The Cutter Incident seems like the most damning.
2) Do you have any evidence to suggest a risk with the mRNA delivery vehicle? If so, what is that risk and why will it materialize in some unknown amount of time instead of after someone gets the vaccine?
2. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
[Full disclosure: I have had one shot of BioNTech and am waiting for my second.]
So the concern isn't mRNA or is it?
> 2. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Sure, but it also means you need some sort of empirical or a priori starting point.
There isn't even a hypothesis to gather evidence for except "this vaccine might cause something spooky to happen in the future". What is that spooky thing? Let's gather evidence.
Regarding evidence for "spooky things", well, by their nature there is no or little evidence for them. They are black swans and the means by which they are addressed is the precautionary principle. In particular, by their nature, there can be no evidence about presence or absence of long term effects of novel delivery mechanisms.
Personally speaking, I suspect I'm a lot better off being vaccinated than not but some of the credulity around vaccines is rather surprising to me (especially the fact that many people don't seem to know that J&J uses a novel delivery mechanism too).
What is this concern based on? That it's new or rarely used? Why would you have prior concern one way or the other?
> Regarding evidence for "spooky things", well, by their nature there is no or little evidence for them. They are black swans and the means by which they are addressed is the precautionary principle. In particular, by their nature, there can be no evidence about presence or absence of long term effects of novel delivery mechanisms.
This runs into the same problem. And it's even worse because you have a known risk (COVID-19) and a future, unknown and unquantifiable risk with no prior reason to believe such a risk exists and you're opting to defend against that risk instead.
It's like never investing in the stock market because one day something might happen and cause something to happen. It doesn't make any sense.
> Personally speaking, I suspect I'm a lot better off being vaccinated than not but some of the credulity around vaccines is rather surprising to me (especially the fact that many people don't seem to know that J&J uses a novel delivery mechanism too).
Sure, but to be fair not a single one of these people ever questioned any other vaccine delivery mechanism they were getting. Questioning this stuff is new, and it's a deliberate disinformation campaign.
> What is this concern based on? That it's new or rarely used? Why would you have prior concern one way or the other?
I didn't originate this conversation so I can't speak for the original commenter, but it seems to me it's worth pausing for thought when a billion people are due to receive a medical intervention of a type that has never been used before.
> This runs into the same problem. And it's even worse because you have a known risk (COVID-19) and a future, unknown and unquantifiable risk with no prior reason to believe such a risk exists and you're opting to defend against that risk instead.
I'm not opting to defend against that risk but nor do I think the calculus is as obvious as you are making out. On the one hand I am very, very glad the vaccines are available because they seem to be significantly suppressing infection numbers and keeping people out of hospital. On the other hand I believe that individuals should not be coerced by their employer into receiving a vaccine.
> Sure, but to be fair not a single one of these people ever questioned any other vaccine delivery mechanism they were getting. Questioning this stuff is new, and it's a deliberate disinformation campaign.
Which people? People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine#False_claims_about...
Sure... but what makes you think the scientific and medical community haven't done the equivalent of this?
> I'm not opting to defend against that risk but nor do I think the calculus is as obvious as you are making out.
Then how would you describe the calculus? I know what COVID-19 infection numbers and statistics are, at least within some +-% differential.
But I have no knowledge or evidence of any future problem with the COVID-19 vaccine. Why would I accept a known and severe risk against an unknown risk with unknown severity?
So, could you expand on the less obvious aspects of the calculus here? If there's knew information I want to know.
> On the one hand I am very, very glad the vaccines are available because they seem to be significantly suppressing infection numbers and keeping people out of hospital. On the other hand I believe that individuals should not be coerced by their employer into receiving a vaccine.
I think it's a tough subject, but just as someone shouldn't be coerced by their employer into receiving a vaccine, I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease. How do you reconcile that?
> Which people?
Take the total number of people who are now anti-vax, subtract those who became anti-vax before 2020. That remaining population.
> People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years.
