Lem wrote: ↑Fri Feb 05, 2021 6:37 pm
1) Separation of church and state, and 2) fair unbiased access are concepts that are "anti-science"? Wow.
Well, that does explain your position.
Obviously "science" can only speak to the goal, so what do you think the goal of the vaccinations is? What do you think it should be?
As I've said, I understand the goal of the vaccinations to be to
end the deaths and hospitalizations from Covid-19 as soon as possible. If you understand it to be something different, then obviously we're going to disagree on what the best methodology is; we're working towards different goals. And that's fine.
So, having clarified what my understanding of the goal is, all other considerations are secondary to that. "Church and state"? Irrelevant. "Unfairness" and "bias"? Absolutely!
For example, if I were the Vaccine Czar for California, and my model showed that we were looking at eight weeks for distribution of vaccines to vulnerable populations, and the Scientologists or Catholics or Jews came to me and showed they had the infrastructure in place to distribute the vaccines to vulnerable populations in four weeks, but their plan would have them vaccinate
their most vulnerable first, I would make that deal in a heartbeat. I might get pilloried for it, but cutting four weeks off the vaccine distribution time could save thousands of lives. Sounds good to me.
Fair and unbiased access? Not at all. Those concepts are meaningless if the goal is to end hospitalizations and deaths as soon as possible (they actually work counter to the goal by slowing things down). I would be totally biased towards getting the vaccines to the most vulnerable first, and those most likely to spread it second, in any way possible. There would be
massive bias, and the people who desperately want a vaccine but are in low risk groups would be unfairly excluded. And there would be as little "randomness" as possible, because that would slow things down. Once we figured out who should get the vaccines, speed, not fairness or randomness, would be the focus. (Also, vaccines would be administered 24 hours a day until they were gone).
People would complain about the
unfairness and bias, but thousands of lives could be saved that would otherwise have died. I would get tons of heat for it by anti-science people who want to extend the pandemic in the name of fairness, but I'd be okay with that. When supplies are limited,
any decision is "unfair", so trying to find "fairness" is impossible. Resorting to "random" appearing distribution of scarce but vital resources is just a lame attempt from those in charge to try and hide the unfairness and deflect their responsibility (and fool the people).