13 ms·

I wish I could get people that are avoiding the COVID vaccine “because we don’t know what the long term effects are” to realize that we have real data showing t

I wish I could get people that are avoiding the COVID vaccine “because we don’t know what the long term effects are” to realize that we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. You don’t want a tiny piece of mRNA but you want the whole organism reproducing in your body? The whole genome and all the proteins made?

hallway_monitor 5y ago
Agree completely. That said, ideally I don't want either. Since a lot of people wanted to get vaccinated immediately, I can avoid that and the virus with very high probability. If needed, I'll take v3 or so of the mRNA vaccine.
- egeozcan 5y ago
  If many people do what you are doing, some percentage can get the virus and allow it to mutate further, reducing the vaccine efficiency, putting others to risk. Prisoner's dilemma at play. meta edit: I don't like your post becoming completely gray and therefore up-voted you. It's a view that many people hold and it needs to be answered not by screaming "down-vote the selfish!" but rather with good arguments.
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    Oh 100%. It's a selfish play I admit. But if there's greater than zero risk of any long-term unknown effects from a vaccine, the number of people already vaccinated means the expected value is probably negative for anyone who hasn't been vaccinated yet.
    - tux3 5y ago
      Ignoring the blatant disregard for the safety of others, your calculations are off the mark. The Delta variant is the only one you should be concerned about from here on. And a single dose of vaccine only provides minimal protection against it. For your scheme to be safe, you would need about 80% of people around you to have 2+ doses of a high-efficacy vaccine, and ideally all with Pfizer over Astra, given their relative efficacy. There's a greater than zero risk you're going about this wrong and will end up catching a new variant. Vaccination works, if you ACTUALLY GET THE SHOTS. Cheers
    - devit 5y ago
      There seems to be a sizeable number of people who don't want to vaccinate, plus children under 12 won't be, and also the pandemic will survive in developing countries and travelers coming from them for a while. So I think the risk of getting infected in fall may well be significant enough to make taking the vaccine a good decision. Plus of course by vaccinating you no longer need to worry about minimizing infection risk, you don't need to get fake certificates to access things that are restricted to vaccinated people, you are free to travel to developing countries without risk. Also if you don't vaccinate now and the pandemic somehow has a resurgence you will have to rush to vaccinate then and stay at least month in full isolation while others who are vaccinated are freely going to events instead of doing the isolation now that events haven't fully resumed yet.
      - megous 5y ago
        Vaccination has its risks too. Long-term pain in the vaccinated shoulder, that will eventually spread to the other arm (due to sudden overuse), will not make you enjoy your life either. Having to test regularly may be less of a bother in life, if you lose this stupid vaccination lottery..., if you want to play on the convenience note.
  - makomk 5y ago
    Realistically, there's basically no chance of vaccinating enough people fast enough on a global scale to stop the virus mutating further and reducing the vaccine efficacy, probably not even of reducing the odds of it that much, and it's not even clear that the countries with the best vaccine rollouts will manage to stop it spreading at this point. And that's despite vaccination on an unprecedented speed and scale for a disease this new, using technology that didn't even exist a few years ago.
- anthomtb 5y ago
  Most of the arguments against accepting an mRNA shot read as “too new, do not want” to me. What are the specific long-term side effects that one should be aware of when accepting an mRNA shot?
  - captainredbeard 5y ago
    It’s more the effects of free circulating spike protein in the bloodstream than mRNA triggering ribosomes.
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      I don't understand what you are saying. What is the significance of either of those?
    - lima 5y ago
      And cytotoxicity - with the second shot, the body will have cytotoxic T cells which could target some of the transfected cells. But, why not to be worried: - It's a normal process and most cells will be replaced. - The effects would be tiny, especially compared to an infection with the real thing. If this was causing widespread issues, we would know by now. - All studies done so far indicate that only a very small amount will enter systemic circulation. It's a classic risk tradeoff, and the risks of taking the vaccine are much smaller than the risk of getting the real infection (billions of viruses replicating vs. one-time dose, real spike protein vs. stabilized spike protein).
    - Majromax 5y ago
      > It’s more the effects of free circulating spike protein in the bloodstream than mRNA triggering ribosomes. The mRNA vaccines are designed to express the spike protein in a membrane-bound form; very little is found floating free. See https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/spike-protein-circulating-in-the-vaccinated-what-does-it-mean https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/spike-protein-circula.... Additionally, the mRNA vaccines express a modified spike protein that is stabilized in its "prefusion" state (as seen on the virus itself before it binds with a cell), and the resulting complex seems to have somewhat fewer effects even when it does interact with a cell.
- lrem 5y ago
  Your very high probability rides on the virus dying down. Which will happen after enough people get vaccinated to bring Reff < 1. Which with the original variant required 50% of the population and probably only adults counted. With the newest variant, that threshold grows to about 80% and probably needs to involve children. The longer we wait, the higher the chance it will never die down.
  - drno123 5y ago
    People who have got Covid are also immune - there is a paper published in Nature which showed that even people who had mild cases of Covid have long-term (possibly) lifetime Covid immunity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4
