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I'm honestly shocked and disappointed how much credence is given to anti-vaccination beliefs or even vaccination-skepticism or vaccination-hesitancy by people w

by cletus 5y ago

I'm honestly shocked and disappointed how much credence is given to anti-vaccination beliefs or even vaccination-skepticism or vaccination-hesitancy by people with a supposed higher education, even a science education. The reasons vary. None of them are quantifiable. A few common ones: - "We don't know the long-term effects" -> triggering an immune response is extremely quick in terms of effects. Any issues (eg the highly unlikely potential clotting issue in Astra-Zeneca) are actually identified quickly. Vaccines aren't drugs. Drugs are prone to long-term effects. Vaccines are different; - (now defunct) "The vaccine had an emergency authorization" -> it still went through Phase 3 Clinical Trials. People don't actually understand what "emergency authorization" actually means. It's primarily administrative, not clinical; - "The vaccine doesn't prevent transmission" -> It greatly diminishes severe outcomes including hospitalization and death. Immune response isn't simply a boolean switch. Viruses go through several stages before they become infections. Respiratory illnesses will probably still have the virus get to the respiratory tract and allow transmission; - "Risks of death are low" -> collapse of the hospital system would not only impact Covid patients but non-Covid patients. We already have had healthcare workers who essentially had to decide who lives and who dies. That's a lot of responsibility to put on someone for an unquantifiable risk; - "I did my own research" -> No, you didn't. You watched a Youtube video from an unverifiable source or just a plain whacko. That's not research. Stop using that word; - "Just vaccinate the people at risk" -> we don't really know who they are, particularly in young people. Some people have severe reactions for reasons that aren't entirely clear yet; - "Body autonomy" -> Diseases don't affect just you. You can transmit a virus to people who are at risk and may not for legitimate medical reasons be able to get a vaccine; - "This was rushed" -> Actually, it wasn't. DARPA had promoted mRNA vaccine research for years before Covid-19 and we can all be thankful for that; - "It's no more severe than the flu" -> In a bad year, the flu might kill 40,000 people in the US. The Covid death count stands at 800,000 at least and that's probably underreported by a lot, particularly with pandering politicians keen to underplay the significance and impact (eg New York not initially counting nursing home resident deaths). I could go on. One statistic I love to hear from anti-vaxxers is "the death rate is only 1% (or 2%)". If there is a bowl of 100 M&Ms and one of them will kill you, are you eating one? A large football stadium might hold 50,000 people. Are you going to a match when 500 of those people will die? We've now administered billions of vaccine doses worldwide and yet there's no quantifiable risk of adverse effects. Vaccines are a medical miracle that has eliminated polio and smallpox and all but eliminated a host of other devastating diseases. The only difference between those vaccines and Covid-19 is that it's more recent. That's it. If a disease affected just you then I'd say "go right ahead and don't get it" but it doesn't. And the minute risk of adverse outcomes from that vaccine outweighing the very quantifiable benefits to not only you but other people is just a level of irrational selfishness that I find deeply depressing. It also convinces me just how screwed we are on climate change when people are willing to let themselves and other die rather than have the minor inconvenience of a shot. Driving to the supermarket is riskier than having the vaccine yet I don't see people not driving places. Humans are bad at assessing risk. The sad part here is this irrationality is impacting other people in very real ways. Children being left without parents, that sort of thing. And please let's not play the false equivalence game here and say "there are two sides here". There really aren't.

