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Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just di

Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. Very few people in my area of London have bothered with the so-called lockdown (too much was open to be called a lockdown), masks, etc - I expect I've had all variants, and apparently my immune system is on top of it, in which case there's nothing to pass on; and the people in my area clearly don't care if I did. I'm no more an "anti-vaxer" than I am an anti-martian.

tharne 6y ago
The technology behind this vaccine has been actively worked on for over a decade. Yes, these vaccines have been sent to market faster than normal, but they certainly have not been "rushed".
- ryankemper 6y ago
  I hear this line being trotted out all over - especially from the "experts" - and I find it nothing short of enraging. There is a difference between saying "an mRNA platform in general might not be safe" and the actual claim real people make which is "this specific vaccine has not existed for more than a year and is being hastily rolled out on the world population via implicit or explicit coercion". The mRNA platform in general can be safe and, say, the Moderna vax could still have a poor safety profile. This is why we perform rigorous long-term testing and why most vaccine approvals (not that these are FDA approved of course) take several years. If you can't be intellectually honest enough to admit that there is a difference between "we've used this platform in theoretical research in small numbers" to "we mass-market and roll out this novel vaccine to billions of humans worldwide", you shouldn't be in the discussion, IMO.
  - 8note 6y ago
    It's the same thing with flu vaccines, mind you. They only get a few months testing before entering mass use The speed of access for these vaccines is that they started mass production while testing was ongoing, rather than waiting until after testing to start production
  - clcaev 6y ago
    J&J is not mRNA platform, it uses an adenovirus platform.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      Thanks. To avoid repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26799734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26799734 TL;DR you can probably s/mRNA/adenovirus vector/g although I will grant that adenovirus vector seems less "experimental" than mRNA does
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    It's not an mRNA vaccine; it uses an adenovirus vector, like the Oxford/AZ virus. The mRNA vaccines both seem to be fine, by comparison.
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      Thanks for the important clarification; I didn't read closely enough. My argument was definitely tailored for the mRNA discussion, although the purpose was more to illustrate the broader principle, but, not knowing a whole lot about adenovirus vector vaccines specifically, is it even the case that adenovirus-vector vaccines have been widely used in the general population? I couldn't find great info with a cursory search (indeed the top result is the CDC which consistently fails to cite anything they ever claim, ugh), but I wonder if the general argument still applies for these types of vaccines as well. Anyway, thanks so much for catching and pointing out my error there.
      - meepmorp 6y ago
        I believe there's an Ebola viral vector vaccine. The only other ones approved for use are for COVID, so it is definitely a newer technology. fwiw, new and better better technologies need to get used for the first time, eventually.
        ryankemper 6y ago
        > fwiw, new and better better technologies need to get used for the first time, eventually. No-one disputed that, I'm just pointing out that it is a very valid point for someone to say "I have concerns that we're rushing out an experimental vaccine". You might take issue with the specific wording (I don't) but the general point I hope we can agree on.
        meepmorp 6y ago
        Let's say that I think the point is understandable, and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand if only because nobody likes being treated like that.
  - atleta 6y ago
    It's not dishonest. It's a very adequate answer to the over-simplifying claim above. I.e. there is a difference between a newer and an older platform and there is a difference between an experimental platform and a new platform (that's not experimental but has been in development for a long time). You can always argue for making things slower and experiments longer, the problem is, that there is a pandemic going on with 3M deaths in the past year. Actually people seem to think that you can develop vaccines without being rushed, but it doesn't seem to be the case. There are several reasons why other vaccines took years: - it was a long time ago and scientists had a lot less knowledge, experience and older technology. (Think e.g. the mRNA vaccines, which J&J is not one of, where the first candidate could be completed in something like 2 weeks after the isolation and sequencing of the virus.) - they had to start from 0 for a new virus (because they new less, etc.). Like for the polio, or HIV. In the case of SARS-CoV2, they could build a lot on the experiments from SARS-CoV1. As far as I know, there was a vaccine candidate back in 2003, but by the time it would go into phase-3, the epidemic was over. Also, it seems that research never stopped about the coronavirus vaccines, so there were new results between 2003 and 2020 that the mRNA vaccines built on. - some viruses are easier to develop a vaccine for. (E.g. the HIV is not one of them, because it's very good at evading the immune system) - I've already mentioned this, but if the vaccine candidate doesn't get ready on time because of the above reasons, then you may have to wait for years before you can do a phase3 trial because there will be no people getting infected, so you won't be able to measure the effectiveness. This is what happened with the ebola vaccine in 2014. Now the vaccine is 7 years old, but it doesn't make it any safer, because there weren't people who could be vaccinated. (Well, of course, you could vaccinate them and wait for any long term side effect, just in case, that would show up without being infected, but that doesn't seem like a very important data point.) But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines).
    - ryankemper 6y ago