And what has come of it? Billions of people around the world have received vaccines, untold lives have been saved, we've eliminated insane diseases like SmallPox and Polio... but now I'm supposed to side with the anti-vax people because why exactly? What did the medical and science community do to lose my trust? I guess you could argue the funding of gain of function research in Wuhan (where the virus almost certainly originated from), but that's not going to undo the cumulative history of medicine that has been wildly successful for me.
Given the grave situation we find ourselves in it seems to me that mass vaccination is the best option for humanity and for individuals. However, there is an unquantifiable downside risk as a result of lack of knowledge.
>I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease. How do you reconcile that?
Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months.
> > People have been questioning the safety of vaccine delivery mechanisms for at least 20 years.
> And what has come of it? ...
I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon.
ok... but then you (not you specifically) have to weigh that against the known and real risk of COVID-19. Hundreds of thousands dead, "long COVID", etc. versus an unknown and un-hypothesized risk with unknown bad outcomes.
Like articulate a possible future bad outcome that is realistic due to these vaccines. Can you (or anyone) do that? Like do you think in 20 years people will start wilting away b/c the took the COVID-19 vaccine?
> Well, we have been defending successfully against that risk for about 18 months.
I... wouldn't call our response to COVID-19 all that successful. How many in the US and UK alone have died? a million?
> I was just a bit surprised because you seemed to be suggesting that vaccine skepticism was a new phenomenon.
I'm specifically suggesting that there are loads of new "vaccine skeptics" that are only vaccine skeptics starting in 2020 because they've received enough politicization and disinformation to do so. They weren't skeptics when they were getting annual flu shots or shots for measles or w/e and had no issue with vaccines or the scientific community before.
Here's the calculus.
When a needle goes into your arm, you know, with a one hundred percent certainty, that you are subjecting yourself to a tiny risk that something will go wrong. You don't know how your body will respond to the vaccine, nor can you know how protective it is going to be in a couple of months. You know that the risk, to the best of our current knowledge (which tends to change bewilderingly fast), is tiny. Yet, there is no denying that it exists. And you know, know with an absolute certainty, that your body is getting exposed to the vaccine. How much this thought scares you, if at all, is a part of the instrument known as informed consent.
What you also know is that if your body gets exposed to the actual virus, there is a much greater chance that something will go very wrong. What you cannot know is whether you will have that encounter with the virus. You also do not know whether you have already been exposed to it and have had it asymptomatically (in theory, it is technically possible to test your immune system, but in practice, no-one is going to do it outside of a clinical trial).
> I'm not sure others should be coerced into having to share space with someone who is willingly unvaccinated from a contagious disease
Pre-2019, we did not mandate that people around us get vaccinated against flu, although we know that flu can result in a lethal pneumonia. Nor did we require people around us to be vaccinated against chickenpox, meningococcus, tuberculosis, etc. Each of those infections can be lethal, so why should we be coerced into sharing space with people who can be contagious?
Thing is, we were not concerned about it, just as you are not concerned about the possible side effects of a vaccine.
The narrative on covid vaccines has been changing over the course of the last several months, which may have given rise to resentment that has nothing to do with politics. The narrative used to be that maybe some happy day we will get the vaccines that will protect our most vulnerable, and then it will be safe to lift the lockdown. Then it celebrated that the vaccines became available to the general public. Good, happy news. Then the narrative shifted to emphasise that vaccines are not perfectly protective, yet still protect people from severe and long covid. That would have been a great place for it to stop, but it keeps shifting further.
Now, if a vaccine protects the vaccinated person against catching the virus (with, say, 60% probability) and against a severe covid (with an over 95% probability), then why do the vaccinated make demands of the unvaccinated? The vaccinated got their extra insurance; why are they still freaking out?
> but now I'm supposed to side with the anti-vax people because why exactly?
No-one asks you to side with the anti-vax people; the only request they can make is to peacefully co-exist.
A tiny risk of what? What is the likelihood of the risk and what is the risk?
Go do some homework if you're going to say taking a vaccine is risky. Show me the numbers. Show me the science.
> Pre-2019, we did not mandate that people around us get vaccinated against flu, although we know that flu can result in a lethal pneumonia. Nor did we require people around us to be vaccinated against chickenpox, meningococcus, tuberculosis, etc. Each of those infections can be lethal, so why should we be coerced into sharing space with people who can be contagious?
