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It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. This whole pandemic has highlighted something that I really prefer

• jquery 5y ago
  It seems HN is quite eager to upvote vaccine skepticism of all kinds. It could provide quite the distorted view of reality if I were to trust HN karma over the near-universal medical scientific consensus (FDA approving vaccines for 5-11 year olds with a universal vote). I wouldn’t be surprised if HN starts advocating for ivermectin soon.
  • throwaway2077 5y ago
    well, there's always reddit if enjoy the company of intellectual majority.
  • native_samples 5y ago
    Approving vaccines for children is nowhere near being a near-universal medical scientific consensus. Far from it. Lots of people in medicine think that's clearly insane. See the testimony of Peter Doshi to the Senate recently for an example.
    • jquery 5y ago
      > Lots of people in medicine think that's clearly insane. But not the people who matter. The FDA panel was unanimous. Stop listening to fringe voices in fields you aren’t an expert in. Peter Doshi was invited by Republicans to sow FUD. He doesn’t think the vaccines are saving lives.
      • native_samples 5y ago
        The people who matter are there because they purged any rational people a long time ago. The UK JVCI has gone through multiple rounds of purges by now. Government health agencies have no credibility as neutral bodies by now, that's long shot. Peter Doshi is a doctor and editor of a prestigious medical journal - the fact you consider him a "fringe voice" shows just how far off the reservation, and just how dangerous, views like yours have become.
• bopbeepboop 5y ago
  > This whole pandemic has highlighted something that I really prefer not to think about, which is just how irrational, selfish, incapable of assessing risk and prone to confirmation bias too many people are. Your entire post is a straw man of other people based on your fear causing you to lose empathy. You’re an example of what you’re lamenting.
• tomp 5y ago
  > view laws requiring their use as impinging on their freedom. They are impinging on our freedom. "You must do something" directly means you're less free, there can be no debate about this. The only debate to be had, is whether someone else (the government, the experts, ...) is allowed to force you to do things "in your best interest". There are ideological and practical (e.g. "power invites abuse" and "experts are stupid" as exemplified by the current pandemic) arguments pro/against. And we want people to make sacrifices for climate change? The main problems with most proposed solutions are: (1) they ideological (e.g. "meat harms the environment"), (2) they exacerbate inequality ("no flying except private"), (3) they're ignorant ("no nuclear, let's double down on destabilizing solar"). If instead you proposed solutions that were (1) actually "we're all in this together" (e.g. revenue-neutral carbon tax, or a yearly "carbon budget" so that rich people flying private would pay much more), (2) utilized best technology available (nuclear+solar+batteries+synthesised fuel+...), and (3) respected individual liberty (e.g. some people would rather eat less meat, others would prefer to drive less), you'd see much more public support.
  • ay 5y ago
    The agreement to be a part of the society is an infringement on personal freedoms by definition - individuals agrees to constrain their behaviors to a set of rules, in return getting the benefit of scale. A healthy society by definition aims to maximize the sum of benefit minus the inconveniences of constraints. In the old days of the village life one could forfeit the impacts to their personal freedom, abandon society and go live in the forest on their own. Unfortunately the modern societies do not give this option. It would be truly helpful to give some perspective to people.
  • lovecg 5y ago
    Generally you don’t have a right to drive in any way you want on a public road. There are tons of restrictions on your personal liberty that you agree to when you get behind the wheel, including free expression (try to install a red/blue flashing light on your car and claim first amendment protections). And seatbelts are not required on private roads, or in any case the law would not be enforceable (though if that did happen I’d like to learn about it and be proven wrong).
  • 5y ago
• lamontcg 5y ago
  > It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. That has nothing to do with it. Delta isn't selecting for immune escape, it is just selecting for higher transmissibility. It has outcompeted other immune escape variants. We aren't into the phase of the pandemic where immune escape becomes important yet.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  are you unconcerned by the trend? whats to say the vaccine efficacy won't decline further? people are going about their normal routines assuming they're safe now, when in reality almost 2 years later there's still no clear path to universal lasting immunity.
• tgb 5y ago
  On your first comment, as far as I know the big contributor seems to be the Delta variant which arose and became prevalent in India at a time when it had very low vaccination rates (and from a different vaccine). In a hypothetical world without vaccines, we'd still have delta and just be worse off. I don't see any reason to attribute this to selective pressure from vaccines.
