• PeepinGoodArgs
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    8 months ago

    Trump actually did a lot of what he said he’d do. He was incredibly effective. This isn’t praise for him. I’m just saying, MAGA mostly agrees with you, but see an archon of action in Trump.

    • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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      8 months ago

      That’s actually not how most maga people feel as far as I can tell. Trump’s Twitter feed and candidacy compared to Trump’s government were quite different. As president he did maybe too good of a job keeping his hands off of things. Considering the massive riots during a good chunk of his presidency, many conservatives including maga conservatives wanted him to be a little bit more like the fascist that the left pretends he was instead of the 90s Democrat he actually was.

      There’s actually quite a bit of criticism of trump from his supporters. He passed terrible budgets, he didn’t pardon Assange or Snowden or the j6 protesters, he put swamp monsters like John Bolton into positions of power when they should have been put into positions of prison cells or at least unemployment lines, he went along with covid mandates, and project warp speed that resulted in the untested experimental vaccines being mandated to countless people around the world was his idea.

      People talk about the supreme Court, but that’s turtle man McConnell’s crowning achievement, not Trump’s.

      • Shanedino@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You are acting like the vaccines were a bad thing. Also, especially if you think of the first wave of vaccines that went to at risk groups as field trials, they were very much tested. The fact that trump didn’t support the vaccines publicly and push his constituents at the very least to use them is a large mark against him.

        • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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          8 months ago

          Do you think that if you put 9 women who arent pregnant together then you can make a baby in 1 months, and if you put 275 women who aren’t pregnant together that you can make a baby in a day?

          I would say you can’t do that, it takes 9 months to make a baby even if you put 1000 women who aren’t pregnant on the job.

          The same way, you can’t do long-term testing without a long term. That’s one of the reasons why when Trump originally started project warp speed everyone told him that it was absolutely impossible to create a vaccine in that period of time, because you still needed to test it. And they didn’t, not in the long term.

          Now I took the untested experimental vaccine before it was mandated that I shall take it or else lose my job. I took it because I feel like it was the right thing to do, but unlike the establishment that lied to everyone by claiming they knew everything about the long-term effectiveness and safety of the drugs, I went into it understanding it was ultimately a gamble. It was a gamble that I won on the safety front, I’m just fine. But it was a gamble I lost on the effectiveness front, I ended up getting covid anyway not long after I and 85% of people in my country took the vaccine.

          Trump was never against the vaccines and always advocated that his supporters take them. Of course he wasn’t against them, it was one of his achievements as president. Whatever you think of the vaccines, if it wasn’t for his policy initiative project warp speed they never would have been developed as quickly as they were. He openly told people to get vaccinated. The problem is that most people don’t actually know anything about Donald trump, they only know what the latest rage bait article says. It’s really sad watching people who claim to be free thinkers just doing whatever they’re told by the Teevee.

          https://youtu.be/hSfeCqKty9o?si=hUY1sSFd2ztuIQx2

          • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldOP
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            8 months ago

            Can you share the testing schedules for long-term testing which were skipped? I’ve asked this every person that I’ve seen share your position, but I’ve never gotten an answer. Somehow, everyone knows that long-term testing must mean more than the tests that were done, but nobody can tell me how long it has to be.

            Any kind of official source is fine.

            • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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              8 months ago

              There are typically 3-4 phases of testing for vaccines.

              Phase 1: Small groups of people (20 to 100) receive the trial vaccine. This phase gathers information on the vaccine’s safety, identifies side effects, and studies how well the vaccine works to cause an immune response.

              Phase 2: The clinical trial expands to hundreds (100-300) of trial participants who have characteristics (such as age and physical health) similar to those for whom the vaccine is intended.

              Phase 3: The vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety.

              Phase 4 (if applicable): Ongoing studies after approval, designed to monitor the effectiveness of the approved vaccine and detect any side effects not identified in the clinical trial.

              The Emergency Authorization from the FDA allows the use of unapproved drugs in the case of emergencies. the 4 vaccines to be used starting in late 2020 before Phase 1/2 trials were complete for Moderna and before Phase 3 trials were complete for Pfizer/Biontech, Astrazeneca, and Johnson&Johnson.