This is disingenuous (or maybe you actually don't know what you're talking about).
We didn't require flu vaccines (although some places like hospitals did because it kills people...) because although the virus is deadly, it is not nearly as transmissible as COVID-19. Notice how when COVID-19 came about our healthcare infrastructure experienced far more stress than we do with seasonal flu? Maybe you should go talk to some medical workers who dealt with this stuff and ask them what it was like.
And you're completely incorrect about requiring vaccines against other diseases. You have to get exemptions for these. You can't even go to a university without these vaccines unless you have a medical condition that is documented or a religious exemption. We do require people get vaccines. Maybe you don't remember it (or didn't go to university - not judging that) because you were vaccinated like a normal person. Grade schools required vaccines. It's simple fucking public health. This isn't controversial. It sure as hell wasn't in 2019. Interesting how conservatives became liberal on the topic. Hmm.
And even if we didn't do any of the things you mentioned, we can just say that the prior policy was bad, and the new policy is good. Why did people go to the office who knowingly had strep or the flu? That was beyond stupid. Why did we waste so much time and money on people being sick when we had alternatives?
> Thing is, we were not concerned about it, just as you are not concerned about the possible side effects of a vaccine.
What are the possible side effects and what is the prevalence of those side effects? Tell me specifically the science and research you've done. You keep saying there are "possible side effects of a vaccine". Name the possible side effects. Hell, try doing it just for COVID-19 vaccine. Name the side effects, their prevalence, and explain the science behind the concern.
Why do you view these risks as unnecessary, but other more certain and more dangerous risks as necessary? What's your rationale? Do you even have a framework for these risks? Do you not fly airplanes since you're taking a 100% certain risk that a tiny risk of the plane crashing will occur?
> No-one asks you to side with the anti-vax people; the only request they can make is to peacefully co-exist.
Yea. How can my nephew who is immunocompromised peacefully co-exist with people who don't want to get vaccinated against a highly contagious disease because... it's "risky"?
Here's the truth of the matter. You take risks everyday. You take risks when you drink a beer, or smoke a cigarette, drive a car, or walk down the street. You view those risks as necessary, but you view this "tiny" (your words) risk of a vaccine to help stop a disease and protect other people as not a necessary risk. Yea. It's not even a good kind of selfishness. So no, I'm not interested in "peacefully co-existing" with such lunacy when you threaten other peoples lives for no good reason.
At least if you have the allergic reaction you do it on the spot where the medical professionals are.
And yet again, compare that with the risk of getting COVID-19. (600k+ deaths in the U.S. alone). How many had an allergic reaction to the vaccine and died?
You mention science a lot in your posts, in a manner that makes me wonder how much of these questions is genuine and how much is just a rhetorical device. A tiny risk of what, you are asking? A tiny risk of serious adverse events — anaphylaxis, thrombosis, myocarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome — depending on the vaccine and the age group. Explain the science behind the concern, you say. Really? Are you really interested in the immunology of Guillain-Barré or in the hematology of a thrombosis? Something tells me that you are not. The numbers? The numbers are tiny, like I said, but greater than zero. Some countries discontinued AstraZeneca over the fear of those tiny numbers. I do not remember whether the same happened anywhere for Johnson & Johnson.
> Do you even have a framework for these risks?
No, I don't. Especially since the numbers keep changing.
> This is disingenuous (or maybe you actually don't know what you're talking about)... And you're completely incorrect about requiring vaccines against other diseases.
From the title of the article that set the topic of this conversation, and from your mention of employers, I assumed that we were talking about workplace, and more specifically, about white-collar office workers. It is true that in some professions (teachers? the military? medicine?) people have been required to have certain vaccinations. For me, personally, the last place that made that requirement was secondary school. Neither the university, nor my employers have ever made such a demand.
As an aside, I find it interesting that you mention a religious exemption. I don't know why it would matter to you that a potentially contagious person sharing your space is such because of their religion; or why someone's sheer fear of the vaccine, however irrational, is any different from a religious belief.
