Oh, Mirriam-Webster already decided that "fully vaccinated" people are "anti-vaxxers" if they do not support vaccine mandates. [1]

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anti-vaxxer

What's the point of appealing to Mirrian-Webster? They're the tail, not the dog; nobody goes to one of their dictionaries to determine how a word or phrase is used.

That’s how they are traditionally being used. They are used as the ultimate source of truth. “We don’t agree, let’s see what the dictionary says”. That trick would still work on majority of people I’d think.

But yes, it’s the tail that is wagging the dog which is wagging the tail.

There have been cases where lobbyists and special interest groups got the dictionary definitions altered to suit they client’s needs.

That is absolutely ridiculous.

Not really though. If you go back 2 years, people who were opposed to mandatory vaccinations were generally people who thought their children shouldn't be required to get vaccinated against measles. Vaccine mandates are crucial social policy

> Vaccine mandates are crucial social policy

Maybe the reason USA has so many anti vaccers is because of vaccine mandates? It is much easier to believe that something is evil when you are forced to do it. Also many first world countries doesn't mandate vaccines and people get vaccinated anyway, so it isn't crucial social policy.

Exactly. COVID is so deadly, that people have to be coerced and mandated into taking it, when in the beginning of all of this, most were walking around asymptomatic with it.

No, that’s probably not the reason. The anti-COVID stuff preceded discussion of vaccine mandates. Europe has mandatory childhood vaccinations and not the same level of anti-vaccine sentiment.

Or they are tools for a medical totalitarian dystopia. 2 years ago there were effectively zero exception free vaccine mandates, and only a very few places where they were actually hard to get.

No, it really is. You're ignoring the fact that the definition was changed in order to shame people who are against mandating COVID vaccines.

According to what?

They're wrong.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...

No, they are not crucial social policy. You will have to accept that democracy does not mean that everyone has to be of the same opinion as you.

Merriam-Webster's standard in definitions is descriptive rather than prescriptive:

Merriam-Webster is a descriptive dictionary in that it aims to describe and indicate how words are actually used by English speakers and writers. Generally, the descriptive approach to lexicography does not dictate how words should be used or set forth rules of "correctness," unlike the prescriptive approach.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/descriptive-vs...

If Merriam-Webster are defining a word in a specific way, that reflects typical usage of that word, not M-W's "decision". It is literally the voice of the people.

The complaint is that Merriam-Webster is not reflecting typical usage by "the people" here, but rather spin from a concentrated press campaign. John Q. Budweiser down the street isn't using the word differently, but all the right newspapers and pundits are, and all at the same time. To John, that starts to look Orwellian.

In my country people that are already double-jabbed and say they want to wait for the 3rd dose/booster are already called science deniers and anti-vaxxers, so that's that.

"Webster defines [word] as..." has been a running punchline for over 20 years. I think the dignity of the real anti-vaxxers will remain intact.

It's certainly better than "anti-vaxxer" which labels them and buckets them as crazy and makes them dig their heels in further. If the goal is to convince people to get vaccinated, belittling them is not the right approach.

When I was in the process of disassociating from a high demand religion (a decade long process), I was struck with how effective people who insisted on reality were. Reality sounded belittling, but it really wasn't. I see an analogy here with the people insisting against vaccination with zeal and fervor. It is very hard to break through the bubble of cognitive dissonance, and lone/let live or "humor them" approaches frankly are disingenuous.

Strawman. No one said you shouldn't speak about the truth and reality. I'm saying not to give them a demeaning label.

shrug. Labels are quite effective for concise communication, all negatives aside. Such as your classification of my point as a strawman (which I don't consider it to be), you communicate a precise response with a single word.

Sure.

But "anti-vaxxer" has two meanings which are conveniently confused in current usage.

1. Someone against all vaccines 2. Someone against the current COVID vaccines

strawman is a description of your argument, not you. It doesn't make a judgement about what kind of person you are, and that you have been or always will make bad arguments.

It's very different from calling you Strawman-er, which would be making unfounded assumptions about your general argumentation style and would pre-judge future statements by you.

"Anti-vaccine advocate" is clear. It identifies a set of behaviors that are intellectually dishonest, either claiming hesitancy, outright denying science, or (even worse) economically benefitting by sowing confusion.

When people don't do this, they aren't advocating against vaccination.

My understanding of the strawman fallacy is that the strawman is inaccurate. None is expressed here, simply labeling a phenomenon.

> which would be making unfounded assumptions about your general argumentation style and would pre-judge future statements by you.

After decades of internet discussion, such charity from people holding opposing viewpoints appears to be rare even when explicitly and rigorously adopted.

Agreed. Anti-vaccine advocate is more accurate at this point. Denialist is harsh, but fits.

Most people who are "COVID vaccine hesitant", or whatever term we want to use, aren't opposed to the concept of vaccination in general. Many of them have even gotten flu shots many times in the past, which as an aside when analyzed rigorously are barely better than placebo:

https://www.cochrane.org/CD001269/ARI_vaccines-prevent-influ...

> Injected influenza vaccines probably have a small protective effect against influenza and ILI (moderate-certainty evidence), as 71 people would need to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case, and 29 would need to be vaccinated to avoid one case of ILI. Vaccination may have little or no appreciable effect on hospitalisations (low-certainty evidence) or number of working days lost.

So 71 shots to avoid one case, or if we want to be charitable we should use the 29 shots per one ILI since really ILI is what we care about. And no actual effect on hosp. or working days lost (both of which is what we should really actually care about)

--

Anyway I got off track with the flu vaccine stuff, but anyway surely you're aware that far more people are "hesitant" about the COVID vaccine specifically than any of the other vaccines? So to cast it as a case of "anti-vaccine advocacy" is just wrong. That's not what's going on here and as long as you refuse to try to understand these people you will continue failing to impact their behavior.

> as you refuse to try to understand these people you will continue failing to impact their behavior.

You and I are not responsible for their behavior, and as a society we have entertained their petulance long enough.

I support vaccine mandates to increase the social costs for people who fail to perform their civic duty to be vaccinated. (Medically unable is a different story).

Well good for you, but you actually do need to look on the impact on behavior of the things you advocate for. Unless your goal is purely to punish/harm those that don't share your beliefs rather than some tangible outcome in terms of vaccination or [insert primary endpoint here].

We're already seeing the impact of vaccine mandates in places like New York: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-mandate-new-york-...

> "We stopped elective inpatient surgeries. We stopped some of our outpatient patient visits. We stopped ICU medical transfers from other referral rural hospitals. ... We've asked for more time to work on strategies with the state to ensure that as many people as possible get vaccinated," said Tom Quatroche, the president and CEO of Erie County Medical Center.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that mass COVID vaccination doesn't magically stop the virus from doing what it does. Israel has absurdly high vaccine uptake - including a sizeable proportion of triply-vaxxed people - and we're still seeing more "cases" than at the same time the previous year. So I wonder how much you've actually looked into the efficacy (in terms of chance of infection and spread) of these vaccines given the data. And I wonder how rigorously you've thought about the second and third order effects when phenomenoms like antigenic drift and immune escape and Marek's disease are very well known.

Anyway, I won't go too far down that rabbit hole since the discussion is more of "assuming vaccination is good and we don't have any ethical qualms with using violent police power to compel people to consume a pharmaceutical product where the manufacturers have literally no liability to the consumer for any adverse reactions, what is the best way to modify behavior" than about examining the premise of the utility of mass vaccination itself. It's probably already obvious that I completely reject the ethics of what you are in favor of. So setting the pesky notion of ethics aside for the time-being, I still think you're failing to see the very obvious harms that come from the brand of coercion that you're advocating for.

Like I said above, we're already seeing the effects of these mandates on healthcare capacity. Firing 5% of one's hospital staff is no small thing. And you seem to very much not see how censoring and suppressing alternate points of view only reinforces those points of view. Implicitly you seem to think that adopting a policy and actually enforcing it in the real-world are the same thing - which is a trap that many a naive intellectual has fallen into since time immemorial.

Hey, I apologize that my stance, as to me it appears to rub you the wrong way. If you're feeling heated or triggered, please accept an apology from an internet stranger.

My stance on the necessity of vaccines isn't a belief. Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.

Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research. The simplest assumption is they believe something that is not supported in the science, but have too much ego on the line to accept they are incorrect. This accurately classifies most of the concerns I've seen. I can empathize. We've all made mistakes in who we trust or what we conclude. But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk. Hence why I am absolutely okay with a mandate to ensure the anti-vaccine advocates burden the social costs for their decisions.

> Why people choose to deviate from a very clear dominating strategy is simply not necessary for me to understand or research.

It's very important for you to understand if you hope to impact the behavior of people who don't share your beliefs. Or am I misunderstanding and you live in a universe where you can wave a magic wand? If so, I'd recommend just using that aforementioned wand to eliminate all mortality :P

> Its from understanding the science of vaccines and the exponential mathematic of pandemics.

It's logistic, not exponential, because the exponential growth tapers off as the proportion of immunity increases. This might seem like a nitpick*, but it's very indicative of the inability of those in your camp to foresee higher order effects. From a purely societal perspective, these vaccines do not offer anywhere near enough protection to actually avoid the propagation of the virus. All they've done is create a rich population of SARS-2-naive vaccinated individuals who provided perfect substrate for a variant like Delta, which possess point mutations on the spike, to rip through the vaccinated (given that, insofar as the vaccines were reasonably effective against "alpha", they prevented the vaccinated from acquiring natural immunity). It is no coincidence that a strain that largely-but-not-entirely bypasses vaccine immunity is now by far the most dominant strain here in the US.

* granted you could counter-nitpick me here by pointing out that the pandemic phase is specifically the exponential part of the epidemic curve

> But in the meantime, people like kids, the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk.

Kids are not at serious risk of COVID-19. How can you claim to "understand the science" if you won't even admit this very basic fact? The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 is dramatically lower than Influenza, and we never pulled kids out of in-person schooling for two years straight when presented with pandemic Influenza. (Yet if we applied COVID risk standards, we would have)

Note that this is usually where people come in and make a bunch of unfounded assertions about long COVID and how the kids will be crippled for life. I hope you're not going to take that route :)

> the especially vulnerable, and those who cannot medically take the vaccine are put at risk.

Ignoring the ethical issue of how much responsibility someone has to ingest a pharmaceutical product with no manufacturer liability, I think a much more accurate statement is that those individuals are put at risk by those who have not acquired natural immunity. Briefly:

The difference between a SARS-2-naive vaccinated individual and a SARS-2-naive unvaccinated individual is real, but quite minor in the context of Delta in terms of infection & transmission. The difference between a SARS-2-recovered unvaccinated individual and a SARS-2-naive vaccinated individual is absolutely massive. (https://pastebin.com/8yR3y5NA to avoid cluttering this comment)

So, while ethically I don't accept the notion of assigning blame to transmission of highly infectious endemic respiratory viruses, if we're gonna assign blame, the relevant criteria is "previous exposure to SARS-2", not vaccination status.

