thousand) in India, 24,700 (16,100–44,700) TB cases and 12,500 deaths (8.8–17.8 thousand) in Kenya, and 4,350 (826–6,540) cases and 1,340 deaths (815–1,980) in Ukraine. The principal driver of these adverse impacts is the accumulation of undetected TB during a lockdown. — The potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tuberculosis epidemic a modelling analysis - The Lancet

... does that give any clues as to who might now be too embarrassed to comment retrospectively on how we handled the pandemic?

The worldviews we erect to organize our sense-making define the nature and boundaries of what is ethically permissible or unjust. — Joshs

I think that's nonsense, and quite evidently so. Ethical judgements tend to involve quite different parts of the brain than might be involved in sense-making, and most precede any such activity by many years developmentally, and by many milliseconds in processing terms. I just don't see any evidence whatsoever to back up such a theory.

Ethics might change over time as group dynamics put different thinking patterns in positions of influence, and some of that change might coincidentally take place as developments in technology or science have an impact on the centres of power in any group, but it's a tangential influence at best, and not a directed one.

Notwithstanding all that, the point I was making still stands even under your preferred model. Scientific investigations which are currently considered unethical by any society (regardless of how they came to that judgement) are not conducted. If it were true that all scientific problem-solving was default associated with human progress, then all scientific investigation would be default morally acceptable. It isn't.

We clearly have other preferences which compete with the value of scientific problem-solving, thus refuting the notion that the two can be equated without loss.

I think that may have been true a few hundred years ago, and more, but Philosophy was in a different place then. Philosophical treatises contained musings on what would now be called everything from fundamental physics, to psychology, to social science. Any 'Philosopher' engaged in such discourse nowadays is just mouthing off without bothering to do the actual research sufficient to back up their claims and so very few are taken seriously. That leaves modern Philosophy very much engaged with far more niche subject matter than the deeply political issues of church, state and the fundamental nature of society that they used to be expounding on.

Small 'p' philosophy may be another matter, but that's mostly post hoc. I don't see much evidence of people rationally arriving at some belief system and then changing their political approach as a result. I do, however, see a lot of evidence of one's political position being justified, post hoc, by some philosophical rationalisation, in the face of a challenge to the position.

The pursuit of politics will, I think, forever be practised by the usual tools of group membership, obedience to authority, and disempowerment/disenfranchisement of opposition. Any philosophy accompanying that will be constructed as an afterthought, some window dressing to give more academic air to the basic act of repression.

the result of solving those problems must inevitably be progress.” — Joshs

... assumes the aim is merely to solve puzzles. What if the aim were to increase human welfare? In what sense does merely finding the solution to a puzzle guarantee progress? Not all scientific investigations are ethical, but their results would have solved problems, so if solving problems equates to progress then why do we shy away from unethical investigations?