> Why did people go to the office who knowingly had strep or the flu? That was beyond stupid.
Because their terms of employment made it difficult for them to stay at home?
That’s exactly the point. You take these risks all the time. Every day you take these risks, often far more likely and unnecessary. Yet you draw the line at vaccines? That’s irrational. You know the danger.
> You mention science a lot in your posts, in a manner that makes me wonder how much of these questions is genuine and how much is just a rhetorical device.
> Explain the science behind the concern, you say. Really? Are you really interested in the immunology of Guillain-Barré or in the hematology of a thrombosis? Something tells me that you are not.
Does it make a difference? Why do I need to be interested when you’re advocating that people don’t take the Covid-19 vaccine? If you are going to advocate that position at least have the courage to explain exactly what the facts are, using numbers and science.
> A tiny risk of what, you are asking? A tiny risk of serious adverse events — anaphylaxis, thrombosis, myocarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome — depending on the vaccine and the age group.
What is the risk? What are the numbers? Explain exactly what the risk is and explain exactly what the risk numbers are.
> The numbers? The numbers are tiny, like I said, but greater than zero.
… there is a non-zero chance you can get struck by a meteor. Do you stay inside? I bet the probability of that is higher than complications due to a vaccine.
> Some countries discontinued AstraZeneca over the fear of those tiny numbers. I do not remember whether the same happened anywhere for Johnson & Johnson.
And that was at an over abundance of caution. But you can just… take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine? Or are you going to say that since they temporarily got scared of these other two that you’ll take no vaccines in the future (and I assume in the past) b/c they light experience the same scenario?
> From the title of the article that set the topic of this conversation, and from your mention of employers, I assumed that we were talking about workplace, and more specifically, about white-collar office workers. It is true that in some professions (teachers? the military? medicine?) people have been required to have certain vaccinations. For me, personally, the last place that made that requirement was secondary school. Neither the university, nor my employers have ever made such a demand.
Idk what country you live in but in the US universities and grade school require vaccination. As they should, obviously.
> As an aside, I find it interesting that you mention a religious exemption. I don't know why it would matter to you that a potentially contagious person sharing your space is such because of their religion; or why someone's sheer fear of the vaccine, however irrational, is any different from a religious belief.
You’re drawing interest where none is warranted. I’m speaking factually here how things work at least in the U.S.. I don’t find religious exemption compelling.
> Because their terms of employment made it difficult for them to stay at home
Industrial revolution is over. Which the 8-5 is a product of. Time’s are a-changin.
What are you talking about? I am super happy for people to take their vaccines, the more the merrier. If there's anything I am advocating for it is for them to do so willingly with the full understanding of risks and benefits rather than be forced to do so under duress from the state.
> What is the risk? What are the numbers? Explain exactly what the risk is and explain exactly what the risk numbers are.
I am not sure I understand what you are asking for here. Nor am I sure that you quite understand it either. If you are asking for the official position on the risks, you can easily look it up yourself on the CDC web site [0]. If, on the other hand, you are asking me to review all available data on adverse events associated with the vaccines, then I am sure you realize that this is a monumental task for a full-time job, and not for a conversation in an online forum.
> And that was at an over abundance of caution. But you can just… take the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine?
There is a paper, submitted in April 2021, which estimates that the risk of thrombotic events for Pfizer recipients is even greater than for those who received AstraZeneca [1]. So if those over-cautious agencies suspended AstraZeneca over concerns about thrombosis, what would they have done to Pfizer, and what are we, the public, to think of it all?
> Yet you draw the line at vaccines? That’s irrational. You know the danger.
It probably is, yes. As for knowing the danger though, I would submit that typically you don't. Or try not to. Knowing the danger would leave some (or many) of us paralyzed.
[0]: E.g.: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
> There is a paper, submitted in April 2021, which estimates that the risk of thrombotic events for Pfizer recipients is even greater than for those who received AstraZeneca [1]. So if those over-cautious agencies suspended AstraZeneca over concerns about thrombosis, what would they have done to Pfizer, and what are we, the public, to think of it all?
> "What are you talking about? I am super happy for people to take their vaccines, the more the merrier."