>we don't have any ethical qualms with using violent police power to compel people to consume a pharmaceutical product where the manufacturers have literally no liability to the consumer for any adverse reactions,

Where, exactly, is anyone in the US "using violent police power to compel people to consume a pharmaceutical product"?

At most, folks are being required to either get vaccinated or regularly tested in order to keep working. Which is AIUI, at least under US labor law, absolutely legal.

So I ask again: where, exactly, is "using violent police power to compel people to consume a pharmaceutical product" happening?

Well personally I'm an ancap so I consider all laws/executive orders to be implicitly (and often explicitly) backed by the police power of the state. You can say that the government requiring employees to be vaccinated isn't violent police power because they're not holding them down and injecting them, but what exactly will the state do if the employer doesn't comply? They'll send in the guys with guns to enforce.

Really it's such a small thing to be splitting hairs over though. If you prefer, just read what I wrote and mentally s/violent police power/coercion

Repeating the question as you didn't really answer it, and as a minarchist I view ancap theories as infeasible even if interesting:

> Where, exactly, is anyone in the US "using violent police power to compel people to consume a pharmaceutical product"?

Your answer, as I read it, is "never, but they could, and that is concerning!"

I like Bill Burr's glorious response to the slippery slope argument, "Where does it stop? F#$@%#@%@ somewhere!"

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough. It’s being used in places like Biden’s federal mandate that will (when they announce the actual OSHA rule) slap private companies with massive fees if they have unvaccinated employees

I didn't realize that OSHA came to workplaces with firearms and shoots those who don't follow the regs.

I guess you learn something new every day. Please.

What happens if they don’t pay the fees?

>What happens if they don’t pay the fees?

For many, nothing[0] happens.

[0] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/safety/employers-have-escaped-...

Barely better than placebo? The paper you linked says:

"Inactivated influenza vaccines probably reduce influenza in healthy adults from 2.3% without vaccination to 0.9%"

That's a ~60% reduction, which is nothing to shake a stick at. But I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that the flu shots do not have a remarkably high reduction rate; that's been public knowledge for a long time. In fact the CDC's own data on this is even gloomier than the Cochrane review:

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/effectiveness-studies....

In any event, if people are concerned about mRNA vaccines for whatever reason, there are other vaccines out there like the J&J vaccine.

While there are always reasons to be distrustful of the gov't (it is not hard to find examples of the CDC, Surgeon General, etc being dead wrong on aspects of the pandemic), a cost benefit analysis of whether to get the vaccine or not should produce a pretty clear result.

Sorry, where are you getting that quote? I couldn't find your quote on the page. Anyway, that quote doesn't disprove the points I made whatsoever. The number needed to treat is enormous, and there's no detectable benefit on either hospitalizations or missed days of work:

> Injected influenza vaccines probably have a small protective effect against influenza and ILI (moderate-certainty evidence), as 71 people would need to be vaccinated to avoid one influenza case, and 29 would need to be vaccinated to avoid one case of ILI. Vaccination may have little or no appreciable effect on hospitalisations (low-certainty evidence) or number of working days lost.

That's literally the spitting definition of "barely better than placebo" in my book.

Indeed, I prefer "vaccine redundancy" over "vaccine hesitancy".

For people who've had Covid before, vaccine is simply redundant. (If you disagree, please provide sources / data for your view.) Of course, getting vaccinated would increase their immune system's response, but so would for someone who was vaccinated a month ago... at some point, it has to be "good enough" for normal life (not 100% safe anyways).

Israeli study says getting infected creates 13x stronger immune response than the vaccine versus Delta. How much stronger do we need to get that justifies taking the vaccine at that point? This is the entire point of why they say vaccine mandates are wrong for those that already had it.

Delta isn't, and likely, won't be the only variant.

Having a broad response via vaccination helps, even if you have antibodies from prior exposure.

Vaccination provides immune system training for exactly one viral protein. Recovery from natural infection provides immune system training for all proteins present in the variant that caused the infection.

Vaccination only provides an immune response for the spike protein, not a broad response.

You're missing the point. Prior infection creates a much broader response than vaccination does.

No, the point is clear but missing an essential detail. Vaccination results in much better outcomes when you do get the disease. Ergo the ideal is to be vaccinated, and then if you so happen to get sick, recovery is quicker and you have a stronger immune response.

What are you talking about? I've seen studies that suggest vaccination in addition to natural immunity can result in higher levels of antibodies, but I've seen nothing to suggest that vaccination results in "much better outcomes" as compared to natural immunity.

People with natural immunity aren't even getting infected in any meaningful numbers, while fully vaccinated individuals are getting infected left and right.

You jumped ahead a bit. Let me clarify.

If you are unvaccinated and have not had the disease, then if you get infected your prognosis is much poorer than being vaccinated.

If you are vaccinated and get infected, you have a better outcome.

If you are both vaccinated and have had prior immunity, see the discussion on other threads in this discussion.

You forgot:

If you are unvaccinated and previously got infected, you now have a much better outcome than being vaccinated, including from future variants of the virus.

You are now banned from YouTube.

This article is misleading misinformation.

> "I've had COVID - therefore I don't need to get the vaccine." Turns out that's not entirely true. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study reporting that individuals who've had COVID are twice as likely to get reinfected

The article makes it sounds as if prior infection makes it 2x as likely to get infected as having the vaccine.

