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Out of curiosity, how do people on HN rate the risk of long term side-effects?

headmelted 6y ago
That's a question for someone who's heavily schooled on mRNA vaccines and/or a practitioner involved in the trials for this particular vaccine. Not that I have a problem with your asking the question, I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect.
- gwd 6y ago
  > I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect. I'm pretty sure they were hoping to be answered by someone heavily schooled in mRNA vaccines and/or a practitioner involved in the trials for this particular vaccine. On this particular "tech board", there's a reasonable chance of getting a response from those kinds of experts.
- shusson 6y ago
  > I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect. Part of your answer, which I'm paraphrasing to "I don't know, talk to the experts", is already a good answer. But I was hoping that there was an expert lurking around that might be able to explain the risks or link to some evidence.
  - tgb 6y ago
    You asked what "people on HN" think which is not exactly the top way to fish out experts.
    - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
      If an expert read that, they would likely respond, citing why they are an expert. So I think it’s as good a way as any on hn.
      - tgb 6y ago
        If you hold a strawpoll of everyone around, then you may get an expert. But you will also primarily get non-experts, which is the problem and what headmelted is pointing out. If expert opinions are desired, why not ask for that? The non-expert opinions are already abundant, vocal, and ready to spread misinformation. shusson was not soliciting only expert opinions or even primarily expert opinions, whether that was intentional or not.
gr2zr4 6y ago
We all are still waiting peer-reviewd scientific papers instead of press releases....
- nojito 6y ago
  This isn’t true. The health institutions of the respective countries have access to the raw study data which they use to determine whether or not to approve them. The amount of fear mongering in hackernews is just mind blowing.
  - goodcanadian 6y ago
    I don't think it is fear mongering. While the health institutes have access to the data, I don't. I don't think anyone on hacker news can make many intelligent statements about side effects, yet, though the press releases claim that they are similar to what is typical of other vaccines.
    - anthonypasq 6y ago
      Why would you personally need access to the data unless you actually think the government would allow people to take a dangerous vaccine.
      - jMyles 6y ago
        We are a scientifically literate society, and increasingly so. We do not simply summon blind faith in institutions to interpret the world in which we live; we share with each other and seek truth. I do not trust governments, not only (and not primarily) because they have violated trust, but because trust in governments to be arbiters of scientific truth is not a healthy or sustainable practice in a civilized society.
      - minkzilla 6y ago
        Pretty much all governments have a history of maliciousness and/or incompetence. Well I think it unlikely they would allow it. It is certainly in the realm of possible scenarios.
alexmingoia 6y ago
The only potential long-term risk I wonder about is antibody dependent enhancement [1] for future variants of the virus. But, that has nothing to do with whether the vaccine uses mRNA or an attenuated virus. Those involved in making a vaccine are very much aware of this issue and design vaccines to avoid it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhanceme...
pfranz 6y ago
I'm curious for an actual expert to answer, but when I've heard this question presented they would point out that the risk of long-term side effects from a vaccine must be compared relative to the unknown, long-term side effects of a covid infection and continuing to live in a society that's locked down.
bamboozled 6y ago
I'm really surprised this hasn't been down voted to oblivion, Also relieved you haven't been this time around.
sideshowb 6y ago
I'd also be interested to know whether mRNA vaccine, in hijacking the body's own cells then training the immune system to attack them, carries extra risk for those with autoimmune disorders i.e. people whose immune systems already have an unfortunate tendency to attack themselves. I'm sure this has all been thought about by relevant experts but I'd like to see the published research.
- jfoster 6y ago
  From what I understand, people unlucky enough to have certain conditions haven't been included in the studies, and therefore won't be taking the vaccine. That includes pregnant women, and (I think?) people with autoimmune disorders.
majewsky 6y ago
Not a doctor, just a member of a risk group. The continued spread of Covid poses a rather high risk to me, both because of mortality and because of potential long-lasting aftereffects ("Long Covid"). Even if the vaccine turns out to have longterm side effects, I find it very unlikely that those will be more significant than Long Covid. Therefore the risk tradeoff makes any vaccine a complete no-brainer to me.
- jonny_eh 6y ago
  Very true. This vaccine doesn't exist in a vacuum.
- svrb 6y ago
  What about people in the risk group(s) for vaccine side-effects? E.g., people with autoimmune issues. Does their safety matter less than yours? (Assuming you're advocating for vaccinating others; if you're just advocating for vaccinating yourself and yourself only, then carry on.)
  - majewsky 6y ago
    I'm also in the autoimmune-disorder bucket. From what I understand, Covid also triggers plenty autoimmune issues, so the risk assessment does not change in a significant way.
    - svrb 6y ago
      At this point, the autoimmune dangers of vaccines are well understood but the autoimmune dangers of COVID-19 aren't. Doesn't that mean it's safer to avoid the vaccine, until that situation changes? In fact it's exactly the opposite of what many people here are saying, considering only themselves and not others, but using their own logic!
      - johnisgood 6y ago
        I dunno. I have an autoimmune disease. I was COVID-19 positive without any symptoms. It has been some time now. Everything is fine. With regarding to the vaccine: I do not want to risk it, when I know that I went through COVID-19 without symptoms and may just do it again and again after 6 months? They say I have 6 months of immunity.
belorn 6y ago
Hopefully the risk for long term side-effects will be lower than last time with the 2009 swine flue pandemic when my government used pandemrix. Hopefully any similar signs of long term side-effects will be discovered before low-risk groups start to receive the vaccine. Personally since I belong to a low-risk group, there will be quite some time before the line reaches me where I need to make a decision, in which more data will be available from high-risk groups. It will also take time for my country currently pressured health care system to allocate resources for vaccinations without causing even more problems. My current estimate is many months from now. Outside of long term side-effects I am concerned about how long the protection last. It is difficult to calculate risk without knowing that data point.
eastendguy 6y ago
Well, fwiw, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine idea, Ingmar Hoerr, thinks side effects are very unlikely, since the mRNA molecules dissolve after a few days. He has been working on this for 20 years, with no serious side effects ever observed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr
- john_alan 6y ago
  Was the SARS vaccine virus not mRNA?
  - apexalpha 6y ago
    Yes, this is why these mRNA vaccines are here so fast; a lot of prework was done for SARS vaccine, which is also a Corona disease. But I think SARS died out before the vaccine was ready/needed.
    - patall 6y ago
      the parent is concerned regarding the appearance of ADE (Antibody-dependent enhancement) during the creation of the SARS vaccine. While we cannot totally disregard ADE, I assume we should have seen it by now (and the Oxford trial was stopped exactly because they thought they might have observed something like it). Whether it appears again on a population scale level, nobody knows.
      - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
        Yeah, I've thought about it too, but both mild reinfections and vaccine trials show that SARS-2 does not exhibit ADE.
      - jonstaab 6y ago
        I don't know anything, but I've read that ADE can take 1-3 years to surface.
- Scaevolus 6y ago
jfoster 6y ago
I'm concerned about that, but I'm far more concerned about covid-19, so I would be pretty happy to take a vaccine. Covid is known to have risk of death, side-effects, and unknown future medical conditions, so it seems unlikely that a vaccine would be much worse than that.
- free2OSS 6y ago
  Nearly all of the things you mentioned is among old or obese people. Lucky children can't vote, lets start vaccinations! I somewhat kid, but COVID is a real life example where a tiny minority has ruled over the overwhelming majority.
  - ciarannolan 6y ago
    It just old and sick people dying, don't worry about it!
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    Don’t know where you are, but in the UK and the US, old and/or obese is nothing like a tiny minority.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      It's really a problem everywhere, UK & US are just leading the charge. E.g. Germany has over half the population overweight, and a solid 1 in 4 are obese. While that doesn't match the US, it's not exactly something to brag about.
  - axaxs 6y ago
    I can't be bothered to grab numbers, but in the US, and perhaps elsewhere, I'd wager that the number of people a) over 55, or b) obese, or c) otherwise high risk make up more than half the population, or very much near it.
  - astura 6y ago
    Because fat old people don't deserve to live?
garmaine 6y ago
Less than the risk of long-term side-effects from COVID.
patall 6y ago
Guessing probabilities is nuts. However, if they do not screw something up in production (which I regard a larger potential source of error than the vaccine itself) there won't be long term side-effects for most people. There were some side effects from swine-flu in Sweden around 2010 that were certainly major and those affected 1/12.000 people. I would guess that is an upper bound for side effect, but as I said, guessing probabilities of an unknown with sample size one is hard. BioNtech has been developing mRNA vaccines for cancer patients for some time, so I would not expect any really large long term (in the range of 2-4 years) side-effects for fractions of the population larger than 20% based on that alone.
matz1 6y ago
Its interesting that some people worry about long term side effect of vaccine but not worry about long term side effect of lockdown. Vaccine is good but my biggest worry is if the same kind of virus happen again, it will become justification for lockdown until the vaccine exist.
graeme 6y ago
I’m not aware of any vaccine that had long term side effects that were not also apparent in the short term. E.g. I believe it was the swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy in a small percentage of people receiving it. But that was apparent immediately. To my knowledge no one has identified any slow acting consequences of a vaccine that would not have been obvious from the first rollout of a vaccine. So this question is mostly academic. Unless you’re someone in the UK slated to get the first dose, you probably won’t even have an opportunity to get the vaccine before the effects in early groups become known. And for those in high risk early groups, the risk of covid surely outweighs the risk of vaccine. Nothing has shown up in trials so far so I’m not expecting side effects beyond the known effect of short term flu like symptoms for a couple days.
- CJefferson 6y ago
  What do you mean by short term? That swine flu vaccine is my main concern. It wasn't clear in trials, and it took a couple of years before anyone took the problem seriously as far as I can tell -- by that point a significant chunk of the world could have a COVID vaccine.
  - graeme 6y ago
    I mean the effects would have been immediate, rather than say “develops cancer in 20 years”. Though I guess the narcolepsy took about a month to develop. I suspect there will be much more monitoring and speed with these vaccines than with the swine flu vaccine. The mechanism for the narcolepsy was a protein present in the virus itself. So actually getting the flu would have been much worse for those with the genes that made them susceptible. It doesn’t sound like mRNA vaccines would have this vulnerability. Though I do take your point that it’s possible something like the swine flu narcolepsy event would only be found after the fact. However that would be a pretty small consequence since in this case the flu also would have caused worse narcolepsy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562845/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562845/
    - CJefferson 6y ago
astura 6y ago
For me, from a strictly individual perspective, the health risks from a vaccine is almost certainly less than the long term (and short term) risks of COVID-19 infection.
- jMyles 6y ago
  Is the long covid phenomenon any more pronounced with this virus than any other coronavirus (last I read[0], the answer seems to be 'no')? Since there are four others circulating, will this vaccine even have a significant effect on these post-viral symptoms? 0: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/ https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid...
  - figaroniguzo 6y ago
    Or is it even real or nocebo/anxiety from constant fearmongering and propaganda? Why are most long Covid sufferers young, female, white and on Twitter?
abootstrapper 6y ago
Risk of long term covid side effects seems greater to me than long term vaccine side effects.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  Why do you believe this out of curiosity? Every single "long term covid" symptom study I've read are case studies. The UK one from the publication in Charlottesville covered 60 distinct people and they were all either high risk workers or over 55. We don't know what "permanent damage" is actually happening. I remember having pneumonia in the 90s and it took my lungs over 3 months to recover, and that's from a normal known infection. I think there is a strong case to be made, that a lot of these "long covid" cases might be a combination of normal pneumonia recovery, nocebo effect and fear/hysteria over this disease.
  - alex504 6y ago
    I am not a doctor but normal pneumonia recovery doesn't cause myocarditis, memory loss, abnormal liver function, kidney damage or gastrointestinal damage. It seems very likely at this point that COVID is a disease of the blood vessels, which has the potential to do some really nasty damage to your organs. The numbers are hard to estimate but I've seen experts say that they think about 5 times the number of people who die will have enough problems to be considered having a long term disability. With estimates of case fatality being about .5% - 1.5% that would mean about 5% of the people who get it will have enough long term damage to be disabled.
  - foolfoolz 6y ago
    theres a huge hysteria market for this virus. it seemed like at one point and article was coming out weekly saying long term effects were worse and worse and worse. i don’t believe it
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    For me personally the unknowns of such a new virus mean that the existence of the case studies would be enough to be concerned. And the strongest case is made by the fact that this virus' closest relative known to infect humans has caused lasting damage to people with cases that lead to hospitalization: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 "Evidence from people infected with other coronaviruses suggests that the damage will linger for some. A study published in February recorded long-term lung harm from SARS, which is caused by SARS-CoV-1. Between 2003 and 2018, Peixun Zhang at Peking University People’s Hospital in Beijing and his colleagues tracked the health of 71 people who had been hospitalized with SARS. Even after 15 years, 4.6% still had visible lesions on their lungs, and 38% had reduced diffusion capacity, meaning that their lungs were poor at transferring oxygen into the blood and removing carbon dioxide from it." We know this much and SARS is poorly studied because it faded away so we generally lost interest in it. This virus is both similar and different enough to be very, very wide spread so even minor negative effects over the total population that gets moderate to mild cases will have the potential to have very large impacts on worldwide health. As time goes on we are going to better document the consequences of mild and moderate cases and understand these things better, caution seems advisable until we do.
