While complex and inefficient government administration can be a serious problem, I think that citing that as an important factor in delaying production of the mRNA vaccines is factually questionable. I realize that this issue is somewhat away from Ferguson’s main point, but I write because I feel there is a trend, especially from a branch of the US Republican party, to discredit a remarkable scientific achievement, and to attribute such success as there may have been exclusively to industry. Third, the US epidemic in 1957 ended basically independently of the vaccine.įourth, while a large number of doses were manufactured in 1957, it was nowhere near sufficient to vaccinate the whole population. Second, the 1957 vaccine was only marginally effective, in contrast to the ~95% efficacy of the current mRNA vaccines. In contrast, today’s mRNA vaccines were entirely novel, produced against a new virus. Flu is a recurrent disease with quite predictable antigenic shifts once a technique has been developed (which it had ten years earlier), it’s simply a matter of applying exactly the same approach to the new strain. However, while it is perhaps arguable that one reason for this apparent “remarkable success” compared to Trump’s “Operation WarpSpeed” was lack of bureaucracy, the main factors were not related to that.įirst, the 1957 vaccine was produced according to well-known and well-understood principles. Indeed there was a serious flu epidemic in 1957-58, and indeed we produced a vaccine very quickly. I write because Niall made a claim during the conversation that I consider dangerously misleading. I have long been an avid follower, and I enjoyed your conversation with Niall Ferguson. Meanwhile, a reader looks back to last week’s episode: For three clips of my conversation with Charles - on the different career choices that high-IQ women often make on the “unearned gift” of those with high IQs and how IQ is irrelevant to the human worth, dignity, and essential equality of all people - head over to our YouTube page. You can listen to the episode right away in the audio player above (or click the dropdown menu to add the Dishcast to your podcast feed). Instead, I wanted to discuss his last book which received almost no attention, Human Diversity. Charles has a new - and probably explosive - book coming out soon, Facing Reality.
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