      > It's not dishonest. It's a very adequate answer to the over-simplifying claim above. I would disagree that calling it "rushed, experimental, and not necessary for [the original commenter]" is an over-simplifying claim. Indeed I find the "we've done theoretical research with platform X for years" to be the oversimplification. That being said I do agree that there is a difference between an experimental platform and a new platform. > But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines). Starting with the "higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines" part, FWIW, this is true in general but not for all individuals. For someone like me (20's, active, no major health conditions), the acute side effects of getting a SARS-2 vaccine far outpace the expected level of symptoms from SARS-2 infection itself. (Speaking from a personal risk reduction standpoint only, I don't want to get into the ethics of medical collectivism for the purposes of this discussion). I don't think you would dispute that, but just wanted to mention it because it's because taboo (and indeed you can get actively censored) to say "for my specific health circumstance the vaccine is more dangerous to me". As for the more general point about understanding the risks of the vaccines and the disease fairly clearly, I would say that we understand the virus far better than the vaccines. Indeed it really saddens me how we've wasted public health dollars on messaging to people that immunity to reinfection is not a thing (when it is most definitely a thing) and to be super spooked about variants despite the fact that SARS-2 is not going to magically mutate away from the spike protein anytime soon (i.e. there's plenty of epitopes for our immune system to work with even for the highly artificial immunity produced by making the body's cells manufacture spike protein exclusively). I will grant though that we have bounds on how bad short or medium-term adverse reactions could be to the vaccines. Personally I worry less about the (using mRNA as an example here to illustrate a general point) "it's going to turn me into a human GMO" pseudo-argument than I do things like (a) "is the rate at which spike proteins get produced in the body much more of a steep increase followed by a steep dropoff leading to greater potential for acute inflammatory episodes than via naturalistic infection" as well as (b) "could we be over-sentitizing the immune system to react too strongly when it detects spike protein, particularly for those who already had COVID-19 before ever getting the vaccine". If you're not aware, an absurd amount of people who have already gotten COVID-19 and therefore have naturalistic immunity are still getting the vaccine, either because they're "required" to (aka they don't know or want to fight their job's requirements) or more often because they've been brainwashed to think that the variants evade natural immunity which is just a total media-propagated falsehood. > In the case of SARS-CoV2, they could build a lot on the experiments from SARS-CoV1 Totally agreed and I wish more people knew that the virus causes COVID-19 is called SARS-2 and that it is directly related to SARS-1 (I'm referring to layfolk here). As a separate tangent I wish more people understood that the emergence of SARS-2 means we don't really need to worry about SARS-1 anymore because anyone exposed to SARS-2 will be cross-reactive with SARS-1. > I've already mentioned this, but if the vaccine candidate doesn't get ready on time because of the above reasons, then you may have to wait for years before you can do a phase3 trial because there will be no people getting infected, so you won't be able to measure the effectiveness. This is simply not the case for an endemic seasonal respiratory virus. You'll have plenty of cases, especially since we're basically PCR-testing the whole globe (I don't think we should be, to be clear). But I totally agree that the apparent benefit of vaccines declines exponentially as time goes on, particularly with SARS-2 where the fact that it is deadly for the very elderly and harmless for the very young means that yearly recurring mortality is going to essentially vanish after it's propagated through the current world population (as an aside, this fact is one of many reasons why all the hysteria around the virus was absurd from the get-go; amortized over several years the mortality of SARS-2 is entirely unremarkable) > But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines). Yeah, to conclude I want to bring it back to my earlier point which is that once the virus has propagated through the current world population (more or less), the set of SARS-2-naive individuals will become dominated by the very young, who are not at real risk of COVID-19 and therefore they will develop immunological memory while young when they are incapable of being harmed by SARS-2. This means that recurring yearly mortality will fall off a cliff (albeit, if we keep labelling deaths the way we do we won't see that reflected in the numbers nearly as much as we should). Which is why I think the restrictions and everything else, even if they had worked in places like the US or Europe where they totally failed, were always a bad idea. But the other side of that coin is: yes, insofar as you do think SARS-2 is something worth really freaking out over, we absolutely have to rush the vaccines because if we wait 2 years then there won't be any real COVID-19 deaths left to mitigate.
- pyronik19 6y ago
  They slapped the word "experimental" on the disclosure form and waived liability to the manufacturer... it was rushed... as it should be. I took it. But the reason people don't "trust the science" is that its obvious people are lied to on a regular basis around covid and trust has flatlined.
deleted 6y ago
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atleta 6y ago
Well, you may not be (or see yourself) an anti-vaxxer, and your right that it's not necessarily wise to label everyone as such who have concerns with these vaccines, but it also doesn't mean that your excuses make sense. The batch is not "rushed" more than it's needed: there IS an emergency. It's also not experimental. The experiments have all been done (up to phase 3). It's perfectly normal to only see 1 in a million (or even 1:100 000) side effects after starting the vaccination of the general public. Simply because the phase 3 will never contain millions of people. I've checked, and the 30-40k studies we had with these seem to be indeed large. I.e. safe. What you think about your immune system is kind of irrelevant for a few reasons, but talking up their immune system seems to be a general self-convincing strategy for a lot of people. First of all, it's not apparent that you have contracted the virus. Unless you have an antibody test showing that you are seropositive, you simply don't know, but the chances aren't very high. What you can be sure about is that you have not contracted "all" variants. If you live in the UK then you had the chance to meet the UK variant (B117, IIRC) and the base variant (D6.... whatever). Very likely not both. And the immunity for the base variant seems to work pretty well for the UK variant, so it doesn't even matter if you met both. But even if you know you are already immune, the natural immunity doesn't last that long. The vaccines give you higher antibody levels (at least the mRNA ones do, again IIRC) and better immunity especially due to the second dose. (Which you can't really simulate with a second infection within a few weeks.) And at last: you can't generalize from your own experience. Looking at the numbers, which we do have a lot of, people who haven't met the virus and don't have immunity should by all means get the vaccine. Because the virus is a lot more dangerous (several orders of magnitude more dangerous) than even the J&J or the AZ vaccine. Though the exact risk profile will depend on individual factors, of course, but since you've talked about all vaccines...