    - vladTheInhaler 5y ago
      Except that Covid isn't just one disease, and immunity is a moving target. If you got the original variant back in February 2020, that may or may not protect you from a new variant with new mechanisms for evading/suppressing immune response.
- r3trohack3r 5y ago
  I’m not sure which child to respond to, so responding here. I’m pretty well aligned with this and I’m not sure why it’s getting the downvotes. COVID has never been communicated to me as something serious for my age group. Maybe I’m misinformed, but I’ve never feared getting COVID. I was _terrified_ of needing hospital care _during a hockey stick_. COVID was communicated to me as a hospital killer. I was terrified I’d have a bad time and not get the care I needed or, worse, steal care from someone else in a zero-sum game. And it wasn’t just COVID during that window. If we “hockey sticked” and exceeded hospital capacity, any care I needed (heart problems, broken bones, different virus, etc.) would all be wrapped up in the same zero-sum game. I quarantined for months, then socially distanced, and now I’m pretty much back to life as normal. What changed for me: my perceived risk of my local hospitals getting knocked over by COVID is now close to zero. In my eyes we’ve weathered the storm. Am I missing something?
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Long covid. I'm 28, fit and healthy, and I had covid that wasn't bad enough to require hospital treatment, but left with me with fatigue, shortness of breath and heart arrythmias that are only just improving 12 months later and are still not back to full fitness.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      I am 42, fairly fit and healthy too, and I still suffer from minor heart arrhythmia and an occasional fatigue 6 months after contracting a mild case of covid.
      - r3trohack3r 5y ago
        Several folks at my gym have said similar. They’re still at 80% capacity after 6+ months of contracting COVID, and are in their 20s and 30s. Sorry this is happening to you…
        inglor_cz 5y ago
loceng 5y ago
I wish I could get people that don't understand the nuances to deeply look into, study the mRNA vaccine, currently known issues including long haul COVID symptoms of people who've only had the vaccine (via the spike protein which has turned out to be cytotoxic and seems to break away causing issues), and look seriously into the Ivermectin research and its suppression; and yes, certainly I'll be downvoted because people prefer to do that instead of actually look into it - and I won't bother linking to resources related to Ivermectin etc - just go to my comment history and see them there, downvoted of course.
- namelessone 5y ago
  >and I won't bother linking to resources related to Ivermectin I'm not informed enough to comment on the content of your post, but this is a horrible way to start a productive discussion.
  - bavent 5y ago
    They aren’t trying to start a productive discussion. Anti-vaxxers don’t approach debates in good faith. They tend to drop long-winded comments that vaguely link together different conspiracies and anecdotal bits of “evidence” but then never cite sources and never back up their claims when pushed.
    - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
      > Anti-vaxxers don’t approach debates in good faith. Neither do people who make blanket pronouncements about an entire broad demographic of people, after labeling them with loaded & vindictive terminology.
      - bavent 5y ago
        Neither do people who make blanket statements about people making blanket statements.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
plank_time 5y ago
What is the percentage of people who suffered any long term brain effects? And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases?
- lima 5y ago
  > And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases? Does this matter?
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Hard to tell in advance, without the information. Was this a flippant dismissal or a genuine question?
    - lima 5y ago
      Genuine question.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    Would be interesting to know. If you're alarmist about COVID affecting brain tissue long term and we have protections against other diseases that also have long term effects on brain tissues, it reasons to me that you should also be as adamant if not more for protecting against those diseases. There's a lot of funding studying COVID, for good reasons. Why not use those findings to further other areas as well? We now have some interesting comparisons to look at. Might be even more good reasons to promote getting your annual flu shot.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > Does this matter? Who knows? Maybe there's a ton of viral infections out there that cause some form of brain damage and get no attention at all. Attention bias at play.
  - LikelyClueless 5y ago
    I would try to avoid the flu more if I had an idea of how much brain damage it could cause. I understand the comparison to the flu is a touchy subject, but the question can still be asked from a standpoint of curiosity. Is this disease showing completely new symptoms for a viral infection, or have we been over analyzing any little details that are not so uncommon? Does it matter? I certainly would like to know the answer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Claudus 5y ago
Maybe they are waiting for a study on “Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 Vaccination...”
causality0 5y ago
Yeah. I had complete loss of smell and taste, which came back about 90% over the next six weeks. It was fine for a month and then it went wonky. Probably 30% of my "scent spectrum" has now been replaced with the same burnt meat smell/taste. Everything from chocolate to feces to hamburgers now has the same core odor. It really, really sucks.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  How old are you? Were you completely healthy before?
  - causality0 5y ago
    30. Overweight but no actual medical problems. Not prescribed any medications. Not a drug, cigarette, or alcohol user.
    - brigandish 5y ago
      I don't mean be invidious, but being overweight is an actual medical problem, one that's been strongly linked[1][2][3] with susceptibility and severity of the disease. I can't recommend reading the World Obesity Atlas pdf enough as it provides possible explanations for the disparities in cases and deaths we've seen in different societies. [1] https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covid-19-and-obesity-the-2021-atlas https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covi... [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/excess-weight-and-covid-19-insights-from-new-evidence https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/excess-weight-and... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32788355/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32788355/
      - 0x737368 5y ago
        Lol at parent comment being downvoted - being overweight is absolutely a medical problem, people need to stop normalising it.
  - Jill_the_Pill 5y ago
ekianjo 5y ago
> we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. As in, 90% (probably more because asymptomatic people are never tested) of people actually have no symptoms at all and seem to go along fine with it? Or are you talking about something else?
- dboreham 5y ago
  Study suggests the "90% who are fine" may not all be fine.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > Our general approach in this study was therefore as follows: (i) utilise brain imaging data from 782 participants who have visited the UKB imaging centres for two scanning sessions, on average 3 years apart, with 394 of these having contracted COVID-19 in between their two scans; Have they established with certainty that in the control group there were no-one with COVID19 infection in the first place?
    - olaulaja 5y ago
      Having a few false negatives in the control group shouldn't really matter since that would only make the groups more similar and hide any differences that exist rather than hallucinating ones that don't.
ekianjo 5y ago
> You don’t want a tiny piece of mRNA but you want the whole organism reproducing in your body? Rather than injecting yourself with mRNA which will create long-term antibodies in your organism which will be reactivated any time something like COVID19 appears again in the nature, it's probably safer to rely on COVID19 treatments are are short lived (as in, metabolized) and reduce the viral load swiftly.
- electrondood 5y ago
  mRNA is short-lived, metabolized, etc. That's exactly how Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work. > Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the immune cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them. [0] You seem to be arguing against the principle of vaccination in general. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    mRNA are short-lived but the modified spike-specific T cells T-cells they create are not.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      But that's just ordinary, natural human immunity. Your body naturally produces "thing-specific T-cells" for a large number of "not self" things it has encountered throughout your life, to defend you from them. It's part of how your body's automatic anti-virus system works. It has a very clever system, where some cells learn to recognise foreign proteins. There is no spike protein actually in these T cells. They are just trained to recognise spike protein, waiting to mobilise quickly to pretect you from it if it's detected in future. Why would you not want that? Do you have some evidence that your spike-specific T cells themselves cause harm, in a way that your other thing-specific T cells do not? (It's not impossible, but seems unlikely.)
- vajrabum 5y ago
ikerdanzel 5y ago
80% of population will have immunity against COVID without any vaccination. Death rate is only around 1-2%. Severe reaction is under 10%. People knows for sure they have 80% won't have any effect from COVID. People don't know what is the odds of long term effect of vaccines. There are many people died directly due to vaccinations. These numbers are actively cover-up. Look at all the reported cases, they are "infections". Not death. In UK, as long as a person is tested positive, within 28 days no matter how that person die, even if it is suicide, they are counted as COVID death. Infections in USA is also massively double, triple or quadruple counted. As long as a test is counted even they are on the same person. It is fully understandable why some people willing to risk COVID than vaccines. Basically the rewards doesnt justify the risk for them. There are countries in EU fully embrace natural herd immunity. I let you research which country is that without the need of vaccinations. Their hospitals didnt collapse. Their death is only several times higher than flu and accident deaths. And by the way, this year magically, common flu death just disappear.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
As someone not getting the vaccine. I'll explain my reasoning. At this point, the odds of getting COVID are small. And much better treatments are around the corner. Thus a 1% mortality rate for the elderly, with multiple co-morbidities, will be even lower for someone my age should I get it at some point. Vaccines introduce a foreign substance 100% of the time into your body, sometimes have side effects. I won't even date girls that got the vaccine, until more is known about long term effects. I'm worried about possibility of birth defects should a pregnancy occur.
- dntrkv 5y ago
  > Vaccines introduce a foreign substance 100% of the time into your body So does the virus. And all of our data shows the virus is much, much worse.
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    yes, but by taking the vaccine 100% chance of doing that. Virus, only if I get it.
    - MAGZine 5y ago
      You're weighing a real possibility against an unfounded one. P(Complications|Covid) has a calculatable probability. P(Complications|Vaccine) is not, because we don't even know if they exist. And further, we strongly suspect they don't. In other words, I think you're trading one hand for (at best) one in the bush.
      - krona 5y ago
        P(Complications|ChAdOx1) is definitely not zero, especially for people < 40 years of age.
      - sethammons 5y ago
        Two of my brothers-in-law were hospitalized after receiving the vaccine.
AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
We also have data showing that there are negative long-term effects from getting the full-blown COVID vaccine. [0] The range of negative outcomes for just about any medical procedure range from none to death, so this should not be surprising. One really cannot, and should not, use this kind of reasoning for what should be a private, personal matter. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/ (Note the "I am not anti-vaccination" qualifiers in most submissions.)
- evgen 5y ago
  "I am not anti-vax" is always the first lie we hear from every anti-vax idiot. Now that the general anti-vax position has been so thoroughly debunked everyone knows to avoid someone who is obviously displaying this particular mental illness, so they have learned to be much more circumspect about their claims and how to position their anti-vax arguments. It will usually start with a bit of sea lioning and concern trolling before they move into arguments that tend to end with 'just saying...'
mrfusion 5y ago
If you find yourself saying or thinking "It's so simple why don't people understand" with regard to a political or social issue, there's a good chance you don't fully understand the issue.
throwkeep 5y ago
There are valid concerns and a difficult risk benefit analysis for some cohorts, I think. What are your thoughts on this? Put yourself in her shoes: "I held off on a COVID vaccine because I wanted to wait for data with positive signals for both pregnancy in the short term and long-run fertility. I’m trying to get pregnant, and those are the two things I care about most. Vaccine data is so politicized that it’s actually somewhat difficult to find full studies, results discussions or data sets as a layman, because every search term redirects you to “yes, get vaccinated right now, your concerns are merely ignorance” The other study that concerns me shows that the vaccine’s lipid nanoparticles— which carry the RNA instructions for the spike protein — move beyond the deltoid muscle they’re injected into and accumulate in other tissues, and seem to accumulate in ovarian tissue preferentially. That study looked at a very small sample, but given what we think we know about the spike protein — it likely causes some degree of tissue damage on its own, independent of the virus — it’s something that definitely demands further study Anyway, I feel like I need to come clean at this point. For a long time I was avoiding the vaccine because I wanted to hold out for more data. Now I’m actively choosing not to get it because what I’ve seen is providing the opposite of a positive safety signal for my purposes. It’s really important that I clarify I’m not at a high risk of exposure. I generally don’t work or even socialize outside my home. Lockdown life frankly doesn’t look that different from my preferred lifestyle. If I were a high exposure risk I would think about this differently I’m in the process of getting a prescription for prophylactic ivermectin, which has also become extremely politicized — to the point of becoming a censored topic on some platforms. I’m not giving advice, here. I’m not making broader efficacy claims. I’m just trying to be honest COVID is no joke. You do not want to get COVID. “Long COVID” symptoms should concern you even if you don’t think an infection would kill you. But the vaccines are very new and skipped a great deal of otherwise required safety testing, and some of this data is really worrisome." https://mobile.twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1405649896212819975 https://mobile.twitter.com/webdevMason/status/14056498962128...
- bruce343434 5y ago
  > data is worrisome I'd love to learn more about this but run into the walls your described about everyone dismissing your worries. Where is this data?
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
drno123 5y ago
The difference being, if you choose to get vaccinated, it’s 100% chance that you get mRNA. If you did not get Covid so far, the chances are going down you ever will.
- berberous 5y ago
  In many countries, the number of people getting the vaccine has plateaued, and at a fairly low level. Combine that with loosening policies, lower precautions, and more transmissible variants (like the Delta variant), and I think a lot of unvaccinated people may be at higher risk of catching it then they expect.
- lagadu 5y ago
  Once the pandemic phase is over, it'll be yet another endemic disease, meaning that as time goes anyone's chance of getting it tends towards 100%.
  - thu2111 5y ago
    Flu is endemic. Many people have never had it. The idea that 100% of people will get not only COVID but the exact strain that exists today does not seem well supported, especially as governments are already making noises about variants and booster shots.
faeriechangling 5y ago
Yeah this one has perticularly irked me we have data on the vaccines dating back almost as far as data on COVID. There is less overall cases and less overall time so there are more unknowns but there isn't also the same phenomenon we see of "COVID long haulers" amongst vaccine recipients. So far we have MORE evidence of spooky but speculative long term effects for COVID itself. The only argument that has made sense to me is the Freerider argument, or "both COVID and the vaccine have unknown effects so I will try to avoid both" because COVID cases are currently so low particularly when bolstered with "I'm open to taking the vaccine especially if cases go up but want to delay for more data for now". I'm sceptical it's going to be possible for anybody but a marginal minority to be a Freerider who doesn't vaccinate/distance/wear PPE long term because R0=5.7 in Wuhan during the initial outbreak so it seems like it takes mass scale efforts to reduce transmission no matter how one goes about it.
curmudgeon22 5y ago
I think it's reasonable to do a personal assessment of the risk. Yes, COVID can have very negative short and long term effects. BUT, what are an individuals chance of getting COVID? Quite a bit less than 100%. That's not the same math as the vaccine.
- Obsnold 5y ago
  I think this depends a lot on the time scales you are looking at. COVID isn’t going to go anywhere once the pandemic is declared over. The chance of you getting it at some point is very high.
papito 5y ago
This WP article mentions cases where the "COVID long haulers" have the aftereffects go away after the vaccine, which we don't know why yet, exactly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/long-haul-covid-vaccine/2021/03/16/6effcb28-859e-11eb-82bc-e58213caa38e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/long-haul-covid-vaccin...
splithalf 5y ago
But the virus is “all natural”! You can trust Mother Nature more than a bunch of creepy pharma-scientists. Didn’t you see Godzilla?