rory 5y ago
Although I agree the data are pretty clear at this point that these vaccines are all quite safe, there are absolutely quantifiable (low) risks [0]. Beyond the data, people aren't idiots for being skeptical of new treatments. Unknown unknowns are impossible to quantify. You point to polio as something that's similar but not as new. That example doesn't do a lot to support your argument, since when the polio vaccine was new it gave ~20% of recipients polio and killed 10 children [1]. The main issue now is unvaxxed people digging in their heels as we get more proof of the vaccines' safety (although the learnings on their efficacy are more mixed). I don't think those people will be encouraged by arrogant and infantilizing rants against them. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7027e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7027e2.htm [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
charbonneau2 5y ago
> "We don't know the long-term effects" -> triggering an immune response is extremely quick in terms of effects. Any issues (eg the highly unlikely potential clotting issue in Astra-Zeneca) are actually identified quickly. To flatly disregard long-term effects seems quite premature. The adjusted risk for narcolepsy in younger people, following exposure to adjuvanted A(H1N1) pandemic vaccine (Pandemrix) in 2009 for example, seemed to be "increased 14 times during the first year after vaccination, three times elevated the second year" [1]. Regarding the current vaccines, Pfizer informed the FDA, that "long-term safety of COVID-19 vaccine in participants 5 to <12 years of age will be studied in 5 post-authorization safety studies, including a 5-year follow-up study to evaluate long term sequelae of post-vaccination myocarditis/pericarditis" [2]. > "Just vaccinate the people at risk" -> we don't really know who they are, particularly in young people. We also don't really know who is at risk of getting vaccine-related side effects, particularly in young people. A pre-print study from University of California "suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period" [3]. This is not a fact, but definitely a call for further studies. > "This was rushed" -> Actually, it wasn't. DARPA had promoted mRNA vaccine research for years before Covid-19 From my perspective, people seem to be mostly concerned with rushed clinical trials, not prior research. Scientists repeatedly told the public that, despite the speed, "the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently in use have been rigorously tested" [4]. "But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial" [5]. Did it only happen at several sites in Texas? We don't really know. But it seems to be a valid concern. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pds.4788 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pds.4788 [2] https://www.fda.gov/media/153409/download https://www.fda.gov/media/153409/download [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-clot-idUSL1N2MF1OE https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-clot-idUSL... [5] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635

by cletus 5y ago

rory 5y ago

Although I agree the data are pretty clear at this point that these vaccines are all quite safe, there are absolutely quantifiable (low) risks [0]. Beyond the data, people aren't idiots for being skeptical of new treatments. Unknown unknowns are impossible to quantify. You point to polio as something that's similar but not as new. That example doesn't do a lot to support your argument, since when the polio vaccine was new it gave ~20% of recipients polio and killed 10 children [1]. The main issue now is unvaxxed people digging in their heels as we get more proof of the vaccines' safety (although the learnings on their efficacy are more mixed). I don't think those people will be encouraged by arrogant and infantilizing rants against them. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7027e2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7027e2.htm [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/

charbonneau2 5y ago

> "We don't know the long-term effects" -> triggering an immune response is extremely quick in terms of effects. Any issues (eg the highly unlikely potential clotting issue in Astra-Zeneca) are actually identified quickly. To flatly disregard long-term effects seems quite premature. The adjusted risk for narcolepsy in younger people, following exposure to adjuvanted A(H1N1) pandemic vaccine (Pandemrix) in 2009 for example, seemed to be "increased 14 times during the first year after vaccination, three times elevated the second year" [1]. Regarding the current vaccines, Pfizer informed the FDA, that "long-term safety of COVID-19 vaccine in participants 5 to <12 years of age will be studied in 5 post-authorization safety studies, including a 5-year follow-up study to evaluate long term sequelae of post-vaccination myocarditis/pericarditis" [2]. > "Just vaccinate the people at risk" -> we don't really know who they are, particularly in young people. We also don't really know who is at risk of getting vaccine-related side effects, particularly in young people. A pre-print study from University of California "suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period" [3]. This is not a fact, but definitely a call for further studies. > "This was rushed" -> Actually, it wasn't. DARPA had promoted mRNA vaccine research for years before Covid-19 From my perspective, people seem to be mostly concerned with rushed clinical trials, not prior research. Scientists repeatedly told the public that, despite the speed, "the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines currently in use have been rigorously tested" [4]. "But, for researchers who were testing Pfizer’s vaccine at several sites in Texas during that autumn, speed may have come at the cost of data integrity and patient safety. A regional director who was employed at the research organisation Ventavia Research Group has told The BMJ that the company falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial" [5]. Did it only happen at several sites in Texas? We don't really know. But it seems to be a valid concern. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pds.4788 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pds.4788 [2] https://www.fda.gov/media/153409/download https://www.fda.gov/media/153409/download [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... [4] https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-clot-idUSL1N2MF1OE https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-clot-idUSL... [5] https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635 https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635