This isn't whataboutism.

Whataboutism is reacting to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter".

It's a defensive argument to protect against your opponent shifting the goal posts.

However, it doesn't apply when your subject is a function of its context. In other words, whataboutism doesn't work when 2 subjects depend on each other, as they do here. This isn't "what about sugar", this is "how do we know there's no conflict of interest".

The onus is not on me to prove anything about the booster, it's on them to prove that they're worth listening to.

If you want evidence, then you probably didn't read my link because the evidence for sugar didn't emerge for years after the fact. Dealing only in absolutes is absurd.

Life is like poker, by the time you have all the information it's already too late.

The commenter’s point was that due to other scandal, “scientific consensus” doesn’t hold the same weight it once might have held. Especially when powerful industries and Lot’s O’Money are involved. Not just sugar, but energy, tobacco, and yes…even other pharmaceuticals. TBH there seems to be a pretty direct correlation between any industry that tends to be regularly described as “Big [name of industry]” and these sort of scientific oopsies that turn up a decade or so later.

I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, but I am not going to be at all surprised if 10 years from now there is an “oops” with this too.