ET, I agree, and I agreed when SA said that ongoing monitoring of outcomes was important. But the Norway results do not support Dave and N_’s arguments. They do not support N_’s “culling” conspiracy theory, and they do not support Dave’s claims of “obvious quackery”.
What they are an argument for in the ongoing emergency is informed consent.
In the larger context, the existence of the emergency itself and the haste in deploying experimental vaccines is an indictment of governments’ nonchalance; gross irresponsibility by not doing what the New Zealand government did.
That could still be done, by compartmentalising, wiping out covid-19 zone-by-zone, implementing proper trace, test and quarantine, and in that environment developing vaccines with all the usual safeguards. That option is open to all governments at any time; it’s never “too late”, and it only takes a couple of months. China got covid-19 under control after the Chinese New Year celebrations had scattered it through a tenth of the global population, and that’s how they did it.
It’s like climate change. The solution is always the same, but the longer you leave it the more damage it does.