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To preface: I got the vaccine months ago (as soon as I had access), I'm a big believer in vaccines. With that being said, this policy doesn't sit well with me.

To preface: I got the vaccine months ago (as soon as I had access), I'm a big believer in vaccines. With that being said, this policy doesn't sit well with me. None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. Of course, a lot of people have received those vaccines, but I also don't necessarily fault individuals for feeling hesitant (the nuance here is that I think people ought to get the vaccine). mRNA is a new, unknown technology, and the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before. We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines. Both candidates Biden and Harris expressed the need for full trials and transparency in regard to the vaccine before they were in office, then changed their tune after (see: https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1416969060890210305 https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1416969060890210305). Biden says: > When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, Who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, “Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK”? If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.

ysavir 5y ago
>If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision If this were mandating that every resident of NYC must be vaccinated, I would agree. But it's not doing that. It's only saying that anyone wanting to dine (or possibly shop, too) indoors, that is, in spaces we know to have higher contamination and spread rate, they need to be vaccinated. People that are hesitant can still go unvaccinated and that's fine, but they have to keep to areas where contamination and spread are less prevalent. And I think that's fair.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies. I think we've determined from other issues that "separate but equal" isn't actually equal. That absolutely applies here.
  - ysavir 5y ago
    > It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies. Yes, that's how de Blasio phrases it, but I think there's more to it than how he's talked about it. The way I see these mandates is an effort to have people maintain a person R-naught of less than 1. How each person achieve that is up to them. They can wear masks, they can get vaccinated, they can avoid places with high transmission rates (such as indoor dining/shopping), or a combination of all these things. And ideally we find more options for people to take so that that everyone can help achieve a personal R-naught in a way that best fits their needs. Ultimately, the goal is to create a win-win scenario where on a personal level individuals can choose what degree of transmission prevention they want to pursue, and on a social level we're organized so that everyone is (hopefully) not infecting others, or doing so so sparsely that the infection rate is going down. The goal now is to find a comfortable equilibrium in which society can continue to do its thing without explosive outbreaks of Covid. These sort of mandates help get us there. This is all still very new and we need to find more methods in which we can reach that equilibrium, and we should continue to look for them, but we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like.
    - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
      > we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like. What makes you say this? There is literally no other city in our country doing a lockdown like this. Many places are still opened up and not experiencing a surge. Even in Missouri, cases have dropped in many regions in the last few days without such lockdowns, and hospitals have not been overloaded.
      - KittenInABox 5y ago
        > hospitals have not been overloaded As of 3 weeks ago Missouri had to expand their hospital system explicitly for delta variants? https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-michael-brown-86ab629fa8d0e5f0463211646b1f8f0a https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-micha...
- SirensOfTitan 5y ago
  From Alec Karakatsanis's excellent Usual Cruelty on plea bargains: > “the Constitution requires that every guilty plea waiving the constitutional right to trial by a jury of one’s peers be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.69 But no one who works in the criminal system thinks that contemporary plea bargaining produces voluntary agreements. The vast majority of plea bargains are accepted by people who are told that they will be imprisoned for longer if they do not give up their right to a jury trial. Many of these people are in jail and are told that pleading guilty is the only immediate way out of jail. In no other cultural context would the word “voluntary” describe this arrangement. Should my coworker ask a person out on a dinner date but tell the person that, if he does not accept, he will be placed in a cage, no one would view the person’s agreement to dine with my coworker as voluntary. That’s not how we understand “voluntary” actions.” Plea bargains are a totally different world, I'm not trying to compare this decision with plea bargains. What