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Can someone explain to me why the vaccine is safe even though it’s “experimental”. I got it, but I have family members that I’m trying to convince and their big

Can someone explain to me why the vaccine is safe even though it’s “experimental”. I got it, but I have family members that I’m trying to convince and their biggest fear is that it’s going to hurt them long term.

psychometry 5y ago
Whereas actually getting covid won't hurt them long term (assuming it doesn't kill them)...? What a ridiculous argument. Not sure what you should tell them, honestly.
- ceoloide 5y ago
  Treating others as ridiculous won't help with the convincing. Reason doesn't always work when strong emotions are at play. However, I am no psychologist nor an influencer, I too don't know what can be done to overcome the impasse. I'd be curious to know what strategies work.
  - svara 5y ago
    I think GP made a good argument, if you state it in somewhat more friendly words. The world is different now from 2019; history has forced on us the unfortunate choice between the vaccine and the novel Coronavirus. The idea that the vaccine might have unknown, rare, long-term side-effects isn't nonsensical per se; but you have to weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated. What we definitely know so far is that such weird "dark horse" side-effects that only appear long after the actual studies are a very rare phenomenon for vaccines in general, there is no biological reason for why they should appear in this case, and none have been observed so far, even though the first people got these vaccines a year or so ago. Probably the underlying problem is a general fear of vaccines or pharmaceuticals in general. Side-effects in general occupy a way too large space in people's imagination. It might help to consider the dangers inherent to common everyday activities to keep things in perspective.
    - rory 5y ago
      > weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated Why do you say that's a certainty? I think it's still very uncertain how many people the virus will infect going forward.
      - svara 5y ago
        It is certain. Even if the vaccines always led to sterilizing immunity (they don't) and immunity lasted forever (it doesn't), we're not reaching sufficient fractions of vaccinated people literally anywhere in the world for the virus to go extinct locally - the newest variants are just that contagious. And even if that was possible in some first world countries, that wouldn't be sufficient, it would simply be re-imported sooner or later. So there's really no way it's going away. This is now an endemic human virus and, vaccinated or not, you'll be exposed to it many times over the rest of your lifetime. Barring some technological breakthrough in vaccine development and a big shift in people's attitudes towards them, it's with us forever. You also don't have to take my word for it, this is an uncontroversial view amongst infectious disease epidemiologists.
    - effie 5y ago
      Vaccines decrease your chance of bad COVID from one small number to another 10x smaller number. "Getting the virus", even if almost certain, isn't something most people have to worry about. Bad COVID is a worry, getting the virus, no.
  - minikites 5y ago
    >Treating others as ridiculous won't help with the convincing. Nothing will work to convince an unreasonable person. The next best thing to do involves blunting the impact of their dangerous choices, e.g. adding penalties and restrictions for the unvaccinated in society so they can't harm the rest of us.
    - ceoloide 5y ago
      I think this is the problem with the discourse around vaccines. People are quick to dismiss others as "reckless, unreasonable, impossible to convince". The people I know are far from unreasonable, but they might be applying the wrong reasoning strategy or fixating on bad / outdated data, or worst case outcome only. Nobody in the general population has the obligation to convince others, to be clear. I just wish the public discourse and institutions did a better job at educating and catering to those points of view instead of branding people by their against-vaccine stance only.
    - effie 5y ago
      You are advocating for segregation based on politics. If that comes, you won't like the consequences.
sokoloff 5y ago
At some point, you might not be able fully reason them out of a position they didn’t reason their way into, but I’d appeal to “what mechanism would show no negative response for 6+ months but then start showing negative outcomes later?” If there was a significant risk in the short-term, we’d be seeing those cases already. At some point, you throw up your hands, wave, and wish them luck.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's actually been significantly over a year since the trials. Wild, I know.
ceoloide 5y ago
This is truly a very common sentiment. Independent of the approved status, the common phrase is "how can we know it won't have long term effects that are unknown now?". Psychological effects of past medical disasters that caused irreversible harm and went under the authority's radar shouldn't be discounted, many people cling to that to justify their fear of the unknown. So how do we set up a discourse that takes this type of fear into account? What are the tricks or strategies to help people overcome their fears?
- minikites 5y ago
  >the common phrase is "how can we know it won't have long term effects that are unknown now?". If this was truly the fear, we would see these types of people wearing masks religiously. But we don't, which means it's not a medical fear, it's a political one.
  - onos 5y ago
    It is certainly a mix. Eg one of the demographic groups least likely to be vaccinated are blacks, who obviously lean democrat.
  - ceoloide 5y ago
    You are painting people in big strokes. The people I know that fear long term effects wear mask religiously and follow safety procedures. These are also the same people that won't get a flu vaccine, and resist getting the vaccines for all but the most deadly of diseases. Another comment in this submission mentioned being bad at evaluating risk, perhaps that's what it is. They fixate on the unknowns of a vaccine, but they aren't able to compare it effectively to the risks of the virus.
    - minikites 5y ago
      >The people I know that fear long term effects wear mask religiously and follow safety procedures. This is not even remotely the common case. Overall, the overlap between anti-mask and anti-vaccination individuals is massive: https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2020/09/anti-vax-to-anti-mask-processing-anti-science-claims-during-a-pandemic/ https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2020/09/... The core of both is the same: anti-science and anti-society.
ianai 5y ago
Over a billion people have taken them without significant problems. Probably way more than any trial for any treatment before or well into the future.
- msandford 5y ago
  I have heard reports of people having long covid-like symptoms from the vaccine and needing treatment. That may not be significant to some folks, but to others it might well be. I'm not saying that their evaluation is correct, BTW, but I think it's difficult to make the argument that the vaccine is 100.0000% upside. Even if the rate of people having these long covid-like symptoms is lower than that of people who get covid it's still not riskless even though the risks are lower.
  - psychometry 5y ago
    >I have heard reports of people having long covid-like symptoms from the vaccine and needing treatment. citation needed
    - gota 5y ago
      Snark aside, really - citation needed. I've seen plenty of scary long covid reports and have a close personal connection to at least one strong case, and it is heartbreaking. But they are are all from getting Covid, not the vaccine. Let us know what and where you're reading about these vaccine-induced long covid symptoms
  - ianai 5y ago
    By significant I include the relative infrequency of complications.
- deleted 5y ago
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vwcx 5y ago
