Posted on 10/20/2020 10:02:18 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Of course “ethical heartburn” sounds like a good reason to avoid it... until they send out a vaccine that’s never been tested on humans so functionally the first million people to get it are the challenge test.
Thats why numbers are better than percentages. Percentages can be misleading. 20% of those who died are in the younger age group. That does NOT mean that young people have a 20% chance of dying if they get COVID. To make simple math lets approximate the totals as 8 million cases and 250,000 deaths. This means that there have been 200,000 deaths in the old age group and 50,000 in the young age group. Almost all of the case total is young, lets say 7 million. That would indicate a CFR among the young group of <1%. It would indicate a CFR of 20% in the old group. Since estimates are that actual infection rates are likely 5-10x greater than reported numbers, the true risk is likely <0.1% for young people and 2-4% for old people. The 20% of deaths being young people does not matterthere are a lot more young people and therefore a lot more cases among them.
The difference between this study and either Mengeles experiments or the Tuskegee study is informed consent. Unlike the victims in those two cases those involved in this study are volunteers who presumably agreed to participate after being informed of the potential risks of participating. I dont see why we should have ethical issues with a study like this when the participants are properly informed volunteers.
Europe is culturally opposite than the U.S. when it comes to drug trials - ok to use humans, but not ok to use animals.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.