That's not to say it isn't possible, but many things are possible but sufficiently unlikely that we take those risks. We eat, drink, and breathe many things every day that we don't fully understand the ingredients or impacts of.
For the analogy to be more accurate, the parts should explicitly not be bicycle parts.
From the responses you’d think I was talking about brain chips injected by Bill Gates, but I suppose this is the result when a layman attempts to explain something unfamiliar to other laymen.
Edit: sorry, my comment may have sounded snarky, which was not my intention. World-wide vaccinations do carry a risk. It’s just that such a risk clearly pales in comparison to the very known downsides of the current situation. I am in no way a vaccine expert and cannot comment intelligently on why long-term risks are considered to be low.
People only use the precautionary principle for things they don't want to do.
It's very good for that, since it always results in recommending not to do things.
FDA approvals aren't a black and white affair. Some drugs are approved as orphan drugs through trials designed to be much cheaper than Phase 1-3 trials when they treat diseases that wouldn't be profitable for pharma, for example, and there is a path for preliminary compassionate use approvals and accelerated development for stuff like chemo where the disease is terminal anyway. The FDA works with each company to tailor the process to their needs (although, obviously, they stick to a strict standard unless there's good justification).
Likewise, the vaccine rollout won't be all or nothing. We won't even have a billion doses for a long while and the focus will (likely) be on vaccinating those for whom the benefits outweigh the extra risk like front line medical staff and the immunocompromised or elderly. I don't expect the world to get vaccinated at gun point, although the rules for schools and other institutions will quickly accumulate to cover most of the population.
Personally, I'm not going to be taking the vaccine for a while since no one in my family is at risk and we're (mentally) preparing for several years of varying levels of isolation and other precautions. I have faith in the system for the most part since I've worked on an FDA application before (clinical diagnostics, not therapeutics), but the kind of geopolitical and economic pressure its under right now is unprecedented and should keep epidemiologists up at night (hell, it probably does). It's going to be up to each individual to balance their risks and obligations at least until we get more data.
These new vaccines have a 90% efficacy. It's probably a no-brainer to give them to someone in their 70s or 80s with a high likelihood of having an adverse covid case. But a 20-year-old?
Out of a purely selfish wish of having a more normal world, part of me wants to suppress these thoughts and think "I'm probably excessively cautious, it's a good thing that the economic pressures will probably ensure that most are vaccinated in a year or two". But I do worry that many healthy people don't have a complete view of the potential for unknown unknowns when they decide to take it.
The selfish part of me is thankful that someone else does the dirty job for ensuring that those thoughts aren's spread wider. I'm really hoping that the authorities know what they're doing, and I'd definitely be lying awake at night if I was in that role.
I probably won't take it myself - there, I said it - but rather wait and get more data, or maybe go as far as seeing when one of the protein-based vaccines are ready.
"Suppose someone was infected with a retrovirus, could reverse transcriptase embed that rna into the dna? This could be especially worrisome if we're talking about a pregnant woman and fetus undergoes rapid cell division... etc.."
I would be surprised if I did not mangle up some terms & concepts in the paraphrasing above. Someone who knows more can correct me or just watch/read the fda hearing.
Another thing that was mentioned in the FDA hearing was that pfizer also tested it on HIV positive people. HIV is a retrovirus which also carries the reverse transcriptase enzyme. I don't want to draw any conclusions from this because I don't have any medical knowledge. Maybe someone here with more insight could comment.
I think, generally, it has been discussed. There's lots of research on mRNA vaccines going back decades at this point, though they haven't made it to market until now. I see people saying "it's not being discussed" often on this site, but really, anyone saying "no, this is safe" has the implicit support of all that research behind them.
I don't know anything about biochemistry, and I'm aware that the above is just remote speculation. It is meant as an example of food for thought. But I do wonder when a whole field of scientists state "there is no possibility of unexpected long-term side effects" to a therapeutic tool that has never been used at anything resembling this scale.
Would love to hear more experts discuss why this is considered sufficiently long-term safe to make the decision of vaccinating a billion people after nine months of testing. Am I missing something, or is it just a question of the precautionary principle in this case being considered too costly?