- argvargc 6y ago
  Zero experiments have been done on long-term effects, and you cannot, and no one can, counter this point. That's the definition of "rushed". Vaccines typically take several years of testing before being approved. These aren't approved according to those standards. Manufacturers are absolved from risks because of this "emergency use" status. Why absolve them if there are no risks? If they truly believed these were safe and of tremendously important benefit, they could stand up and say "we accept responsibility for negative outcomes in accordance with ordinarily approved medication, and waive our rights to emergency use protections". Then everyone would rush to take them as doubts would be broadly eliminated.
loveistheanswer 6y ago
If you've already had the virus, and had only mild symptoms from it, what additional level of protection does the vaccine confer? Do you still really need to get the vaccine in that case? The CDC says yes, but their reasoning is purely based on FUD: "experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again". According to the available data, there has been only 71 confirmed cases of reinfection out of over 137,000,000 cases.[1] Meanwhile, states in the US are reporting hundreds of "breakthrough cases" of fully vaccinated people. So, the data we have indicates naturally gained immunity is stronger than vaccinated immunity. It's funny how many people treat nuanced, data driven discussion like this as heresy to be shamed and censored. [1]https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...
thelean12 6y ago
You may not be full on anti-vax, but you're very clearly anti-science. > I expect I've had all variants No evidence of this. > and apparently my immune system is on top of it No evidence of this. > in which case there's nothing to pass on Even if the above were true, we don't know how long you'd have immunity. > and the people in my area clearly don't care if I did. They would if they caught it and had severe symptoms.
- tryonenow 6y ago
  Resorting to calling people "anti-science" is just as counterproductive and unnecessary as calling them "anti-vax". You're only solidifying animosity and mistrust. People have every right to question what they're being told by the same governments who mishandled this epidemic from the start - especially since there such strong political incentives that aren't necessarily aligned with scientifically based recommendations.
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    You are vaguely waving your hand at unspecified "political incentives" with absolutely no specifics or evidence of anything. I mean, you can question anything, but that has about zero value. Answers with evidence backing them have value.
    - ironmagma 6y ago
      Everything should start from a place of questioning. If there is data and the data makes sense, that can replace questioning with certainty. But often the data has a limited or tenuous connection, possibly even a fraudulent connection. This is why it’s important to actually read the studies and understand the science, not just to hand wave it away as “evidence = value.”
jrockway 6y ago
Did you get an antibody test to confirm that you've already had it? I don't think data supports the assumption that you've already had it; it's a rare disease even where it's spreading widely. I also have a gut feeling that people didn't take "lockdown" or social distancing seriously, but some counterevidence is that nobody in the UK has gotten the flu in 2021: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-cases-covid-england-phe-latest-b1805124.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-cases-covid-en... That's not because they're already immune, it's because diseases simply aren't being transmitted. As bad as people are about masks and social distancing, there is some measurable effect. I'll also point out some anecdata. I know someone in their late 20s that got COVID. They have felt miserable every day in the 9 months since having it. Others have relayed similar stories. Public health authorities are worried about severe consequences like death, but death isn't the only possible outcome. You could just feel like shit for the rest of your life. To me, this is a nasty disease that I do not want to contract. I probably won't die if I get it, but there is more to life than merely not being dead. As a result, I got the vaccine as soon as I could.
arcticbull 6y ago
> Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. No, it's not. That's a misunderstanding of how the vaccine development process works and what takes time. What takes time in the normal course of development is testing the vaccine, yes. Specifically, determining how effective it is. The reason that takes so long is that in general there are very, very few cases of most of the diseases vaccines are developed to prevent -- and you can't just go giving people Ebola to check how many of them catch it. It's fearmongering, plain and simple. There's mountains of data for your perusal online explaining how and why it got done fast -- here's one example. [1] [1] https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-public-engagement-resources/how-covid19-vaccine-developed-fast https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-p...
- koolba 6y ago
  Nine women cannot work together to produce a baby in one month. Similarly, while wider population testing for safety and efficacy would likely correlate with long term safety, it’s not a total substitute. I think it could be completely rational for young, healthy, low BMI people to delay vaccination till they’re more comfortable with any potential long term issues.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Well I guess it's a good thing nobody's trying to produce a baby, but rather, a vaccine. Because they succeeded, and you hand-waved away my completely rational explanation with a nonsequitur about pregnancy. Those folks aren't being immunized to protect themselves but those around them. This is a team effort and everyone's gotta pitch in. I got my J&J a week ago. No side-effects here.

