Equal Amount Of Good And Bad In Everything

Are you referring to Covid vaccines? If so, I am not here to necessarily take up for them or attack them. I am in no way a person that thinks they should be mandated upon people that do not want it.

Having worked in pharma in the past, I have a pretty good feel for the industry and the meaning and implication of various studies. The only promise that pharma and more specifically the FDA makes about a drug is that it is more effective than placebo and that it is acceptably safe. From that perspective, the vaccines are successful. Claims of being 93% effective were solely based on the length of the study period and were by no means meant to be taken into infinity (especially with a rapidly mutating virus). Thats not to say that a lot of people did not misrepresent this data, but that misrepresentation was not necessarily pharma or the FDA. The bulk of the misrepresentation was from people in the government pushing for a mandate.

 

The product does not prevent contracting or spreading covid. They got a sweet government contract and even scored a "use at your own risk" status so that any harmful side effects does not cut into their profits.

In some countries, government regulates pharma. In the US, big pharma regulates government.

 

But this does not refute what I had just said. Efficacy has several different endpoints. Preventing infection is one, but so is preventing hospitalizations. Since the virus has mutated, preventing infections has waned significantly, but preventing hospitalizations has held up pretty well. On both endpoints the still surpass placebo. This makes the drugs successful and worthwhile.

What country are you claiming has handled the Covid vaccines approval correctly? What country are you claiming where the FDA regulates pharma as opposed to what you claim exists in the US? In my experience, the US FDA is one of the bigger pain in the a** FDA's.. I am not aware of an FDA that is more stringent than the US, but I am willing to hear you out if you have evidence to the contrary. There are isolated examples of various FDA's that will hold out approval when others have approved on specific drugs, but not to the point where one is consistently more stringent than the US.

 

'Equal' and 'everything' are too abdolute to be realistic. Surely most good has a downside and most bad has some silver lining. But most things are more one or the other, and surely some things are all one or or the other.

 

The risk of hospitalization for healthy people and children is close to zero. The heavy handed tactics used to push this product were dishonest and unreasonable. If anything, the elderly and frail may benefit.

I realize the bar is low for the rubber stamp to come down and deem a product "safe and effective". I know 2 healthy people that can barely get out of bed since taking this product. They feel extremely painful electric shock sensations in their face, hands and feet. Trigeminal Neuralgia is the diagnosis.

Do you feel that healthy people and children should be compelled to consume this product?

 

As I said, I am not here to take up for the government's role in pushing the vaccine on the American public. I oppose their heavy handed tactics as well. That is not my argument.

 

Fair enough.

 

I guess anything is possible, but what would be the point of having something like that around?

 

You support trump and he's evil. Why do you support evil?

 

I don't know where you are but from where I sit, my situation is considerably better than that. I understand what you are saying, but in extreme times, the herd has a tendency to get caught up in extreme narratives, as well.

Life is still pretty damn good for most.

 

The idea is that bad is made by good, that one cannot exist without the other. Therefore x amount of good produces x amount of bad [given enough time for it to play-out].

 

To play devil's advocate, why does half the country like him so much? Are they evil, as well?

 

Dumb and dumber was a huge hit. The white nationalist movement, the KKK, the US Nazi party, and similar groups have needed a leader for many years. And people willing to follow trump will choose anything he says over what actual experts say, even about subjects like virology. Does trump really need to be explained? It is a cult that appeals to the evil and ignorant alike.

Were all the people who committed suicide for Jim Jones evil? Of course not. Were all the people who loved Hitler evil? No, they just believed everything he said. Hitler rallies looked very much like trump rallies.

 

So you believe that he has fooled 100M people? Interesting. Is there a politician that you like?

 

post deleted.

 

perhaps the best comment possible in a thread extolling the metaphysical conservation of moral neutrality in the cosmos.

 

Interesting way to look at it.

If people could just take a step back and consider the whole [go right hemisphere], I believe they would find that attempting to take sides [excepting matter of morality] is a tremendous waste of time and energy. As a purely practical matter [even if one could understand the complexity of reality], who are we to judge? Most of our species has a very difficult time performing very simple tasks laid out in a step-wise fashion. Imagine attempting to take into consideration every damn thing? Seems like most would never be able to get out of bed in the morning.

 

It isn't half or even half of half. It's a small but VERY vociferous minority. You have to understand that a good part of Trump's "appeal" is due to the natural desire of people to pay attention to the outlandish and to give a certain grudging respect to someone who appears decisive and strong vs people who are careful and measured. When you couple this with Trump's tendency to implicitly tell his followers they are better than everyone else his appeal is obvious

 

We do?? We build great bridges, very tall buildings and we're planning on returning to the Moon in a few years. Seems to me we generally do okay. (We could do a LOT better, as Periclean Athens proves, but baby steps)

 

I am not trying to be cute here, instead, I am truly interested in understanding your perspective. Can you give me an example of what you refer to above? And I do not believe that his appeal is obvious at all. Everybody who has observed him over the years knows he is what is [personality-wise], but this still doesn't explain why so many people look to him for leadership on so many issues.

 

When you were a little kid, did you ever watch an ant colony do its thing? Or any other species for that matter. Human life is decidedly different than the life lived by the rest of our planetary co-inhabitants. We appear to spend a great deal of our time and energy creating our own fictitious reality whilst other creatures are doing what they must to survive.

Imagine if humanity spent just one percent more time on productive endeavors instead of doing worthless stuff like debating this subject matter? Can you imagine a couple of dung-beetles consumed by a discussion on nuanced poop selection? Even if they do, it doesn't seem to detract from their productivity.

Whereas building a skyscraper or going to the moon is certainly an achievement, it appears to me that this time and treasure might be spent in other ways [such as giving it back to those who earned it in the first place].

 

IMO his appeal is obvious from the tens of thousands, some driving hundreds of miles, at each of his stops. Nothing like a sold out stadium to know the fans like their team. They look to him for leadership because of his evident leadership abilities and his support and capability in pursuing policies the public wants, not because of his personality.

 

If only....

 

Fex refer to any of his speeches on Immigrants. He says terrible things about them with little to no backing but the implication that all of his listeners are superior to immigrants just because they were lucky enough to be born here is very clear. Mind, this idea is nowhere explicitly expressed, Trump is careful not to do that but the implication is just about unmistakable to almost anyone. This practice extends to most other minorities and/or anyone who doesn't support him. The message is that anyone who supports him is a special person, and a cut above the many inferiors who are the real cause of all our difficulties. Now all pols do this, but only to a small extent. It is almost Trump's entire stock in trade and it is particularly dependent on his attacking anyone who doesn't support him

 

I wouldn't disagree but what I've found most interesting is that Trump made his fortune in perhaps the most corrupted aspect of this economy...real estate...where so many dys-functional institutions converge [talk about intersectionality!], housing, finance, taxes, and perhaps most important of all, the ability to participate in the American dream [affordable home ownership].

Not that all the other issues are not critical [de-globalization, immigration, proper defense posture, etc.], but he has mega-profited from the dys-function that allowed much of what transpired over the past fifty years to come down. And although he is certainly better than career politicians like the Clinton's, Bush's, and Biden, he seems to be wanting to save a system that needs a serious and fundamental overhaul.