  • cletus 5y ago
    Sure but Delta is now the dominant strain everywhere. Evolutionary pressure still applies.
    • jsnell 5y ago
      Your initial point was "It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus". That is implying that the existing observations could be explained by evolutionary pressures, not just that it might be happening in the future. Delta would have been the dominant strain everywhere without the vaccine as well. Most of the reproductive advantage of Delta did not come from antigenic drift. Blaming vaccines for it like you did is completely, 100% false. In a world with no vaccines, antigenic drift would happen just the same way, and still gain a reproductive advantage, just from evolving against disease-conferred immunity rather than vaccine-conferred.
• Tenoke 5y ago
  >It's basically equivalent to arguing that people wearing seat belts can die in car accidents therefore seat belts are ineffective. Worse, you can suffer an injury from a seat belt so they're net harmful. For what is worth, I remember when seatbelts were about to become mandatory in my country as a kid and people argued exactly that. They weren't feeling unsafe in the first place to want to go through the inconvenience. It took a lot of traffic cop posts and fines until people got the habit rather than a rational argument about small chances which people are bad at reasoning about. Though in all fairness that's the same country that is at the bottom of the vaccination charts and top of the deaths charts in Europe and due to corrupt government there's an abnormal distrust in authority there.
  • noduerme 5y ago
    Those laws only exist to generate revenue for the police. Dying in car crashes is not an infectious condition, and never constituted a public health emergency. Put another way, it's no harm to society if you go through a windshield, but you can be fined for not wearing a seatbelt... while it's measurably harmful and morally questionable to refuse a vaccine, and no one will ever fine you for it.
    • Tenoke 5y ago
      Car crashes do economic damage, raise health and car insurance premiums etc. It's not a health emergency but there is harm to society.
      • noduerme 5y ago
        But unlike speeding or drunk driving, not wearing a seatbelt doesn't cause car crashes.
      • jcims 5y ago
        Is it possible to find anything that can exist or occur that is immune from being calculated a 'harm to society'?
• majou 5y ago
  Ok.
• forgotmypw17 5y ago
  What I believe based on life experience is that the further removed I am from an information source, the more likely it is to be untrue, outdated, inaccurate, distorted. What I see with my own eyes is LIKELY to be true, although even the process of perception causes distortion. What someone I personally know tells me has already been distorted THREE TIMES, but is still probably good information, if they are a trustworthy individual. Friend-of-a-friend? That's FIVE distortions, count them. This type of information is good for compounding, but is not reliable enough by itself. Any further than that, and I might as well be flipping coins. Add to that various conflicts of interest, and I'd rather avoid hearing it at all.
• yyyk 5y ago
  >It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. All the major variants of concerns came into being in countries with very little vaccination. Delta started in India for example. Most viruses have a very hard time mutating to evade vaccines, since that requires evading the human immune system (with the exception of influenza which is very good at creating new strains which avoid immunity - vaccine or no vaccine).
• noduerme 5y ago
  I don't like the analogy. I think seat belt and helmet laws are impositions on your right to kill yourself. Refusing to wear a seat belt doesn't generally endanger anyone else. If antivaxers were only harming themselves, then let em be idiots and die. The problem is, they're not only endangering themselves. Second hand smoke would be a better analogy to vaccine refusal, although it's a pale comparison as it would take a LOT of second hand smoke over many years to achieve the negative health results that a single infected person can inflict on others in the course of a plane flight.
  • mkotowski 5y ago
    > Refusing to wear a seat belt doesn't generally endanger anyone else. What if people are in passengers’s seats? Their bodies can be launched with a lot of kinetic force killing people in the front seats. Eventually with enough force, the driver can be launched out of the car and hurt somebody else. Granted, it is not always happening. The same way someone infected do not always pass the virus to somebody else before getting better or dying. In my opinion the analogy is quite fitting. People think it is about them, not noticing how it can impact others.
    • noduerme 5y ago
      One person with covid will infect on average 3-5 others directly. Multiply that out. One person can only have one car crash, ever, in which their body becomes a projectile capable of killing someone nearby. One is a public health crisis and the other isn't. Conflating the two is an absurdity and a disservice to any attempt at getting antivaxers to understand the seriousness of the situation.