tharne 6y ago

The technology behind this vaccine has been actively worked on for over a decade. Yes, these vaccines have been sent to market faster than normal, but they certainly have not been "rushed".

ryankemper 6y ago
I hear this line being trotted out all over - especially from the "experts" - and I find it nothing short of enraging. There is a difference between saying "an mRNA platform in general might not be safe" and the actual claim real people make which is "this specific vaccine has not existed for more than a year and is being hastily rolled out on the world population via implicit or explicit coercion". The mRNA platform in general can be safe and, say, the Moderna vax could still have a poor safety profile. This is why we perform rigorous long-term testing and why most vaccine approvals (not that these are FDA approved of course) take several years. If you can't be intellectually honest enough to admit that there is a difference between "we've used this platform in theoretical research in small numbers" to "we mass-market and roll out this novel vaccine to billions of humans worldwide", you shouldn't be in the discussion, IMO.
- 8note 6y ago
  It's the same thing with flu vaccines, mind you. They only get a few months testing before entering mass use The speed of access for these vaccines is that they started mass production while testing was ongoing, rather than waiting until after testing to start production
- clcaev 6y ago
  J&J is not mRNA platform, it uses an adenovirus platform.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    Thanks. To avoid repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26799734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26799734 TL;DR you can probably s/mRNA/adenovirus vector/g although I will grant that adenovirus vector seems less "experimental" than mRNA does
- meepmorp 6y ago
  It's not an mRNA vaccine; it uses an adenovirus vector, like the Oxford/AZ virus. The mRNA vaccines both seem to be fine, by comparison.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    Thanks for the important clarification; I didn't read closely enough. My argument was definitely tailored for the mRNA discussion, although the purpose was more to illustrate the broader principle, but, not knowing a whole lot about adenovirus vector vaccines specifically, is it even the case that adenovirus-vector vaccines have been widely used in the general population? I couldn't find great info with a cursory search (indeed the top result is the CDC which consistently fails to cite anything they ever claim, ugh), but I wonder if the general argument still applies for these types of vaccines as well. Anyway, thanks so much for catching and pointing out my error there.
    - meepmorp 6y ago
      I believe there's an Ebola viral vector vaccine. The only other ones approved for use are for COVID, so it is definitely a newer technology. fwiw, new and better better technologies need to get used for the first time, eventually.
      - ryankemper 6y ago
        > fwiw, new and better better technologies need to get used for the first time, eventually. No-one disputed that, I'm just pointing out that it is a very valid point for someone to say "I have concerns that we're rushing out an experimental vaccine". You might take issue with the specific wording (I don't) but the general point I hope we can agree on.
        meepmorp 6y ago
        Let's say that I think the point is understandable, and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand if only because nobody likes being treated like that.
- atleta 6y ago
  It's not dishonest. It's a very adequate answer to the over-simplifying claim above. I.e. there is a difference between a newer and an older platform and there is a difference between an experimental platform and a new platform (that's not experimental but has been in development for a long time). You can always argue for making things slower and experiments longer, the problem is, that there is a pandemic going on with 3M deaths in the past year. Actually people seem to think that you can develop vaccines without being rushed, but it doesn't seem to be the case. There are several reasons why other vaccines took years: - it was a long time ago and scientists had a lot less knowledge, experience and older technology. (Think e.g. the mRNA vaccines, which J&J is not one of, where the first candidate could be completed in something like 2 weeks after the isolation and sequencing of the virus.) - they had to start from 0 for a new virus (because they new less, etc.). Like for the polio, or HIV. In the case of SARS-CoV2, they could build a lot on the experiments from SARS-CoV1. As far as I know, there was a vaccine candidate back in 2003, but by the time it would go into phase-3, the epidemic was over. Also, it seems that research never stopped about the coronavirus vaccines, so there were new results between 2003 and 2020 that the mRNA vaccines built on. - some viruses are easier to develop a vaccine for. (E.g. the HIV is not one of them, because it's very good at evading the immune system) - I've already mentioned this, but if the vaccine candidate doesn't get ready on time because of the above reasons, then you may have to wait for years before you can do a phase3 trial because there will be no people getting infected, so you won't be able to measure the effectiveness. This is what happened with the ebola vaccine in 2014. Now the vaccine is 7 years old, but it doesn't make it any safer, because there weren't people who could be vaccinated. (Well, of course, you could vaccinate them and wait for any long term side effect, just in case, that would show up without being infected, but that doesn't seem like a very important data point.) But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines).