In their minds, is the greater risk a side effect from the vaccine popping up years from now or the debilitating effect of long-term COVID symptoms? Because right now, we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people not dying from Covid, but still suffering for more than a year with no end in sight to their symptoms. Also curious if their fear of long-term vaccine side effects has been their line since April? I'm seeing a few anti-vaxx friends switching to this line of anti-reason in the last few weeks, now that the FDA approval is right around the corner.
- breckenedge 5y ago
  That’s been my experience too. I asked one holdout I know, and she said she was waiting to see what effect the vaccine had on us, even though many of us have been vaxxed for six months or more. She’s so afraid of the vaccine that she gave up income due to loss of employment.
alkonaut 5y ago
It’s not experimental. It was. It was given emergency approval which sounds dramatic - but isn’t. Now the vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions with few adverse effects. An expert (can’t remember) explain why one shouldn’t be afraid of long term adverse effects of the vaccine: basically it has only two periods of operation: short term you can be affected by anything in the shot which contains all kinds of lipids and stuff used to create a vaccine. You can be allergic to one of these substances, for example. But if you didn’t have a short term effect from the vaccine, the long term effect is just the immune response. Nothing else. That immune response would come from the disease too. There is just no mechanism that would create a long term adverse effect. BUT there are tons of ways in which the virus could! You should ask the vaccine sceptic which long term effect they would rather have: the virus or the vaccine. Because it’s not about getting vaccine or not at this point. It’s about getting immune from the vaccine or from the disease. There just is no benefit of getting immune from the disease.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  > It was given emergency approval which sounds dramatic - but isn’t. In New Zealand since they had elimination they didn't do emergency approval. They expedited their normal process, but since there were literally no people dying in New Zealand of COVID-19 they weren't losing anybody by waiting for their medicines agency to complete all the steps it would usually take at the pace necessary. They're currently vaccinating their general population, having at first prioritised health workers and those at the border who might meet infected people in the course of their duties. Obviously things look a bit different when you've got people dying every day, but the vaccine is the same, so if you'd be more confident that it was assessed without worrying about all the people dying meanwhile, New Zealand did that. Months ago.
  - rco8786 5y ago
    My understanding of the US process is the same, that the “emergency” approval was just an expediation of the normal process.
    - 5y ago
alfl 5y ago
Build a function of unknowns that gives probability of a “bad outcome”, plug in the ranges of the best data you can find for the unknowns. Compare this to the probability of getting Covid (~100%) and having a “bad outcome”. This let me confidently say things like, “getting vaxxed is 2-5x safer than not” and ending the argument (whatever the actual figures were when I got vaxxed). The real answer isn’t technical though —- we need public health authorities to learn post-Internet PR. I’m cribbing Eric Weinstein here.
- basseq 5y ago
  And yet[1]: 75% of unvaccinated adults are "not worried about getting seriously sick"... 50%+ are not worried "about the Delta variant worsening the pandemic"... 50%+ say "getting vaccinated is a bigger risk than getting infected", and... 75% don't think the vaccines are effective. So definitely a "PR problem" is those figures differ from reality. But you read these figures, and the outcome is obvious: "I'm not going to get seriously sick, the long-term effects of the vaccine are unknown, and the vaccine doesn't work anyway... so why should I get it?" [1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-july-2021/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...
- effie 5y ago
  The procedure you are describing is difficult to do formally for most people, so they estimate it intuitively, like you did. And since individual data and personal values and political stances are involved, they got a different result from yours.
minikites 5y ago
If someone isn't vaccinated by now, I don't think the FDA "approving" it is going to make a difference, they've made their choice. We need to start shipping our supply of vaccines to nations that need them so we can give them to people who actually want them.
JCM9 5y ago
The general public has a very hard time rationalizing and making decisions based on risk assessments. People get nervous on US commercial air carriers even though this is by all measures currently the safest form of transport in the history of transportation. Literally safer than walking down the street. As for the vaccine, the fallacy of most people’s logic here is thinking that not getting the vaccine equates to risk avoidance. In fact based on all we know it’s quite the opposite. The risk of not getting the vaccine vastly outweighs any potential risk of getting the vaccine. With the Delta variant if one isn’t vaccinated it’s increasingly very likely you’ll get COVID. The short and long term impacts of COVID are well known to have a high risk of being severe. From a risk standpoint it’s a no brainer. The media doesn’t help here at all. One person has a reaction from the vaccine and they’re all over it. Meanwhile thousands more die from not getting the vaccine. Opting out of the vaccine increases your risk, not decreases it.
- tedmcory77 5y ago
  "The general public has a very hard time rationalizing and making decisions based on risk assessments. People get nervous on US commercial air carriers even though this is by all measures currently the safest form of transport in the history of transportation. Literally safer than walking down the street." I've thought about this a lot; for me, it's not the mortality rate that bothers me the most. It's the method of passing. Having been in a plane experiencing a serious issue it was a lot scarier because of the duration than the traffic accidents I've seen which were basically over immediately.
  - pixl97 5y ago
    I think you may have a poor idea of how people die in car accidents then. Car accidents are less instantly fatal, instead you tend to suffer for some while you bleed out, or the car slowly begins to burn as you're trapped.
    - blueflow 5y ago
      Majority of fatal car crashes cause death by blunt trauma, so not much different from a plane crash.
danShumway 5y ago
Short version: - Full FDA authorization takes time - We know a lot more about how these vaccines work than other vaccines so we're less nervous about them, but that doesn't mean full FDA authorization doesn't still take time - Since temporary authorization was granted, a huge number of people have gotten the vaccine, which gives us a lot of confidence since we effectively have a lot of case studies to look at. However, doesn't change anything about the fact that full FDA authorization still takes time. - If Covid wasn't Covid, even knowing the above we might not have allowed temporary authorization, but we're managing relative risk, and the risk for nearly every population from Covid dwarfs the risk that there's a side effect from the vaccine that's worse. But, FDA authorization still takes time, it's not based on how dangerous the alternative is, so full authorization is still only gonna happen once enough time has elapsed for the vaccines to be evaluated using the normal process. ---- I don't know if this will help with your family in specific, but I like to compare this to a change on a piece of software in an enterprise environment. Knowing for certain that the change is safe requires the change to be deployed on production hardware via a production build and run through a full set of full-stack tests, and then ideally monitored for a week to see if anything else jumps out as a regression. So one day, imagine we notice a critical bug that's causing data loss for customers. I can argue: - The change to fix this bug is in a part of the code that is well understood, all of our developers have looked it over and agreed that it's unlikely to have side effects. - We've hotpatched this fix to multiple sites that were affected, and tested internally, and everything seems to be working well. We do have this