Here's the thing to consider though: The vaccine codes only for the spike proteins of the virus. You can look up the RNA strands within the vaccines and their translation to protein, it's a relatively short segment of RNA. RNA has a very short lifetime itself.

If you do get exposed to Covid, your cells will be exposed to those very same spike proteins and more. Thus the vaccine should theoretically be much safer than being exposed to Covid itself.

Yeah, it's pretty well covered in the link I posted, and there is more data too.

This guy is not the creator of mRNA vaccines, he’s just a guy who did something slightly related with mRNA forty years ago, and is now trying to ride the wave to money. I think it’s fair to say the vaccine was rushed, but that’s because we have been having the second largest pandemic of the century. More Americans are dead from this than died in WW2.

I didn’t downvote you. I do wish we had a longer trial period, and I don’t like taking something that hasn’t been through the full duration trials. Here is what convinced me:

- we now have more than a billion vaccinations done globally, with no mass surge of negative side effects.

- virtually every politician in every party has gotten vaccinated. Including most of the people telling you not to get vaccinated.

- the vaccine produces way fewer antibody targets than the actual virus, so I would expect that if there was a long term negative effect from the spike produced by the vaccine, we would get that or worse from the virus.

- the virus is really contagious and seems to be mutating toward being more contagious over time.

- thus, you’re probably going to get it, which means one way or the other you’re probably going to make a lot of antibodies to spike protein no matter how you slice it.

> the vaccine produces way fewer antibody targets than the actual virus

This is not necessarily true. It depends. People in my family who took the vaccine and had visible side efects (headaches, fever) for a day or two have more antibodies than other acquaintances who got hospitalized with the disease.

Higher antibody levels and more antibody targets aren't the same thing.

The mRNA vaccines cause one protein from the virus to be present, so you get antibodies against that specific protein. More traditional vaccines use dead/weakened virus, which will trigger production of antibodies against multiple parts of the virus.

Don’t attack people, it just weakens your comment. You’ve not really added anything useful to the discussion unfortunately.

Saying someone speaks to right wing people means nothing to me.

There’s nothing in there that’s an attack, but wow, you are an asshole. There is a good faith engagement and persuasion in there, and you respond with this?

Fuck off, you’re what’s wrong with society.

> This guy is not the creator of mRNA vaccines, he’s just a guy who did something slightly related with mRNA forty years ago, and is now trying to ride the wave to money.

He seems to give plenty of time to people who don't seem to have any money to offer. I don't know what evidence you have to support any of your claims. For all you know he is a really good, concerned person, why assassinate someone's character like that?

If one can't attack the arguments, it's easier to attack the person I guess?

Just Google his name. You are using polite words, but not engaging in good faith. It’s not worth wasting my time further with you. I guess I should have checked your history to see that you’re a dedicated vaccine denialist.

I listened to an interview with the head of the German regulatory body overseeing recommendations for vaccinations. He said that we have never seen side effects of all vaccinations beyond 2 to 3 months. Compare with sinuous venous trombosis risk which was uncovered despite being a 1 in 100,000 risk.

In the short amount of time people have been taking these vaccines, how much more data than a few months could they really be looking at, seriously ?

They're looking at a century's worth of other vaccines and noting that the side effects present early on, not years later.

The stuff in vaccines gets broken down or excreted by the body; it doesn't linger in your system for years. mRNA, for example, breaks down in minutes/hours.

All it tells us if that in the very short term, it seems safe. Great.

When we know more about the long term, then people will be more happy to take it?

No, it is far more likely at that point that you will just trot out some other excuse.

No. I really hope that it’s safe, I can take it without fear and never look back.

If you think I’m really against vaccines you’re wrong.

You're getting downvoted because your post is the standard antivax trope of "just asking questions", which is ultimately FUD.

What you're actually doing is completely discounting possible long term effects from the choice to do nothing. Nobody has been a Covid-19 survivor for 3, 5 or 10 years, nor do we know the big picture epidemiological impact of unchecked Covid for 3, 5, or 10 years.

The only data we have is necessarily from the present. And here and now, it seems to indicate that getting vaccinated is a prudent thing to do.

Maybe neither option is great? Have you ever considered that possibility?

It's funny because your post really offers nothing new, just another opinion of your own.

I've said before, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I've taken vaccines before and if the Pfizer vaccine proves safe longer term, we know more about reported heart problems in younger males, I won't need to mix and match vaccines and have booster shots and all that type of rot, then yeah, I'll likely participate.

I'm just not prepared to jump right in because Internets tell me they feel it's safe to do so.

What's actually wrong with that? I don't see the issue?

I don't know how I've implied that any option was "great" ?

My post is pointing out that your previous framing is discounting the possible effects from doing nothing, while emphasizing the possible effects from doing something. This is not scientific.