statquontrarian 6y ago
This is a good summary paper with some safety concerns: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243.pdf?origin=ppub https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243.pdf?origin=ppub > A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms 54,166 induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity 167,168 . Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken. Another potential safety issue could derive from the presence of extracellular RNA during mRNA vaccination. Extracellular naked RNA has been shown to increase the permeability of tightly packed endothelial cells and may thus contribute to oedema 169. Another study showed that extracellular RNA promoted blood coagulation and pathological thrombus formation 170. Safety will therefore need continued evaluation as different mRNA modalities and delivery systems are utilized for the first time in humans and are tested in larger patient populations.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  I have an autoimmune disease and I sit a lot. So I guess I will say no to the vaccine?
  - statquontrarian 6y ago
    You should talk to a doctor. I doubt there are any blanket statements that apply.
credit_guy 6y ago
CDC has a page [1] with the notable historical vaccine adverse events. I think it's an informative page to read, but just in case you don't have time, here's my summary: - most adverse events were due to manufacturing issues (e.g. contamination with some live virus). In this respect, I don't think the Covid vaccines are likely to be any more or less risky than other vaccines, such as the annual flu vaccine - two vaccines had an association with the Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). Even nowadays, if you take the annual flu vaccine they advise caution if you've had GBS before. - one Rotavirus vaccine was quickly discontinued after they saw it can cause a serious condition called intussusception - finally, a case that you'll hear lots of people talking about, a possible link between a flu vaccine adjuvant (AS03) and narcolepsy. The CDC page directs you to the actual study [2]. My summary is that this link was observed only in Sweden and Taiwan, but in no other countries. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do not have adjuvants (but Novavax and others will have). [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30122647/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30122647/
- Solstinox 6y ago
  Good sources, keeping in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future results.
JamisonM 6y ago
I am personally quite terrified of the possible unknown long term side effects of COVID-19 and largely confident that the vaccines are going to be safe. If you offered me a vaccine tomorrow vs a 100% certain mild case of COVID-19 that would guarantee me immunity for a year so I could get the vaccine in 12 months when there was /even more/ confidence about the safety of the vaccine I would take the vaccine.
- alex504 6y ago
  Yeah I think that basically sums it up. The dangers of long term COVID far, far outweigh the potential risks of the vaccine. It seems many people have a fundamental distrust of vaccines and many also still don't understand how dangerous COVID seems to be for people who have relatively little risk of dying from the disease. I haven't been able to come up with a theory as to why public health departments and the media haven't been making the long term effects a key part of their messaging.
  - jMyles 6y ago
    Is the long covid phenomenon any more pronounced with this virus than any other coronavirus (last I read[0], the answer seems to be 'no')? Since there are four others circulating, will this vaccine even have a significant effect on these post-viral symptoms? 0: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/ https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid...
    - JamisonM 6y ago
      That article is really something, the first thing that jumps out: "Second, covid is not some magical entity, it’s a coronavirus, and it behaves like other coronaviruses, and other respiratory viruses more generally. It would be strange for covid to cause symptoms that other respiratory viruses don’t. And since I’ve never heard of “long rhinovirus” or “long influenza”, I’m inherently doubtful of claims that there’s such a thing as “long covid”." This is just getting caught up in silly semantics, people are experiencing longer term health effects, they are calling it "long covid" for lack of a better name not because it is an affirmative diagnosis. "On MedRxiv, there is a pre-print awaiting peer review of a prospective cohort study that followed 4,182 people with positive PCR tests... if we assume that this study was reasonably accurate, then one in 50 people who get covid still have symptoms at the twelve week point..." This is supposed to be an argument that inclines me to think that whatever "Long Covid" is I am not supposed to be worried about it? If 1 in 50 people that get a positive test are still feeling after effects of having what the author believes "behaves just like other coronaviruses" then I think we should be very concerned! Even if truly long term effects only develop in 1 in 500 COVID-19 cases.. that's a lot of people who are going to be sick for a really long time! It would be 400 Americans a day right now. Yikes! That's bad! I'll take my chances with a vaccine! (And I know the standard response to this is.. "well, those people are mostly old or sick with something else so you can't really count it that way" but a certain, maybe large, proportion of those people would probably never get a serious respiratory virus in the near or medium term in the absence of COVID-19. It is a really large number of extra sick people, and all at once.) Also the 4 other coronaviruses circulating thing is silly, obviously the long term effects of the common cold viruses are not going to be comparable if the short term effects are clearly not comparable, it is reductionism of the worst kind.
ouid 6y ago
Of covid or the vaccine? Vaccine side effects are, generally speaking, either immediate, or are a problem with the immunological response that they elicit. I would say that these scenarios have not been fully evaluated, but the risk of other kinds of side effects is very very low.
tubularhells 6y ago
As I see it, the political side is pushing for a solution for the now, damn the consequences in 5-10 years. This is really just BAU in politics. I wouldn't be surprised if the leaders of the vaccine firms weren't using their own vaccines on themselves and their families for a couple more years, until they have sufficient data. I have read enough research papers about the replication crises in many fields to know how much these long term studies are needed to properly assess a risk-benefit analysis for vaccination. I will, personally, stay the fuck away for the next couple years. My life didn't change much anyway, I've been working from home for years now. Less social life, but I can weather that. As a note, we got COVID with the wife, I was without symptoms while she lost taste for a couple days and was tired for a week. That was all.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
From covid? Pretty high, pretty sure I read 5-10% of people in infected. For these vaccines 0.0000001%. So I'm saying not zero but you're more likely to die on the way to get the vaccine (car/bus/stroll) than any long term side effects.

