A. Pfizer isn’t the only vaccine option.
B. If one doesn’t take the vaccine, one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.
C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.
I think it’s the best option out of all non-great options to mandate vaccines in order to participate in crowded settings. It’s a matter of civic responsibility in order to partake in civic life. Sure it would be better if there was no Covid so no one would need an extra vaccine, but that world no longer exists. I don’t like the current situation either but it is what it is.
Civic responsibility isn’t brought up much these days. Liability shield for vaccine makers isn’t fair, but unvaccinated allowed to romp around spreading the virus without liability is also not fair.
It's now becoming obvious that vaccinated individuals can still be infected and can spread the infection as well. At the same time, mortality is greatly diminished. At that point, we have a vague and unspecific reduction of an already modest risk. This is insufficient to make a "civic responsibility" argument. By the same token, I could argue people should not drive cars as a matter of civic responsibility, because that carries a non-zero risk of killing a pedestrian.
But the analogy to cars is flawed. A more equitable one would be to obey traffic laws and not do things like speed or lane jump. I.e driving in a responsible manner that is considerate of others safety. It doesn’t reduce traffic accidents to zero, it minimizes them. Your analogy would be like continuing the lockdown for vaccinated people because even vaccinated people can in rare cases spread the disease. That is as wacky as forbidden people to drive. Having people vaccinated to partake in large gatherings is like requiring people to obey speed limits or face a penalty. Sure some people will get around it.
At the same time employers now seemingly want to be on the hook for any communicable diseases spread on company property or function. People are being coerced into disclosing medical information or risk being treated like pariahs. It cannot be understated that people are being pressured into getting an unapproved (EUA is not approval) gene therapy (FDAs classification, not mine) that has never been widely tested in humans and has non-trivial side effects. This is unprecedented, at least in the US.
This is on top of being constantly mislead by media and government officials. NPR recently gave a stat, something to the effect of “young people under 40 make up half the positive COVID cases”. Sounds alarming, except that demographic makes up half the population _and_ that demographic had disproportionately mild symptoms from the disease.
If you want to be vaccinated, please go right ahead. But then stop. Allow others that you are not the guardian of to make their own health choices based on their personal research or decision making process.
What is "much higher" in a number?
> If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.
"Significant" would depend on their lifestyle, would it not? Are the rural unvaccinated as "significant" as the urban unvacinnated?
> Civic responsibility isn’t brought up much these days.
Not everyone has the same idea of what civic responsibility should be, which is probably why we have to write and then enforce laws.
I'm not sure about the booster dose, Delta or any other variants, but the Pfizer Vaccine has been consistently shown in several studies to reduce COVID mortality by 99%, so that number is currently ~100
The Pfizer vaccine as I believe 94% effective against severe disease, so around 20x higher.
> What is "much higher" in a number?
The analysis revealed that vaccination efficacy in terms of protection against deaths was equal to 72%, with a lower reduction of number of deaths for B.1.1.7 versus non-B.1.1.7 variants (70% and 78%, respectively). Other factors significantly related to mortality were arrivals at airports, mobility change from the pre-pandemic level and temperature.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.26.21257844v...
An estimated 10,400 deaths have been averted [in the UK] as a result of the COVID-19 vaccination programme up to the end of March 2021.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
>> If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.
> "Significant" would depend on their lifestyle, would it not? Are the rural unvaccinated as "significant" as the urban unvacinnated?
Living in a rural environment does not mean that the virus doesn't spread, otherwise the "Cases/Deaths per 100,000" maps at https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/8167071... would have wide divergence per state, but they all are around 11K deaths per 100,000.
A common thing I heard from some early in the pandemic was that places with lower density would fare better, but that never made much sense to me: even if you have only 10K people in a 50 mile diameter circle, they all still shop and socialize in a handful of places.
But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.
> C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.
Even if others have taken the vaccine themselves? Either that particular risk is negligible if the vaccine works, or the vaccine doesn't work.
>But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.
According to table "COVID-19 Fatality Rate by AGE:" at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se..., the mortality rate for everyone under 40 years of age is 0.2%. That "is basically 0", but means that for every 1000 people infected, 2 will die. Roughly half of the US is under 40 years old (https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...). If no-one had gotten vaccinated, you would expect to see 320,000 deaths in that age group. According to https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se..., we've had 286,000 deaths so far in that age group.