      • jcims 5y ago
        Doesn't make much of a difference but R0 of Covid is probably closer to 2-3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7751056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7751056/
      • mkotowski 5y ago
        > One is a public health crisis and the other isn't. Conflating the two is an absurdity Well, it is called an analogy, isn’t it? No one said it is exactly the same. > One person can only have one car crash, ever, […] Except not. As people who can be infected, infect others, fall sick again, and so on. People can have multiple accidents with varying degree of charm for themselves and others. Also, you forget that car crashes can also have more than 2 vehicles involved, especially on highways. > a disservice to any attempt at getting antivaxers to understand the seriousness of the situation. Well, I took for granted I am not talking to one. I would certainly need to use a different approach then. The issue with antivaxxers is that the reasons for their behavior often seems orthogonal to logical arguments, and aligns more with emotional responses like fear of the unknown and political and/or religious views.
• overhero 5y ago
  Why can I be forced to use seatbelts and vaccine skeptics are not forced to get the shot? My decision is purely personal, while theirs does increase the risk for everyone around. Ever rode a motorcycle without a helmet? That's the real deal!
  • tzs 5y ago
    Not wearing a seatbelt while driving does actually increase the risk to those around you. If you need to make a sudden swerve to avoid something that suddenly gets in your way such as a deer leaping into the road in front of you, wearing a seatbelt should increase your chances of maintaining control during and after the swerve. It was really fun in the old days when we didn't have seatbelts and cars often had bench seating in front, so that on a sudden left turn (in the US) the driver could slide could slide far to the right.
  • roenxi 5y ago
    Well, they're both impositions on freedom. But semi-forced medical procedures imposed in an emergency and likely driven by special interests are genuinely concerning. Organising protests over seat-belts - while logically defensible - just makes people look stupid. So in principle, you shouldn't be fined for either. But the vaccine mandates are a hill worth fighting over.
    • glogla 5y ago
      > But semi-forced medical procedures imposed in an emergency and likely driven by special interests are genuinely concerning. Organising protests over seat-belts - while logically defensible - just makes people look stupid. I'd say both makes people just look stupid, especially when using phrases like "driven by special interests".
      • roenxi 5y ago
        Yep. And one of them is a cause which is worth looking a little stupid for while standing up for freedom, because it is an issue where it is more important to be right than to look like part of the crowd. The other one isn't - being seatbelts.
• newsclues 5y ago
  I just want to point out that your seatbelt analogy isn’t true for all population groups. Seems some of the vaccines are resulting in heart issues for young, otherwise healthy men. So would you wear a seatbelt if you had almost zero risk of dying from the crash but an very small chance the seatbelt might choke you while driving and lead to long term harm? Would you take the risk, solely because the authorities say you must take the risk wearing a potentially unsafe seatbelt to save some old people? You were saying something about people can’t evaluate risk. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y As a young man, who survived Covid, why would I risk heart complications to save some old people?
  • drran 5y ago
    If you survived Covid without complications, you should not fear a vaccine, because it contains parts of the virus you're already exposed to, so nothing new for your body.
    • born2web 5y ago
      Is this the case even with the mRNA based vaccines?
  • gnfargbl 5y ago
    The irony in your post is that you might also be failing to evaluate risk correctly, because you aren't looking at all of the numbers. To continue your analogy: even as a young and healthy man, the additional risk of you being choked by the seatbelt is still _very slightly smaller_ than the risk reduction from you wearing it. See e.g. tables 1-4 of https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-september-2021-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15-years/jcvi-statement-on-covid-19-vaccination-of-children-aged-12-to-15-years-3-september-2021 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-se..., which give the comparative risks in the 12-15 age group. It is true that the difference in risk is very marginal, and so you might reasonably choose to "price in" some additional uncertainty around vaccine risks, and reasonably choose not to get it. You do also mention that you have survived Covid. I don't have the figures, but I would suspect that also changes the risk calculation in your personal case, in favour of you not getting the vaccine. But please, whatever you do, look at all the numbers before making a decision. Don't just pick and choose those that fit your case.
• switch007 5y ago
  There are a great, great number of people who believe _both_ that the vaccine works on some level but disagree with the way it's being used in medical apartheid, the lack of exit plans, and changes to daily life, and so on. There are a great number of valid complaints. But mentioning them and commenting in a more measured way probably wouldn't get you so many upvotes.
  • nuerow 5y ago
    > it's being used in medical apartheid Can you please offer a description of exactly what you feel warrants an association with racial discrimination and persecution?
