Originally Posted by nffc

I don't agree with them but until the facts are actually known a lot of these theories (and the conventional argument) are simply that. If it is not proven either way that the vaccines cause these issues, and to be fair we don't know the effects of the vaccines after 2 years or more anyway because we've only been issuing them that long, we can't say whether they are overall safe or not. I'm sure people were saying to pregnant women that taking thalidomide was all safe until their kids were popping out with birth defects and then they realised the issue. Needless to say the vaccines have done the primary intended job of stopping people dying when they get covid, or at least reducing the likelihood of this, the milder omicron lineage is also an important factor here. Whether in 5-10 years they have caused another problem couldn't have been foreseen at the time, nor could we have waited to see that, and I guess the health services will have to address that if it's possible when that does happen.


More concerning to me is not this particular issue but the slightly related one in that SM is allowing a lot of people who may well be highly qualified but not necessarily experts on viruses or epidemiology to have a platform to put their own personal views forward under the general pretext of "I'm a scientist and I say this". A guy called Kit Yates, who is a professor of Pure Mathematics at Bristol, was using his SM to question why the gov isn't mandating or putting in stronger messaging about face masks again. Now if he was talking about calculus or something I'd agree he was probably an authority and he is probably capable of mathematical modelling in various scenarios but in terms of measures to mitigate a virus, where are his credentials there? He's probably left school with A-levels in Maths, FM and Physics or another science and then read maths at uni and taken his PhD remaining with it. Where's his expertise in epidemiology or virology as opposed to someone like Jonathan Van Tam or Jenny Harries? This is the thing with these IndySage types, whilst they are clearly intelligent people and entitled to their viewpoints without taking into context who they are and their backgrounds you don't know really how informed they are on the actual subject. Though they are there to provide expertise in the field they know about, so there is clearly a requirement for maths people to be there. It reminds me a bit of the scene in Chernobyl where Legasov was telling Scherbina they needed to evacuate and he was like "stick to putting out the fire", as though it wasn't ultimately his decision - though you could say that was taken into account at a different level as they ultimately agreed it was the right thing to do. But on the contrary we don't need masks now and Yates should keep that as a personal opinion not transmitted in any official capacity IMO