Quote:
Originally Posted by Byue
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Dude, you missed the point but...
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No, I did not miss the point. The poster I responded to literally said 'You made it political, even though no government money is spent on it' after referencing the vaccine. I responded to show an easily 'researched' instance of where taxpayer dollars were spent on something he said they were not. Don't try to move the goalpost because your buddy made an ignorant claim. You're obviously more informed than he is, but he's got to ride his own rap of ignorance. The vaccine was the easiest one to discredit so I picked it for the sake of timeliness.
As far as those making it political; the article states, 'The Department of Health and Human Services and Moderna both told Axios the two parties agree to what is in news releases when it comes to federal government funding and other support provided to advance the vaccine.' This shows that the government has influence over the information released about the vaccine because they tossed in the money. This, in turn, opens up something that would otherwise be more dictated by scientific norms to government influence. It also goes on to say.. 'To say that the vaccine is fully funded by the federal government discounts
a small but very real private donation to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.' This leads the reader to believe that while, yes, the money was to develop and buy, the majority financial stakeholder in the effort to create the vaccine is the US government. Money begets influence, no? So it's reasonable to be wary of political slant behind news and press releases around the vaccine. It's not like we can't find previous examples of governments using financial influence for partisan or illicit gains through private corporations or universities. The scale of the money spent would definitely result in additional government oversight of the project considering the possible ramifications of the results, and I know that from experience because the larger the government project I get, the more bureaucrats I have to deal with to get it done and get paid.
I'm not arguing for or against the vaccine, and the dollar amount that went into research vs. buying doses doesn't really matter. I'm acknowledging the US taxpayer's stake in the development, and that there is some justification for healthy skepticism of what we're told about it.