code running in production for some customers, but we have not seen side effects. - The risk of one of our customers randomly losing their data because of the bug is far higher than the risk of the fix causing additional problems, and it would be foolish for us to leave our customers in a state where they might lose data suddenly. All of those are good arguments for bypassing the full set of tests and deploying the fix immediately (which is basically what the FDA did with the emergency authorization). BUT I still can't accurately claim that my fix has passed the full set of testing requirements. Independently of hot-patching sites and rolling out the critical fix, I also still want to run the full test suite and monitor the production hardware for a while longer. That's basically where we are with the vaccine. We'd be foolish not to be deploying it now, but we still can't pretend or shortcut the process and just say that it's fully authorized (even though basically no one is expecting the authorization process to fail at this point). It hasn't passed the full test suite and sat on production hardware for a week yet. However, the risk of an issue at this point is small enough that for the vast majority of adults (even middle-aged and below), the risk of Covid complications are higher than the risk of vaccine complications. The good news is that most timetables I've seen expect full authorization to be finished for Pfizer between September and December. I would not advise anyone to wait for that, but hopefully when it happens that will decrease vaccine hesitancy.
mschuster91 5y ago
> Can someone explain to me why the vaccine is safe even though it’s “experimental”. The COVID vaccines are a trade-off... possible but unlikely long-term consequences vs. definitive and massive long-term side effects of catching COVID. Australia and New Zealand aside, if you are not vaccinated you will get COVID eventually.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  Why do you say “australia and New Zealand aside”? Getting vaccinated doesn’t prevent you getting covid… it just prepares your immune system to fight it if you do get it.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    Because these two countries actually follow measures to detect and contain COVID outbreaks.
II2II 5y ago
I suspect the argument about long term effects is intentionally misleading. It will be impossible to convince most of those people about long term effects until the long term has come to pass. The chart in the article even alludes to that, with < 15% saying they'd get vaccinated if there was full FDA approval. That is likely as close as we'll get to a statement of there being no long term effects in the near future. As for "shortcuts" being taken in the approval process, the normal process is intended for situations where there is less urgency. The combination of a high infection rate and relatively high mortality rate has a large social impact and it has a large economic impact, regardless of whether anything is done to mitigate spread. The provisional approval is necessary, it still reflects high standards for safety, and it does not imply a lack of safety. Edit: for clarity.
- effie 5y ago
  > relatively high mortality rate Can you quantify that? How many people died from COVID vs. cancer or transport accidents?
  - throwaway2016a 5y ago
    I think it is reasonable to look at excess death counts since the number of deaths in any given week can be predicted with reasonable accuracy statistically. So assuming most excess deaths are due to COVID and not other causes (likely more actually are since deaths for things like Flu and car crashes were down this year due to social distancing): Anywhere from 6,000 to 30,000 deaths a WEEK in the US alone between May 2020 and May 2021 [1] Or in other words, enough to put it as the third leading cause of death globally[2] and the NUMBER TWO cause in the United States. Now some people can and will argue that COVID deaths are misattributed because of co-morbities. However, the excess death statistics pretty clearly suggest that to not be the case. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [2] https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/just-how-do-deaths-due-covid-19-stack https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/just-how-do-deaths... I only did a few minutes of searching so I'm not sure how accurate thinkglobalhealth.org but I trust the CDC numbers quite a bit.
staticassertion 5y ago
Just explain how the vaccine works. I think a lot of people seem to not really understand it, which makes it this mystery fluid being injected into them. You don't need to get too detailed. The vaccine contains mRNA, which is basically like DNA (in layman terms). The mRNA is from covid and it's what gives it its 'spiky' structure. When the mRNA is injected your body uses it to generate those spikes - that's just a normal function of your body. Your immune system learns how to attack those spikes, and so it'll recognize covid in general. mRNA is very short-lived so it breaks down, the end result being that your body gets some covid proteins for a little while and your immune system cleans them up. I think a really simplistic breakdown like this goes a long way to helping people feel comfortable. They're no longer wondering "what's in this thing? how does it work?" and instead it's like "oh ok yeah, I have at least an extremely basic understanding of DNA, and this is just a tiny little piece of DNA stuff that breaks down super fast".
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  As I understand it, mRNA vaccines are considered safer "by design" than other types of vaccines, because mRNA is so short-lived and the body has no way of replicating mRNA, and each piece of mRNA is only translated a few times, so the number of proteins a shot of mRNA vaccine creates is very specific. Because the mRNA can be made to only produce a very specific component of the virus, there is basically no risk for a real infection to develop, because there isn't a real pathogen, in contrast to some other vaccines which contain modified/weakened pathogens.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    I don't know that they're much safer because I think the risks are just really low in general and likely the same - the "major" risk being an autoimmune response, which isn't really specific to vaccines. My understanding was that the main benefit was that it's easier to produce in large amounts (and faster to go from sequence -> vaccine?), and the main downside is that it's harder to store (since it breaks down so easily). But I'm not a doctor, and I generally try to not tell people what they should do, shouldn't do, or what the risks are - just give them the info and help them understand what's going on. Most people are just afraid of the unknown, and if no one's giving them an explanation they can understand they'll go with the simplistic, albeit incorrect ones that they can ("microchips are a thing I know about - they put those in animals to track them, maybe they're putting it in the vaccine").
analog31 5y ago
I ask what are the long term effects of covid. Allowing covid to spread throughout society is also an experiment.
- effie 5y ago
  True. One which unfortunately we can't stop with vaccines. Even if vaccines were 100% effective (which they are not), we would have to violate constitution and humans rights of millions to really exterminate the virus with vaccines. That's unthinkable (the consequences would make the whole COVID situation a boring detail of history). The COVID is here like flu, cold is, can't get rid of it, we should let it exist and go on with our lives.
  - analog31 5y ago
    But we could greatly reduce its spread through behavioral measures, including masking. Like with flu and cold, absolute eradication is not the only possible policy goal.
    - effie 5y ago
      Agreed.
lb0 5y ago
