Interesting Links for 10-12-2020

[andrewducker]

Lost Muppet Christmas Carol song rediscovered

(tags:muppets movies Disney Christmas )

Covid in Scotland: Lockdown nearly eliminated it, but the second wave was reignited by summer holidays

(tags:pandemic Scotland holidays OhForFucksSake )

"A damn stupid thing to do"—the origins of the C programming language

(tags:programming history computers )

Looks like one in every few thousand people is allergic to the Covid vaccine

(tags:pandemic vaccine allergies )

Tyrannosaurs probably sounded like geese

(tags:birds dinosaurs sound )

Five reasons why the "Nordic Model" is a terrible approach to sex worker legislation

(tags:sexwork law )

Top 10 student and graduate design projects of 2020

(tags:design architecture )

I don't usually talk about new battery technology, but this one looks like it might actually happen

(tags:batteries technology )

British public now supports proportional representation 42% - 33%

(tags:voting reform polls )

Nicolas Cage To Host 'History Of Swear Words' At Netflix

(tags:niccage swearing Netflix )

Some more info on the Pfizer vaccine and its safety and efficacy

(tags:vaccine safety )

Comments

[andrewducker]

The disease kills. And in far, far higher numbers.

[claudeb]

Too bad you can't put those numbers into balance because we're talking human lives. And what about the much bigger cost of people losing their confidence in vaccines, when it's already tenuous to begin with?

[andrewducker]

We weigh up people's lives all the time! It's part of running any healthcare system!

[claudeb]

No, you don't. You help as many people as you can, as much as you can, no matter who they are. You don't do math with lives. Not ever, regardless of circumstances.

[andrewducker]

That's not how health systems work. We have limited resourced, and we weigh up how to help the most people possible, given those resources.

[anna_wing]

Governments, societies and individuals do the maths with lives all the time. Wants are infinite, resources are finite, aespecially in the health-care context. Your health care authorities are making decisions all the time as to how to assign them, ideally for maximum overall social benefit, rather than say, for individual private profit.

One hopes that the WHO will approve a range of vaccines, so you might have a choice of different ones eventually. I believe some of the Chinese ones are made by traditional vaccine technology - denatured or killed vaccines made in eggs, that sort of thing, so there wouldn't be the additional element of novel technology, if that is your principal concern.