I would like to illustrate, through the author's example, is the process by which modern governments reduce the individual's agency in a de-facto manner, while de-jure asserting that individual's rights are upheld. People have been stuck inside for so, so long, keeping them out of restaurants if they don't get vaccinated is surely just manipulating their decision making toward getting a vaccine they may be uncomfortable getting. I suppose I don't really get what good this does. If a person decides to not get vaccinated and then decides to dine indoors, who are they harming, other than potentially themselves, by making that decision? I wish they would get the vaccine, but I also do respect their rights to judge the information available for themselves without severely restricting their ability to live their lives.
  - alonmower 5y ago
    Who are they harming? Literally everyone else in the space that is now more likely to be exposed to someone with the virus (and who has taken fewer precautions to avoid being contagious) People’s rights to swing their fists around wildly end at my face
  - ysavir 5y ago
    > I also do respect their rights to judge the information available for themselves without severely restricting their ability to live their lives. Can you expand on how being required to dine outside instead of dining inside is a severe restriction on someone's ability to live their life?
- mrfusion 5y ago
  It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores. Then if you want to eat you have no choice but to get it. What about denying healthcare for unvaccinated? Another easy step.
  - ysavir 5y ago
    > It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores. When Covid first broke everything shut down. That is, everything except grocery stores, which were open to all. So yes, I think it's a big stretch to imagine it expanding to grocery stores.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    That's what was originally announced for the health pass in France before public outcry made them soften the restrictions.
- orblivion 5y ago
  If you look at De Blasio's announcement of this "Key To NYC" program, the stated purpose sounds pretty clearly like trying to pressure people to get vaccinated. He gave the example of how successful it was with mandating city workers get vaccinated. Making it clear that this is to show New Yorkers that the way to participate in normal life is to be vaccinated. Sort of a "enough is enough, it's time to get vaccinated" attitude. Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days.
  - ysavir 5y ago
    > Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days. I don't think de Blasio has a real purpose. I think he's doing what his advisors and experts are recommending he do and he's trying to make it sound purposeful because the political like sounding purposeful.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  It’s a bit like cars. Own whatever you want, but the state has a say in what is and is not allowed on the roads they built and maintain.
  - ysavir 5y ago
    That's a great example! Thanks, I'm going to use this.
    - ds206 5y ago
      Yes, because no one ever breaks the rules of the road right? I mean, you've never driven over the speed limit? Parked in a non-parking space? Driven through a red light? Yes, what a great example lol.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Your response to a claim that the state has a compelling interest is an argument that enforcement is incomplete. You do see how these things are orthogonal, right?
- bingohbangoh 5y ago
  “I will not require you to get vaccinated because that is illegal. Instead, I will make it impossible for you to not get vaccinated. That is allowed.”
threatofrain 5y ago
> If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision. Do people feel the same way about schools requiring vaccines, or children getting the MMR, Hep B, or Polio vaccines?
- SirensOfTitan 5y ago
  As I clearly mentioned, this vaccine is not FDA approved. We have no idea of the long term effects. I find it fairly reasonable to not want to be a test subject.
  - bingidingi 5y ago
    So if the FDA approved it you’d be ok with it?
  - standardUser 5y ago
    "We have no idea of the long term effects" Perhaps you have no idea, but the people closest to this science, including the countless government agencies around the world that have given authorization, have a pretty good idea. The design and length of clinical trials is not arbitrary, but your personal idea of "long term" is arbitrary.
    - textgel 5y ago
      Just as they had a good idea that vaccinating would effectively make the virus transmissible, just as they had a good idea about masks working and not working, just as they...
      - standardUser 5y ago
        Not sure what point you are making, but vaccines work and are neutralizing the pandemic in places with sufficient coverage. The Delta variant does spread more aggressively to recovered or vaccinated people, but very, very rarely sends them to the hospital.
TomVDB 5y ago
> None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. On one hand, I can't wait for the Pfizer vaccine to be fully FDA approved in September. On the other, everybody who uses that argument today will simply forget about it and move goalposts.
- FreakyT 5y ago
  Exactly this -- people have just seized on the the "not FDA approved" line because it sounds reasonable if you don't really understand how FDA approval works or what it really means. As soon as it's approved, the goalposts will absolutely move to "well, I don't trust the FDA". For those "waiting for FDA approval", have you ever taken a vitamin supplement? Guess what, you're putting not-FDA-approved chemicals into your body.
yupper32 5y ago
You lose all credibility when you bring up the Biden/Harris comments. At the time we were at the point where it was a real possibility that Trump would push out the vaccine regardless of the status of trials, etc. Trump kept saying dates and deadlines for all sorts of things throughout the pandemic that had no basis in reality, to the point that pushing out the vaccine early was a real possibility, just to make him look better. THAT is what the Biden/Harris comments are referencing. Could they have been more clear? Absolutely. But I'm confident that you personally know the difference and that you're just deciding to peddle that bullshit to further whatever right wing agenda you have.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  If the vaccine had been rushed under trump it would have been malicious, but if the vaccine is rushed under Biden it's kosher? This is partisan logic and pointing it out doesn't make someone right-wing.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - yupper32 5y ago
    It wasn't rushed under Biden, at least in the sense that it didn't skip any steps or ignore trial data (the whole vaccine process was as quick as possible under both Presidents, of course). There was a real worry that it would be maliciously rushed under Trump. Imagine this: Trump guts the FDA leadership and installs fringe scientists. Those scientists then skip steps, ignore trial data, and push out the vaccine. If you think that was a far out possibility, then you're likely right-wing. The Scott Atlas situation alone should convince you that this was possible, let alone everything else about Trump.
karmelapple 5y ago
> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines. By that logic, we have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of COVID-19, and how they might compare to the unknown of the long term side effects of vaccines. We do know that many COVID-19 patients have had very bad effects over many months (I'm thinking of long COVID here), not to mention the possibility of death. We don't know what it'll be like 5 years from first getting COVID-19, but we know long term problems happen from the virus. Compare that to what's known about the vaccine: we haven't seen any indication that the vaccine is causing very bad effects over many months in any significantly large percentage of the population.
ch4s3 5y ago
> mRNA is a new, unknown technology This is untrue, researchers have been testing various mRNA therapies on people for 30 years, with it being first done in vitro in 1990 then in vivo in 1992 [1]. Lipid nano particles were first used around the same time. > the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before This is only true if you ignore the development of the mRNA vaccine platform for flu, rabies, and zika that predated the pandemic by years. The novel development here was swapping in new protein encoding. If you look at this as a continuation of that process, then it's only a little faster than normal, and a lot of that was due to the FDA switching sequential steps in the process to be parallel. > We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines. This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects. > Both candidates Biden and Harris They're both craven, ignorant politicians, who cares what they said when the other guy was in power. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076378/ [edit] All that said, I am no pro mandate but seriously you should all voluntarily go get vaccinated IMHO.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  >This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects. This isn't really what I'm worried about. Right now people are talking long COVID, subtle long term brain damage and it seems like mechanisms are still unknown. So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage. I'd be much more comfortable with the vaccine if the long COVID studies included groups : - no vaccination/hospitalised - no vaccination/asymptomatic - vaccination/not infected - vaccination/infected I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.
ttobbaybbob 5y ago
I don't understand calling it a nanny state. The government punishes you for not wearing a seat belt, children are excluded from school if they aren't vaccinated, drunk driving is illegal. Other than fda approval is the covid vaccine any different? if you're worried about the long term side effects and thus choose not to get vaccinated shouldn't you expect to not participate fully/freely in society (a la children's vaccines or repeat drunk-driving offenders)?
jmull 5y ago
Just to point out: The vaccines available in the US are authorized for use through an established FDA process. If you trust the FDA approval process, why not the FDA’s EUA process as well?

ysavir 5y ago

>If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision If this were mandating that every resident of NYC must be vaccinated, I would agree. But it's not doing that. It's only saying that anyone wanting to dine (or possibly shop, too) indoors, that is, in spaces we know to have higher contamination and spread rate, they need to be vaccinated. People that are hesitant can still go unvaccinated and that's fine, but they have to keep to areas where contamination and spread are less prevalent. And I think that's fair.

TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies. I think we've determined from other issues that "separate but equal" isn't actually equal. That absolutely applies here.
- ysavir 5y ago
  > It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies. Yes, that's how de Blasio phrases it, but I think there's more to it than how he's talked about it. The way I see these mandates is an effort to have people maintain a person R-naught of less than 1. How each person achieve that is up to them. They can wear masks, they can get vaccinated, they can avoid places with high transmission rates (such as indoor dining/shopping), or a combination of all these things. And ideally we find more options for people to take so that that everyone can help achieve a personal R-naught in a way that best fits their needs. Ultimately, the goal is to create a win-win scenario where on a personal level individuals can choose what degree of transmission prevention they want to pursue, and on a social level we're organized so that everyone is (hopefully) not infecting others, or doing so so sparsely that the infection rate is going down. The goal now is to find a comfortable equilibrium in which society can continue to do its thing without explosive outbreaks of Covid. These sort of mandates help get us there. This is all still very new and we need to find more methods in which we can reach that equilibrium, and we should continue to look for them, but we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like.
  - TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
    > we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like. What makes you say this? There is literally no other city in our country doing a lockdown like this. Many places are still opened up and not experiencing a surge. Even in Missouri, cases have dropped in many regions in the last few days without such lockdowns, and hospitals have not been overloaded.
    - KittenInABox 5y ago
      > hospitals have not been overloaded As of 3 weeks ago Missouri had to expand their hospital system explicitly for delta variants? https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-michael-brown-86ab629fa8d0e5f0463211646b1f8f0a https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-micha...
SirensOfTitan 5y ago
From Alec Karakatsanis's excellent Usual Cruelty on plea bargains: > “the Constitution requires that every guilty plea waiving the constitutional right to trial by a jury of one’s peers be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.69 But no one who works in the criminal system thinks that contemporary plea bargaining produces voluntary agreements. The vast majority of plea bargains are accepted by people who are told that they will be imprisoned for longer if they do not give up their right to a jury trial. Many of these people are in jail and are told that pleading guilty is the only immediate way out of jail. In no other cultural context would the word “voluntary” describe this arrangement. Should my coworker ask a person out on a dinner date but tell the person that, if he does not accept, he will be placed in a cage, no one would view the person’s agreement to dine with my coworker as voluntary. That’s not how we understand “voluntary” actions.” Plea bargains are a totally different world, I'm not trying to compare this decision with plea bargains. What I would like to illustrate, through the author's example, is the process by which modern governments reduce the individual's agency in a de-facto manner, while de-jure asserting that individual's rights are upheld. People have been stuck inside for so, so long, keeping them out of restaurants if they don't get vaccinated is surely just manipulating their decision making toward getting a vaccine they may be uncomfortable getting. I suppose I don't really get what good this does. If a person decides to not get vaccinated and then decides to dine indoors, who are they harming, other than potentially themselves, by making that decision? I wish they would get the vaccine, but I also do respect their rights to judge the information available for themselves without severely restricting their ability to live their lives.
- alonmower 5y ago
  Who are they harming? Literally everyone else in the space that is now more likely to be exposed to someone with the virus (and who has taken fewer precautions to avoid being contagious) People’s rights to swing their fists around wildly end at my face
- ysavir 5y ago
  > I also do respect their rights to judge the information available for themselves without severely restricting their ability to live their lives. Can you expand on how being required to dine outside instead of dining inside is a severe restriction on someone's ability to live their life?
mrfusion 5y ago
It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores. Then if you want to eat you have no choice but to get it. What about denying healthcare for unvaccinated? Another easy step.
- ysavir 5y ago
  > It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores. When Covid first broke everything shut down. That is, everything except grocery stores, which were open to all. So yes, I think it's a big stretch to imagine it expanding to grocery stores.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  That's what was originally announced for the health pass in France before public outcry made them soften the restrictions.
orblivion 5y ago
If you look at De Blasio's announcement of this "Key To NYC" program, the stated purpose sounds pretty clearly like trying to pressure people to get vaccinated. He gave the example of how successful it was with mandating city workers get vaccinated. Making it clear that this is to show New Yorkers that the way to participate in normal life is to be vaccinated. Sort of a "enough is enough, it's time to get vaccinated" attitude. Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days.
- ysavir 5y ago
  > Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days. I don't think de Blasio has a real purpose. I think he's doing what his advisors and experts are recommending he do and he's trying to make it sound purposeful because the political like sounding purposeful.
ashtonkem 5y ago
It’s a bit like cars. Own whatever you want, but the state has a say in what is and is not allowed on the roads they built and maintain.
- ysavir 5y ago
  That's a great example! Thanks, I'm going to use this.
  - ds206 5y ago
    Yes, because no one ever breaks the rules of the road right? I mean, you've never driven over the speed limit? Parked in a non-parking space? Driven through a red light? Yes, what a great example lol.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Your response to a claim that the state has a compelling interest is an argument that enforcement is incomplete. You do see how these things are orthogonal, right?
bingohbangoh 5y ago
“I will not require you to get vaccinated because that is illegal. Instead, I will make it impossible for you to not get vaccinated. That is allowed.”

threatofrain 5y ago

> If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision. Do people feel the same way about schools requiring vaccines, or children getting the MMR, Hep B, or Polio vaccines?

SirensOfTitan 5y ago
As I clearly mentioned, this vaccine is not FDA approved. We have no idea of the long term effects. I find it fairly reasonable to not want to be a test subject.
- bingidingi 5y ago
  So if the FDA approved it you’d be ok with it?
- standardUser 5y ago
  "We have no idea of the long term effects" Perhaps you have no idea, but the people closest to this science, including the countless government agencies around the world that have given authorization, have a pretty good idea. The design and length of clinical trials is not arbitrary, but your personal idea of "long term" is arbitrary.
  - textgel 5y ago
    Just as they had a good idea that vaccinating would effectively make the virus transmissible, just as they had a good idea about masks working and not working, just as they...
    - standardUser 5y ago
      Not sure what point you are making, but vaccines work and are neutralizing the pandemic in places with sufficient coverage. The Delta variant does spread more aggressively to recovered or vaccinated people, but very, very rarely sends them to the hospital.