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    > It's not dishonest. It's a very adequate answer to the over-simplifying claim above. I would disagree that calling it "rushed, experimental, and not necessary for [the original commenter]" is an over-simplifying claim. Indeed I find the "we've done theoretical research with platform X for years" to be the oversimplification. That being said I do agree that there is a difference between an experimental platform and a new platform. > But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines). Starting with the "higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines" part, FWIW, this is true in general but not for all individuals. For someone like me (20's, active, no major health conditions), the acute side effects of getting a SARS-2 vaccine far outpace the expected level of symptoms from SARS-2 infection itself. (Speaking from a personal risk reduction standpoint only, I don't want to get into the ethics of medical collectivism for the purposes of this discussion). I don't think you would dispute that, but just wanted to mention it because it's because taboo (and indeed you can get actively censored) to say "for my specific health circumstance the vaccine is more dangerous to me". As for the more general point about understanding the risks of the vaccines and the disease fairly clearly, I would say that we understand the virus far better than the vaccines. Indeed it really saddens me how we've wasted public health dollars on messaging to people that immunity to reinfection is not a thing (when it is most definitely a thing) and to be super spooked about variants despite the fact that SARS-2 is not going to magically mutate away from the spike protein anytime soon (i.e. there's plenty of epitopes for our immune system to work with even for the highly artificial immunity produced by making the body's cells manufacture spike protein exclusively). I will grant though that we have bounds on how bad short or medium-term adverse reactions could be to the vaccines. Personally I worry less about the (using mRNA as an example here to illustrate a general point) "it's going to turn me into a human GMO" pseudo-argument than I do things like (a) "is the rate at which spike proteins get produced in the body much more of a steep increase followed by a steep dropoff leading to greater potential for acute inflammatory episodes than via naturalistic infection" as well as (b) "could we be over-sentitizing the immune system to react too strongly when it detects spike protein, particularly for those who already had COVID-19 before ever getting the vaccine". If you're not aware, an absurd amount of people who have already gotten COVID-19 and therefore have naturalistic immunity are still getting the vaccine, either because they're "required" to (aka they don't know or want to fight their job's requirements) or more often because they've been brainwashed to think that the variants evade natural immunity which is just a total media-propagated falsehood. > In the case of SARS-CoV2, they could build a lot on the experiments from SARS-CoV1 Totally agreed and I wish more people knew that the virus causes COVID-19 is called SARS-2 and that it is directly related to SARS-1 (I'm referring to layfolk here). As a separate tangent I wish more people understood that the emergence of SARS-2 means we don't really need to worry about SARS-1 anymore because anyone exposed to SARS-2 will be cross-reactive with SARS-1. > I've already mentioned this, but if the vaccine candidate doesn't get ready on time because of the above reasons, then you may have to wait for years before you can do a phase3 trial because there will be no people getting infected, so you won't be able to measure the effectiveness. This is simply not the case for an endemic seasonal respiratory virus. You'll have plenty of cases, especially since we're basically PCR-testing the whole globe (I don't think we should be, to be clear). But I totally agree that the apparent benefit of vaccines declines exponentially as time goes on, particularly with SARS-2 where the fact that it is deadly for the very elderly and harmless for the very young means that yearly recurring mortality is going to essentially vanish after it's propagated through the current world population (as an aside, this fact is one of many reasons why all the hysteria around the virus was absurd from the get-go; amortized over several years the mortality of SARS-2 is entirely unremarkable) > But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines). Yeah, to conclude I want to bring it back to my earlier point which is that once the virus has propagated through the current world population (more or less), the set of SARS-2-naive individuals will become dominated by the very young, who are not at real risk of COVID-19 and therefore they will develop immunological memory while young when they are incapable of being harmed by SARS-2. This means that recurring yearly mortality will fall off a cliff (albeit, if we keep labelling deaths the way we do we won't see that reflected in the numbers nearly as much as we should). Which is why I think the restrictions and everything else, even if they had worked in places like the US or Europe where they totally failed, were always a bad idea. But the other side of that coin is: yes, insofar as you do think SARS-2 is something worth really freaking out over, we absolutely have to rush the vaccines because if we wait 2 years then there won't be any real COVID-19 deaths left to mitigate.
pyronik19 6y ago
They slapped the word "experimental" on the disclosure form and waived liability to the manufacturer... it was rushed... as it should be. I took it. But the reason people don't "trust the science" is that its obvious people are lied to on a regular basis around covid and trust has flatlined.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

