> What if there's unpredictable long term consequences?

That same question can be asked about covid so I don't understand how this single point brings anything to the discussion. We don't know the future. We don't know the future vaccine effects just like we don't know the future for covid effects.

We do definitely know that the effects of covid (even if you discount them by the fact that not everyone gets covid) are much worse than the vaccines. Everything points to the vaccines being much better than the disease.

That was my point from the beginning, but you still cannot exclude risk completely. This is why manufacturers are explicitly exempt from responsibility of damages. Why would that be needed then? Why do people getting the vaccine need to wait a while before being released? Because of the unknowns that I meant.

And it doesn't even have to be intrinsic to the vaccine, it could be a manufacturing error like there was with Polio.

As I said, I am vaccinated, but this reaction and militancy really puts me off and frankly, I think it is a bit stupid. Not your comment though.

Of course you can't exclude the risk, but there is _no_ usable information in that fear. Just because something can happen down the line, doesn't mean it's actionable. What if these vaccines start giving us super human strength in a few years? Can we discount that possibility? Why or why not? Should I act on that possibility today?

All we can consider is _actionable_ information. All information so far points to the side-effects of the vaccines causing problems at negligible levels compared to the the side-effects of getting covid. That is information we can use and it really only supports one conclusion.

I believe this to be actionable enough that the decision to take it or not should remain an individual decision and I believe that is the extend what people demand. Nobody is talking about throwing it off the market because it isn't deemed safe.

I never said this shouldn't be anyone's individual choice. All I said was that I'm disgusted that so many people would make the choice.

If everyone else is vaccinated except you, you're protected from the effects of both covid and the vaccine.

How so? You can still get covid. Even the people vaccinated can get covid. Besides there is nowhere where everyone is vaccinated but you anyway. Some places have high rates some places have low rates. So your hypothetical situation just doesn't apply anywhere.

Anyway if you'd like an anecdote, I have a friend in Spain who just got the delta variant along with his 4 friends a few days ago. He was about to get his second shot yesterday (obviously it's postponed now) and his 4 friends were all completely vaccinated when they got sick.

>What if there's unpredictable long term consequences?

This is actually a smaller issue. The big issue is that measures based on science that is tainted with trust issues must not be mandated.

Have written about this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27817926

Basically, I think science require a global change in its perception that is updated to modern times.

All of the components have been used before, these things aren't that new.

mRNA tech itself has been in development since the 80s, and for immunisation since about 2012. It's gone from the body within a few hours AFAICT. If you're that worried, go for the J&J or AZ vaccines, which are more 'traditional' and don't use mRNA.

Being new or not is not the crucial point. What matters is that it's in the interest of the society at large that as many people as possible are vaccinated quickly. This might present certain incentives to treat possible side effects in a political way, basically downplaying them.

I'm not saying this is what is happening now, but it has definitely happened in the past. When you read the history of Pandemrix[0][1], you will note that:

> In August 2010 the Swedish MPA issued a statement which included the following: "An investigation is ongoing, but any relationship between the vaccination and the reported symptoms can not be concluded."

and:

> In the Irish parliament, TD Clare Daly commented that, “The Health Service Executive (HSE) decided to purchase Pandemrix and continued to distribute it even after they knew it was dangerous and untested, and before most of the public in Ireland received it.”

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix

[1] https://www.thelocal.se/20201126/why-some-young-swedes-are-w...

> Being new or not is not the crucial point.

When we're talking about "we don't know the long term effects", it's certainly a crucial point, because it shows that we can have a good idea of the long term effects already.

I agree there's likely to be huge political pressure to downplay side effects, however the scale of this rollout and the attention it's getting worldwide mean that it's going to be very unlikely such things sneak through, simply due to the size of the vaccinated population.

Downplaying the side effects is a negative influence in that case. On the contrary, you should transparent with it.

Downplaying the side effects is always a negative, people should be informed.

The fear is that people are irrational, and when informed will overreact and not get vaccinated. This fear is not unfounded, so they downplay the side effects. Then people notice this downplaying, lose confidence anyway, and don't get vaccinated.

It's a bizarre and ridiculous game.

I'm not worried at all, I'm eager to be able to get a mRNA vaccine, but no vaccine at all is available to my age group where I live. I envy y'all.

That's traditionally not how vaccines work. The side effects and consequences are short term, as in less than one month. The substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.

Off the top of my uneducated head, the one theoretical concern would be giving yourself an autoimmune disease, where your immune system attacks something it shouldnt. Like mistraining a model. Barring that, it seems general consensus is that long term consequences are infinitely unlikely.

>The side effects and consequences are short term, as in less than one month. The substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.

I am not sure this idea of "traditional vaccine" is true. The contents of Vaccines can be drastically different. And you cannot generalise that.

> substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.

It is quite misleading, to say the least.

>quite misleading

Possibly. Or accurate.

So can't generalize. Which was the point.

You can generalize that traditionally vaccines don't last in the body.

In this specific case, you can argue the lipid layer throws a wrench in assumptions, and then the onus is on you to prove some proposed mechanism for long term effect. Because the protein the vaccine targets is not human, the risk of the immune system turning on the body after training was rhetorical, because if the antibodies were targeting our body, it would have come up by now.

Another theoretical concern that has not manifested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement...