7 ms·

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 vacc

by atleta 5y 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 5y 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.
- jrockway 5y ago
  Things are "rushed" because it's an emergency. SARS-CoV-2 has existed for a little more than a year, and it's already killed 3 million people. At some point, you have to take the leap of faith that this thing that's very much like other things is going to actually be very much like those other things. mRNA vaccines are not new. Adenovirus vaccines are not new. Vaccines are brought to market in less than a year routinely; consider the seasonal flu vaccine. (Why are we seeing mRNA vaccines for COVID and not other diseases, if it's not new technology? Because the vaccines for other diseases didn't work.) You are totally right that there could be some magical protein in the vaccines that causes you to drop dead in two years. There probably isn't though, so what you call "rushed" other people call "saving lives".
  - argvargc 5y ago
    9 million - including many children, and mostly people of colour - die each year of starvation. Where's the emergency, trillions and unprecedented worldwide cooperation and effort to eradicate that forever within less than a year? It doesn't even require the invention of anything new, and is primarily a logistical (/expense) problem. Would save three times as many lives just in the first year, overwhemingly more life years overall, and be much easier to implement, being confined to mainly a few known, poorly-resourced areas (rather than the entire earth). If you've seen or lived the effects of starvation firsthand, you'd find it difficult to understand why suddenly everyone is willing to do anything, even destroy their own livelihoods or take rush-developed intravenous shots, to try and save the lives of a significantly smaller number of predominantly elderly people who were about to die of just about anything else anyway, at the expense of those 9 million (or any other of preventable causes of death that kill in higher numbers per year and have been known about for decades, for example: smoking). Why not spend a year making the manufacturing of cigarettes illegal, have a worldwide crackdown with cigarette company executives hauled to jail for crimes against humanity, make it illegal to depict smoking in any media, censor all images of cigarettes, and launch a 24/7 every news channel, every street corner propaganda campaign, with celebrities publicly blacklisting smokers? Save significantly more lives in the first year, and keep doing so year after year. Wouldn't need to trash the economy, ruin businesses, or risk plunging anyone into poverty, etc - and no need for anyone to take a rushed, long-term untested shot.

by atleta 5y ago

argvargc 5y 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.

jrockway 5y ago
Things are "rushed" because it's an emergency. SARS-CoV-2 has existed for a little more than a year, and it's already killed 3 million people. At some point, you have to take the leap of faith that this thing that's very much like other things is going to actually be very much like those other things. mRNA vaccines are not new. Adenovirus vaccines are not new. Vaccines are brought to market in less than a year routinely; consider the seasonal flu vaccine. (Why are we seeing mRNA vaccines for COVID and not other diseases, if it's not new technology? Because the vaccines for other diseases didn't work.) You are totally right that there could be some magical protein in the vaccines that causes you to drop dead in two years. There probably isn't though, so what you call "rushed" other people call "saving lives".
- argvargc 5y ago
  9 million - including many children, and mostly people of colour - die each year of starvation. Where's the emergency, trillions and unprecedented worldwide cooperation and effort to eradicate that forever within less than a year? It doesn't even require the invention of anything new, and is primarily a logistical (/expense) problem. Would save three times as many lives just in the first year, overwhemingly more life years overall, and be much easier to implement, being confined to mainly a few known, poorly-resourced areas (rather than the entire earth). If you've seen or lived the effects of starvation firsthand, you'd find it difficult to understand why suddenly everyone is willing to do anything, even destroy their own livelihoods or take rush-developed intravenous shots, to try and save the lives of a significantly smaller number of predominantly elderly people who were about to die of just about anything else anyway, at the expense of those 9 million (or any other of preventable causes of death that kill in higher numbers per year and have been known about for decades, for example: smoking). Why not spend a year making the manufacturing of cigarettes illegal, have a worldwide crackdown with cigarette company executives hauled to jail for crimes against humanity, make it illegal to depict smoking in any media, censor all images of cigarettes, and launch a 24/7 every news channel, every street corner propaganda campaign, with celebrities publicly blacklisting smokers? Save significantly more lives in the first year, and keep doing so year after year. Wouldn't need to trash the economy, ruin businesses, or risk plunging anyone into poverty, etc - and no need for anyone to take a rushed, long-term untested shot.