atleta 6y ago

Well, you may not be (or see yourself) an anti-vaxxer, and your right that it's not necessarily wise to label everyone as such who have concerns with these vaccines, but it also doesn't mean that your excuses make sense. The batch is not "rushed" more than it's needed: there IS an emergency. It's also not experimental. The experiments have all been done (up to phase 3). It's perfectly normal to only see 1 in a million (or even 1:100 000) side effects after starting the vaccination of the general public. Simply because the phase 3 will never contain millions of people. I've checked, and the 30-40k studies we had with these seem to be indeed large. I.e. safe. What you think about your immune system is kind of irrelevant for a few reasons, but talking up their immune system seems to be a general self-convincing strategy for a lot of people. First of all, it's not apparent that you have contracted the virus. Unless you have an antibody test showing that you are seropositive, you simply don't know, but the chances aren't very high. What you can be sure about is that you have not contracted "all" variants. If you live in the UK then you had the chance to meet the UK variant (B117, IIRC) and the base variant (D6.... whatever). Very likely not both. And the immunity for the base variant seems to work pretty well for the UK variant, so it doesn't even matter if you met both. But even if you know you are already immune, the natural immunity doesn't last that long. The vaccines give you higher antibody levels (at least the mRNA ones do, again IIRC) and better immunity especially due to the second dose. (Which you can't really simulate with a second infection within a few weeks.) And at last: you can't generalize from your own experience. Looking at the numbers, which we do have a lot of, people who haven't met the virus and don't have immunity should by all means get the vaccine. Because the virus is a lot more dangerous (several orders of magnitude more dangerous) than even the J&J or the AZ vaccine. Though the exact risk profile will depend on individual factors, of course, but since you've talked about all vaccines...