Those ""longterm"" fears to me are just an excuse. No vaccine (or please tell me one) ever showed any "long term" effects in that sense that bad things showed up > 3 months after the vaccination, actually almost all side-effects happen instantaneously. The reason talking about "long term" side effects is that you usually need to reach very high numbers on your studies to e.g. correlate one in a million side effect to a medication, and thus need very "long term" studies. However, for those vaccines we are now MUCH beyond these numbers already! That is also what people mostly don't get in general right now: (In the very beginning maybe yes, but now not anymore) Those studies are NOT! pushed anymore with shortcuts and exceptions, the contrary, because due to the pandemic situation the necessary numbers (get x people of test persons infected) were so quickly passed now.. similar now for those side effects. It just doesn't make any sense to pull that argument anymore (though science vs belief is hard). And if you are really like "Meh.. but these totally new mRNA vaccines will grow me horns" => Comparing mRNA vs old-school vector vaccines is maybe like comparing LDC TVs of today vs old tube TVs that even bombarded you with little xrays... it is just such a technology jump.. and if you are into the topic and really concerned about that this mRNA will inject something into your cells/genes.. then you actually should be much more afraid of vector vaccines or just some viruses out there like Corona doing the same but much more reliably..
- jansan 5y ago
  Well, there is the Dengvaxia controvery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia_controversy
- manwe150 5y ago
  There was once a concern that certain vaccines predisposed you to diabetes or autism. Those studies took years to run (need to follow through adulthood), though in the end could not find a correlation.
munch117 5y ago
Pfizer-BioNTech has been approved in the EU since December 2020. Fully approved that is, not experimental, not emergency use. That it's still on emergency use in the US is puzzling. But as anyone who's been through a formal approvals process knows, these things can drag out forever. Approving bodies are all about CYA, they just don't like to commit to anything being satisfactory.
- effie 5y ago
  Not true. It has conditional marketing authorization. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty#authorisation-details-section https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty#... Also it is in pharma's interest to have this as long as possible. They like their immunity from prosecution.
MR4D 5y ago
It isn’t “experimental”, rather, it has “emergency use” authorization. Frankly, these vaccines have tons of data behind them, with the exception of long-term results [0]. Here’s how I would frame it: would you rather take a chance on a vaccine or getting Covid? Remember, Covid has many worse short term effects than the vaccine, and long term effects from it are truly understood yet either. So the vaccine is the more rational choice, despite the unknowns. Hope that helps. [0] - https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...
- Majromax 5y ago
  > Here’s how I would frame it: would you rather take a chance on a vaccine or getting Covid? I refuse to get any virus that has not passed rigorous Stage 3 and Stage 4 safety trials. Worse yet, this so-called Delta variant has been rushed into production without even the most basic studies, even though it's clearly not the same thing as the original virus!
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Ha! If only it was that simple.
loicd 5y ago
I don't understand why people are so obsessed over potential long term effects of vaccines while completely ignoring the potential long term effects of covid. There are no examples of vaccines with long term side effects. On the other hand, there are viruses like HPV that despite producing essentially no symptoms cause cancer in the long run. Sars-cov-2 is a new virus. Nobody knows its long term effects. Even asymptomatic covid cases may have damage to their lungs. Given how contagious covid is, the choice really is between covid and the vaccine, and the vaccine definitely looks like the safer choice.
- effie 5y ago
  > I don't understand why people are so obsessed over potential long term effects of vaccines while completely ignoring the potential long term effects of covid. I don't know anyone obsessed but: the issue is present. The rollout was quick and we don't have 10 years of data and the pharma got their immunity. If pharma isn't confident in safety of their product, it's safe to assume they know or are afraid that some significant percentage of nasty cases will happen. > There are no examples of vaccines with long term side effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome#Vaccine_onset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy... If there can be bad effects like GB syndrome as far as in 6 weeks, there can be longer term effects as well. With COVID vaccines it hasn't been very long yet. Standard studies of vaccines take 10 or more years. I like that cautious approach. > Sars-cov-2 is a new virus. Nobody knows its long term effects. Yes, the same as for vaccines. Hopefully we will know in the future. > Even asymptomatic covid cases may have damage to their lungs. Given how contagious covid is, the choice really is between covid and the vaccine, and the vaccine definitely looks like the safer choice. COVID is very contagious if you believe that positive PCR test means you have COVID. Of course, that's not how disease in general is diagnosed; symptoms are the telltale of sickness, and based on those, COVID is not that bad. Of course, there is the possibility that prolonged presence of virus in these OK persons will wreak havoc with their health in the coming years. But this is hypothetical now and not enough to scare major part of the population.
  - loicd 5y ago
    I know about GB syndrome. I do not consider that to be "long term". When I got my first dose, many people had already been fully vaccinated for more than 6 weeks and I personally knew quite a few of them. There was nothing to worry about. On the other hand, I've actually been told by some people I know that the vaccine is going to kill me in a couple years through some mysterious unspecified long term side effect. There are no examples of a vaccine doing that, no proposed mechanism for that, and the whole argument boils down to "we do not have 10 years of data so we do not know for sure that it is not the case". Well, we do not have 10 years of data on the long term side effects of getting infected by Sars-cov-2 either. I point out the asymmetry as these are the same people saying that covid is not that bad. > COVID is very contagious if you believe that positive PCR test means you have COVID. I'm startled. Are you nitpicking over covid (the disease) vs sars-cov-2 (the virus)? Of course if you have a positive PCR test it means that you are infected by the virus. Whether or not you have symptoms is irrelevant when we are talking about long term side effects. Think about HIV or the cancer inducing HPV strains. Again, even if you are asymptomatic you may get lung damage from covid. I am not saying that there are long term consequences to that, but you do not know that, and there are no less reasons to believe that than to believe in any long term side effects of the vaccine. edit: typos
nokcha 5y ago
Two points: 1. The fact that the vaccine only has "emergency-use authorization" rather than full FDA approval is best explained by the fact that the FDA is a dysfunctional bureaucracy motivated primarily by CYA rather than rational cost-benefit analysis. 2. The vaccine isn't 100% absolutely safe, but neither is anything else in life. The proper question to ask isn't whether the vaccine is safe in some absolute sense, but whether it is safer than going around unvaccinated. The evidence indicates that getting vaccinated is significantly safer than regularly breathing the same air as other people while unvaccinated. And although healthy non-elderly people are unlikely to outright die of COVID-19, there is evidence that infection often causes long-term effects, including cognitive deficits [1, 2]. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... [2] https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/07/29/covid-7-29-you-play-to-win-the-game/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/07/29/covid-7-29-you-play-...
- effie 5y ago
  1. Maybe true, but there is also the interesting fact that pharma wanted and got immunity, so it is in pharma's interest to prevent the full authorization; 2. You missed the fact that risks depend on personal data, factors, weights of those factors. Also, cheap treatments are available and effective which push the risk of bad COVID to such small number it's immaterial to most anti-covidism people (a political stance).

