Peter Todd @pete@petertodd.org

@121 So sounds to me like it's a case of corruption and/or a lapse in ethics. The company had spent $2 billion on development, and it had taken 20 years. That happens to be around the time that patents expire, so I wouldn't be surprised if they needed the vaccine deployed to have a chance at making their money back.

I think the takeaway here is that the WHO probably has some rather unethical people working for them.

@121 In the areas where Dengue Fever is common - where the vaccine was tested - about 80% to 90% of the population have already been infected before. The trials were just 30,000, so it would have been tested on only 1,500 to 3,000 people who hadn't been infected.

Now, this issue was 100% forseeable: it's been known for a *long* time that Dengue Fever works this way. And according to the article, even with the reduced #'s, the potential issue was clear in the data.

But, easy to gloss over...

It's not hard to use that vaccine safely either: just give it to people who have already been infected. Then it does a perfectly good job of reducing the risk from further infections. That's exactly how the US now uses it.

I'm amazed that the WHO wouldn't recommend the obvious in favor of getting more vaccines in more arms, even though they knew a selective approach would save more lives. Smells like corruption frankly.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched-vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions

On a botched Dengue Fever vaccine, that actually _increased_ your risk of hospitalization/death by about 45% if you hadn't contracted Dengue Fever before.

The craziest thing is this _was_ known, but the WHO recommended all children be given the vaccine anyway, regardless of infection status.

"'No, you can't give a vaccine to a perfectly normal, healthy person and then put them at an increased risk for the rest of their lives' Halstead says. "You can't do that.""

@CalebCarr @NormieNorm @verretor I can like your toots.

I can't however do that when any six year olds comedians are present, least I get inundated with terrible low-brow humor.

@nvk Not gonna lie, I just became a lot more likely to buy one.

@NormieNorm @CalebCarr @verretor I should get around to upgrading my Mastodon software to see if it goes away... I've been meaning to change the hosting anyway.

@CalebCarr @verretor This is apparently a bug; I haven't blocked you. Others have had it as well.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20210323-where-people-go-to-bars-to-drink-milk

http://scripts.farmradio.fm/radio-resource-packs/package-89/breeding-cows-in-a-zero-grazing-system-can-be-a-dual-environmental-solution/

So turns out that Rwanda has been discouraging traditional cattle grazing in favor of intensive factory farming because "climate change".

Basically, trading off a bit of methane emissions - which are _not_ a permanent problem - for increased long-term, permanent, emissions from all the industrial infrastructure required for intensive farming.

This smells more like corporate corruption than environmentalism...

https://archive.is/G9RTg

"AstraZeneca is manufacturing an epic failure around its COVID-19 vaccine"

This article makes it sound like we have a perfectly safe and effective vaccine, and all the issues are just bumbling incompetent management...

You expect the public to believe that? Because the alternative is a much simpler story: AstraZeneca management are competent. But the vaccine has safety problems, hasn't work as well as expected, and they're trying their best to spin that positively.

@121 Bingo!

Now, can you figure out how they made it all look correct?

@verretor Sure, and they have given people fake injections for the purpose of filming. But point is, that's not a _ conspiracy_. The people who they're doing this too very likely got vaccinated for real off camera. It's just an idiotic bit of PR theater. _That's_ what's worth making fun of.

@verretor I think that's a pretty dumb class of conspiracy theory. If authorities were actually faking vaccinations, they'd just give people 100% real injections of harmless saline. It's impossible to know for sure if those vaccinations are real. So it's not worth speculating about very dumb ways of faking them.

https://www.piratewires.com/p/mall-cops-and-messiahs

"A whole nation of writers over at Vox dot who gives a shit spent the last decade writing niche “everyone is evil” hot takes under the delusion that such things were popular. But they were never popular. They were just impossible to look away from."

"I am probably always going to click on the latest, unhinged “We Need to Talk About Spider-Man” hot take. But I will die before I pay [Vox] ten dollars a month."

@emzy Now, see if you can figure out why that setup looks convincing. What is the geometry of the whole scene that makes it work?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJb9RnAVDuE

Pretty sure I figured out how this works from the video - see if you can too!

@average_random_joe @alex Plants have nothing to do with that problem. Which is increasingly about China anyway.

@average_random_joe @alex The Sahara greening could really screw over the Amazon: the latter gets enormous amounts of nutrients from dust blown in from the former. More greenery will reduce dust erosion.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants/