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There are lessons to be learned from the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/0
by HarryHirsch 6y ago
There are lessons to be learned from the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article
If it turns out that there are side effects that weren't discovered due to rushed testing the fallout will be ugly, no one is going to trust public officials in anything. We had a preview with the dengue vaccine on the Phillippines: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/dengue-vaccine-fiasco-leads-criminal-charges-researcher-philippines https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/dengue-vaccine-fiasc...
- ghaff 6y agoAnd, arguably, Lymerix. Although the situation with that is... complicated. The Dengue vaccine is still on the market in various places including the US AFAIK for certain demographics/prior exposure. Some tradeoffs are worth it. It's almost a given that any near-term vaccine almost certainly hasn't been adequately tested by historical standards, "we" (or at least the government) will accept side effects at a level that wouldn't normally be considered acceptable, and both private and public institutions will require vaccination to fully participate in society.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoLymerix is a good comparison. There were justified concerns about the vaccine provoking an autoimmune reaction in some patients, and meanwhile tick bites can be prevented through simple actions - cover arms and legs, stay out of long grass, use insect repellent. It's difficult to argue for a vaccine when other measures work equally well and pose less risk. Meanwhile the first world has reduced the spread of coronavirus through public health interventions but America can't follow.
- ghaff 6y agoThere are some analogs but they may be different than you think. >meanwhile tick bites can be prevented I'm careful but I (normally) do a fair bit of hiking and live on a large property surrounded by fields. I am careful but I still find ticks on myself every now and then and am bitten from time to time. One can certainly be careful about reducing virus contact at the cost of considerable inconvenience. But there's a lot of evidence that new outbreaks are still flaring up in many places and that many locales end up going through a rough patch sooner or later. So I'm not sure it's fair to say that if everyone just took some basic precautions and otherwise carried on as usual, we'd be just fine even without a (potentially somewhat risky) vaccine.