In reality, the study is only comparing previously infected individuals. So it's "just Covid" vs "Covid + vaccine". This is obvious. My original claim is, that "just Covid" is better (or equally good) as "just vaccine".

The reporter's slant and choice of words is irrelevant.

It looks a lot like you are looking for reasons to ignore the evidence. No one can help you if contrarianism is your end goal, and you can harm others plenty.

And, this is exactly why youtube is banning speech right now.

>I find it very hard to believe that anyone is still "on the fence" about it.

>And there it is--this doesn't sound like a person who is weighing their options in good faith. It sounds like someone who is already convinced of what the truth is.

Pot, meet kettle.

that one jumped out at me :)

But lots if these people DO change their minds. I have a relatively small circle of in-person family and friends, and five of the six hesitant people in that group are now covid vaxxed. There are those who will accept no evidence, but most of the "hesitant" aren't in that group.

Curious - what changed their minds?

+1 I sincerely want to believe this is true. What information in September was enough to convince them, where they weren't convinced in August (when the vaccines got full FDA approval).

EDIT: According to [1] the "Wait and See" bucket is down to about 7% as of September. I'd really love to know what new information they are waiting for. Fascinating!

1: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...

I'm not sure I entirely agree.

There are people getting vaccines for the first time every day right now. Somehow they came around.

Given that there have been 20 million vaccine doses administered in the US during the month of September, it would seem that you are wrong. The vaccine has been available for many months. Certainly some of those 20 million doses represent people who have been hesitating for one reason or another.

At this point in time, nobody not vaccinated yet is interested in your propaganda. Also, the post you are replying to is already sort of doxing his own wife, so please dont make it even worse by capitalising on that.

If it is an established truth that these vaccines are safe, why still grant these companies immunity from liability if something goes wrong?

Before someone dismisses the question as anti-vaxxer, I have taken the vaccine.

> overabundance of evidence that the COVID vaccines are safe, effective, and that they decrease hospitalizations and death

"evidence" that comes from tightly controlled information sources with clear non-truth oriented motivations, that can only accept one answer, and suppres all contrary evidence and discourse? Well if Pravda and the Party tell us the injection is a must and safe too then who could ever doubt it?

I was (and am?) "vaccine hesitant." I am vaccinated now, though it was probably unnecessary since I already had it. I'm really starting to wonder what exactly they injected into me and almost regret it. These are not the actions benevolent actors with nothing to hide.

FYI what pushed me over he edge was a combination of discomfort (wanted to occasionally re-engage with nightlife without worry and guilt), time, local community that I trusted more getting it, and some people in particular I wanted to meet up with that were particularly anal about covid fears.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28694236.

This strikes me as entirely being exactly the things of which you are accuse the parent post's author.

> "people like you are part of the problem"

> "such judgemental bullshit"

> "judgmental jerks who prolong the schism between people"

Whatever your positions or beliefs on the matter, or opinions of the post author to whom you are responding, your opinions and views could be more effectively expressed using logic and reasoning without the ad hominem and vulgarity.

In any regard: it's beneath the community standards of reasoned and respectful communication on HN, which I think many of us highly appreciate and value.

I think you can dial it back a notch. The comment they highlighted...

> She thinks they’re taking it down because they don’t want people to know the truth.

Isn't indicative of someone wanting to see long term data. That's someone who thinks the powers that be are hiding some smoking gun.

I'm sure there are folks with qualms about long term safety, but you're absolutely ignoring all the false information being pushed by a lot of the "hesitant". "Long term effects" is their strongest argument, but they rarely use it. Instead it's lots of stories being made up, statistics fabricated, and just flat out belligerence.

So yeah, I'm on board with the idea that "vaccine hesitant" is a term that should be used with discretion. Stand up for the truly hesitant. The rest are full of shit, and I have no problem with that label for them.

> The vaccine is the fastest vaccine EVER approved.

This is because it's received the most private and public funding of any vaccine, ever, in history. Not because safety hurdles were removed.

> We have ZERO long-term data as to what it does.

We have 30 years of mRNA studies and research, and at this point, ~billions of case studies that show no negative effects over the course of 1+ years.

> But I UNDERSTAND why people are hesitant.

84% of unvaccinated people said their decision against immunization wouldn’t change if the vaccines had no side effects ([source](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/cnbc-poll-shows-very-little-...)). Also, "Higher county uninsured rates and poverty rates are associated with lower vaccination rates." and "vaccination rates are lower in counties that voted for Trump compared to those that voted for Biden" ([source](https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/vaccina...)).

This isn't a debate among intellectuals about impact of mRNA generated spike proteins like you're framing it. It's an idealogical divide among those who properly evaluate risk of long covid vs. vaccination and low income conspiracy theorists.

> We have 30 years of mRNA studies and research, and at this point

The mRNA vaccines are the first ever approved for use in humans. This is indisputable.

There are no long term studies as to its side effects. Do I think there are any? No. But could I be wrong? Definitely. Thoughts and feelings aren't science. We need the long term data, which have none of.

I just want to point out that the difference between the mRNA vaccines and the other medications with long term side effects is that the mRNA vaccine is only active in your body for a few days. You don't get repeated injections on a timescale often enough to constantly have the vaccine in your body. The only thing that remains is the antibodies, which were made by your own body. On the other hand, blood pressure medication etc. needs to be taken daily and has active ingredients constantly circulating in your bloodstream.