hallway_monitor 5y ago

Agree completely. That said, ideally I don't want either. Since a lot of people wanted to get vaccinated immediately, I can avoid that and the virus with very high probability. If needed, I'll take v3 or so of the mRNA vaccine.

egeozcan 5y ago
If many people do what you are doing, some percentage can get the virus and allow it to mutate further, reducing the vaccine efficiency, putting others to risk. Prisoner's dilemma at play. meta edit: I don't like your post becoming completely gray and therefore up-voted you. It's a view that many people hold and it needs to be answered not by screaming "down-vote the selfish!" but rather with good arguments.
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Oh 100%. It's a selfish play I admit. But if there's greater than zero risk of any long-term unknown effects from a vaccine, the number of people already vaccinated means the expected value is probably negative for anyone who hasn't been vaccinated yet.
  - tux3 5y ago
    Ignoring the blatant disregard for the safety of others, your calculations are off the mark. The Delta variant is the only one you should be concerned about from here on. And a single dose of vaccine only provides minimal protection against it. For your scheme to be safe, you would need about 80% of people around you to have 2+ doses of a high-efficacy vaccine, and ideally all with Pfizer over Astra, given their relative efficacy. There's a greater than zero risk you're going about this wrong and will end up catching a new variant. Vaccination works, if you ACTUALLY GET THE SHOTS. Cheers
  - devit 5y ago
    There seems to be a sizeable number of people who don't want to vaccinate, plus children under 12 won't be, and also the pandemic will survive in developing countries and travelers coming from them for a while. So I think the risk of getting infected in fall may well be significant enough to make taking the vaccine a good decision. Plus of course by vaccinating you no longer need to worry about minimizing infection risk, you don't need to get fake certificates to access things that are restricted to vaccinated people, you are free to travel to developing countries without risk. Also if you don't vaccinate now and the pandemic somehow has a resurgence you will have to rush to vaccinate then and stay at least month in full isolation while others who are vaccinated are freely going to events instead of doing the isolation now that events haven't fully resumed yet.
    - megous 5y ago
      Vaccination has its risks too. Long-term pain in the vaccinated shoulder, that will eventually spread to the other arm (due to sudden overuse), will not make you enjoy your life either. Having to test regularly may be less of a bother in life, if you lose this stupid vaccination lottery..., if you want to play on the convenience note.
- makomk 5y ago
  Realistically, there's basically no chance of vaccinating enough people fast enough on a global scale to stop the virus mutating further and reducing the vaccine efficacy, probably not even of reducing the odds of it that much, and it's not even clear that the countries with the best vaccine rollouts will manage to stop it spreading at this point. And that's despite vaccination on an unprecedented speed and scale for a disease this new, using technology that didn't even exist a few years ago.
anthomtb 5y ago
Most of the arguments against accepting an mRNA shot read as “too new, do not want” to me. What are the specific long-term side effects that one should be aware of when accepting an mRNA shot?
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  It’s more the effects of free circulating spike protein in the bloodstream than mRNA triggering ribosomes.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    I don't understand what you are saying. What is the significance of either of those?
  - lima 5y ago
    And cytotoxicity - with the second shot, the body will have cytotoxic T cells which could target some of the transfected cells. But, why not to be worried: - It's a normal process and most cells will be replaced. - The effects would be tiny, especially compared to an infection with the real thing. If this was causing widespread issues, we would know by now. - All studies done so far indicate that only a very small amount will enter systemic circulation. It's a classic risk tradeoff, and the risks of taking the vaccine are much smaller than the risk of getting the real infection (billions of viruses replicating vs. one-time dose, real spike protein vs. stabilized spike protein).
  - Majromax 5y ago
    > It’s more the effects of free circulating spike protein in the bloodstream than mRNA triggering ribosomes. The mRNA vaccines are designed to express the spike protein in a membrane-bound form; very little is found floating free. See https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/spike-protein-circulating-in-the-vaccinated-what-does-it-mean https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/spike-protein-circula.... Additionally, the mRNA vaccines express a modified spike protein that is stabilized in its "prefusion" state (as seen on the virus itself before it binds with a cell), and the resulting complex seems to have somewhat fewer effects even when it does interact with a cell.
lrem 5y ago
Your very high probability rides on the virus dying down. Which will happen after enough people get vaccinated to bring Reff < 1. Which with the original variant required 50% of the population and probably only adults counted. With the newest variant, that threshold grows to about 80% and probably needs to involve children. The longer we wait, the higher the chance it will never die down.
- drno123 5y ago
  People who have got Covid are also immune - there is a paper published in Nature which showed that even people who had mild cases of Covid have long-term (possibly) lifetime Covid immunity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4
  - vladTheInhaler 5y ago
    Except that Covid isn't just one disease, and immunity is a moving target. If you got the original variant back in February 2020, that may or may not protect you from a new variant with new mechanisms for evading/suppressing immune response.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
I’m not sure which child to respond to, so responding here. I’m pretty well aligned with this and I’m not sure why it’s getting the downvotes. COVID has never been communicated to me as something serious for my age group. Maybe I’m misinformed, but I’ve never feared getting COVID. I was _terrified_ of needing hospital care _during a hockey stick_. COVID was communicated to me as a hospital killer. I was terrified I’d have a bad time and not get the care I needed or, worse, steal care from someone else in a zero-sum game. And it wasn’t just COVID during that window. If we “hockey sticked” and exceeded hospital capacity, any care I needed (heart problems, broken bones, different virus, etc.) would all be wrapped up in the same zero-sum game. I quarantined for months, then socially distanced, and now I’m pretty much back to life as normal. What changed for me: my perceived risk of my local hospitals getting knocked over by COVID is now close to zero. In my eyes we’ve weathered the storm. Am I missing something?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Long covid. I'm 28, fit and healthy, and I had covid that wasn't bad enough to require hospital treatment, but left with me with fatigue, shortness of breath and heart arrythmias that are only just improving 12 months later and are still not back to full fitness.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    I am 42, fairly fit and healthy too, and I still suffer from minor heart arrhythmia and an occasional fatigue 6 months after contracting a mild case of covid.
    - r3trohack3r 5y ago
      Several folks at my gym have said similar. They’re still at 80% capacity after 6+ months of contracting COVID, and are in their 20s and 30s. Sorry this is happening to you…
      - inglor_cz 5y ago