In general you seem to be attaching a high weighting to not taking the vaccine, including repeating common logical fallacies. Most likely you've gotten that from the "Internets", so it's fallacious to invoke it as if it's some singular party instructing you to do something. The Internet is generally malicious noise, it's up to you to pull signal out of it.

At the basic level, there is no "all that type of rot". I got two shots, had cold symptoms for a day on the first one, and was otherwise fine. It has allowed me to reduce my Covid precautions substantially, and has drastically increased my quality of life. If there end up being variants that require boosters, then I can make another decision to get those or not.

I wasn't chomping at the bit for the vaccine since it was announced, rather I too figured I'd wait and see what the larger scale effects were. But by the time spring rolled around I had considered 6 months enough time to shake out most unknown unknowns at scale.

What's you're deal then? You just feel strongly I should take the vaccine?

Where I live, what I do for work has really made no impact on my quality of life, so I don't give a fish about the virus or the vaccine.

It's funny to me that you say you deliberated, then you took it, and now I'm being "unscientific" for deliberating in the same way. But somehow you've made the scientific choice because you felt 6 months was long enough to wait. Not very scientific ?

I'm not going to argue that you, Internet Stranger, should get the vaccine. I will tell my friends they need to be vaccinated if they want to hang out.

I respect people's right to make their own informed decisions, but not to repeat disinformation. I've pointed out exactly how your framing is unscientific for privileging one option ("do nothing") above the rest, but you keep brushing past that.

I shared my story in the hopes that you would see there are deliberate decisions by the people getting vaccinated as well, not just the "Internets". Six months of time felt like a reasonable period of caution to me. If you wanted to wait a year or a "little longer", I wouldn't say we disagree. But rather you're putting forth reasoning that implies needing to wait 10 years which might as well be forever.

If you yourself really don't come into contact with other people - ie you live alone, work at home, get groceries delivered, and don't visit friends - then sure, continue on isolating. But for the vast majority of people this path is inapplicable, and for them your incorrect framing is actively harmful.

If we’re planning on vaccinating the entire population of the human race I think it would’ve been better give the vaccine to the most vulnerable and at least have a 3 year study done and focus on treatments in the meantime before giving it to younger people.

I’ve read good things about Ivermectin for example, where’s the rushed controlled clinical trial of that ? A drug we do know is safe, cheap and widely available ?

Also if you look into it, there are actually valid questions being asked such as, what causes heart inflammation and attacks? Why isn’t that more understood. How was it missed in initial trials ? What is the mechanism causing that? [1]

Doesn’t seem right we should give young otherwise healthy men heart troubles ?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/heart-inflammation-after-co...

This guy is the self-proclaimed "creator of mRNA vaccines," in the same way that there is a certain self-proclaimed "inventor of email" with whom we're all familiar. His role in the development of the technology that eventually became mRNA vaccines appears, however, to be relatively minor, and it lies decades in the past.

It would be fair to say he would have a pretty solid grasp on the basic concepts behind the medicine, probably more than most people in the comments sections of the internet :)

You are worried about the long term effects of a mRNA vaccine that has passed clinical trials and was already tested on >10M people, but not about viral RNA spreading in your community? I guess we'll se the effects of the vaccines in 3…10y. Until then I'm getting a third shot if I must, because I'd really want to be there maybe having this conversation in the next decade.

You can be worried about both, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

I think Covid19 escaped from a lab and is probably engineered (to some degree), so I imagine it's also insanely messed up stuff.

The vaccine is new, but the mRNA delivery system has been in the pipeline for decades, with other treatments actively undergoing the normal, slow FDA process[1].

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-...

Yes, but why is it okay to approve this mRNA delivery system in a matter of months while the approval for these others require decades of test?

There's clearly inconsistency by the FDA here.

Why is it okay to destroy someone's house with axes and water when it's on fire but otherwise it's illegal? There's clearly inconsistency by the fire department here.

Seriously, what other course of events do you propose should have happened? Vaccines couldn't have been developed before Covid-19 existed. Should we have just pretended that mRNA technology didn't exist, in favor of traditional approaches of making vaccines, and then rushed approval on those? It seems like that alternative has actually been explored by other countries and they're nowhere near as effective.

I think the FDA's normal process is extremely flawed and would like to see more expedited trails that allow early-opt-in and continually expanding test groups that ramp up in size as efficacy and safety is proven.

It's criminal that the FDA has effectively sat on mRNA tech for decades while watching people who could have benefit from it die. The FDA deemed mRNA tech unsafe to give to much smaller groups of people already directly affected with various mRNA treatable diseases yet now after a few months of testing they have amazingly deemed it safe to give to to the entire world. The risk calculus just isn't consistent.

I'll agree with you there.

The way you worded your proceeding comment made it sound as if you would have preferred the FDA to not approve the Covid mRNA vaccines, as opposed to preferring easier approvals for other mRNA tech in general.

To extend my quip, the people who could benefit from it each have their own little fire and are being systematically ignored.