> mRNA vaccine is only active in your body for a few days.

Isn’t the point of it to confer long term immunity? Specifically, it aims to alter the immune system, probably one of the more complicated systems our body has. Immune system disorders are no joke, they can kill or significantly reduce the quality of life. So there is a potential area for things to go wrong.

There is also the case of any long term effects triggered by the short term presence of mRNA. What if it lands in different types of organs, could that cause cancer in 2-3 years, other serious chronic condition. Not by the mRNA still being transcribed there but by some other unintended interaction or lasting damage.

I just don’t understand where the absolute confidence that it’s safe long term is coming from.

Note that my previous comment did not state anything to do with long term safety, only that there is a false equivalency being drawn. I agree that there is no long term (decades) study that I can point to about the safety of mRNA vaccines. However, my personal choice to take the vaccine was a conscious comparison of the benefits and risks (with attempts at quantifying the above).

> Do we know if the mRNA vaccine has any long term effects?

Phew, good thing we've got non-mRNA vaccines available.

The vaccine "hesitant" are not rational actors. They have some position they decided on and use post-hoc rationalizations to defend that position.

Their irrational positions have contributed to the current situation of clogged hospitals, increased deaths, and the continued need for costly mitigation measures.

How long do the components of the vaccine stay in the body before being consumed?

Is DNA changed?

Do you have a specific pathway you think the mRNA vaccine conponents takes that you think will cause long term effects?

Why is the more traditional approaches taken by J&J not acceptable if there is fear regarding mRNA vaccines?

Mostly False, mrna vaccines have been studied for about twenty years now.

False. Studied doesn't mean it worked or was feasible. This is the first mRNA vaccine approved for use in humans. The lipid nanoparticles used to deliver the mRNA was first tested in humans in 2015 but wasn't an approved drug.

Appeal to solipsism is not a compelling argument. It’s obviously been studied quite a while and feasible, the results speak for themselves. That govt is slow to react until forced is not apropos of anything.

We have 10 years of data[1] behind other mRNA therapeutics that use the exact same technology that the vaccine uses.

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

The mRNA COVID vaccines were the first mRNA vaccines approved for humans ever.

Obtaining the long term data depends on reliable uptake of dependable data. When nurses and doctors refuse to acknowledge that a new symptom for the individual that happens within the hour/day/week of receiving the vaccine isn't even a possible side effect of the vaccine, then we don't have a reliable uptake of data. This is a common and largely unaddressed systemic complaint that destroys trust.

The chorus of "it's safe" becomes a self-reenforcing position regardless of actual outcome because it taints the view of those collecting the actuals in the field.

I have noticed this type of “vaccine side-effect hesitancy” too. Family getting serious heart issues after the vaccine, vision problems and other strange effects, and almost all of them have gaslighted by the doctors “it’s probably just a coincidence”, “it’s not the vaccine pretty sure, just take an aspirin”.

It’s the complete opposite response you’d expect from the medical community, where you’d think they would be very keen in investigating these issues.

It’s seems like they are almost afraid of even looking too hard…

I, too, would expect a "do no harm" approach to be overly cautious in recording potential side effects or symptoms post vaccine. To error on over reporting rather than this really odd refusal to consider even the possibility.

I'm not surprised that they're not afraid to look too hard about COVID-19 though. In the current climate, that road leads to loss of job and income.

What symptom are you implying is being ignored?

It's far too varied to give you a small list. You can easily find story after story online if you look — though they're being purged as fast as the automated systems can manage it as this story demonstrates.

This is pretty standard operating procedure for vaccines since I started paying attention. I have children that suffered reactions from various vaccines — I also have been personally vaccine damaged. I try not to just repeat random stories online, so I will just keep this to my family and my immediate acquaintance. I've seen lots of things from a bout of severe allergies centered around the injection point to being severely ill following a shot to lasting new symptoms including new autoimmune disorders, or odd things like unusual hair growth. I had a friend who had a child die, that was previously perfectly healthy, from the disease (autopsy report) they were being vaccinated for the previous week.

Presenting a question about the vaccine being responsible, even for minor stuff, generally results in being gas lit. "Impossible", "You don't know what you're talking about", "Didn't happen", "Just a Coincidence" even when all rational reason indicates that the vaccine should at least be considered. These anecdotes are consistently shot down online for various reasons, but nobody seems to connect the dots that when you systemically ignore evidence there is no mathematical model that will somehow find what is really happening. The data is just lost because those who are supposed to be trusted to collect it are ignoring so much of it.

You look at all the comments here about the irrationality of those who don't accept the data, etc. This is not about data. This is about a loss of trust. You can show all the data in the world, but if the trust bridge has been burned then it's for naught. You can't cross the bridge again with a mountain of data because it's irrelevant. That bridge is being burned at the ground level every day, one by one, by a medical system that really doesn't care much about individuality or parental perspectives when they don't match their own.

This story itself continues to burn the trust bridge. We don't want your stories, your personal experiences, you cannot be heard. There is no discussion. Be silent. That's not how to build trust. It's purely an attempt to cull the information base in favor of the chosen outcome.

Right, people like you need to be stopped. Lets stop talking to people like you, and support them in our community. Lets stop helping people like you if they need something. Lets just drop people like you out of society.

While I almost entirely disagree with you, I agree with the general idea that most people aren't "hesitant". Personally I'm vaccine "hell no!" (because I don't have a personal medical need for the COVID vaccine, potential side effects aside, and I reject the societal benefit argument given the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike).