That's a question for someone who's heavily schooled on mRNA vaccines and/or a practitioner involved in the trials for this particular vaccine. Not that I have a problem with your asking the question, I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect.

gwd 6y ago
> I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect. I'm pretty sure they were hoping to be answered by someone heavily schooled in mRNA vaccines and/or a practitioner involved in the trials for this particular vaccine. On this particular "tech board", there's a reasonable chance of getting a response from those kinds of experts.
shusson 6y ago
> I just don't think an opinion poll on a tech board is going to yield an accurate prediction of what to expect. Part of your answer, which I'm paraphrasing to "I don't know, talk to the experts", is already a good answer. But I was hoping that there was an expert lurking around that might be able to explain the risks or link to some evidence.
- tgb 6y ago
  You asked what "people on HN" think which is not exactly the top way to fish out experts.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    If an expert read that, they would likely respond, citing why they are an expert. So I think it’s as good a way as any on hn.
    - tgb 6y ago
      If you hold a strawpoll of everyone around, then you may get an expert. But you will also primarily get non-experts, which is the problem and what headmelted is pointing out. If expert opinions are desired, why not ask for that? The non-expert opinions are already abundant, vocal, and ready to spread misinformation. shusson was not soliciting only expert opinions or even primarily expert opinions, whether that was intentional or not.