>> C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.
> Even if others have taken the vaccine themselves? Either that particular risk is negligible if the vaccine works, or the vaccine doesn't work.
You're forgetting the number 1 law of large numbers. Things that have a very low chance of probability happen all the time at scale. The vaccine reduces the likelihood of individuals dying by orders of magnitude, and as a group it is a great tool to reduce the R0 under 1, but contagion and transmition is still possible, and every new infection we are rolling the dice on getting "lucky" with a new vaccine resistant variant.
Also, are you aware you can be exposed to the virus and not be infected?
I added every age group between 0 and 39, but took the incorrect column (Deaths from all causes, which is obviously incorrect), which puts me off by an order of magnitude.
> Also, are you aware you can be exposed to the virus and not be infected?
That is true, like with any virus it is a statistics game. It is also true that the Delta variant is 1000x more virulent/transmissible, so likelihood of infection is much higher today than a year ago.
That doesn’t even get into the benefit of preventing long Covid and being able to open the economy faster with fewer restrictions
You statement sounds far more confident than what the science would currently permit.
Severe reactions to experimental vaccines for example?
1) The vaccine isn't perfect, and herd immunity nonlinearly reduces the risk of everyone including the vaccinated from getting it.
2) Unvaccinated people, who make up the vast majority of the cases, create an environment for the virus to evolve within, possibly mutating into a form that is more dangerous to everyone, including the vaccinated
I would argue that the data now shows that herd immunity is not achievable with any vaccination rate. The vaccines just don't work that way, breakthrough infections are rampant.
> Unvaccinated people, who make up the vast majority of the cases, create an environment for the virus to evolve within, possibly mutating into a form that is more dangerous to everyone, including the vaccinated.
This is speculative. Vaccination-induced immunity is clearly not perfect, at the same it puts selection pressure on the virus. Natural immunity, going by reinfection rates, appears to be much stronger. I would speculate that in a population where 70% are vaccinated, where the amount of infections among the vaccinated is roughly the same, the virus is much more likely to mutate in the vaccinated individuals.
Also, the chance of being disabled for a long while if you are young without comorbidity is far from 0%. It is quite significant, certainly above 0.5%.
~60 million are <12 years of age, which means that they aren't eligible for the vaccine at this time, and I've seen reports that it is unlikely we'll have vaccines for the youngest among us. So 82% of the population is the absolute most we can vaccinate.
With the demographic numbers and the (admittedly terrible proxy of) allergy numbers, 86 million people wouldn't be vaccinated (~25%). With a 0.2% percent fatality rate, we are talking about 170,000 deaths if all of them get infected.
> But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.
Having long term side effects doesn't round to zero, even for young healthy people. And vaccine side effects do.
The reason the flu vaccine isn't one of them is because it's not that effective to begin with and you have to take it every year. It's not effective enough to really stop an epidemic, so instead vaccinating patients is the main thrust instead of HCW, because the overall impact will be fairly low.
A difference is that COVID is much deadlier, no?
There aren't actually any virus particles in the mRNA vaccines, so there's no biological mechanism for that to happen.
Beyond that, the virus causes orders of magnitude more spike protein response, so even if that was true, which it probably isn't, then it is still very unlikely that the vaccine could cause long-covid.
Also, all vaccines introduce spike proteins in the body, not just mRNA vaccines.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201217154046.h...
Relevant part "The spike proteins alone can cause brain fog". And vaccines do produce viral proteins as intended.
It appears to come from a researcher contacted by the site for the article. And it's probably true.
However, there's a few reasons to believe that "long" covid like symptoms wouldn't come from the spike protein alone:
1. As a parent mentioned, you generate a lot fewer proteins w/ the vaccine than the virus
2. IIUC, those proteins are more localized. The soreness with an initial injection is inflammation due to spike protein creation, and that's usually localized to the injection site. The proteins themselves are less likely to travel as widely as the virus.