So while I come at it from the total opposite reason, you're right that with the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months, most people who are not vaccinated are fairly strongly opposed to getting it (not necessarily all for the same reason). There are definitely a bunch of "I wanna wait and see" type people, but given all the coercion/propaganda they are few and far between.

That's like saying I'm "vaccine hell no!" because I don't have a personal need for a polio vaccine lol. Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.

> and I reject the societal benefit argument given the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike

That's so weird, all the data seems to indicate that in areas with high vaccination rates nobody gets sick and dies.

It feels like you've manufactured a windmill for yourself.

> Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.

You don't know me or my medical history, so you can't make that statement honestly. I am in a population where I am at borderline negligible risk from SARS-2 infection. The mere 24+ hours of post-second-shot acute inflammatory cascade, which is almost guaranteed, already eclipses the expected value of COVID symptoms I would experience if infected. (Perhaps you aren't aware of how stratified the risk is based off age and comorbidities?)

You doubly so cannot make such a statement when you don't know whether I've already had COVID previously. Someone who has had SARS-2 naturally and recovered is almost completely insulated from COVID risk. And this, by the way, is much moreso than compared to an unexposed-yet-vaccinated individual. And the effect size is massive, we're not talking about natural immunity being "20% better", we're talking like 800% better. Source: https://pastebin.com/8yR3y5NA

> That's so weird, all the data seems to indicate that in areas with high vaccination rates nobody gets sick and dies.

How closely have you been looking at the Israeli data? It is simply false that nobody gets sick and dies. The vaccines very significantly reduce the personal risk of hospitalization or death, but as I've already told you, my risk from SARS-2 is almost nonexistent, so that confers exactly zero benefit for me. The reason you and others are so concerned about vaccination is - I hope - the purported societal benefit of vaccination, and I've already hinted at the very predictable phenomenom that vaccinating against only the spike protein is just going to lead to antigenic drift and immune escape and will just end up spinning our wheels at best, and at worst it will actually lead to increased pathogenicity in the unvaccinated (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...)

Your risk from the vaccine is lower than your risk from Covid lol - because you know the Covid disease creates fully functional viruses whereas the vaccine only incorporates a small subset that cannot reproduce. Why you would want the fully functional version is beyond me.

> Your risk from the vaccine is lower than your risk from Covid

You don't have the necessary information about my demographic and medical history to be able to make this claim. The following statement of yours is a non-sequitur because it in no way proves the claim of yours that I am at greater risk from SARS-2 infection than I am of a COVID vaccine:

> because you know the Covid disease creates fully functional viruses whereas the vaccine only incorporates a small subset that cannot reproduce. Why you would want the fully functional version is beyond me.

> You don't have the necessary information about my demographic and medical history to be able to make this claim.

I was referring to the aggregate, it is strictly correct unless you have a specific medical issue and I'm confident your doctor will inform you.

> The following statement of yours is a non-sequitur because it in no way proves the claim of yours that I am at greater risk from SARS-2 infection than I am of a COVID vaccine:

Sure it does. You will get COVID. You'll either be vaccinated at the time or you won't be.

> Sure it does. You will get COVID. You'll either be vaccinated at the time or you won't be.

That may be true, but it's another non-sequitur. You need to show that the acute and long-term risks of me receiving the moderna or the pfizer or the j&j, is lower than the risks to my health from getting COVID-19 while unvaccinated. And first you need to know whether I've already had COVID, because that's highly relevant to that calculation.

---

I think you're missing the general principle here, so let me see if this hypothetical helps you. Imagine a hypothetical virus that spreads just like SARS-2 but has a 0% IFR, no symptoms, and no complications whatsoever, whether short or medium or long term.

Imagine a vaccine that is 100% effective at preventing this hypothetical 0% IFR virus from infecting me. Imagine that in 99.9999% of people, the vaccine causes no harm, but in that .0001% of people, it causes harm.

Which is more dangerous to me, getting infected with the hypothetical virus, or getting vaccinated?

> Which is more dangerous to me, getting infected with the hypothetical virus, or getting vaccinated?

You not getting vaccinated and then getting infected with COVID is more dangerous to you and those around you than you getting vaccinated and then infected. Those are the only two options. Everyone on earth will contract COVID.

Surely you believe then that folks who refuse to get vaccinated on principle like yourself and then contract COVID should be triaged strictly below anyone else who needs medical care? I'm not saying that you shouldn't receive care, but you should receive it after everyone else has been sorted out. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes IMO.

Is the polio and mRNA vaccine series really comparable? I was under the impression if you wanted to you could probably enumerate some huge differences.

Perhaps we should start by admitting there is no long term data on the Covid vaccines as a whole truth and we honestly start from there?

How about a steelman argument? Just don’t put it on YouTube, it would be censored.

6 billion doses administered and counting. 30 years of research on mRNA vaccines, 50 years of research on viral vector vaccines, and 20 years of research on coronaviridae. It’s about the best understood thing on the planet.

Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending there’s no long term data here.

> 6 billion doses administered and counting.

That is a lot. I’m one of those. How long has it been since all these doses were given?

> Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending there’s no long term data here.

I agree. Please shut me up and post the links to long term human mRNA vaccine safety.

> I agree. Please shut me up and post the links to long term human mRNA vaccine safety.

Please shut me up and give me any reason to believe that there would be long term effects.

You're asking me to prove a negative, to prove there's no god. It's the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is why you would think there is one in the first place.

