Let’s get this straight, shall we? Vaccines kill people. No, really - vaccines will kill some they are given to. We know this is true. It is always true. Vaccines kill.
It is also true that non-vaccines kill. This is also, equally, true.
The question is whether a specific vaccine kills more than the non-vaccine option would do. At which point we all have to become those Philosopher Kings that Bentham’s Panopticon is all about and decide for everyone else. Which is, you know, a bit of a problem.
The issue here is simply that if you do anything to 67 million people then some of them will die. Keep that in mind as we look at this news story:
AstraZeneca has admitted for the first time in court documents that its Covid vaccine can cause a rare side effect, in an apparent about-turn that could pave the way for a multi-million pound legal payout.
AstraZeneca, just like the government and any and every rational (or perhaps we should amend that to rational and informed) person knows that there will be rare side effects from a vaccine. Side effects that will kill some people.
The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in a class action over claims that its vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford, caused death and serious injury in dozens of cases.
Probably. Meh.
Lawyers argue the vaccine produced a side effect which has had a devastating effect on a small number of families.
Don’t doubt it in the slightest.
Meh.
AstraZeneca is contesting the claims but has accepted, in a legal document submitted to the High Court in February, that its Covid vaccine “can, in very rare cases, cause TTS”.
TTS – which stands for Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome – causes people to have blood clots and a low blood platelet count.
Fifty-one cases have been lodged in the High Court, with victims and grieving relatives seeking damages estimated to be worth up to £100 million.
Again, don’t doubt that it could be true. But still the correct reaction is that “Meh”.
It could lead to payouts if the drug firm accepts that the vaccine was the cause of serious illness and death in specific legal cases. The Government has pledged to underwrite AstraZeneca’s legal bills.
Hmm, that’s a bit more complex. And I’m not going to try to unravel it here - unlike many I try to explain what I know and not to explain what I don’t. My suspicion is that the government has pledged to underwrite any damages that might be claimed against AstraZeneca, not just legal bills.
The reason?
The Vaccine Damage Payment in the UK. VISP in Canada. National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in the US. Similar things exist everywhere sensible.
The entire point of a vaccine is that we give it to people not, currently, suffering from a disease. They therefore have no immediate risk of injury from the disease. But, as above, doing anything to 67 million people means that some of them will die. No, really. Injecting 67 million with sterile water will kill some. Asking them all to walk up stairs will kill some. Asking 67 million to face France and say “Bugger Off Garlic Eaters” will kill some - and it won’t just be the French falling over from the halitosis of NHS teeth either.
So, if they’re to be responsible for everything bad that comes from a vaccine then no one will make vaccines. Which is why governments - well, the sensible ones - have those vaccine compensation funds. We need lots of people to take vaccines. The vaccines are going to kill some, injure more, we can’t dump the damages on the vaccine makers because there will at this point be no vaccine makers and so government - us all, our wallets - take the strain.
And we really, really, need vaccines. Have a look around you. Just anywhere in public, look at the children around you. Before vaccines half of those would die before puberty. Now, yes, it’s not all about vaccines, drains have helped and so on. But really - 25% of children died in their first year. Another 25% between then and puberty. And it was, largely enough, those infectious diseases of childhood that did it. Measles, rubella, scarlet fever, pertussis, polio and on and on through the lists. All of which have been beaten by vaccines.
Those vaccines which kill some who take them. And save millions more for everyone having taken them.
Which does bring us back to Bentham and that Panopticon State. The greatest good of the greatest number. The calculation is that the one in a million (it’s, around and about, that) that gets entirely fucked over by a vaccine is worth that other 999,999 protected by it. From something between likely to even odds to kill them.
The dead? Tough shit, Sonny. You’ve just got to suck it up for society. It’s your babbie, your husband? Tough shit. We’ll all chip in for the direct medical costs, sure, but the decision to go ahead with the vaccines? Given that it’s odds on - after this couple of generations of general vaccination - that you only exist because of vaccines not killing you or your forbears yep, suck it up.
This is, umm, somewhat less than empathic - but also true.
This is also nothing to do with the fruit loops shrieking about autism, nor those selfish, selfish, bastards insisting that everyone else should have them to protect their little babbie but don’t inject mine!*
It’s very simple calculation of the public good. In both senses - what’s good for the public and also that economists’ public good, something non-rivalrous and non-excludable like herd immunity.
One in a million will die if we do, 500,000 in one million will if we don’t. The Trolley Problem has never been so simple.
Which is why we generally don’t allow legal cases about vaccine damages and the government gives immunity to vaccine manufacturers for their costs even if such cases are allowed.
Because we know that vaccines kill people. What, you think we’re all stupid or something?
Now, whether there even should have been a covid vaccine, whether we should have even worried about it all at all, that’s all another and entirely different matter. But once vaccines then it does simply have to roll out as above.
Yes, we know vaccines kill people. Happened to you and yours? Where do we send the flowers?
*There are indeed the immune compromised who should not, cannot, take a vaccine. Which is why those refusing to vaccinate their little darlins and thereby achieve herd immunity are such selfish, selfish, bastards.
Yes, it must be right that when the societal reward to individual risk ratio for a medical treatment is massively weighted towards the former then State indemnity is necessary to compensate the few unlucky ones and their families. So much so obvious.
However, it is also necessary to protect against the possibility of moral hazard analogous to the “too big to fail” banking problem; if the pharmaceutical company relaxes its diligence, or worse is dishonest in its presentation of the risks of any treatment, then it should forfeit its indemnity and the corporate veil that protects its directors should be ripped away. Indemnity doesn’t justify complacency.
And, as a general principle and not apropos any particular historical treatment, no government should compound its indemnity risk by pushing any treatment on people where the individual risk reward ratio is negligible to non existent, still less ever apply coercive tactics.
Hi, I get and agree with the logic, but I think you swerve a couple of questions regarding the Covid vaccine. There are both private and social costs, and there are opportunity costs of different strategies. And there's informed consent. The bigger scandal about Covid isn't the liability for harm, it's the fact we jabbed a bunch of young people under intense psychological and political pressure with disregard for that harm.
It's one thing when private cost/benefit is small but positive e.g., for MMR. It's another when it's not known. And still another if you know it's actually negative (albeit small). With Covid, for healthy younger adults and healthy children, it was known - because the private benefit of "avoiding infection" was barely measurable - that it was privately better not to be jabbed.
The social benefit was, as becomes increasingly clear, known to be pretty small anyway. The efficacy of the vaccine in preventing infection wasn't a criteria for rollout; it was soon clear that infection resistance was fleeting at the individual level, so quickly that the societal infection resistance was not substantially transformed by the vaccine.
Opportunity cost was essentially the Great Barrington route. Getting infected was soon shown, despite misinformation, to be as good as, or better, than the vaccine at durable infection resistance.
we also need to take into account the violation of strictly informed consent. Psyops and illiberal measures to enforce vaccine uptake, plus failing to inform the young of the costs and benefits to themselves...have onward implications for vaccine uptake and societal trust. Against whatever social benefit, if any, came from Covid vaccines (over and above those whose private benefit justified getting jabbed i.e., the elderly), we have to set the risk of lower vaccine uptake for MMR and all the rest in future. Because the end has been inflated and used to justify the means.