loceng 5y ago

I wish I could get people that don't understand the nuances to deeply look into, study the mRNA vaccine, currently known issues including long haul COVID symptoms of people who've only had the vaccine (via the spike protein which has turned out to be cytotoxic and seems to break away causing issues), and look seriously into the Ivermectin research and its suppression; and yes, certainly I'll be downvoted because people prefer to do that instead of actually look into it - and I won't bother linking to resources related to Ivermectin etc - just go to my comment history and see them there, downvoted of course.

namelessone 5y ago
>and I won't bother linking to resources related to Ivermectin I'm not informed enough to comment on the content of your post, but this is a horrible way to start a productive discussion.
- bavent 5y ago
  They aren’t trying to start a productive discussion. Anti-vaxxers don’t approach debates in good faith. They tend to drop long-winded comments that vaguely link together different conspiracies and anecdotal bits of “evidence” but then never cite sources and never back up their claims when pushed.
  - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    > Anti-vaxxers don’t approach debates in good faith. Neither do people who make blanket pronouncements about an entire broad demographic of people, after labeling them with loaded & vindictive terminology.
    - bavent 5y ago
      Neither do people who make blanket statements about people making blanket statements.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

plank_time 5y ago

What is the percentage of people who suffered any long term brain effects? And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases?

lima 5y ago
> And did they do the same study against people who got the flu and other diseases? Does this matter?
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Hard to tell in advance, without the information. Was this a flippant dismissal or a genuine question?
  - lima 5y ago
    Genuine question.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  Would be interesting to know. If you're alarmist about COVID affecting brain tissue long term and we have protections against other diseases that also have long term effects on brain tissues, it reasons to me that you should also be as adamant if not more for protecting against those diseases. There's a lot of funding studying COVID, for good reasons. Why not use those findings to further other areas as well? We now have some interesting comparisons to look at. Might be even more good reasons to promote getting your annual flu shot.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > Does this matter? Who knows? Maybe there's a ton of viral infections out there that cause some form of brain damage and get no attention at all. Attention bias at play.
- LikelyClueless 5y ago
  I would try to avoid the flu more if I had an idea of how much brain damage it could cause. I understand the comparison to the flu is a touchy subject, but the question can still be asked from a standpoint of curiosity. Is this disease showing completely new symptoms for a viral infection, or have we been over analyzing any little details that are not so uncommon? Does it matter? I certainly would like to know the answer.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Claudus 5y ago

Maybe they are waiting for a study on “Brain imaging before and after Covid-19 Vaccination...”

causality0 5y ago

Yeah. I had complete loss of smell and taste, which came back about 90% over the next six weeks. It was fine for a month and then it went wonky. Probably 30% of my "scent spectrum" has now been replaced with the same burnt meat smell/taste. Everything from chocolate to feces to hamburgers now has the same core odor. It really, really sucks.

ganzuul 5y ago
How old are you? Were you completely healthy before?
- causality0 5y ago
  30. Overweight but no actual medical problems. Not prescribed any medications. Not a drug, cigarette, or alcohol user.
  - brigandish 5y ago
    I don't mean be invidious, but being overweight is an actual medical problem, one that's been strongly linked[1][2][3] with susceptibility and severity of the disease. I can't recommend reading the World Obesity Atlas pdf enough as it provides possible explanations for the disparities in cases and deaths we've seen in different societies. [1] https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covid-19-and-obesity-the-2021-atlas https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covi... [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/excess-weight-and-covid-19-insights-from-new-evidence https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/excess-weight-and... [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32788355/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32788355/
    - 0x737368 5y ago
      Lol at parent comment being downvoted - being overweight is absolutely a medical problem, people need to stop normalising it.
- Jill_the_Pill 5y ago

ekianjo 5y ago

> we have real data showing that there are long term effects from getting full blown COVID. As in, 90% (probably more because asymptomatic people are never tested) of people actually have no symptoms at all and seem to go along fine with it? Or are you talking about something else?

