5 ms·

> Not a doctor, but from what I've heard from immunologists, vaccines in general are incredibly unlikely to have long-term side effects on the scales that you t

by cheph 5y ago

> Not a doctor, but from what I've heard from immunologists, vaccines in general are incredibly unlikely to have long-term side effects on the scales that you think about. Fair enough, but the comment I responded to said: "We know that there are no side effects that are common enough to be of real concern." Given this statement is not qualified for timescale, I want to know what the basis for it is. How does the person who made it know there are no side effects on the order of six months or a year that are common enough to be a concern? Look I am all happy chappy with the vaccine, I will inject that sweet MRNA Pfizer or Moderna vaccines as soon as someone lets me at it, but I still think we need to avoid what Fauci does, which is knowingly lie in order to get people to do what we want them to do. There is blood clotting risk from AZ? Great, tell me what the risk is and I can deal with it, but lie to me and we are done talking.

nightski 5y ago
mRNA has a short life span. It merely tricks the body into producing the spike protein. It breaks down in the body fairly rapidly. What long term effects would you anticipate from this? There is a good chance for long term effects from covid. Completely the opposite for the vaccine.
- cheph 5y ago
  > What long term effects would you anticipate from this? Maybe you are responding to the wrong person? I never made any claims regarding what long term effects to anticipate. I asked how the person I responded to know there are no serious side effects on time scales longer than we have tested things on. > There is a good chance for long term effects from covid. Completely the opposite for the vaccine. Yes. I know.
- peytn 5y ago
  I think the concerns would be around the delivery vehicle, which presumably is some big polycationic lipid thing. From what I can gather, there’s not terribly much info on what’s known about what’s going into people’s bodies, and what info does exist has arisen from a thick soup of trade secrets and conflicts-of-interest.
throwaway894345 5y ago
People need to remember that we're not taking the vaccine for fun, we're taking it because COVID is out there and we know for certain that it has some lethal side effects as well as non-lethal side effects and possibly other long-term side effects that we don't yet know about. We weigh that risk against the risk that there might be some long-term side effects of the vaccine. To the best of our knowledge, the risks posed by COVID are more dire than those posed by the vaccines and we basically have to choose one.
- cheph 5y ago
  Maybe you responded to the wrong person. I am in no way suggesting it is better to not take the vaccine, or that there is good reason to think that the risks posed by COVID are less dire than those posed by the vaccines.
DangerousPie 5y ago
You can never know anything for sure. This is why science, medicine and drug approvals are all about probabilities and calculated risks. If everyone suddenly dropped dead 10 years after taking a drug that was approved in 2015 there is no way we could know that right now. But we know it's very, very unlikely, so we accept that risk. With vaccines we know from decades of experience that severe side effects tend to occur very shortly (days or maybe weeks) after the injection. So this is why vaccine trials observe participants for weeks or months, not years, before concluding that the vaccine is safe. Of course this doesn't guarantee that the Covid vaccine don't happen to be an exception. But if that was the approach we took then we would never be able to approve anything, and never get the benefits we know for sure it brings.
- cheph 5y ago
  > You can never know anything for sure. But you can? e.g. "We know that there are no side effects that are common enough to be of real concern."? What deficiency do I have that prevents me from knowing anything for sure that you don't have?
  - DangerousPie 5y ago
    Fair enough, I clearly should have phrased that differently. I simplified the wording at the cost of accuracy. The correct wording would be "We know that it is highly unlikely that there are any side effects that ...".
    - cheph 5y ago
      Thanks, that is a much more reasonable statement, and I agree. On the one hand we don't know, but on the other hand a lack of knowledge does not mean everything has equal probabilities. I personally don't see any good reason to think that the risk for long term side effects from the vaccine is higher for the vaccine than for COVID itself.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Your deficiency is that you're not a time traveller. You can't know what the long term consequences are no matter how many studies you do, until the long term has come to pass. You can however guess, and make good guesses (I'm planning on getting the vaccine). But it does no one any good to fail to outline unknowns that are steelmanned by "we can't possibly know".
jrockway 5y ago
> Given this statement is not qualified for timescale Keep in mind that we also don't know the long-term effects of COVID-19. It's possible that people who were infected with mild cases drop dead 1 year and 6 months after the infection. The disease hasn't been around that long, so we simply don't know.

by cheph 5y ago

nightski 5y ago

mRNA has a short life span. It merely tricks the body into producing the spike protein. It breaks down in the body fairly rapidly. What long term effects would you anticipate from this? There is a good chance for long term effects from covid. Completely the opposite for the vaccine.

cheph 5y ago
> What long term effects would you anticipate from this? Maybe you are responding to the wrong person? I never made any claims regarding what long term effects to anticipate. I asked how the person I responded to know there are no serious side effects on time scales longer than we have tested things on. > There is a good chance for long term effects from covid. Completely the opposite for the vaccine. Yes. I know.
peytn 5y ago
I think the concerns would be around the delivery vehicle, which presumably is some big polycationic lipid thing. From what I can gather, there’s not terribly much info on what’s known about what’s going into people’s bodies, and what info does exist has arisen from a thick soup of trade secrets and conflicts-of-interest.

throwaway894345 5y ago

People need to remember that we're not taking the vaccine for fun, we're taking it because COVID is out there and we know for certain that it has some lethal side effects as well as non-lethal side effects and possibly other long-term side effects that we don't yet know about. We weigh that risk against the risk that there might be some long-term side effects of the vaccine. To the best of our knowledge, the risks posed by COVID are more dire than those posed by the vaccines and we basically have to choose one.

cheph 5y ago
Maybe you responded to the wrong person. I am in no way suggesting it is better to not take the vaccine, or that there is good reason to think that the risks posed by COVID are less dire than those posed by the vaccines.

DangerousPie 5y ago

You can never know anything for sure. This is why science, medicine and drug approvals are all about probabilities and calculated risks. If everyone suddenly dropped dead 10 years after taking a drug that was approved in 2015 there is no way we could know that right now. But we know it's very, very unlikely, so we accept that risk. With vaccines we know from decades of experience that severe side effects tend to occur very shortly (days or maybe weeks) after the injection. So this is why vaccine trials observe participants for weeks or months, not years, before concluding that the vaccine is safe. Of course this doesn't guarantee that the Covid vaccine don't happen to be an exception. But if that was the approach we took then we would never be able to approve anything, and never get the benefits we know for sure it brings.

cheph 5y ago
> You can never know anything for sure. But you can? e.g. "We know that there are no side effects that are common enough to be of real concern."? What deficiency do I have that prevents me from knowing anything for sure that you don't have?
- DangerousPie 5y ago
  Fair enough, I clearly should have phrased that differently. I simplified the wording at the cost of accuracy. The correct wording would be "We know that it is highly unlikely that there are any side effects that ...".
  - cheph 5y ago
    Thanks, that is a much more reasonable statement, and I agree. On the one hand we don't know, but on the other hand a lack of knowledge does not mean everything has equal probabilities. I personally don't see any good reason to think that the risk for long term side effects from the vaccine is higher for the vaccine than for COVID itself.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Your deficiency is that you're not a time traveller. You can't know what the long term consequences are no matter how many studies you do, until the long term has come to pass. You can however guess, and make good guesses (I'm planning on getting the vaccine). But it does no one any good to fail to outline unknowns that are steelmanned by "we can't possibly know".

jrockway 5y ago

> Given this statement is not qualified for timescale Keep in mind that we also don't know the long-term effects of COVID-19. It's possible that people who were infected with mild cases drop dead 1 year and 6 months after the infection. The disease hasn't been around that long, so we simply don't know.