gr2zr4 6y ago

We all are still waiting peer-reviewd scientific papers instead of press releases....

nojito 6y ago
This isn’t true. The health institutions of the respective countries have access to the raw study data which they use to determine whether or not to approve them. The amount of fear mongering in hackernews is just mind blowing.
- goodcanadian 6y ago
  I don't think it is fear mongering. While the health institutes have access to the data, I don't. I don't think anyone on hacker news can make many intelligent statements about side effects, yet, though the press releases claim that they are similar to what is typical of other vaccines.
  - anthonypasq 6y ago
    Why would you personally need access to the data unless you actually think the government would allow people to take a dangerous vaccine.
    - jMyles 6y ago
      We are a scientifically literate society, and increasingly so. We do not simply summon blind faith in institutions to interpret the world in which we live; we share with each other and seek truth. I do not trust governments, not only (and not primarily) because they have violated trust, but because trust in governments to be arbiters of scientific truth is not a healthy or sustainable practice in a civilized society.
    - minkzilla 6y ago
      Pretty much all governments have a history of maliciousness and/or incompetence. Well I think it unlikely they would allow it. It is certainly in the realm of possible scenarios.

alexmingoia 6y ago

The only potential long-term risk I wonder about is antibody dependent enhancement [1] for future variants of the virus. But, that has nothing to do with whether the vaccine uses mRNA or an attenuated virus. Those involved in making a vaccine are very much aware of this issue and design vaccines to avoid it. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhanceme...

pfranz 6y ago

I'm curious for an actual expert to answer, but when I've heard this question presented they would point out that the risk of long-term side effects from a vaccine must be compared relative to the unknown, long-term side effects of a covid infection and continuing to live in a society that's locked down.

bamboozled 6y ago

I'm really surprised this hasn't been down voted to oblivion, Also relieved you haven't been this time around.

sideshowb 6y ago

I'd also be interested to know whether mRNA vaccine, in hijacking the body's own cells then training the immune system to attack them, carries extra risk for those with autoimmune disorders i.e. people whose immune systems already have an unfortunate tendency to attack themselves. I'm sure this has all been thought about by relevant experts but I'd like to see the published research.

jfoster 6y ago
From what I understand, people unlucky enough to have certain conditions haven't been included in the studies, and therefore won't be taking the vaccine. That includes pregnant women, and (I think?) people with autoimmune disorders.

majewsky 6y ago

Not a doctor, just a member of a risk group. The continued spread of Covid poses a rather high risk to me, both because of mortality and because of potential long-lasting aftereffects ("Long Covid"). Even if the vaccine turns out to have longterm side effects, I find it very unlikely that those will be more significant than Long Covid. Therefore the risk tradeoff makes any vaccine a complete no-brainer to me.

jonny_eh 6y ago
Very true. This vaccine doesn't exist in a vacuum.
svrb 6y ago
What about people in the risk group(s) for vaccine side-effects? E.g., people with autoimmune issues. Does their safety matter less than yours? (Assuming you're advocating for vaccinating others; if you're just advocating for vaccinating yourself and yourself only, then carry on.)
- majewsky 6y ago
  I'm also in the autoimmune-disorder bucket. From what I understand, Covid also triggers plenty autoimmune issues, so the risk assessment does not change in a significant way.
  - svrb 6y ago
    At this point, the autoimmune dangers of vaccines are well understood but the autoimmune dangers of COVID-19 aren't. Doesn't that mean it's safer to avoid the vaccine, until that situation changes? In fact it's exactly the opposite of what many people here are saying, considering only themselves and not others, but using their own logic!
    - johnisgood 6y ago
      I dunno. I have an autoimmune disease. I was COVID-19 positive without any symptoms. It has been some time now. Everything is fine. With regarding to the vaccine: I do not want to risk it, when I know that I went through COVID-19 without symptoms and may just do it again and again after 6 months? They say I have 6 months of immunity.