3. The proteins don't last very long. They're gone after a few days. So long term symptoms wouldn't be due to a continued immune response. They might be due to inflammation that hasn't gone down, I guess, but that seems unlikely to last months.
And again, all of these will be worse with the virus than the vaccine. You'll have more spike proteins, for longer, over a larger part of your body, and also have a virus attacking you in addition to the immune response.
I'm hesitant to just accept this as a fact. Vaccinations can cause very strong immune reactions in young adults that would otherwise likely suffer mild or asymptomatic infections. There are many surveys that query for a basket of sometimes unspecific symptoms such as "fatigue" or "brain fog" as a follow-up of a COVID infection. I'm missing that volume of surveys in the follow-up for vaccinations.
I feel like (B) is true, but framed in such a way to get a specific [negative] reaction.
People hurt by any COVID-19 vaccine are still entitled to compensation for that injury. Essentially the US Government provides a liability shield, wherein the damages/liability is transferred to a specific government fund, because it is considered in the greater public good to have companies make vaccines at all.
This is done via the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program[0] which is easier/cheaper to win than normal civil court and pays attorneys fees on a win. This is funded via a specific tax on all vaccine sales that is earmarked for only this purpose.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...
It apparently is using an odd countermeasure payment program, which is not approving any claims. https://yourworlddaily.blogspot.com/2021/07/covid-19-vaccine...
it's dystopian. this is power that won't be reliquished by either major party, just like 9/11 surveillance and security theater. unlike some of currently fashionable political impetuses, this one is worth actively resisting, to keep federal powers in check.
mRNA vaccines have been well studied - from a scientific standpoint it's hard to imagine how it even could cause problems.
Here is an example of a long term problem caused by a (traditional, non-mrna) vaccine
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...
As far as I know there hasn't been much research into the long term effects of many vaccines. After decades of availability if they were causing issues I hope somebody would have found a connection if they were causing issues. I would very much like to see research into this though.
I do agree mrna vaccines are unlikely to cause long term issues.
Just to be clear. I am very much in favor of vaccines. I just don't like being required to take it so soon after it was created.
So if you trust the decades of mRNA vaccine research, you should consider the vaccine strictly safer than covid, as getting the disease will expose you to everything the vaccine exposes you to.
I believe both mrna and traditional vaccines are safer than covid. I just don't like to take vaccines or medication without longer results than a year. I also agree mRNA vaccines shouldn't have any long term negative effects, but I tend to take the position when in doubt don't take an action.
If in 5 years there hasn't been any widespread negative effects I will probably take it.
This is similar to how flu vaccines vary from year to year, but the mechanisms and changes are well understood so the approval process can be streamlined, but we don't expect issues from this year's flu vaccine that we didn't see last year, even though they are different.
It's already the law, and has been for like half a century (edit: more like 80 years, actually). If you aren't vaccinated you can't attend school. You can't serve in the military. You can't work in many health care fields. We requires our citizenry to be vaccinated against major preventable diseases. We always have.
And this policy is, objectively, the second[1] biggest success story in the last few centuries of public health policy. Period.
Why did no one care about "keeping federal powers in check" in 2019? Why do you only care now? You don't think maybe that there's something polluting your priors?
[1] The invention of antibiotics gets #1.
Unless you get an exemption, which can be requested and are often granted on a variety of grounds.
> We requires our citizenry to be vaccinated against major preventable diseases. We always have.
We clearly don't, though. As a citizen you can be entirely unvaccinated and live a completely normal life.
So yeah sure, if you have a specific medical problem, or very very limited religious reason, you can be exempted from vaccination, which is the same for the COVID vaccine.
Literally nothing has changed, the COVID vaccine is now just part of the list of required vaccines (and as of right now COVID vaccination is actually not required at most universities as they are waiting for final FDA approval which will likely be here sometime in late August).
This is only because the majority of the populace is vaccinated against polio, measles. If the majority of the population was also unvaccinated, these viruses would make life not fun. Most of us live a very sheltered life and have never directly experienced living with measles or polio.
You seem to be arguing technicalities without addressing my point. We have lots and lots of vaccine regulation that ensures that virtually all citizens are immune to diseases like measles, hep, diphtheria, etc... No, it's not absolute, and I don't believe I claimed it was. All policy requires careful tuning.