psychometry 5y ago

Whereas actually getting covid won't hurt them long term (assuming it doesn't kill them)...? What a ridiculous argument. Not sure what you should tell them, honestly.

ceoloide 5y ago
Treating others as ridiculous won't help with the convincing. Reason doesn't always work when strong emotions are at play. However, I am no psychologist nor an influencer, I too don't know what can be done to overcome the impasse. I'd be curious to know what strategies work.
- svara 5y ago
  I think GP made a good argument, if you state it in somewhat more friendly words. The world is different now from 2019; history has forced on us the unfortunate choice between the vaccine and the novel Coronavirus. The idea that the vaccine might have unknown, rare, long-term side-effects isn't nonsensical per se; but you have to weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated. What we definitely know so far is that such weird "dark horse" side-effects that only appear long after the actual studies are a very rare phenomenon for vaccines in general, there is no biological reason for why they should appear in this case, and none have been observed so far, even though the first people got these vaccines a year or so ago. Probably the underlying problem is a general fear of vaccines or pharmaceuticals in general. Side-effects in general occupy a way too large space in people's imagination. It might help to consider the dangers inherent to common everyday activities to keep things in perspective.
  - rory 5y ago
    > weigh the probability of that against the certainty of you and / or your loved ones getting the virus if you're not vaccinated Why do you say that's a certainty? I think it's still very uncertain how many people the virus will infect going forward.
    - svara 5y ago
      It is certain. Even if the vaccines always led to sterilizing immunity (they don't) and immunity lasted forever (it doesn't), we're not reaching sufficient fractions of vaccinated people literally anywhere in the world for the virus to go extinct locally - the newest variants are just that contagious. And even if that was possible in some first world countries, that wouldn't be sufficient, it would simply be re-imported sooner or later. So there's really no way it's going away. This is now an endemic human virus and, vaccinated or not, you'll be exposed to it many times over the rest of your lifetime. Barring some technological breakthrough in vaccine development and a big shift in people's attitudes towards them, it's with us forever. You also don't have to take my word for it, this is an uncontroversial view amongst infectious disease epidemiologists.
  - effie 5y ago
    Vaccines decrease your chance of bad COVID from one small number to another 10x smaller number. "Getting the virus", even if almost certain, isn't something most people have to worry about. Bad COVID is a worry, getting the virus, no.
- minikites 5y ago
  >Treating others as ridiculous won't help with the convincing. Nothing will work to convince an unreasonable person. The next best thing to do involves blunting the impact of their dangerous choices, e.g. adding penalties and restrictions for the unvaccinated in society so they can't harm the rest of us.
  - ceoloide 5y ago
    I think this is the problem with the discourse around vaccines. People are quick to dismiss others as "reckless, unreasonable, impossible to convince". The people I know are far from unreasonable, but they might be applying the wrong reasoning strategy or fixating on bad / outdated data, or worst case outcome only. Nobody in the general population has the obligation to convince others, to be clear. I just wish the public discourse and institutions did a better job at educating and catering to those points of view instead of branding people by their against-vaccine stance only.
  - effie 5y ago
    You are advocating for segregation based on politics. If that comes, you won't like the consequences.

sokoloff 5y ago

At some point, you might not be able fully reason them out of a position they didn’t reason their way into, but I’d appeal to “what mechanism would show no negative response for 6+ months but then start showing negative outcomes later?” If there was a significant risk in the short-term, we’d be seeing those cases already. At some point, you throw up your hands, wave, and wish them luck.

sudosysgen 5y ago
It's actually been significantly over a year since the trials. Wild, I know.

ceoloide 5y ago

This is truly a very common sentiment. Independent of the approved status, the common phrase is "how can we know it won't have long term effects that are unknown now?". Psychological effects of past medical disasters that caused irreversible harm and went under the authority's radar shouldn't be discounted, many people cling to that to justify their fear of the unknown. So how do we set up a discourse that takes this type of fear into account? What are the tricks or strategies to help people overcome their fears?

minikites 5y ago
>the common phrase is "how can we know it won't have long term effects that are unknown now?". If this was truly the fear, we would see these types of people wearing masks religiously. But we don't, which means it's not a medical fear, it's a political one.
- onos 5y ago
  It is certainly a mix. Eg one of the demographic groups least likely to be vaccinated are blacks, who obviously lean democrat.
- ceoloide 5y ago
  You are painting people in big strokes. The people I know that fear long term effects wear mask religiously and follow safety procedures. These are also the same people that won't get a flu vaccine, and resist getting the vaccines for all but the most deadly of diseases. Another comment in this submission mentioned being bad at evaluating risk, perhaps that's what it is. They fixate on the unknowns of a vaccine, but they aren't able to compare it effectively to the risks of the virus.
  - minikites 5y ago
    >The people I know that fear long term effects wear mask religiously and follow safety procedures. This is not even remotely the common case. Overall, the overlap between anti-mask and anti-vaccination individuals is massive: https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2020/09/anti-vax-to-anti-mask-processing-anti-science-claims-during-a-pandemic/ https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2020/09/... The core of both is the same: anti-science and anti-society.

ianai 5y ago

Over a billion people have taken them without significant problems. Probably way more than any trial for any treatment before or well into the future.

msandford 5y ago
I have heard reports of people having long covid-like symptoms from the vaccine and needing treatment. That may not be significant to some folks, but to others it might well be. I'm not saying that their evaluation is correct, BTW, but I think it's difficult to make the argument that the vaccine is 100.0000% upside. Even if the rate of people having these long covid-like symptoms is lower than that of people who get covid it's still not riskless even though the risks are lower.
- psychometry 5y ago
  >I have heard reports of people having long covid-like symptoms from the vaccine and needing treatment. citation needed
  - gota 5y ago
    Snark aside, really - citation needed. I've seen plenty of scary long covid reports and have a close personal connection to at least one strong case, and it is heartbreaking. But they are are all from getting Covid, not the vaccine. Let us know what and where you're reading about these vaccine-induced long covid symptoms
- ianai 5y ago
  By significant I include the relative infrequency of complications.
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vwcx 5y ago

In their minds, is the greater risk a side effect from the vaccine popping up years from now or the debilitating effect of long-term COVID symptoms? Because right now, we're seeing hundreds of thousands of people not dying from Covid, but still suffering for more than a year with no end in sight to their symptoms. Also curious if their fear of long-term vaccine side effects has been their line since April? I'm seeing a few anti-vaxx friends switching to this line of anti-reason in the last few weeks, now that the FDA approval is right around the corner.

breckenedge 5y ago
That’s been my experience too. I asked one holdout I know, and she said she was waiting to see what effect the vaccine had on us, even though many of us have been vaxxed for six months or more. She’s so afraid of the vaccine that she gave up income due to loss of employment.

alkonaut 5y ago

It’s not experimental. It was. It was given emergency approval which sounds dramatic - but isn’t. Now the vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions with few adverse effects. An expert (can’t remember) explain why one shouldn’t be afraid of long term adverse effects of the vaccine: basically it has only two periods of operation: short term you can be affected by anything in the shot which contains all kinds of lipids and stuff used to create a vaccine. You can be allergic to one of these substances, for example. But if you didn’t have a short term effect from the vaccine, the long term effect is just the immune response. Nothing else. That immune response would come from the disease too. There is just no mechanism that would create a long term adverse effect. BUT there are tons of ways in which the virus could! You should ask the vaccine sceptic which long term effect they would rather have: the virus or the vaccine. Because it’s not about getting vaccine or not at this point. It’s about getting immune from the vaccine or from the disease. There just is no benefit of getting immune from the disease.

tialaramex 5y ago
> It was given emergency approval which sounds dramatic - but isn’t. In New Zealand since they had elimination they didn't do emergency approval. They expedited their normal process, but since there were literally no people dying in New Zealand of COVID-19 they weren't losing anybody by waiting for their medicines agency to complete all the steps it would usually take at the pace necessary. They're currently vaccinating their general population, having at first prioritised health workers and those at the border who might meet infected people in the course of their duties. Obviously things look a bit different when you've got people dying every day, but the vaccine is the same, so if you'd be more confident that it was assessed without worrying about all the people dying meanwhile, New Zealand did that. Months ago.
- rco8786 5y ago
  My understanding of the US process is the same, that the “emergency” approval was just an expediation of the normal process.
  - 5y ago

alfl 5y ago

Build a function of unknowns that gives probability of a “bad outcome”, plug in the ranges of the best data you can find for the unknowns. Compare this to the probability of getting Covid (~100%) and having a “bad outcome”. This let me confidently say things like, “getting vaxxed is 2-5x safer than not” and ending the argument (whatever the actual figures were when I got vaxxed). The real answer isn’t technical though —- we need public health authorities to learn post-Internet PR. I’m cribbing Eric Weinstein here.

basseq 5y ago
And yet[1]: 75% of unvaccinated adults are "not worried about getting seriously sick"... 50%+ are not worried "about the Delta variant worsening the pandemic"... 50%+ say "getting vaccinated is a bigger risk than getting infected", and... 75% don't think the vaccines are effective. So definitely a "PR problem" is those figures differ from reality. But you read these figures, and the outcome is obvious: "I'm not going to get seriously sick, the long-term effects of the vaccine are unknown, and the vaccine doesn't work anyway... so why should I get it?" [1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-covid-19-vaccine-monitor-july-2021/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/kff-co...
effie 5y ago
The procedure you are describing is difficult to do formally for most people, so they estimate it intuitively, like you did. And since individual data and personal values and political stances are involved, they got a different result from yours.

minikites 5y ago

If someone isn't vaccinated by now, I don't think the FDA "approving" it is going to make a difference, they've made their choice. We need to start shipping our supply of vaccines to nations that need them so we can give them to people who actually want them.

JCM9 5y ago

The general public has a very hard time rationalizing and making decisions based on risk assessments. People get nervous on US commercial air carriers even though this is by all measures currently the safest form of transport in the history of transportation. Literally safer than walking down the street. As for the vaccine, the fallacy of most people’s logic here is thinking that not getting the vaccine equates to risk avoidance. In fact based on all we know it’s quite the opposite. The risk of not getting the vaccine vastly outweighs any potential risk of getting the vaccine. With the Delta variant if one isn’t vaccinated it’s increasingly very likely you’ll get COVID. The short and long term impacts of COVID are well known to have a high risk of being severe. From a risk standpoint it’s a no brainer. The media doesn’t help here at all. One person has a reaction from the vaccine and they’re all over it. Meanwhile thousands more die from not getting the vaccine. Opting out of the vaccine increases your risk, not decreases it.

tedmcory77 5y ago
"The general public has a very hard time rationalizing and making decisions based on risk assessments. People get nervous on US commercial air carriers even though this is by all measures currently the safest form of transport in the history of transportation. Literally safer than walking down the street." I've thought about this a lot; for me, it's not the mortality rate that bothers me the most. It's the method of passing. Having been in a plane experiencing a serious issue it was a lot scarier because of the duration than the traffic accidents I've seen which were basically over immediately.
- pixl97 5y ago
  I think you may have a poor idea of how people die in car accidents then. Car accidents are less instantly fatal, instead you tend to suffer for some while you bleed out, or the car slowly begins to burn as you're trapped.
  - blueflow 5y ago
    Majority of fatal car crashes cause death by blunt trauma, so not much different from a plane crash.

danShumway 5y ago

Short version: - Full FDA authorization takes time - We know a lot more about how these vaccines work than other vaccines so we're less nervous about them, but that doesn't mean full FDA authorization doesn't still take time - Since temporary authorization was granted, a huge number of people have gotten the vaccine, which gives us a lot of confidence since we effectively have a lot of case studies to look at. However, doesn't change anything about the fact that full FDA authorization still takes time. - If Covid wasn't Covid, even knowing the above we might not have allowed temporary authorization, but we're managing relative risk, and the risk for nearly every population from Covid dwarfs the risk that there's a side effect from the vaccine that's worse. But, FDA authorization still takes time, it's not based on how dangerous the alternative is, so full authorization is still only gonna happen once enough time has elapsed for the vaccines to be evaluated using the normal process. ---- I don't know if this will help with your family in specific, but I like to compare this to a change on a piece of software in an enterprise environment. Knowing for certain that the change is safe requires the change to be deployed on production hardware via a production build and run through a full set of full-stack tests, and then ideally monitored for a week to see if anything else jumps out as a regression. So one day, imagine we notice a critical bug that's causing data loss for customers. I can argue: - The change to fix this bug is in a part of the code that is well understood, all of our developers have looked it over and agreed that it's unlikely to have side effects. - We've hotpatched this fix to multiple sites that were affected, and tested internally, and everything seems to be working well. We do have this code running in production for some customers, but we have not seen side effects. - The risk of one of our customers randomly losing their data because of the bug is far higher than the risk of the fix causing additional problems, and it would be foolish for us to leave our customers in a state where they might lose data suddenly. All of those are good arguments for bypassing the full set of tests and deploying the fix immediately (which is basically what the FDA did with the emergency authorization). BUT I still can't accurately claim that my fix has passed the full set of testing requirements. Independently of hot-patching sites and rolling out the critical fix, I also still want to run the full test suite and monitor the production hardware for a while longer. That's basically where we are with the vaccine. We'd be foolish not to be deploying it now, but we still can't pretend or shortcut the process and just say that it's fully authorized (even though basically no one is expecting the authorization process to fail at this point). It hasn't passed the full test suite and sat on production hardware for a week yet. However, the risk of an issue at this point is small enough that for the vast majority of adults (even middle-aged and below), the risk of Covid complications are higher than the risk of vaccine complications. The good news is that most timetables I've seen expect full authorization to be finished for Pfizer between September and December. I would not advise anyone to wait for that, but hopefully when it happens that will decrease vaccine hesitancy.