TomVDB 5y ago

> None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. On one hand, I can't wait for the Pfizer vaccine to be fully FDA approved in September. On the other, everybody who uses that argument today will simply forget about it and move goalposts.

FreakyT 5y ago
Exactly this -- people have just seized on the the "not FDA approved" line because it sounds reasonable if you don't really understand how FDA approval works or what it really means. As soon as it's approved, the goalposts will absolutely move to "well, I don't trust the FDA". For those "waiting for FDA approval", have you ever taken a vitamin supplement? Guess what, you're putting not-FDA-approved chemicals into your body.

yupper32 5y ago

You lose all credibility when you bring up the Biden/Harris comments. At the time we were at the point where it was a real possibility that Trump would push out the vaccine regardless of the status of trials, etc. Trump kept saying dates and deadlines for all sorts of things throughout the pandemic that had no basis in reality, to the point that pushing out the vaccine early was a real possibility, just to make him look better. THAT is what the Biden/Harris comments are referencing. Could they have been more clear? Absolutely. But I'm confident that you personally know the difference and that you're just deciding to peddle that bullshit to further whatever right wing agenda you have.

ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
If the vaccine had been rushed under trump it would have been malicious, but if the vaccine is rushed under Biden it's kosher? This is partisan logic and pointing it out doesn't make someone right-wing.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yupper32 5y ago
  It wasn't rushed under Biden, at least in the sense that it didn't skip any steps or ignore trial data (the whole vaccine process was as quick as possible under both Presidents, of course). There was a real worry that it would be maliciously rushed under Trump. Imagine this: Trump guts the FDA leadership and installs fringe scientists. Those scientists then skip steps, ignore trial data, and push out the vaccine. If you think that was a far out possibility, then you're likely right-wing. The Scott Atlas situation alone should convince you that this was possible, let alone everything else about Trump.

karmelapple 5y ago

> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines. By that logic, we have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of COVID-19, and how they might compare to the unknown of the long term side effects of vaccines. We do know that many COVID-19 patients have had very bad effects over many months (I'm thinking of long COVID here), not to mention the possibility of death. We don't know what it'll be like 5 years from first getting COVID-19, but we know long term problems happen from the virus. Compare that to what's known about the vaccine: we haven't seen any indication that the vaccine is causing very bad effects over many months in any significantly large percentage of the population.

ch4s3 5y ago

> mRNA is a new, unknown technology This is untrue, researchers have been testing various mRNA therapies on people for 30 years, with it being first done in vitro in 1990 then in vivo in 1992 [1]. Lipid nano particles were first used around the same time. > the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before This is only true if you ignore the development of the mRNA vaccine platform for flu, rabies, and zika that predated the pandemic by years. The novel development here was swapping in new protein encoding. If you look at this as a continuation of that process, then it's only a little faster than normal, and a lot of that was due to the FDA switching sequential steps in the process to be parallel. > We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines. This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects. > Both candidates Biden and Harris They're both craven, ignorant politicians, who cares what they said when the other guy was in power. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243 [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076378/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7076378/ [edit] All that said, I am no pro mandate but seriously you should all voluntarily go get vaccinated IMHO.

reader_mode 5y ago
>This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects. This isn't really what I'm worried about. Right now people are talking long COVID, subtle long term brain damage and it seems like mechanisms are still unknown. So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage. I'd be much more comfortable with the vaccine if the long COVID studies included groups : - no vaccination/hospitalised - no vaccination/asymptomatic - vaccination/not infected - vaccination/infected I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.

ttobbaybbob 5y ago

I don't understand calling it a nanny state. The government punishes you for not wearing a seat belt, children are excluded from school if they aren't vaccinated, drunk driving is illegal. Other than fda approval is the covid vaccine any different? if you're worried about the long term side effects and thus choose not to get vaccinated shouldn't you expect to not participate fully/freely in society (a la children's vaccines or repeat drunk-driving offenders)?

jmull 5y ago

Just to point out: The vaccines available in the US are authorized for use through an established FDA process. If you trust the FDA approval process, why not the FDA’s EUA process as well?