Yep. That's totally what you're saying.
That you chose to read my comments as an instruction for people on how to act, is entirely on you.
Meanwhile the risks are negligible at best, especially when considering the alternative which might be getting a disease we know for a fact has killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone.
But hey let's focus on the totally big deal risks of vaccines. Right? It's like someone talking about flying for the first time - oh you should do it but beware of the risks... here's a link to the one in 5 million "probability" of something bad happening.
Yep. That's totally on me.
> It's like someone talking about flying for the first time - oh you should do it but beware of the risks...
You keep framing this ("totally take the vaccine", "oh you should do it") as if I were trying to convince somebody on what they should do. Or, earlier, as if I were trying to change your mind on vaccine safety. While what I was talking about was something that a hesitant person might say, or feel, or think.
Turn your airplane metaphor around. In it, if I were extremely scared of flying, and if I tried to explain to you why I were afraid of flying, I would not be doing it with the purpose of keeping you from flying, but so that you did not drag me on that god damn plane, and also, hopefully, did not make my life on the ground miserable. While you keep interpreting it as "oh, so what you are saying is that people shouldn't fly?".
What’s the incidence rate? How does that compare against the risk of getting Covid-19?
My point is, an appeal to history does not work when you are dealing with something new.
By the way, how long have we had vaccines based on adenovirus vectors?
I'm not appealing to history. I'm appealing to the science of creating vaccines. Do you take no vaccines? You could apply the same argument to the measles or flu vaccine. Nobody did until now.
> By the way, how long have we had vaccines based on adenovirus vectors?
Can you articulate in a scientific manner why an adenovirus would be treated differently as it relates to the creation of vaccines and the body's response to them?
For whatever reason that is not the prevailing method when it comes to regulating new medical interventions.
You're admitting that you don't know or understand the science of either COVID-19 vaccines or thalidomide-caused birth defects (really it's going to be for lots of other medical things too let's face it), so why are you questioning only COVID-19 vaccines and not other things?
Why aren't you waking up tomorrow and saying smoking doesn't cause cancer? Why aren't you skeptical of that claim too?
I'd recommend doing what your doctor says, if you have one. If not you might want to consider speaking with one about vaccine safety and the safety and risks of things like ibuprofen or cough medicine.
This is from 2018 - https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243
[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107659 [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/06/novavax-n...
All mRNA vaccine is gone from the body in few days. Usually, the immune response comes within days or weeks.
Theoretically, there is always a change that vaccination triggers some slowly developing auto-immune disease, but that could be triggered by COVID-19 as well (they have the same mRNA). I would be more worried about Long-COVID symptoms. They might be a sign of something chronic for a significant fraction of the population.
https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...
>When new vaccines are released, the unknown side effects, if any, show up within two months of vaccination. This history goes back to at least the 1960s with the oral polio vaccine and examples continue through today.
Beyond that you have to look at this in context - the probability of being harmed by COVID-19 vaccine (including long term) vs the probability of being harmed by a COVID-19 infection (including long term). The vaccine have the lower probability of harm by a very large magnitude.
Yes [1]
*EDIT* - People are being pedantic saying it's not a vaccine while technically true it was a government approved medication that had horrific side effects discovered after approval. This is why people are wary about taking a vaccine still under approval as 'emergency use'. And also ridiculous to force employees back into an office and also require them to be injected with something they may not wish to. Just let them work from home if they choose to not get vaccinated with am emergency approval drug.
What more is the FDA going to say about long terms effects when 50% of the US population is already using the drug?
And if you wanted to think about it more rationally, why would you opt for a more likely and proven scenario of COVID-19 illness and perhaps "long COVID" instead of an unproven speculative issue that there is no evidence for and there is no hypothesis to even generate evidence for?
What will happen in "the long term" and how are you going to get evidence for this and weigh it against the risk of illness from COVID-19?
And let's say there was some big thing that happened. Whatever that is - well, we'd all be in it together. hundreds of millions in the U.S. alone, which means whatever bad thing you're imagining happen would happen to pretty much everyone, which, like COVID-19, means a global search for a cure for whatever thing you think would happen.