Ah forgot the capitalism one!
I'm with you mostly as long as the commitment is balanced. I.E. Companies should be paid to do the work, develop drugs, and take risks. But remove the risk, remove controlled testing, remove open data sharing, that's not capitalism.
Case in point:
- Pfizer and Moderna shots have objectively killed more people than Ivermetcin or HCQ
- Cases are still rising, more people are still getting sick, Pfizer and Moderna see only financial upside
If it's truly open, and truly sponsoring good - let everything on the market, and let consumers and doctors decide what to risk - admitting the vaccines are untested and these alternatives (untested against covid) are demonstrably safe and have been for decades.
That's not what's happening. There are mandates in place to take one drug from one company (that the fda has 'approved' 2 years from now) under the loosest possible definition of success - with absolutely no legal recourse or financial consequence to the business if it is ineffective. No market in the world works that way.
From what I have been able to tell, the Pfizer vaccine has been "fully approved" by the FDA in the U.S. Do you have a link to the letter you are referring to? I know the others are not fully approved and are still being used under the EUA. Also, "not approved" is not the same as "untested".
Is far as counting vaccinated vs. unvaccinated its kind of mixing apples and oranges. You can't count someone as fully vaccinated for the purpose of measuring effectiveness if they have not had both doses and at least 14 days have passed since the last dose. In other words, if you legitimately died of COVID between dose 1 and 14 days after dose 2, you can't say it is because the vaccine is ineffective. As far as I know, an adverse effect from the first does would still be reported to VAERS and accepted. They aren't going to throw it out because you are "unvaccinated". The VAERS numbers are available publicly. I'm confused as to what data you think is being hidden. Even if you take all the VAERS reported deaths at face value and add them to the "died of covid while vaccinated column" it would not change the percentages. The number is too small for that. It is also without a doubt true that at least some people contracted covid but didn't know it yet before getting vaccinated. At that point it is too late for the vaccine to help.
As far as how it is possible to have 3x more daily cases, etc. It's because there are still enough unvaccinated/people without natural immunity for that to happen. 70% is not 80% or 90% and it can make a big difference. Some people get COVID more than once (I personally know one healthcare worker who did and this is before there was a vaccine). I think "cases" is probably not the best way to measure effectiveness. Certainly not exclusively. It appears that full protection is time limited and effectiveness may be reduced against variants. However, it does appear that the vaccines lower the risk of other negative outcomes (hospitilization/death) for a longer period of time and vs. the variants (at least the ones we have so far).
For at least the pfizer vaccine, they had the typical clinical trials you would have for something like that. The concession that was made to speed things up was that some of the phases of the trials were allowed to overlap to save time vs. analyzing the results of phase 2 before being allowed to move on to phase 3, etc.
I'm sure the vaccines have killed more people than Ivermectin or whatever but hundreds of millions of people aren't taking those. I also don't know that the evidence shows that those treatments are more effective than the vaccine. There are ongoing clinical trials though. Every vaccine or drug ever made kills people. It is unclear yet whether this particular vaccine kills more people than average or not. Initial reports through VAERS would say more than the flu vaccine but not orders of magnitude more. Anecdotally I know of several unvaccinated people (friends or coworkers of other friends for the most part) that have died from COVID (legitimately, not cancer/covid) yet I know of nobody personally (yet) that has died from the vaccine or of COVID after being vaccinated (partially or otherwise). Most of those I know of that have died have been close to the age of 50 and mildly to moderately overweight. You are probably slightly more at risk from the vaccine vs. covid only if you are otherwise very healthy and in one of the risk groups for the vaccine (young adult males for myocarditis vs. Pfizer vaccine, child bearing age for women vs. J&J vaccine). Of course, you could choose to take the vaccine you aren't in the higher risk group for too...
It isn't clear to me why this vaccine would somehow weaken your immune system. The whole point is to stimulate an immune response. My understanding is this normally happens vs. the dna of the virus when you get a virus or get a traditional vaccine (live attenuated or dead). The difference with the new mRNA vaccines is that they are triggering an immune response to the protein that surrounds the virus. But why would this somehow weaken your immune system? I am not enough of a virologist or immunologist to say for sure but it doesn't make any sense to me at a high level. Your immune system doesn't know the difference between a pretend invader and a real one. The same accusation has been levied at the flu vaccine. Testing has shown that was not the case. It makes me skeptical of the accusation here.
As far as open markets and all that, I absolutely agree...in theory. The problem is that existing laws and regulations make it difficult for this to work. Lets say the vaccine causes a few deaths and there are lawsuits. There could even be an injunction to stop vaccinating people. Or there could be lawsuits for obscene amounts of money. Lawsuits that take months or years. This would lead to the cost of the vaccine being obscene amounts of money or no vaccine at all. If you need to vaccinate people quickly this is not ideal. And what about signing a waiver? If you do it voluntarily, does that not protect the company from liability (provided they weren't lying of course)? I think everybody must sign a form acknowledging the risks in order to get the vaccine. Things like myocarditis and blood clots are known risk factors (though very low probability ones). Now if you are absolutely FORCED to get the vaccine, that's another story. But then it is the government doing the forcing, not Pfizer.
I think for an open market solution to work here there actually has to be an open market and other laws have to be changed. I also think if a company is honest about the testing they have done, reveal the risks they are aware of, and you sign a waiver acknowledging and taking responsibility for those risks, then it is on you, not the company at that point. Again, if the company misleads or hides things, that is another story.