mschuster91 5y ago

> Can someone explain to me why the vaccine is safe even though it’s “experimental”. The COVID vaccines are a trade-off... possible but unlikely long-term consequences vs. definitive and massive long-term side effects of catching COVID. Australia and New Zealand aside, if you are not vaccinated you will get COVID eventually.

philliphaydon 5y ago
Why do you say “australia and New Zealand aside”? Getting vaccinated doesn’t prevent you getting covid… it just prepares your immune system to fight it if you do get it.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  Because these two countries actually follow measures to detect and contain COVID outbreaks.

II2II 5y ago

I suspect the argument about long term effects is intentionally misleading. It will be impossible to convince most of those people about long term effects until the long term has come to pass. The chart in the article even alludes to that, with < 15% saying they'd get vaccinated if there was full FDA approval. That is likely as close as we'll get to a statement of there being no long term effects in the near future. As for "shortcuts" being taken in the approval process, the normal process is intended for situations where there is less urgency. The combination of a high infection rate and relatively high mortality rate has a large social impact and it has a large economic impact, regardless of whether anything is done to mitigate spread. The provisional approval is necessary, it still reflects high standards for safety, and it does not imply a lack of safety. Edit: for clarity.

effie 5y ago
> relatively high mortality rate Can you quantify that? How many people died from COVID vs. cancer or transport accidents?
- throwaway2016a 5y ago
  I think it is reasonable to look at excess death counts since the number of deaths in any given week can be predicted with reasonable accuracy statistically. So assuming most excess deaths are due to COVID and not other causes (likely more actually are since deaths for things like Flu and car crashes were down this year due to social distancing): Anywhere from 6,000 to 30,000 deaths a WEEK in the US alone between May 2020 and May 2021 [1] Or in other words, enough to put it as the third leading cause of death globally[2] and the NUMBER TWO cause in the United States. Now some people can and will argue that COVID deaths are misattributed because of co-morbities. However, the excess death statistics pretty clearly suggest that to not be the case. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm [2] https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/just-how-do-deaths-due-covid-19-stack https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/just-how-do-deaths... I only did a few minutes of searching so I'm not sure how accurate thinkglobalhealth.org but I trust the CDC numbers quite a bit.

staticassertion 5y ago

Just explain how the vaccine works. I think a lot of people seem to not really understand it, which makes it this mystery fluid being injected into them. You don't need to get too detailed. The vaccine contains mRNA, which is basically like DNA (in layman terms). The mRNA is from covid and it's what gives it its 'spiky' structure. When the mRNA is injected your body uses it to generate those spikes - that's just a normal function of your body. Your immune system learns how to attack those spikes, and so it'll recognize covid in general. mRNA is very short-lived so it breaks down, the end result being that your body gets some covid proteins for a little while and your immune system cleans them up. I think a really simplistic breakdown like this goes a long way to helping people feel comfortable. They're no longer wondering "what's in this thing? how does it work?" and instead it's like "oh ok yeah, I have at least an extremely basic understanding of DNA, and this is just a tiny little piece of DNA stuff that breaks down super fast".

formerly_proven 5y ago
As I understand it, mRNA vaccines are considered safer "by design" than other types of vaccines, because mRNA is so short-lived and the body has no way of replicating mRNA, and each piece of mRNA is only translated a few times, so the number of proteins a shot of mRNA vaccine creates is very specific. Because the mRNA can be made to only produce a very specific component of the virus, there is basically no risk for a real infection to develop, because there isn't a real pathogen, in contrast to some other vaccines which contain modified/weakened pathogens.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  I don't know that they're much safer because I think the risks are just really low in general and likely the same - the "major" risk being an autoimmune response, which isn't really specific to vaccines. My understanding was that the main benefit was that it's easier to produce in large amounts (and faster to go from sequence -> vaccine?), and the main downside is that it's harder to store (since it breaks down so easily). But I'm not a doctor, and I generally try to not tell people what they should do, shouldn't do, or what the risks are - just give them the info and help them understand what's going on. Most people are just afraid of the unknown, and if no one's giving them an explanation they can understand they'll go with the simplistic, albeit incorrect ones that they can ("microchips are a thing I know about - they put those in animals to track them, maybe they're putting it in the vaccine").

analog31 5y ago

I ask what are the long term effects of covid. Allowing covid to spread throughout society is also an experiment.

effie 5y ago
True. One which unfortunately we can't stop with vaccines. Even if vaccines were 100% effective (which they are not), we would have to violate constitution and humans rights of millions to really exterminate the virus with vaccines. That's unthinkable (the consequences would make the whole COVID situation a boring detail of history). The COVID is here like flu, cold is, can't get rid of it, we should let it exist and go on with our lives.
- analog31 5y ago
  But we could greatly reduce its spread through behavioral measures, including masking. Like with flu and cold, absolute eradication is not the only possible policy goal.
  - effie 5y ago
    Agreed.