dboreham 5y ago
Study suggests the "90% who are fine" may not all be fine.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > Our general approach in this study was therefore as follows: (i) utilise brain imaging data from 782 participants who have visited the UKB imaging centres for two scanning sessions, on average 3 years apart, with 394 of these having contracted COVID-19 in between their two scans; Have they established with certainty that in the control group there were no-one with COVID19 infection in the first place?
  - olaulaja 5y ago
    Having a few false negatives in the control group shouldn't really matter since that would only make the groups more similar and hide any differences that exist rather than hallucinating ones that don't.

ekianjo 5y ago

> You don’t want a tiny piece of mRNA but you want the whole organism reproducing in your body? Rather than injecting yourself with mRNA which will create long-term antibodies in your organism which will be reactivated any time something like COVID19 appears again in the nature, it's probably safer to rely on COVID19 treatments are are short lived (as in, metabolized) and reduce the viral load swiftly.

electrondood 5y ago
mRNA is short-lived, metabolized, etc. That's exactly how Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work. > Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the immune cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them. [0] You seem to be arguing against the principle of vaccination in general. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
- ekianjo 5y ago
  mRNA are short-lived but the modified spike-specific T cells T-cells they create are not.
  - jlokier 5y ago
    But that's just ordinary, natural human immunity. Your body naturally produces "thing-specific T-cells" for a large number of "not self" things it has encountered throughout your life, to defend you from them. It's part of how your body's automatic anti-virus system works. It has a very clever system, where some cells learn to recognise foreign proteins. There is no spike protein actually in these T cells. They are just trained to recognise spike protein, waiting to mobilise quickly to pretect you from it if it's detected in future. Why would you not want that? Do you have some evidence that your spike-specific T cells themselves cause harm, in a way that your other thing-specific T cells do not? (It's not impossible, but seems unlikely.)
vajrabum 5y ago

ikerdanzel 5y ago

80% of population will have immunity against COVID without any vaccination. Death rate is only around 1-2%. Severe reaction is under 10%. People knows for sure they have 80% won't have any effect from COVID. People don't know what is the odds of long term effect of vaccines. There are many people died directly due to vaccinations. These numbers are actively cover-up. Look at all the reported cases, they are "infections". Not death. In UK, as long as a person is tested positive, within 28 days no matter how that person die, even if it is suicide, they are counted as COVID death. Infections in USA is also massively double, triple or quadruple counted. As long as a test is counted even they are on the same person. It is fully understandable why some people willing to risk COVID than vaccines. Basically the rewards doesnt justify the risk for them. There are countries in EU fully embrace natural herd immunity. I let you research which country is that without the need of vaccinations. Their hospitals didnt collapse. Their death is only several times higher than flu and accident deaths. And by the way, this year magically, common flu death just disappear.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

As someone not getting the vaccine. I'll explain my reasoning. At this point, the odds of getting COVID are small. And much better treatments are around the corner. Thus a 1% mortality rate for the elderly, with multiple co-morbidities, will be even lower for someone my age should I get it at some point. Vaccines introduce a foreign substance 100% of the time into your body, sometimes have side effects. I won't even date girls that got the vaccine, until more is known about long term effects. I'm worried about possibility of birth defects should a pregnancy occur.

dntrkv 5y ago
> Vaccines introduce a foreign substance 100% of the time into your body So does the virus. And all of our data shows the virus is much, much worse.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  yes, but by taking the vaccine 100% chance of doing that. Virus, only if I get it.
  - MAGZine 5y ago
    You're weighing a real possibility against an unfounded one. P(Complications|Covid) has a calculatable probability. P(Complications|Vaccine) is not, because we don't even know if they exist. And further, we strongly suspect they don't. In other words, I think you're trading one hand for (at best) one in the bush.
    - krona 5y ago
      P(Complications|ChAdOx1) is definitely not zero, especially for people < 40 years of age.
    - sethammons 5y ago
      Two of my brothers-in-law were hospitalized after receiving the vaccine.