belorn 6y ago

Hopefully the risk for long term side-effects will be lower than last time with the 2009 swine flue pandemic when my government used pandemrix. Hopefully any similar signs of long term side-effects will be discovered before low-risk groups start to receive the vaccine. Personally since I belong to a low-risk group, there will be quite some time before the line reaches me where I need to make a decision, in which more data will be available from high-risk groups. It will also take time for my country currently pressured health care system to allocate resources for vaccinations without causing even more problems. My current estimate is many months from now. Outside of long term side-effects I am concerned about how long the protection last. It is difficult to calculate risk without knowing that data point.

eastendguy 6y ago

Well, fwiw, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine idea, Ingmar Hoerr, thinks side effects are very unlikely, since the mRNA molecules dissolve after a few days. He has been working on this for 20 years, with no serious side effects ever observed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Hoerr

john_alan 6y ago
Was the SARS vaccine virus not mRNA?
- apexalpha 6y ago
  Yes, this is why these mRNA vaccines are here so fast; a lot of prework was done for SARS vaccine, which is also a Corona disease. But I think SARS died out before the vaccine was ready/needed.
  - patall 6y ago
    the parent is concerned regarding the appearance of ADE (Antibody-dependent enhancement) during the creation of the SARS vaccine. While we cannot totally disregard ADE, I assume we should have seen it by now (and the Oxford trial was stopped exactly because they thought they might have observed something like it). Whether it appears again on a population scale level, nobody knows.
    - SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
      Yeah, I've thought about it too, but both mild reinfections and vaccine trials show that SARS-2 does not exhibit ADE.
    - jonstaab 6y ago
      I don't know anything, but I've read that ADE can take 1-3 years to surface.
Scaevolus 6y ago

jfoster 6y ago

I'm concerned about that, but I'm far more concerned about covid-19, so I would be pretty happy to take a vaccine. Covid is known to have risk of death, side-effects, and unknown future medical conditions, so it seems unlikely that a vaccine would be much worse than that.

free2OSS 6y ago
Nearly all of the things you mentioned is among old or obese people. Lucky children can't vote, lets start vaccinations! I somewhat kid, but COVID is a real life example where a tiny minority has ruled over the overwhelming majority.
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  It just old and sick people dying, don't worry about it!
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  Don’t know where you are, but in the UK and the US, old and/or obese is nothing like a tiny minority.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    It's really a problem everywhere, UK & US are just leading the charge. E.g. Germany has over half the population overweight, and a solid 1 in 4 are obese. While that doesn't match the US, it's not exactly something to brag about.
- axaxs 6y ago
  I can't be bothered to grab numbers, but in the US, and perhaps elsewhere, I'd wager that the number of people a) over 55, or b) obese, or c) otherwise high risk make up more than half the population, or very much near it.
- astura 6y ago
  Because fat old people don't deserve to live?

garmaine 6y ago

Less than the risk of long-term side-effects from COVID.

patall 6y ago

Guessing probabilities is nuts. However, if they do not screw something up in production (which I regard a larger potential source of error than the vaccine itself) there won't be long term side-effects for most people. There were some side effects from swine-flu in Sweden around 2010 that were certainly major and those affected 1/12.000 people. I would guess that is an upper bound for side effect, but as I said, guessing probabilities of an unknown with sample size one is hard. BioNtech has been developing mRNA vaccines for cancer patients for some time, so I would not expect any really large long term (in the range of 2-4 years) side-effects for fractions of the population larger than 20% based on that alone.

matz1 6y ago

Its interesting that some people worry about long term side effect of vaccine but not worry about long term side effect of lockdown. Vaccine is good but my biggest worry is if the same kind of virus happen again, it will become justification for lockdown until the vaccine exist.

graeme 6y ago

I’m not aware of any vaccine that had long term side effects that were not also apparent in the short term. E.g. I believe it was the swine flu vaccine that caused narcolepsy in a small percentage of people receiving it. But that was apparent immediately. To my knowledge no one has identified any slow acting consequences of a vaccine that would not have been obvious from the first rollout of a vaccine. So this question is mostly academic. Unless you’re someone in the UK slated to get the first dose, you probably won’t even have an opportunity to get the vaccine before the effects in early groups become known. And for those in high risk early groups, the risk of covid surely outweighs the risk of vaccine. Nothing has shown up in trials so far so I’m not expecting side effects beyond the known effect of short term flu like symptoms for a couple days.

