Before you buy a car there is a good chance you do a bit of research and look at things like its safety rating, recalls, consumer reports, and owner reviews. There are features and bells and whistles too and I would wager that you spend more time concerned with those features than anything else. Does it have heated seats? What’s its fuel economy? Do all the rear seats fold down flat (*eyebrow waggle*)? But at any point in the experience do you question the vehicle’s ability to keep you from dying of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning from the exhaust? Of course, you don’t. Most people couldn’t tell you the parts of the car involved or how they’re manufactured, tested, and assembled, let alone the acceptable non-fatal concentration of CO. You take it for granted that it’s safe. You trust that the manufacturer built something safe and effective.
You put that trust in the manufacturer every single time you put yourself in a vehicle, whether it’s your own, someone else’s, a bus, train, subway, motorcycle, scooter, trolley car, or those three-wheeled do-dads that look like Mythbusters built an overpowered Big Wheel. By extension, you’re not putting your trust in the manufacturer; you’re also putting your trust in every person who has ever performed maintenance on the vehicle.
You do this without so much as batting an eyelash. You don’t trot out reams of research and a list of pointed questions to ask before you hop in. You don’t have the odds of a fatal flaw occurring with the vehicle at your fingertips. On your best day you couldn’t compute the odds of all the other vehicles you’ll encounter suffering a fatal flaw of their own and taking you out with it.
Here’s a partial list of things you interact with and trust to work without calling their existence into question. Every one of them can cause you irreparable harm or death if something goes awry:
- Elevators
- Microwaves
- GPS
- Cell phones
- X-ray machines & other medical devices
- Smoke alarms & carbon monoxide detectors
- Anything you ingest or inhale
Companies that make some of those items have the singular concern of taking your money. Cell phones aren’t mass-produced to bring joy to the world; they exist to lighten your wallet. So not only do you place implicit trust in these companies, you pay for the privilege of using their products. Granted, many of them have extra benefits that either improve the quality of your life, provide convenience or entertainment, but taking your hard-earned cash is the driving force. That goes for food, too. If we grew food to feed people there wouldn’t be a hungry person around. Instead, we grow food to sell food. You needn’t look any further for proof than all the fresh produce that never makes it onto the shelf because it’s “ugly”.
Some other commonalities from the list include keeping you safe or assisting in healing. How many times have you looked up the track record of a smoke alarm and verified its efficacy before purchasing it? I’m guessing never. You may investigate or seek recommendations for which one is best reviewed, but for how it works, why it’s safe and how it’s guaranteed to do its job I’ll bet you a shiny nickel those things never crossed your mind. For thousands of items including the smoke detector, the fact it has a UL Mark is good enough, assuming you have the foggiest idea of what a UL Mark means.
Whether you know it or not, the reason you carry around this implicit trust is because of symbols like the UL Mark. It, along with its cousins the FCC Mark, the CSA Mark, and the CE Mark are regulatory bodies with a system of testing and reporting that manufacturers’ standards must meet before they can sell and distribute their products. They, along with the International Standards Organization (ISO) and other regulatory entities around the world are the reason everyday products are safe and effective. The more risk inherent in the product the more rigid the standards. A 9-Volt battery for a smoke detector has different standards than Dr. Ho’s Pain Therapy System, but they both must meet them before you can buy one.
Not installing a smoke alarm because you think a company is out to steal your money, make you live in fear, in cahoots with the fire department or some other woo-woo conspiracy theory, then you’re putting your life and the lives of those in your home at risk.
If what I just wrote above makes sense to you and you agree with it, then guess what?
You’re pro-vaccine.
Forget that in the matters of biochemistry, virology, and epidemiology a massive percentage of humans can’t even ask a relevant question on the topic. Let’s put aside how those details are beyond most people’s comprehension and focus on the system that manufactures and distributes them.
Companies that produce everyday products must abide by certain standards and medical device and drug companies do as well. In the United States, the governing body is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As you would expect, the burden of proof before letting a medical device or drug out into the world is much higher than it is for anything else.
When I’m not writing, I work for a medical imaging software company. We make the software that the doctors use to diagnose and treat patients and our product is a medical device. Before we can sell it, the company is subject to scrutiny by all the governing regulatory bodies where we plan to install it. Have you ever been through an FDA audit? I have and it’s beyond intense, but what we go through is nothing compared to what the drug companies do.
One thing we have in common though is the lack of perfection. With humans come mistakes. When you factor in the sheer number of variables it is inevitable. I think what people struggle with is the cost versus benefit analysis. No life is worth losing, but we’ll lose more lives if we do nothing, so the problem we try to solve is how to reduce those losses as much as possible. A small number of adverse reactions to a vaccine shouldn’t invalidate the benefits it has to the population.
This is something the FDA and other health authorities understand. There are many factors that come into play when there’s a suspected problem, but they boil it down into two components: severity and frequency. A frequent mild issue or an infrequent severe issue end up equal. Severity and frequency work on a five-point scale and every company must have a Risk Management Plan in place that takes them into account. They look something like this:
Example Risk Management Chart.
For the medical imaging software industry, green is acceptable. These are low severity, low-frequency issues. Companies report yellow issues to the relevant health authorities but aren’t serious enough to demand an immediate fix. Red is bad. Reporting a “Red Issue” is a surefire way to get an audit. A product recall or stop shipment is a real possibility for these problems.
When human lives are at stake, the system operates with plenty of caution.
Science is a process of iterative learning and the already small risks associated with medical devices and drugs are getting lower every day. Every time something new comes along the process does its thing and we see how our mitigations hold up in the scientific community. At its root is the desire to solve more problems than it causes and by as wide a margin as possible.
Speaking of desires, we already know the capitalistic motivation for everyday consumer products. Companies want to relieve you of as much of your money as possible. Vaccines exist to improve the quality of your life and often save them. That, in turn, saves that precious economy that we’re all so eager and willing to contribute to. The drug companies are making dump trucks full of money to be sure, but governments aren’t. In fact, it’s costing them the same number of dump trucks full of money as well as myriad other expenses. There isn’t a single rational argument for a government wanting a vaccine to fail or even worse, having it cause more damage than it prevents. It’s in the government’s best interests to keep as many people of its citizens alive for as long as possible (and paying taxes).
In summary:
Get vaccinated, especially when it’s your turn for the COVID-19 one, and install a smoke alarm.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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