    • CapricornNoble 5y ago
      How are the unvaccinated supposed to put food on their table when they are being kicked out of the military, fired from their place of employment, or told that they must comply even if operating a self-owned-work-from-home business? These people are being forced out of regular society into an underclass that will have to operate in a grey economy to survive.
      • cletus 5y ago
        Again this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the origin, meaning and reality of "apartheid". Black South Africans didn't choose to be black. They couldn't choose to be white to escape the segregation, loss of rights and brutality. No one is being held down and forcibly vaccinated. Even in the military, which is pretty strict about this, your choices are to comply or to face disciplinary procedures, possibly including being discharged from the military. That's a choice. Side note: military service members already have to comply with all sorts of medical requirements including shots. Why Covid is being singled out now is the only interesting part to this.
        • CapricornNoble 5y ago
          >>>Again this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the origin, meaning and reality of "apartheid". The etymology of the world is separateness or "apart-hood". We can debate whether the concept requires immutable physical/racial characteristics, but in most Western minds the word "apartheid" is more common to communicate concepts of enforced second-class-citizen status than others, such as in India's caste system, or burakumin here in Japan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burakumin >>>No one is being held down and forcibly vaccinated. They are simply being forced into unemployment, and whether they eventually starve due to their lack of income, well, that's not YOUR fault, right? It's the most cowardly, passive-aggressive way to eliminate undesirables. This is like Israel saying they aren't actively murdering Palestinians, so what's the problem? Meanwhile they maintain a blockade that prevents import of basic stuff that has at times included wheelchairs, tin cans, livestock, and construction materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Limitation_of_basic_goods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip#Lim... >>>Side note: military service members already have to comply with all sorts of medical requirements including shots. Why Covid is being singled out now is the only interesting part to this. Because the tons of other shots that we get (including that stupid, painful anthrax booster) don't have anywhere near the rate/risk of side effects that come with COVID vaccination! And when we're exposed to stuff that DOES negatively impact our health, it has often led to the government getting sued for compensation afterwards. Examples: Agent Orange, Iraq "burn pits", USS Ronald Reagan and Fukushima radiation, etc... Upon further research, you can get VA Benefits for side-effects linked to older, bad batches of anthrax shots: https://ptsdlawyers.com/anthrax-vaccine-presents-long-term-effects/ https://ptsdlawyers.com/anthrax-vaccine-presents-long-term-e... So the government recognizes that it screwed up giving us dangerous vaccinations in the 90s and is compensating veterans, and that's for something with a LOWER risk profile than COVID vaccination. But for COVID, the entire adult population of the country is being told to either comply or join the breadlines. >>>That's a choice. Yes, and sooner or later, as people feel increasingly suppressed by the government, they will simply stop debating and "make the choice" to resort to violence. En masse. And I don't think the bulk of the people who are oh-so-smug-and-confident about the need/importance for this current trend of government authoritarianism fully appreciate what that means.
• ziml77 5y ago
  The pandemic has also made me more aware of the same thing. I already knew that people were selfish and bad at risk analysis, but the degree to which they are is what astounded me. I wish there was some good answer to how to deal with the problem. The government can't get too heavy-handed because that will just drive even more distrust and possibly lead to revolution (the distrust has already happened after lockdowns and vaccine mandates, compounded with any distrust that was already there). There'd have to be a big culture shift if we wanted people to take societal issues seriously. It's pretty clear this is the case when you consider that people are actually losing friends if they decide to get vaccinated. So much for "my body, my choice" (a phrase which has been stolen and twisted by people opposing the vaccines).
  • angelzen 5y ago
    "the government" is just people, perhaps selected for even higher levels of selfishness and poor risk analysis skills.
  • native_samples 5y ago
    So much for "my body, my choice" (a phrase which has been stolen and twisted by people opposing the vaccines). Twisted how. It's exactly the same argument, identical in every way, to the one used for years by abortion supporters. It was seen as noble and obvious correct back then by the same people who deem it to be beyond the pale now. It's obvious they have no internal consistency.
    • ziml77 5y ago
      Twisted because a contagious virus is not just a personal issue. The virus will continue to mutate and weaken the efficacy of both natural immunity and the vaccine if its spread is not halted.
      • native_samples 5y ago
        Abortion isn't a personal issue - it affects the life of the unborn baby. That's why abortion activists have talk about bodily autonomy so heavily. Meanwhile, vaccines not only don't stop you spreading COVID but they appear to make it worse as UK and Swedish data shows. Thus there could easily be an argument to force you to not take the vaccine, on the grounds that you don't personally need the protection and it makes the epidemic worse. Would you like that?