              Phase 3 trials would be completed in late 2022, by which time many covid restrictions and mandates were already dropped and a majority of many populations had already been vaccinated by the time the normal required testing was completed.

              https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-319.pdf (Figure 8)

              https://www.fda.gov/media/144636/download

              I can’t argue against the idea that we were in a situation where we needed something fast so decisive action needed to be taken, but we can see some of the effects of the fast tracking. First, the AstraZeneca vaccine (which I don’t think was accepted under the Emergency Authorization in the US) was found to have a higher risk of blood clots than the others (Phase 3 testing of that particular vaccine lasted until early 2023) so was restricted for use in places like England and Canada where it was accepted for use. As well, because testing was fast tracked, politicians were out there making false claims about the effectiveness of the vaccines. If the vaccines were really as highly effective as touted, then covid should have gone extinct in populations that were fully vaccinated, but that didn’t happen (and the counterpoint to that was that the virus mutated and so the vaccine wasn’t for those viruses, but it doesn’t particularly matter – if it doesn’t prevent covid it doesn’t prevent covid). As well, because of the limited data set due to fast tracked testing, it wasn’t known until later that boosters would be required to maintain efficacy after a certain point.

              https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-jcvi-statement-7-may-2021/use-of-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-azd1222-vaccine-updated-jcvi-statement-7-may-2021

              In the United States, the Johnson&Johnson vaccine was first accepted under the emergency use authorization, but later had its use restricted, and then later fully revoked as it became obvious there were potential issues with blood clots:

              https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/health/fda-johnson-johnson-vaccine-eua/index.html

              https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-limits-use-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-certain-individuals

              https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine-end/index.html

              https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/janssen/index.html

              The US government and the CDC was recommending that pregnant women get the vaccine in April of 2021, over a year before phase 3 testing was completed. That really set off alarm bells for me because typically pregnant women are excluded from medical trials because of the ethical implications of potentially harming a baby in the womb. Thalidomide is a famous example where a drug was approved (not in America but in many other jurisdictions – For her role in preventing the approval of thalidomide in the U.S., President John F. Kennedy presented Frances Kelsey with the highest award for civilian federal workers, the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service medal.) and it turned out to have unexpected side-effects on unborn children. Given all this, that was a potential risk and I think a lot of pregnant women didn’t have the facts required to make a good decision.

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbdoXen3AR8

              https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-resources/division-pediatric-and-maternal-health-clinical-trials-pregnant-women

              https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-pregnancy-idUSKCN24W1NZ

              At the end of the day, while COVID vaccine skeptics predicted absolutely genocidal consequences for rushing the development of the vaccines, the reality is that the risks paid off. There are some side effects from the vaccines no doubt, but overall we were able to get society back on track significantly before the standard testing regime was completed. The only thing for me is that the government was not being honest to the people about the fact that it was a risk. In my case, I took the vaccine knowing there was a risk because I had a duty to my family to keep my workplace going so I could continue to support them, but some people took it without being properly informed as to the potential risks or the fact that the vaccines were operating under an emergency authorization and testing was not completed.

              • FooBarrington@lemmy.worldOP
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                8 months ago

                Thank you for the links. I understand your point, though I still question which parts of which phase were skipped - there is a big difference between “XYZ wasn’t done” and “XYZ was in the process of being done, and preliminary results were analysed”, which seems to be the case for the trial phases.

                • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
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                  8 months ago

                  By definition, anything allowed by an emergency authorization isn’t fully approved. Whether you define testing that won’t be completed for another 2 years as “skipped” or just “not complete” is irrelevant – it’s still an untested experimental drug or it wouldn’t require an emergency authorization.

                  The one thing skipped is the progressive nature of the testing. Typically, phase 1 justifies phase 2 testing, and phase 2 justifies phase 3 testing. Under project Warp speed, this progression was largely bypassed so that different phases of testing could overlap.

                  Phase 3 testing wasn’t even remotely close to being done by the time of the emergency use authorization. Phase 1 and 2 testing was only just done by the time of the emergency use authorization. The testing wasn’t done yet, and wouldn’t be complete for years. It wouldn’t be done until after the pandemic was declared over. It doesn’t matter if it was skipped or not, it wasn’t completed.

                  The fact that two of the four major vaccines ended up being pulled off the market because they were unsafe should be definitive proof of my point. The testing wasn’t done, and so these potential risks weren’t caught during testing, and so dangerous products were put out to market, and after it was discovered those products had their emergency use authorization rescinded.