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"Trusting the Science" Cringe

"We trusted the science!" This is what I keep hearing when I watch videos made by vaccine victims' next of kin. I cringe every time. I have nothing but sympathy for little Maddie, now in a wheelchair after participating in one of the trials, and others like her. But science is a process, not a corporation, not a government committee, and not a product. It's done best dispassionately and without perverse incentives--not in the middle of a major panic. You need data to have science you can trust, and the data simply weren't there. Getting an experimental injection has no more to do with trusting the science than smoking on the advice of your doctor to lose weight or calm your nerves did back in the 50s. 

Ah, but the vaccines were tested! In fact, they're still in the middle of phase 3 trials, which aren't scheduled to end for another two years. Pfizer's trial was unblinded at six months--meaning there's no longer a control group that hasn't been vaccinated. Now, due to side effects that nobody saw coming because of the lack of data, there is a trial to study menstrual disruptions and testing to see if the Pfizer vaccine causes myocarditis. Again, you need data for science you can trust, and the safety data either aren't there yet or the experiment that would have yielded some data was strangled in the cradle.

But the vaccines are FDA approved! The FDA also approved 71 drugs between 2001 and 2010 that were withdrawn or got a safety warning after approval. That's almost a third of the drugs they approved, and the median time from approval to the first safety event was 4.2 years. That's years, not months. Drugs receiving accelerated approval were more likely to get a safety warning. So FDA approval hasn't proven to be a good standard for drug safety. In Nordic countries that are apparently a little more cautious, the Moderna vaccine has been halted for people under 30. 

At the risk of belaboring the point, you need data to do science. But the people yelling followthescience the loudest are the biggest deniers of data right in front of us: VAERS data on vaccine deaths and injuries, natural immunity, waning efficacy, low risk of serious cases in children, and rising COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths even as more and more people are vaccinated. Following the science means looking at data whether it supports your cherished beliefs or not.

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