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It's pretty wild that prior to vaccination, smallpox prevention was done by inoculation with actual live smallpox. That story of Washington forcing his troops t

It's pretty wild that prior to vaccination, smallpox prevention was done by inoculation with actual live smallpox. That story of Washington forcing his troops to be 'vaccinated' is wrong - he exposed them to actual smallpox. Something like 1% of people receiving inoculation would develop full-blown smallpox. No vaccine courts for those folks. There are going to be a lot of one in a million coincidences with this broad of a vaccination campaign - a lot of people who were going to develop blood clots for unrelated reasons are going to coincidentally get them after getting vaccinated. Same goes for myocarditis - vaccination can cause it in rare cases, but so can adenovirus, herpes, hepatitis, various bacteria, parasites, and fungi. There are going to be a lot of coincidences at this scale so it's important that they're carefully reviewed by the court so the covid vaccine isn't wrongly tarred, especially now when misinformation will make several laps around the world before the facts can get their pants on.

djmips 5y ago
Specifically inoculation against smallpox was termed variolation. It was application of the virus to the skin as opposed to infection via the air/lungs. For those curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
AndrewBissell 5y ago
> Something like 1% of people receiving inoculation would develop full-blown smallpox. No vaccine courts for those folks. They at least got the benefit of being inoculated against a virus which would have a 30% chance of killing them. This made it very likely for the inoculations to be positive risk tradeoff for all the troops who were ordered to get them. The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. Another point of contrast is that smallpox inoculation was sterilizing and prevented the inoculated from being able to spread the disease.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. True, if you only narrowly focus on the immediate benefit to the individual there are head-spinning number of laws and rules that don't make sense in civilization.
  - nojokes 5y ago
    You do not get a flu shot to not get killed by flu. Nobody really expects that it would be likely. You take it to not get a bad case of flu. Well, bad case of COVID-19 is worse than bad case of flu. This alone should be enough to get vaccinated but there is more: you may also develop long lasting symptoms (aka long covid) or get some more serious complication like myocarditis (more likely than from a vaccine).
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    What other sort of benefit is there supposed to be? The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. If we're acknowledging that the immediate risk tradeoff might be negative, these would be the first vaccines in history that people were widely expected to take on those terms.
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. In case you are unaware, reducing the spread of a virus also lowers the odds of sparking new variants, not to mention the fact that limiting or eliminating the spread of a virus also contains and limits the risk posed by new variants.
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Actually, some recent research found that the vaccinated were more likely to host antibody-resistant escape variants (in this case Delta): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v... A similar effect has been observed for leaky vaccines in chickens, where for Marek's disease they actually encouraged the breeding of hotter and more virulent strains. In terms of playing host to new variants the biggest risk may be the immunocompromised, who are not able to be vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompromised-patients-covid-variants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompr...

djmips 5y ago

Specifically inoculation against smallpox was termed variolation. It was application of the virus to the skin as opposed to infection via the air/lungs. For those curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation

AndrewBissell 5y ago

> Something like 1% of people receiving inoculation would develop full-blown smallpox. No vaccine courts for those folks. They at least got the benefit of being inoculated against a virus which would have a 30% chance of killing them. This made it very likely for the inoculations to be positive risk tradeoff for all the troops who were ordered to get them. The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. Another point of contrast is that smallpox inoculation was sterilizing and prevented the inoculated from being able to spread the disease.

mullingitover 5y ago
> The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. True, if you only narrowly focus on the immediate benefit to the individual there are head-spinning number of laws and rules that don't make sense in civilization.
- nojokes 5y ago
  You do not get a flu shot to not get killed by flu. Nobody really expects that it would be likely. You take it to not get a bad case of flu. Well, bad case of COVID-19 is worse than bad case of flu. This alone should be enough to get vaccinated but there is more: you may also develop long lasting symptoms (aka long covid) or get some more serious complication like myocarditis (more likely than from a vaccine).
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  What other sort of benefit is there supposed to be? The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. If we're acknowledging that the immediate risk tradeoff might be negative, these would be the first vaccines in history that people were widely expected to take on those terms.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. In case you are unaware, reducing the spread of a virus also lowers the odds of sparking new variants, not to mention the fact that limiting or eliminating the spread of a virus also contains and limits the risk posed by new variants.
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Actually, some recent research found that the vaccinated were more likely to host antibody-resistant escape variants (in this case Delta): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v... A similar effect has been observed for leaky vaccines in chickens, where for Marek's disease they actually encouraged the breeding of hotter and more virulent strains. In terms of playing host to new variants the biggest risk may be the immunocompromised, who are not able to be vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompromised-patients-covid-variants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompr...