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A comment on Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to distribute in December. Parent comment

Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by dsjoerg on Friday November 20, 2020 @09:45AM (#25160869)
You should balance that against your chance of contracting COVID-19, and the unknown long term effects of COVID-19.

For me, the long-term consequences of the vaccine seem to be better understood (theoretically, not empirically) than the long-term consequences of a COVID-19 infection.

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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by TuringNYC on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:10AM (#25161145)
I think "we" -- as a society -- should balance those two sides. Vaccinations do not always make sense at an individual level, but make a lot of sense at a societal level. If everyone was making a personal trade-off we would not reach the global maxima.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by abfan1127 on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:11AM (#25161161)
how can the long term consequences of the vaccine be better understood than the virus? The vaccine is younger than the virus, and orders of magnitude of more people have had the virus.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by floatingatoll on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:16AM (#25161216)
mRNA vaccines were understood and studied prior to Covid. Covid infections (still) are not understood.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by mrosett on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:56AM (#25161611)
This isn't entirely true; the technology is still very new.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by floatingatoll on Friday November 20, 2020 @11:01AM (#25161659)
A five second search finds papers on mRNA vaccines from 2018. I see no papers on Covid prior to 2019. In relative terms, as the parent comment was using, we have been studying them longer.

I am not arguing that they are well understood, but I imagine most people are filling in that word when they read the comment.

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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by abfan1127 on Friday November 20, 2020 @01:59PM (#25163653)
We've researched coronaviruses since the 1960s, had MERS and SARS most recently (less recent the 2018). I don't understand why we worry about long term effects of Covid, but not long term effects of mRNA vaccines? Both seem to have things to worry about, with both having different scales.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by tzs on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:48AM (#25161525)
Are there any prior mRNA vaccines that have been approved for human use? Wikipedia (currently...) says this and the Moderna ones would be the first.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by bluGill on Friday November 20, 2020 @02:18PM (#25163846)
There have been a few phase-1 trials in humans. But mostly it is research.
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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by abfan1127 on Friday November 20, 2020 @01:56PM (#25163618)
why do we get to generalize mRNA vaccines, but not SARS-Cov-2? We've known about coronaviruses since the 1960s, we've had MERS, SARS, and other more recent ones.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/types.html

I don't think we have long term information on either SARS-Cov-2 or the vaccine...

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Re:Pfizer submits Covid vaccine to FDA for approval, to dist... by just-juan-post on Friday November 20, 2020 @11:06AM (#25161704)
100% incorrect.

These are the very first mRNA vaccines. Here is Wikiepdia to confirm. [1]

You. Are. An. Alpha. Tester. And so is the rest of the world. We all are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_vaccine

"Up until November 2020, no mRNA vaccine, drug, or technology platform, had ever been approved for use in humans, and before 2020, mRNA was only considered a theoretical possibility for effective use in human"

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