Science is constantly "rewriting history." It's called learning.
Unfortunately it's a major source of public distrust in science since when someone changes their mind it's perceived as weakness or deception. A dogmatic idiot who never learns anything looks like a stronger person of greater integrity.
The fact that we got any form of vaccine at all in one year is absolutely incredible. That it doesn't work quite as well as we originally thought isn't surprising given that it wasn't out long enough to observe long term efficacy in the wild. Original numbers were based on limited clinical tests and models.
Science is a process that will get things wrong and is full of experimentation. Unfortunately, this is lost on people, surprisingly some very smart people who should know better.
When you have people screaming at the top of their lungs:
The Science is Settled!!111
They are Science Deniers!!!
Science does not care about your opinion!!!
Etc.
And then scientific learning happens, all those people who were screaming look like dogmatic idiots to those who they were screaming at. It doesn't matter they the ones screaming adopted the new position. I will pull out the old and tired mask issue; when this first started, the people on the "side of science" were screaming that the masks did not help and they trotted out all sorts of scientific studies to back this up, from virus size vs mask to saying ti would be harmful due to keeping more virus at your face. Those who thought masks were important all looked around and said "If masks are such a bad idea, then why are the doctors all wearing them". Now we know it was a stupid and harmful lie.
It is incredible what we accomplished in a year but it is also very frustrating to see how stupidly political and how unnecessarily opaque everyone is being. From the mask lie to the vaccination tempo(we pushed for a shorter amount of time between both shots because we were worried about followup, now we need a third shot?). No-one is willing to sit down and frankly state what we know and what we doesn't know. Our media isn't willing to accept it either. Trust is a two way street but We are all so afraid that uncertainty will breed fear that we take strong positions and end up killing trust.
What was mentioned in the original comment is not learning, it is rewriting history. It's one thing to say, we now have the data to say that we need boosters, because after a while people are at risk again, and another thing to change the original story and say, we never said the vaccine prevents infection, we said it only prevents severe cases.
I think calling people "dogmatic idiots" is exactly what actually drives people away from these discussions.
I can't find any source confirming or denying that claim, but I can say it's absolutely not the impression I got from governments and the media. Does anyone have a source saying these vaccines were designed as non-sterilizing?
> Original numbers were based on limited clinical tests and models.
Exactly! Those initial numbers were based on limited clinical trials because time was not on our side. We needed to get something out fast, so we didn't go through all trial options.
Unfortunately it's a major source of public distrust in science since when someone changes their mind it's perceived as weakness or deception. A dogmatic idiot who never learns anything looks like a stronger person of greater integrity.
The fact that we got any form of vaccine at all in one year is absolutely incredible. That it doesn't work quite as well as we originally thought isn't surprising given that it wasn't out long enough to observe long term efficacy in the wild. Original numbers were based on limited clinical tests and models.