CJefferson 6y ago
What do you mean by short term? That swine flu vaccine is my main concern. It wasn't clear in trials, and it took a couple of years before anyone took the problem seriously as far as I can tell -- by that point a significant chunk of the world could have a COVID vaccine.
- graeme 6y ago
  I mean the effects would have been immediate, rather than say “develops cancer in 20 years”. Though I guess the narcolepsy took about a month to develop. I suspect there will be much more monitoring and speed with these vaccines than with the swine flu vaccine. The mechanism for the narcolepsy was a protein present in the virus itself. So actually getting the flu would have been much worse for those with the genes that made them susceptible. It doesn’t sound like mRNA vaccines would have this vulnerability. Though I do take your point that it’s possible something like the swine flu narcolepsy event would only be found after the fact. However that would be a pretty small consequence since in this case the flu also would have caused worse narcolepsy. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562845/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4562845/
  - CJefferson 6y ago

astura 6y ago

For me, from a strictly individual perspective, the health risks from a vaccine is almost certainly less than the long term (and short term) risks of COVID-19 infection.

jMyles 6y ago
Is the long covid phenomenon any more pronounced with this virus than any other coronavirus (last I read[0], the answer seems to be 'no')? Since there are four others circulating, will this vaccine even have a significant effect on these post-viral symptoms? 0: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/ https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid...
- figaroniguzo 6y ago
  Or is it even real or nocebo/anxiety from constant fearmongering and propaganda? Why are most long Covid sufferers young, female, white and on Twitter?

abootstrapper 6y ago

Risk of long term covid side effects seems greater to me than long term vaccine side effects.

djsumdog 6y ago
Why do you believe this out of curiosity? Every single "long term covid" symptom study I've read are case studies. The UK one from the publication in Charlottesville covered 60 distinct people and they were all either high risk workers or over 55. We don't know what "permanent damage" is actually happening. I remember having pneumonia in the 90s and it took my lungs over 3 months to recover, and that's from a normal known infection. I think there is a strong case to be made, that a lot of these "long covid" cases might be a combination of normal pneumonia recovery, nocebo effect and fear/hysteria over this disease.
- alex504 6y ago
  I am not a doctor but normal pneumonia recovery doesn't cause myocarditis, memory loss, abnormal liver function, kidney damage or gastrointestinal damage. It seems very likely at this point that COVID is a disease of the blood vessels, which has the potential to do some really nasty damage to your organs. The numbers are hard to estimate but I've seen experts say that they think about 5 times the number of people who die will have enough problems to be considered having a long term disability. With estimates of case fatality being about .5% - 1.5% that would mean about 5% of the people who get it will have enough long term damage to be disabled.
- foolfoolz 6y ago
  theres a huge hysteria market for this virus. it seemed like at one point and article was coming out weekly saying long term effects were worse and worse and worse. i don’t believe it
- JamisonM 6y ago
  For me personally the unknowns of such a new virus mean that the existence of the case studies would be enough to be concerned. And the strongest case is made by the fact that this virus' closest relative known to infect humans has caused lasting damage to people with cases that lead to hospitalization: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6 "Evidence from people infected with other coronaviruses suggests that the damage will linger for some. A study published in February recorded long-term lung harm from SARS, which is caused by SARS-CoV-1. Between 2003 and 2018, Peixun Zhang at Peking University People’s Hospital in Beijing and his colleagues tracked the health of 71 people who had been hospitalized with SARS. Even after 15 years, 4.6% still had visible lesions on their lungs, and 38% had reduced diffusion capacity, meaning that their lungs were poor at transferring oxygen into the blood and removing carbon dioxide from it." We know this much and SARS is poorly studied because it faded away so we generally lost interest in it. This virus is both similar and different enough to be very, very wide spread so even minor negative effects over the total population that gets moderate to mild cases will have the potential to have very large impacts on worldwide health. As time goes on we are going to better document the consequences of mild and moderate cases and understand these things better, caution seems advisable until we do.

statquontrarian 6y ago

This is a good summary paper with some safety concerns: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243.pdf?origin=ppub https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243.pdf?origin=ppub > A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms 54,166 induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity 167,168 . Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken. Another potential safety issue could derive from the presence of extracellular RNA during mRNA vaccination. Extracellular naked RNA has been shown to increase the permeability of tightly packed endothelial cells and may thus contribute to oedema 169. Another study showed that extracellular RNA promoted blood coagulation and pathological thrombus formation 170. Safety will therefore need continued evaluation as different mRNA modalities and delivery systems are utilized for the first time in humans and are tested in larger patient populations.

johnisgood 6y ago
I have an autoimmune disease and I sit a lot. So I guess I will say no to the vaccine?
- statquontrarian 6y ago
  You should talk to a doctor. I doubt there are any blanket statements that apply.