argvargc 6y ago
Zero experiments have been done on long-term effects, and you cannot, and no one can, counter this point. That's the definition of "rushed". Vaccines typically take several years of testing before being approved. These aren't approved according to those standards. Manufacturers are absolved from risks because of this "emergency use" status. Why absolve them if there are no risks? If they truly believed these were safe and of tremendously important benefit, they could stand up and say "we accept responsibility for negative outcomes in accordance with ordinarily approved medication, and waive our rights to emergency use protections". Then everyone would rush to take them as doubts would be broadly eliminated.

loveistheanswer 6y ago

If you've already had the virus, and had only mild symptoms from it, what additional level of protection does the vaccine confer? Do you still really need to get the vaccine in that case? The CDC says yes, but their reasoning is purely based on FUD: "experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again". According to the available data, there has been only 71 confirmed cases of reinfection out of over 137,000,000 cases.[1] Meanwhile, states in the US are reporting hundreds of "breakthrough cases" of fully vaccinated people. So, the data we have indicates naturally gained immunity is stronger than vaccinated immunity. It's funny how many people treat nuanced, data driven discussion like this as heresy to be shamed and censored. [1]https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/ https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...

thelean12 6y ago

You may not be full on anti-vax, but you're very clearly anti-science. > I expect I've had all variants No evidence of this. > and apparently my immune system is on top of it No evidence of this. > in which case there's nothing to pass on Even if the above were true, we don't know how long you'd have immunity. > and the people in my area clearly don't care if I did. They would if they caught it and had severe symptoms.

tryonenow 6y ago
Resorting to calling people "anti-science" is just as counterproductive and unnecessary as calling them "anti-vax". You're only solidifying animosity and mistrust. People have every right to question what they're being told by the same governments who mishandled this epidemic from the start - especially since there such strong political incentives that aren't necessarily aligned with scientifically based recommendations.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  You are vaguely waving your hand at unspecified "political incentives" with absolutely no specifics or evidence of anything. I mean, you can question anything, but that has about zero value. Answers with evidence backing them have value.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    Everything should start from a place of questioning. If there is data and the data makes sense, that can replace questioning with certainty. But often the data has a limited or tenuous connection, possibly even a fraudulent connection. This is why it’s important to actually read the studies and understand the science, not just to hand wave it away as “evidence = value.”

jrockway 6y ago

Did you get an antibody test to confirm that you've already had it? I don't think data supports the assumption that you've already had it; it's a rare disease even where it's spreading widely. I also have a gut feeling that people didn't take "lockdown" or social distancing seriously, but some counterevidence is that nobody in the UK has gotten the flu in 2021: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-cases-covid-england-phe-latest-b1805124.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/flu-cases-covid-en... That's not because they're already immune, it's because diseases simply aren't being transmitted. As bad as people are about masks and social distancing, there is some measurable effect. I'll also point out some anecdata. I know someone in their late 20s that got COVID. They have felt miserable every day in the 9 months since having it. Others have relayed similar stories. Public health authorities are worried about severe consequences like death, but death isn't the only possible outcome. You could just feel like shit for the rest of your life. To me, this is a nasty disease that I do not want to contract. I probably won't die if I get it, but there is more to life than merely not being dead. As a result, I got the vaccine as soon as I could.

arcticbull 6y ago

> Agreed, I've had all other vaccines, but this batch is rushed, experimental, and not necessary for me - labelling people such as myself "anti-vaxers" is just dishonest, bitter, childish, name calling. No, it's not. That's a misunderstanding of how the vaccine development process works and what takes time. What takes time in the normal course of development is testing the vaccine, yes. Specifically, determining how effective it is. The reason that takes so long is that in general there are very, very few cases of most of the diseases vaccines are developed to prevent -- and you can't just go giving people Ebola to check how many of them catch it. It's fearmongering, plain and simple. There's mountains of data for your perusal online explaining how and why it got done fast -- here's one example. [1] [1] https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-public-engagement-resources/how-covid19-vaccine-developed-fast https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-p...

koolba 6y ago
Nine women cannot work together to produce a baby in one month. Similarly, while wider population testing for safety and efficacy would likely correlate with long term safety, it’s not a total substitute. I think it could be completely rational for young, healthy, low BMI people to delay vaccination till they’re more comfortable with any potential long term issues.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Well I guess it's a good thing nobody's trying to produce a baby, but rather, a vaccine. Because they succeeded, and you hand-waved away my completely rational explanation with a nonsequitur about pregnancy. Those folks aren't being immunized to protect themselves but those around them. This is a team effort and everyone's gotta pitch in. I got my J&J a week ago. No side-effects here.