Clinical trials take long because they are evaluating long term side effects. They didn't deem it unsafe to give to smaller groups of people, in many cases the company withdrew it from consideration because earlier uses were centered on oncology - taking pieces of patients' cancer cells and attempting to get the body to fight them immunologically - and they weren't able to obtain a clinically significant impact. Running a long term clinical trial is an expensive proposition.

1. https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/comment/evolution-mrna-v...

Because we don't have decades at our disposal to combat this pandemic.

You're being downvoted because vaccination is not a new thing. mRNA vaccines are new but take 10 min to learn how they work. There is literally nothing left in your system that could impact you in "3,5 or 10 years."

> it was rushed and the longer term implications are certainly still not fully understood.

It was not rushed.

We have 250 years of experience with vaccinations and when their side effects happen. And longer with viruses and their autoimmune effects.

After a day or three the vaccine is completely gone from your system, all that remains is the immune effects, the possible side effects are all autoimmune conditions. Those autoimmune conditions will either manifest in 90 days or they will not. There's nothing that hangs around in your body for 3 years and then randomly pops up. By running a trail for 6 months post-injection you will be guaranteed to capture all the side effects from a vaccine study. This is the same with virus triggered autoimmune effects which either pop up in 3 months or they don't (and I've actually had viral pericarditis that affected me about 4-6 weeks after I recovered from a bad cold).

Most of them will run longer, because they don't have a massive worldwide pandemic and they need to prove efficacy so they need enough people in the control group to get infected and that takes time. They were able to speed run the efficacy side of things because so many people were getting infected (we were worried at one point that the virus would largely disappear in Summer 2020 and negatively affect the vaccine trials).

https://www.uab.edu/reporter/resources/be-healthy/item/9544-...

Traditional vaccines != Genetic vector vaccines

Traditional vaccines: Expose the immune system to an inactivated pathogen. The immune system stochastically learns to target a number of proteins specific to the pathogen.

Genetic vector vaccines: Expose a small number of cells to genetic material that instructs them to create a specific protein chosen by the vaccine developer. The immune system then learns to target this specific protein. The pathogen is under no obligation to continues to produce this specific protein, especially in face of the selection pressure produced by the genetic vector vaccines themselves. We are already talking of booster shots to tackle mutations, 6 month since we started large scale deployment. It's only going to get worse.

Open questions:

* Which protein(s) to chose.

* Why a single protein, rather than a mosaic.

* Is the protein(s) choice generic, or should it be personalized to a specific individual protein spectrum.

* What is the long term prognosis for world scale populations.

Cold fact: We have <1 years of world scale experience with genetic vector vaccines.

We have hundreds of years of experience with viral genetic vectors. There's a whole subfield of rheumatology dealing with autoimmune conditions triggered by viruses.

The mRNA vaccines are just a single protein not the whole virus and it never gets assembled so its using considerably less cellular machinery than a real virus would.

We've literally studied this shit for hundreds of years, and we're using less moving parts that would happen with a real infectious virus.

Cold fact: this is not unknown territory at all.

>Those autoimmune conditions will either manifest in 90 days or they will not.

Source? For the long term autoimmune effects of these vaccines, that is.

No? Well that's because that information is unavailable because it hasn't been studied long term hence it can't be known.

There are no long term studies. Hence the reluctance of many to get vaccinated. So that quoted statement can probably be banished to the world of pseudoscience for now. Or post your sources from subjects unrelated to the COVID vaccine that make you think that.

> Source?

The link I supplied was literally a source:

https://www.uab.edu/reporter/resources/be-healthy/item/9544-...

> 2. Vaccine side effects show up within weeks if at all

> That is not to say that there have never been safety issues with vaccines. But in each instance, these have appeared soon after widespread use of the vaccine began. "The side effects that we see occur early on and that's it," Goepfert said. In virtually all cases, vaccine side effects are seen within the first two months after rollout.

That is citing the director of the University's Vaccine Research Clinic.

Sorry, I said "source" when I should have specified "medical study". Your link reads more like marketing towards vaccination fence sitters than actual science. That isn't your fault though, there just isn't science to share. Why? Because we don't have future traveling time machines.

There is something quite amazing about your link however. The piece (about long term side effects from vaccines) notes the polio vaccine from the 1950s. It somehow omits mentioning Simian Virus 40, the cancer causing virus that was found in the polio vaccine. This vaccine was given to 100 million children and its estimated that 10% to 30% of those doses were contaminated.

I'm sure the doctors assured their parents back then that there were no side effects and certainly laughed off any mention of long term side effects. The price to be paid for trust in these vaccines? Their children growing up to develop brain cancer in their 50s and 60s, decades after they were assured how safe they were.

No, its difficult to find studies on something which is literally textbook knowledge.

And nice whataboutism to switch the topic to a vaccine incident from the 1950s, combined with a brand new account, I'm pretty sure I'm arguing with a bot. Have a nice life.