lb0 5y ago

Those ""longterm"" fears to me are just an excuse. No vaccine (or please tell me one) ever showed any "long term" effects in that sense that bad things showed up > 3 months after the vaccination, actually almost all side-effects happen instantaneously. The reason talking about "long term" side effects is that you usually need to reach very high numbers on your studies to e.g. correlate one in a million side effect to a medication, and thus need very "long term" studies. However, for those vaccines we are now MUCH beyond these numbers already! That is also what people mostly don't get in general right now: (In the very beginning maybe yes, but now not anymore) Those studies are NOT! pushed anymore with shortcuts and exceptions, the contrary, because due to the pandemic situation the necessary numbers (get x people of test persons infected) were so quickly passed now.. similar now for those side effects. It just doesn't make any sense to pull that argument anymore (though science vs belief is hard). And if you are really like "Meh.. but these totally new mRNA vaccines will grow me horns" => Comparing mRNA vs old-school vector vaccines is maybe like comparing LDC TVs of today vs old tube TVs that even bombarded you with little xrays... it is just such a technology jump.. and if you are into the topic and really concerned about that this mRNA will inject something into your cells/genes.. then you actually should be much more afraid of vector vaccines or just some viruses out there like Corona doing the same but much more reliably..

jansan 5y ago
Well, there is the Dengvaxia controvery: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengvaxia_controversy
manwe150 5y ago
There was once a concern that certain vaccines predisposed you to diabetes or autism. Those studies took years to run (need to follow through adulthood), though in the end could not find a correlation.

munch117 5y ago

Pfizer-BioNTech has been approved in the EU since December 2020. Fully approved that is, not experimental, not emergency use. That it's still on emergency use in the US is puzzling. But as anyone who's been through a formal approvals process knows, these things can drag out forever. Approving bodies are all about CYA, they just don't like to commit to anything being satisfactory.

effie 5y ago
Not true. It has conditional marketing authorization. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty#authorisation-details-section https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/EPAR/comirnaty#... Also it is in pharma's interest to have this as long as possible. They like their immunity from prosecution.

MR4D 5y ago

It isn’t “experimental”, rather, it has “emergency use” authorization. Frankly, these vaccines have tons of data behind them, with the exception of long-term results [0]. Here’s how I would frame it: would you rather take a chance on a vaccine or getting Covid? Remember, Covid has many worse short term effects than the vaccine, and long term effects from it are truly understood yet either. So the vaccine is the more rational choice, despite the unknowns. Hope that helps. [0] - https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...

Majromax 5y ago
> Here’s how I would frame it: would you rather take a chance on a vaccine or getting Covid? I refuse to get any virus that has not passed rigorous Stage 3 and Stage 4 safety trials. Worse yet, this so-called Delta variant has been rushed into production without even the most basic studies, even though it's clearly not the same thing as the original virus!
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Ha! If only it was that simple.

loicd 5y ago

I don't understand why people are so obsessed over potential long term effects of vaccines while completely ignoring the potential long term effects of covid. There are no examples of vaccines with long term side effects. On the other hand, there are viruses like HPV that despite producing essentially no symptoms cause cancer in the long run. Sars-cov-2 is a new virus. Nobody knows its long term effects. Even asymptomatic covid cases may have damage to their lungs. Given how contagious covid is, the choice really is between covid and the vaccine, and the vaccine definitely looks like the safer choice.

effie 5y ago
> I don't understand why people are so obsessed over potential long term effects of vaccines while completely ignoring the potential long term effects of covid. I don't know anyone obsessed but: the issue is present. The rollout was quick and we don't have 10 years of data and the pharma got their immunity. If pharma isn't confident in safety of their product, it's safe to assume they know or are afraid that some significant percentage of nasty cases will happen. > There are no examples of vaccines with long term side effects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome#Vaccine_onset https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy... If there can be bad effects like GB syndrome as far as in 6 weeks, there can be longer term effects as well. With COVID vaccines it hasn't been very long yet. Standard studies of vaccines take 10 or more years. I like that cautious approach. > Sars-cov-2 is a new virus. Nobody knows its long term effects. Yes, the same as for vaccines. Hopefully we will know in the future. > Even asymptomatic covid cases may have damage to their lungs. Given how contagious covid is, the choice really is between covid and the vaccine, and the vaccine definitely looks like the safer choice. COVID is very contagious if you believe that positive PCR test means you have COVID. Of course, that's not how disease in general is diagnosed; symptoms are the telltale of sickness, and based on those, COVID is not that bad. Of course, there is the possibility that prolonged presence of virus in these OK persons will wreak havoc with their health in the coming years. But this is hypothetical now and not enough to scare major part of the population.
- loicd 5y ago
  I know about GB syndrome. I do not consider that to be "long term". When I got my first dose, many people had already been fully vaccinated for more than 6 weeks and I personally knew quite a few of them. There was nothing to worry about. On the other hand, I've actually been told by some people I know that the vaccine is going to kill me in a couple years through some mysterious unspecified long term side effect. There are no examples of a vaccine doing that, no proposed mechanism for that, and the whole argument boils down to "we do not have 10 years of data so we do not know for sure that it is not the case". Well, we do not have 10 years of data on the long term side effects of getting infected by Sars-cov-2 either. I point out the asymmetry as these are the same people saying that covid is not that bad. > COVID is very contagious if you believe that positive PCR test means you have COVID. I'm startled. Are you nitpicking over covid (the disease) vs sars-cov-2 (the virus)? Of course if you have a positive PCR test it means that you are infected by the virus. Whether or not you have symptoms is irrelevant when we are talking about long term side effects. Think about HIV or the cancer inducing HPV strains. Again, even if you are asymptomatic you may get lung damage from covid. I am not saying that there are long term consequences to that, but you do not know that, and there are no less reasons to believe that than to believe in any long term side effects of the vaccine. edit: typos

nokcha 5y ago

Two points: 1. The fact that the vaccine only has "emergency-use authorization" rather than full FDA approval is best explained by the fact that the FDA is a dysfunctional bureaucracy motivated primarily by CYA rather than rational cost-benefit analysis. 2. The vaccine isn't 100% absolutely safe, but neither is anything else in life. The proper question to ask isn't whether the vaccine is safe in some absolute sense, but whether it is safer than going around unvaccinated. The evidence indicates that getting vaccinated is significantly safer than regularly breathing the same air as other people while unvaccinated. And although healthy non-elderly people are unlikely to outright die of COVID-19, there is evidence that infection often causes long-term effects, including cognitive deficits [1, 2]. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... [2] https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/07/29/covid-7-29-you-play-to-win-the-game/ https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/07/29/covid-7-29-you-play-...

effie 5y ago
1. Maybe true, but there is also the interesting fact that pharma wanted and got immunity, so it is in pharma's interest to prevent the full authorization; 2. You missed the fact that risks depend on personal data, factors, weights of those factors. Also, cheap treatments are available and effective which push the risk of bad COVID to such small number it's immaterial to most anti-covidism people (a political stance).