The first vaccine was given almost a year ago, how long do we need to wait to placate your nebulous fear? Two? Ten? Twenty more? What basis do you have for selecting this timeframe?

The long-term data we do have is the 30 years of mRNA vaccine research.

> Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.

The current survival rate from the virus is at around 99.2%. The vaccine may or may not have long term health effects. How is taking the virus head on less risky?

> 99.2%

I would use 99.7% as a fairly conservative number, frankly: https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/99/1/20-265892.pdf

Anyway, the other point is that that number is the overall IFR. If, like me, you know you're in a category that has almost no risk from COVID, then it's even more of a no-brainer. That's why it's completely absurd that the GP tried to tell me that I'm at less risk from the vaccine from the disease, when they don't know my age, # of comorbidities, metabolic health, past SARS-2 infection status, past non-SARS-circulating-hCoV infection status, etc. They simply don't know what they're talking about.

Because we know for sure that Covid infection causes significant long term damage in at least 10% of cases.

So if you want brain damage, scarred lungs, or some other organ malfunction, Covid infection is the way to go.

And the longer term risks are still unknown.

Which is why it's insane to play evidence-free yes-but-what-if FUD games about vaccine safety when the risks of infection are already known to be high for the survivors.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

> Because we know for sure that Covid infection causes significant long term damage in at least 10% of cases.

Where are you getting your information? Your mayoclinic link doesn't make this 10% claim, nor did you provide any citation for it. I'm genuinely shocked by how divorced from the clinical reality your claims are.

SARS-1, which is SARS-2's less infectious but much more deadly older brother, didn't even cause long-term damage in 10% of cases. And you're trying to claim it for SARS-2, which is a virus where many who are infected will never even know they had it (if they don't get tested)?

Your claims are unfounded and, quite frankly, simply false. There's nowhere near 10% occurrence of "brain damage", scarred lungs, or "some other organ malfunction". (The vagueness of your terminology betrays you, btw)

Since you almost certainly haven't read any literature, let me provide you some reading material. I'll stick to just the lung issues subclaim. Some of these are on the older side but they're still relevant:

["Follow-up Chest CT findings from discharged patients with severe COVID-19: an 83-day observational study"](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1) - First Submitted May 4 2020, Published online May 12 2020

> Radiological abnormalities in patients of severe COVID-19 could be completely absorbed with no residual lung injury in more than two months’ follow-up.

^ note this is severe COVID-19, so that's from a population selected for severity of symptoms and they're still recovered by 2 months.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1440-1843... (SARS-1 pathology)

> Preliminary evidence suggests that these lung function abnormalities will improve over time

> Preliminary evidence suggests that these lung function abnormalities will improve over time

Conclusive evidence suggests that people who get vaccinated don't get lung function abnormalities. Why are you so dead set on refusing to get a vaccine haha? It takes a few minutes, it's free, and it's really not that big a deal. There's really no good reason not to get one.

People are opposed to being vaccinated because of a coordinated media campaign put out by elements in the mainstream media - not least from outlets like Fox whose employees are 90% vaccinated, while daily tests are mandated for the rest.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/sep/15/fox-news-vacci...

Being strongly opposed to something does not make opposition legitimate or warranted. It's perfectly possible to believe something which is absolutely harmful and objectively wrong on a mass scale. Such beliefs are not protected by law or by any reasonable definition of ethical morality.

So having said that - why do you think Fox and co. require tests and vaccinations for their own people while broadcasting anti-vaxxer denialism to their viewers?

Don't watch the news, I read it, never on fox. Don't want the vaccine because I was already infected. I lost my sense of smell for two weeks and slept a lot. Big deal. I don't want side effects of feeling shitty for a week after the vaccine and I don't think there has been enough time to study the side effects. The amount of propaganda and lack of an actual conversation on this fuels my cause. Additionally I don't trust the federal government to do anything other than spend money.

Oh dear. I really don't care what Fox News does. It is very sad to me that this passes as an argument for you. I don't care to speculate on the motivations of a giant corporation. It's also not even true that Fox is "anti vax" - you can find videos of Sean Hannity and the like imploring their audience to get vaccinated. Fox, like all media, makes an enormous portion of its ad revenue from pharmaceutical companies. So you're not even right on your characterization of Fox's stance. Fox is largely pro-vaccine. Trump is pro-vaccine. All the mainstream republicans are pro-vaccine. And none of this is at all relevant, so why are we wasting time talking about it?

I already said (in the comment you directly replied to) why I personally am not getting vaccinated against COVID. I don't understand where your rambling diatribe about Fox News comes from. I gather that you might be a binary thinker that thinks that everyone fits into a red or blue, left or right, democrat or republican, etc box?

> People are opposed to being vaccinated because of a coordinated media campaign put out by elements in the mainstream media

This is an unfounded assertion. And also simply not true BTW, at least for all of the unvaccinated people (myself included) that I know in my personal life.

To be clear, Hannity's position, at least as he states repeatedly on his radio show, is "Talk to your doctor and do what you both agree is appropriate for your personal health situation." He is generally pro-vaccine, but not in the "your needs are outweighed by the needs of society" way that appears to be popular now.

> the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike

Haven't heard of this before, care to elaborate?

> the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months

See idk if propaganda is the right word here. Imagine a world were covid was 20x as deadily, and the vaccine had absolutely zero side effects. How else do you get the message put to get it? Just say nothing? If hospitals are at risk of getting overrun, and unlike lockdowns, vaccines actually make differences in case numbers, the government has an obligation to do something (protect the general welfare clearly is a mandate to prevent overrunning healthcare facilities).

