this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
1420 points (95.9% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
17 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Why would scientist groan at data confirming previous studies?
Because it's obvious to them that it's safe and yet, due to the idiots in the population, they still had to do a study to "prove" what they already knew.
Fact is, mRNA isn't actually new. It's been used as a treatment for some things for nearly two decades before COVID. The remarkable part of the COVID vaccine is the speed at which they were able to adapt the tech to the new threat and produce a viable non-sterilizing vaccine from it. That shouldn't imply that research into a COVID vaccine has stopped, there may be a better vaccine that's possible, and I'm sure someone is working on that and I thank them for their work. The fact is mRNA was proven to be safe more than a decade before COVID-19 was a thing.
The main issue that the public has with it is that mRNA as a treatment or vaccine is relatively unused. The diseases/disorders that have utilized mRNA for treatment aren't the most common, and unless you were presented with mRNA treatment options if you're in the small group of people with the diagnosis that has an mRNA treatment option, it would be entirely new; and that describes the vast majority of people.
The information about it is out there, but Facebook research says that this is "brand new experimental technology" that has unpredictable outcomes, creating FUD, which is entirely based on nothing, because it's not unpredictable and it's not experimental. It's true that it hasn't been used in this application yet (at the time), and that the COVID vaccine was the first to use the technology for that purpose, but it's hardly new/untested/experimental in any way, shape, or form. The doctors and researchers who developed the vaccine did their due diligence, and ran test groups before releasing the vaccine to the widespread population. This was done on an accelerated timeline than what is typical, but it was still done. They followed procedure. The only thing that could be argued that was missing was a long term study to show any lasting effects over years, which they simply didn't have time for; but all evidence from the existing use of mRNA for treatments indicates that's also going to result in no significant issues as well.
They did everything right and some portion of the population screamed bloody murder about it, meanwhile the delivery method was tried and tested, and already proven to be safe, yet they had to do yet another study to affirm what they already knew. For anyone who is aware of what medical R&D is doing and what standards they are held to, the fact that it was safe wasn't even in question, but because some Facebook "researchers" decided it wasn't with no evidence, there had to be additional and unnecessary work done to "prove" something that was already known to be true.
Hence, groan.