So let's include covid in the same regime. You agree with that part, right?
2.) You mean the surge in cases that are seeing vaccinated people faring statistically far better than the un-vaccinated? I don't think that it was ever a secret that the vaccine wasn't going to be bulletproof or capable of complete success against all variants, especially variants that didn't exist at the time of development.
There are many more breakthrough cases with the delta variant. That said, the vaccines are still very good at combatting serious illness:
We continue to estimate that the risk of a breakthrough
infection with symptom upon exposure to the Delta variant
is reduced by seven-fold. The reduction of 20-fold for
hospitalizations, and deaths," Walensky said during
Tuesday's briefing.If we could get 70% of the population vaccinated we could be done with this and move on with our lives.
NOT approve emergency measures (such as PREP Act) that hopes to push risk down and face much slow development for vaccines?
Emminent domain pharmaceutical supply chain?
Nationalize vaccine research efforts to "force" the creation of a new vaccine?
Stop "forcing" people to take vaccine to reduce demand to penalize private enterprise?
These are genuine questions. All vaccines makers/suppliers are poised to rake in profits, be it in capital or some other geopolitical favours.
Government-mandated vaccine from a private supplier. What could possibly go wrong.
Would you not be making the same statement if it was a federally funded, just with a word replaced?
It will increase my taxes anyway; who do you think is paying for all this?
The difference is, that in this way, my taxes pay for privately-held know-how. I want my taxes to pay for public know-how.
They didn't have to limit Pfizer's or other suppliers profit margin to cover people's costs for recommended to diagnose, treat, or prevent COVID (or used in conjunction to enhance effectiveness of or mitigate risks or complications of such a diagnostic, treatment, or prevention measure); that's covered by the same law which shields the makers of those things from liability. [0]
If you are fine with C and D, you might find yourself in a company that most people would not like to be.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/nuremberg-code-addresses-e...
> An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emerge...
That's false. The mere fact that a vaccine is EUA does not mean that it hasn't been tested. The vaccines available under EUA today have gone through exactly the same testing phases as fully FDA-approved ones. The only difference is that the phases were overlapping instead of performed serially. The link you reference already explains this.
And on the topic of ethics, we have more than enough data on the rate of bodily damage and death caused by the covid virus to make vaccines available to the public as soon as practically possible. Any public policy of holding back vaccines for years of small-scale testing in the face of such mass death would be tantamount to genocidal negligence.
So, the timeline is:
- Corminaty; currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is december 2023;
- Spikewax: currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is december 2022;
- Vaxzevria: currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is second quarter 2022;
- Janssen: still doing phases 1/2a, 2a, 3; assumed end december 2023;
I mean, come on. Literally billions of people have taken this drug. What "complicationss" are you expecting that we wouldn't already have data for? It's... a vaccine. We've all had dozens of them. Did you freak out about your measles jab?
Maybe there's a side-channel attack where we can convince the conspiracy folks that this actually is a Chinese bioweapon designed to destroy the political cohesion of the west, so they should get on board and get their shots. Think it'd work?
I agree with your sentiment, but it is not your coworkers who decided that now it's time to force everyone back into the office.
The safest approach, beyond even vaccination, is to physically distance by simply not being around each other. It is not possible to spread this virus when people aren't around each other!
Except that it is in the cat populations worldwide. We dont have to like this fact, but ignoring it leads to safetyism that doesn't work. Maybe when we get the cat population to 70% vaccination rate we will be safe.
You should benefit from less severity of illness. Why does others status matter to you given both can spread?
Ideally, companies would create a vaccine as fast as possible(but safely, without being immune from lawsuits - especially if negligence or malice can be 'proven', why make someone immune from consequence then?) because that's always going to a profitable endeavor anyway. And people would be smart enough to get the vaccine and take precautions about spreading dangerous diseases. I don't know what the right solution is, given that we don't live in such a reasonable world
One upshot to this situation is that we are able to see the people who are willing to become hyperventilating statists with a bit more clarity.
I can't be the only one who is incredibly uncomfortable about society going down this path.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986160 [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-widens-green-pass... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/San-Fra...