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That’s a pretty low bar. I’m sure @Giltil can find some health official somewhere who (correctly) informed the public that the vaccine is safe and effective, without specifically mentioning that every treatment has some risks. Health officials are not in the habit of treating people like utter blithering idiots who are not already aware of that basic fact.
Although I am starting to think that maybe they should.
For a bit of context, here is a discussion of the message that RFK Jr. has been hammering home about the health benefits of drinking raw milk. I wonder if @Giltil believes he is adequately informing the public about the associated risks.
It appears it may be difficult for people to get the updated mRNA vaccine this year even if they want it and would clearly benefit from it. I find myself in this situation.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists releases its updated maternal vaccination guidelines:
tl;dr: Secretary Brainworms can go pound sand.
It is a low bar. But is it still high enough?
Depends. I can easily see @Giltil quote mining something like this from the ACOG recommendations I just linked:
“Looking closely at the full body of data clearly shows that the COVID-19 vaccines are not only completely safe for use during pregnancy but also protective both during pregnancy and after the infant is born,” said Mark Turrentine, MD, FACOG, one of the named authors of the practice advisory. “I know that my patients do all that they can to make decisions that will help them have a healthy baby, and choosing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is one decision that I encourage them all to make.”
Watch him latch on to the words “completely safe” and completely ignore the overall message.
Correct
If so, je suis desolé, Gil. I missed it. But it appears that your new goalposts aren’t much better.
Could you explain exactly what you find objectionable in the video you posted from Fauci? Is your expectation that, in ever single soundbite given by a health official on the COVID vaccine, they must mention the risks associated with it, regardless of the fact that those risks are extremely low?
Do you have the same concerns about the current Secretary of Health chugging shooters of raw milk without mentioning the very serious risks associated with this, and the fact that any health benefits are at best questionable?
So the risks didn’t get mentioned in puff pieces about Fauci and Pence getting vaccinated (the extremely short and edited video is part of the latter coverage).
This was what Fauci was saying a couple of weeks later:
Yes, @Giltil, Fauci was mentioning – and in fact highlighting side-effects, just not in every single interview, regardless of whether it was relevant in the context.
I looked up the full news conference video from December 20, 2020 based on what @Giltil posted. It’s about 20 minutes long during which Dr. Fauci speaks for less than 5 minutes.
The context of Dr. Fauci’s speech is mainly around the development process of the vaccine. He mentions clinical trials involved and that the process followed scientific rigour. He doesn’t get into all the specific details of such, but again he was only speaking for less than 5 minutes.
I found a subsequent interview with Dr. Fauci published December 29, 2020 (9 days later) where he gets into details of potential side effects. He highlights different types of potential side effects and how clinical trials were conducted to determine potential adverse effects of such side effects.
Dr. Fauci was definitely aware of potential side effects and there was information communicated by him about this.
I suppose this highlights that if one is getting their information via journalistic sound bites of brief speeches and ignoring other venues of information, I could see how someone might have the impression that experts weren’t warning people of potential side effects.
LOL, that’s it? That’s your attempt at substantiating how the health authorities “initially were hammering home a message that the vaccine is safe and effective, without mention of the risks”? That one statement by Fauci in a press conference where him and other health officials were publicly getting vaccinated?
I don’t see how one could come to that conclusion even then. One would have to be so biased against vaccines that they conveniently forget any information that contradicts their dogmatic belief.
Yes it is, and I would argue that it sets too low a bar to substantiate Gil’s claim that:
Rather, it merely substantiates that:
The initial message hammered home to us was that the mRNA vaccines were safe and effective, without mention of the risks in each and every mention of the vaccine (regardless of whether mentioning the risks was entirely appropriate in the context).
If Gil had initially made this latter claim (which would be the only one of these claims that this post would substantiate), I think it would be entirely likely that his comment would have been ignored as (i) setting a bar so low you could crawl over, (ii) setting an unreasonable level of expectation on the “health authorities”, and thus (iii) providing no basis for any serious discussion.
To substantiate the former claim, the claim that Gil actually made, I would suggest a higher bar is needed, e.g.:
Quotes, from a reasonably wide range of contexts, showing a reasonably pervasive pattern of failure to mention the risks.
Only two quotes, from the same narrow context (puff pieces about prominent officials getting vaccinated), quite simply does not cut it.
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