• perth 5y ago
  Realistically the risk is that everything surrounding the vaccine is and was extremely suspicious. I've never had a vaccine before where the nurse urged me to keep moving my arm for the remainder of the day. Realistically the clotting of the vaccines was a real issue due to the poor testing, and I'm not sure if it's still a problem because I haven't heard about it being talked about for a while. In addition, there were potential risks known about the vaccine via research financed by Pfizer for months after it was released that were not present in the media or on any waivers for months after the potential interactions began appearing in lab tests, and the information was not effectively delivered to people who got the vaccine or considered the vaccine. I've seen the heart issues mentioned by people in the comments, what I haven't seen is that Pfizer financed lab research on samples of lung and heart tissue and found a potential for interaction that was never told to anyone until it became a problem. Then we can talk about how the vaccine companies got immunity from being sued if people had any problems down the road from it. [1] September 2020: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320520308560 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002432052... [2] March 2021: https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fca-2020-0188 https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fca-2020-018... [3] February 2021: https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.202002662R https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1096/fj.20... [4] January 2021: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7771841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7771841/ ^ Not all optimal links but they are what I pulled from a quick search on Google Scholar regarding the subject. All date prior to wide discussion on potential issues caused by the vaccination.
  • nuerow 5y ago
    > Realistically the risk is that everything surrounding the vaccine is and was extremely suspicious. I've never had a vaccine before where the nurse urged me to keep moving my arm for the remainder of the day. This is the very first time I ever saw anyone make this extraordinary claim, or anything close to it. Practically everyone I know is fully vaccinated and there was absolutely no reference to any thing remotely like that. Ever. At all. Personally, the only out of the ordinary thing I experienced was getting a leaflet with a FAQ on the vaccines. Other than this, I sat down, took the jab, got up, went to the waiting room for a bit, and afterwards went on with my daily life. Boring as hell, and happened on both jabs. I'm really skeptical regarding your claim, to the point I doubt it ever happened. Do you happen to have any way, other than your word, to back it up? > Realistically the clotting of the vaccines was a real issue due to the poor testing, and I'm not sure if it's still a problem because I haven't heard about it being talked about for a while. There is nothing realistic about your claim. Entire countries have taken the vaccine and, even though there are rare cases where patients react poorly to the vaccine, the scenario you've depicted is not factual or grounded on reality. Do you actually have anything that supports your extraordinary claim, or is this something you believe in in spite of evidence?
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  > It's almost like the existence of vaccines places evolutionary pressure on a mutating virus. This is true, however, in this case, the vaccines are losing effectiveness against the same strains over time. Which is unsurprising, actually, early reports from China on natural immunity showed that it doesn't last as long as usual. It was hoped that a vaccine would be more targeted but it seems effectiveness fades there also.
• nuerow 5y ago
  > The vaccine isn't 100% effective in stopping transmission? Or stopping you catching the disease? Or dying? Each of these becomes some pseudo-gotcha moment that leads some down an invermectin-taking path with Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan as the pied piper. What saddens me the most is that when I got my first jab (european country) I was given a leaflet clearly stating that a) the vaccine works by giving your immune system a workout to get it better prepared to fight the infection, b) the vaccine is not a silver bullet in stopping you from contracting and spreading the disease, c) even with the vaccine we need to continue respecting basic health and safety precautions like wearing masks and social distancing. The message was clear: the vaccine significantly mitigated the impact of the pandemic, such as the need for lockouts, but the problem doesn't go away. Consequently, where I am we're seeing vaccination rates close to 80% and pretty much everything went to normal. The infection rates are increasing slightly right now, but it's a far cry from the shitshow that we've endured around the spring of 2020. This is really concerning be because it seems the world already forgot that this first batch of vaccines were nothing more than an emergency stopgap solution to buy the world some time until it figures out how to put a stop to it. Even though we're no longer seeing emergency response teams piling up dead bodies in makeshift tents, the root problem is still there, completely unaddressed.
  • ramphastidae 5y ago
    > it seems the world already forgot that this first batch of vaccines were nothing more than an emergency stopgap solution to buy the world some time until it figures out how to put a stop to it The world gave up. Didn’t you? In many countries vaccines have been fully available for 6+ months and a significant portion of the population still won’t take them. COVID will never be solved because of people who believe Bill Gates put microchips in their medicine.