By making everyone's immune system respond in the same way, you're making it more likely that if the virus escapes (mutates in a way that evades the immune system, by modifying its spike protein), then it will escape completely (for everyone vaccinated by mRNA vaccines).

The hope is that by doing that, the virus would also lose the local optimum of the current spike protein, and become much less infectious.

The alternative is, with "natural" immunity, you generate a much more diverse immune response across the population.

I think that you could have made that case if we had a vaccine in April 2020, but by now US has 30-50% of its population with natural immunity. Additionally, the spike protein is the least likely mutation to enable escaping, as it both has to modify to be different enough from the original, plus somehow still be able to attach onto our cells with similar level of infectiousness. Thats why they choose to vaccinate against the spike protein vs any other part of the virus. None of the variants at the moment seem to be a concern for escaping the spike protein, with a billion vaccinations and a billion infections. We are literally running out of chances for that to happen.

There also remains enough spread now that vaccinated people are getting mini boosts of natural immunity. Israel has some great data on the combination of various number of doses and natural immunity, and the combo is very strong.

That being said, I don't know your medical history. I am a strong supporter of accepting natural immunity in lieu of a vaccine. But even so, that fear of escape isn't made worse by a naturally immune person getting vaccinated, as they already have the non-spike protein defenses.

> Israel has some great data on the combination of various number of doses and natural immunity, and the combo is very strong.

https://pastebin.com/8yR3y5NA

The best study on this actually found no significant difference when giving a single shot to those who were naturally immune. Which makes sense because the chance of reinfection is so incredibly tiny that even if the shot completely eliminated the chance of getting COVID, the absolute size of the effect is still going to be quite small.

> Additionally, the spike protein is the least likely mutation to enable escaping, as it both has to modify to be different enough from the original, plus somehow still be able to attach onto our cells with similar level of infectiousness.

But you don't have to choose just one part. You could have an inactivated whole virus vaccine. That avoids the whole issue.

FWIW we are already seeing point mutations on the spike developing. That's probably why Delta is so damn good at spreading, right? The Israel data suggests a VE of ~39% against Delta. I personally don't believe Pfizer's original 95% VE number, but if you do, that's a startling drop.

What would actually happen if a year or two from now, it turned out that, however unlikely it may appear now, there really were serious long-term vaccine side-effects?

There's absolutely no way it would involve the pro-vax people saying, "We're sorry, you were right." More likely, the same political sides would dig in further, there would be a bunch of attempts to cover up and revise history, and the message would be "The evidence has changed, but people who never got the vaccines didn't believe in science and were still selfish and wrong."

That wouldn't be true if this were really about health.

This is the exact reason vaccine mandates are necessarily and even desirable as a policy. You're not alone, but the proportion of the population willing to live with discomfort in life is vanishingly small, and hopefully small enough that herd immunity can be reasonably established.

We see similar behavior/attitudes among off-grid folks who refuse to use credit cards or other common adaptations.

I make no judgment of you for your thoughts, just pointing out why a policy maker is justified in increasing the personal cost to ensure the responsibility of freedom isn't shirked, since an unvaccinated population invites variants and harms (imposes social cost) on people unable to be vaccinated (kids, medical issues). So long as Anti-vaccine advocates are willing to pay for the costs of their actions, have at it.

They keep moving the number for herd immunity. Biden want 97% vaccinated. Fauci is following Biden.

Refusing a safe and effective vaccine (that clearly wins any risk/benefit on your personal level!, not just population wide) is such an odd choice.

Past vaccines, like against measles and smallpox, were so effective that eejits like you never had to learn the importance of vaccination, before now.

Yea, if only someone would post the links to the 10 year safety and efficacy of these vaccines it would really shut these skeptics up. Ok, well, maybe just the 5 year data. No? Well, I think even 3 would help.

If we’re going to disingenuously compare smallpox and measles vaccines, perhaps we could start with their efficacy. Are there any claims from even the mfgs that Covid shots are in the same range?

> If we’re going to disingenuously compare smallpox and measles vaccines, perhaps we could start with their efficacy. Are there any claims from even the mfgs that Covid shots are in the same range?

Ain't nothing disingenuous from me. The COVID vaccines are some of the most effective vaccines ever invented.

Turns out, if you were the only vaccinated person in a house against smallpox, the efficacy was only 60-something percent. But vaccination also prevents you spreading to others, not just getting infected—so when everybody in a house was vaccinated, the efficacy rose to around 95%.

That's not unlike the COVID vaccines.

> The COVID vaccines are some of the most effective vaccines ever invented.

I didn’t know that. Do you have a source that shows efficacy over 45% after 8 months? I couldn’t find one.

That's an oddly specific ask. The vaccines are absolutely fantastic in the short term, and there's credible evidence indicating the vaccine protection is long term, by analogy with how other vaccines work.

See e.g. https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/141602012829108224... and https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Also worth noting, see scary stories about vaccine efficacy dropping (coinciding with alpha being replaced by delta)? Turns out the efficacy recovers afterwards. See https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143849966572136858.... Other real world studies show robust protection in the medium term, see https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/143995133263551692....

The efficacy is “recovering” because the vaccinated are acquiring natural immunity. The way you / sailorrooscout present it obscures that simple fact.

That's not a simple fact; that's something you're making up.

Remove legal immunity from the manufacturing companies and get FDA approval for all the shots and I am sure more folks will line up.