AndrewUnmuted 5y ago

We also have data showing that there are negative long-term effects from getting the full-blown COVID vaccine. [0] The range of negative outcomes for just about any medical procedure range from none to death, so this should not be surprising. One really cannot, and should not, use this kind of reasoning for what should be a private, personal matter. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CovidVaccinated/ (Note the "I am not anti-vaccination" qualifiers in most submissions.)

evgen 5y ago
"I am not anti-vax" is always the first lie we hear from every anti-vax idiot. Now that the general anti-vax position has been so thoroughly debunked everyone knows to avoid someone who is obviously displaying this particular mental illness, so they have learned to be much more circumspect about their claims and how to position their anti-vax arguments. It will usually start with a bit of sea lioning and concern trolling before they move into arguments that tend to end with 'just saying...'

mrfusion 5y ago

If you find yourself saying or thinking "It's so simple why don't people understand" with regard to a political or social issue, there's a good chance you don't fully understand the issue.

throwkeep 5y ago

There are valid concerns and a difficult risk benefit analysis for some cohorts, I think. What are your thoughts on this? Put yourself in her shoes: "I held off on a COVID vaccine because I wanted to wait for data with positive signals for both pregnancy in the short term and long-run fertility. I’m trying to get pregnant, and those are the two things I care about most. Vaccine data is so politicized that it’s actually somewhat difficult to find full studies, results discussions or data sets as a layman, because every search term redirects you to “yes, get vaccinated right now, your concerns are merely ignorance” The other study that concerns me shows that the vaccine’s lipid nanoparticles— which carry the RNA instructions for the spike protein — move beyond the deltoid muscle they’re injected into and accumulate in other tissues, and seem to accumulate in ovarian tissue preferentially. That study looked at a very small sample, but given what we think we know about the spike protein — it likely causes some degree of tissue damage on its own, independent of the virus — it’s something that definitely demands further study Anyway, I feel like I need to come clean at this point. For a long time I was avoiding the vaccine because I wanted to hold out for more data. Now I’m actively choosing not to get it because what I’ve seen is providing the opposite of a positive safety signal for my purposes. It’s really important that I clarify I’m not at a high risk of exposure. I generally don’t work or even socialize outside my home. Lockdown life frankly doesn’t look that different from my preferred lifestyle. If I were a high exposure risk I would think about this differently I’m in the process of getting a prescription for prophylactic ivermectin, which has also become extremely politicized — to the point of becoming a censored topic on some platforms. I’m not giving advice, here. I’m not making broader efficacy claims. I’m just trying to be honest COVID is no joke. You do not want to get COVID. “Long COVID” symptoms should concern you even if you don’t think an infection would kill you. But the vaccines are very new and skipped a great deal of otherwise required safety testing, and some of this data is really worrisome." https://mobile.twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1405649896212819975 https://mobile.twitter.com/webdevMason/status/14056498962128...

bruce343434 5y ago
> data is worrisome I'd love to learn more about this but run into the walls your described about everyone dismissing your worries. Where is this data?
5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

drno123 5y ago

The difference being, if you choose to get vaccinated, it’s 100% chance that you get mRNA. If you did not get Covid so far, the chances are going down you ever will.

berberous 5y ago
In many countries, the number of people getting the vaccine has plateaued, and at a fairly low level. Combine that with loosening policies, lower precautions, and more transmissible variants (like the Delta variant), and I think a lot of unvaccinated people may be at higher risk of catching it then they expect.
lagadu 5y ago
Once the pandemic phase is over, it'll be yet another endemic disease, meaning that as time goes anyone's chance of getting it tends towards 100%.
- thu2111 5y ago
  Flu is endemic. Many people have never had it. The idea that 100% of people will get not only COVID but the exact strain that exists today does not seem well supported, especially as governments are already making noises about variants and booster shots.

faeriechangling 5y ago

Yeah this one has perticularly irked me we have data on the vaccines dating back almost as far as data on COVID. There is less overall cases and less overall time so there are more unknowns but there isn't also the same phenomenon we see of "COVID long haulers" amongst vaccine recipients. So far we have MORE evidence of spooky but speculative long term effects for COVID itself. The only argument that has made sense to me is the Freerider argument, or "both COVID and the vaccine have unknown effects so I will try to avoid both" because COVID cases are currently so low particularly when bolstered with "I'm open to taking the vaccine especially if cases go up but want to delay for more data for now". I'm sceptical it's going to be possible for anybody but a marginal minority to be a Freerider who doesn't vaccinate/distance/wear PPE long term because R0=5.7 in Wuhan during the initial outbreak so it seems like it takes mass scale efforts to reduce transmission no matter how one goes about it.

curmudgeon22 5y ago

I think it's reasonable to do a personal assessment of the risk. Yes, COVID can have very negative short and long term effects. BUT, what are an individuals chance of getting COVID? Quite a bit less than 100%. That's not the same math as the vaccine.

Obsnold 5y ago
I think this depends a lot on the time scales you are looking at. COVID isn’t going to go anywhere once the pandemic is declared over. The chance of you getting it at some point is very high.

papito 5y ago

This WP article mentions cases where the "COVID long haulers" have the aftereffects go away after the vaccine, which we don't know why yet, exactly. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/long-haul-covid-vaccine/2021/03/16/6effcb28-859e-11eb-82bc-e58213caa38e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/long-haul-covid-vaccin...

splithalf 5y ago

But the virus is “all natural”! You can trust Mother Nature more than a bunch of creepy pharma-scientists. Didn’t you see Godzilla?