credit_guy 6y ago

CDC has a page [1] with the notable historical vaccine adverse events. I think it's an informative page to read, but just in case you don't have time, here's my summary: - most adverse events were due to manufacturing issues (e.g. contamination with some live virus). In this respect, I don't think the Covid vaccines are likely to be any more or less risky than other vaccines, such as the annual flu vaccine - two vaccines had an association with the Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS). Even nowadays, if you take the annual flu vaccine they advise caution if you've had GBS before. - one Rotavirus vaccine was quickly discontinued after they saw it can cause a serious condition called intussusception - finally, a case that you'll hear lots of people talking about, a possible link between a flu vaccine adjuvant (AS03) and narcolepsy. The CDC page directs you to the actual study [2]. My summary is that this link was observed only in Sweden and Taiwan, but in no other countries. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do not have adjuvants (but Novavax and others will have). [1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30122647/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30122647/

Solstinox 6y ago
Good sources, keeping in mind that past performance is no guarantee of future results.

JamisonM 6y ago

I am personally quite terrified of the possible unknown long term side effects of COVID-19 and largely confident that the vaccines are going to be safe. If you offered me a vaccine tomorrow vs a 100% certain mild case of COVID-19 that would guarantee me immunity for a year so I could get the vaccine in 12 months when there was /even more/ confidence about the safety of the vaccine I would take the vaccine.

alex504 6y ago
Yeah I think that basically sums it up. The dangers of long term COVID far, far outweigh the potential risks of the vaccine. It seems many people have a fundamental distrust of vaccines and many also still don't understand how dangerous COVID seems to be for people who have relatively little risk of dying from the disease. I haven't been able to come up with a theory as to why public health departments and the media haven't been making the long term effects a key part of their messaging.
- jMyles 6y ago
  Is the long covid phenomenon any more pronounced with this virus than any other coronavirus (last I read[0], the answer seems to be 'no')? Since there are four others circulating, will this vaccine even have a significant effect on these post-viral symptoms? 0: https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid/ https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/17/what-is-long-covid...
  - JamisonM 6y ago
    That article is really something, the first thing that jumps out: "Second, covid is not some magical entity, it’s a coronavirus, and it behaves like other coronaviruses, and other respiratory viruses more generally. It would be strange for covid to cause symptoms that other respiratory viruses don’t. And since I’ve never heard of “long rhinovirus” or “long influenza”, I’m inherently doubtful of claims that there’s such a thing as “long covid”." This is just getting caught up in silly semantics, people are experiencing longer term health effects, they are calling it "long covid" for lack of a better name not because it is an affirmative diagnosis. "On MedRxiv, there is a pre-print awaiting peer review of a prospective cohort study that followed 4,182 people with positive PCR tests... if we assume that this study was reasonably accurate, then one in 50 people who get covid still have symptoms at the twelve week point..." This is supposed to be an argument that inclines me to think that whatever "Long Covid" is I am not supposed to be worried about it? If 1 in 50 people that get a positive test are still feeling after effects of having what the author believes "behaves just like other coronaviruses" then I think we should be very concerned! Even if truly long term effects only develop in 1 in 500 COVID-19 cases.. that's a lot of people who are going to be sick for a really long time! It would be 400 Americans a day right now. Yikes! That's bad! I'll take my chances with a vaccine! (And I know the standard response to this is.. "well, those people are mostly old or sick with something else so you can't really count it that way" but a certain, maybe large, proportion of those people would probably never get a serious respiratory virus in the near or medium term in the absence of COVID-19. It is a really large number of extra sick people, and all at once.) Also the 4 other coronaviruses circulating thing is silly, obviously the long term effects of the common cold viruses are not going to be comparable if the short term effects are clearly not comparable, it is reductionism of the worst kind.

ouid 6y ago

Of covid or the vaccine? Vaccine side effects are, generally speaking, either immediate, or are a problem with the immunological response that they elicit. I would say that these scenarios have not been fully evaluated, but the risk of other kinds of side effects is very very low.

tubularhells 6y ago

As I see it, the political side is pushing for a solution for the now, damn the consequences in 5-10 years. This is really just BAU in politics. I wouldn't be surprised if the leaders of the vaccine firms weren't using their own vaccines on themselves and their families for a couple more years, until they have sufficient data. I have read enough research papers about the replication crises in many fields to know how much these long term studies are needed to properly assess a risk-benefit analysis for vaccination. I will, personally, stay the fuck away for the next couple years. My life didn't change much anyway, I've been working from home for years now. Less social life, but I can weather that. As a note, we got COVID with the wife, I was without symptoms while she lost taste for a couple days and was tired for a week. That was all.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

From covid? Pretty high, pretty sure I read 5-10% of people in infected. For these vaccines 0.0000001%. So I'm saying not zero but you're more likely to die on the way to get the vaccine (car/bus/stroll) than any long term side effects.