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mRNA vaccines have been a thing in labs for a few decades and first human clinical trials against a pathogen in 2013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccin

mRNA vaccines have been a thing in labs for a few decades and first human clinical trials against a pathogen in 2013 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine

johnisgood 5y ago
> Before 2020, no mRNA technology platform (drug or vaccine) had been authorized for use in humans, so there was a risk of unknown effects.[79] The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic required faster production capability of mRNA vaccines, made them attractive to national health organisations, and led to debate about the type of initial authorization mRNA vaccines should get (including emergency use authorization or expanded access authorization) after the eight-week period of post-final human trials. That risk of unknown effects was still there even when it got authorized for emergency use. Has it changed yet? Like... there was a vaccine based on old tech that has been used in humans for decades without side-effects that caused narcolepsy a year or two later, and we got lucky to have been able to make the association. It is not really only about what tech it uses, apparently.
- epylar 5y ago
  Are you talking about Pandemrix? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... says there was a lot of follow up on that and no link to narcolepsy was found
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    About particularly that, Wikipedia says "In 2018, a multinational study including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists published safety data on adjuvanted pH1N1 vaccines. Sweden was the only country where increased narcolepsy IRs were found in the period after vaccination campaigns. The ability of the researchers to evaluate the Pandremix brand vaccine was limited.", but you can read other ones as well here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy It is quite interesting.
- nikolay 5y ago
  No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.
    - cudgy 5y ago
      The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide. They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination. Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares. > It has been said [the vaccine] reduces spread, but this is not what you observe This is what you observe. There have been a large number of studies published examining the effects of vaccination rate on community spread showing that the reproductive number of the virus (at least the original and alpha/delta strains) is significantly depressed by vaccination. With omicron, vaccine effectiveness vs. initial infection / mild disease is much worse than with previous Covid variants (though it seems that protection vs. severe disease / death is still robust), so we can expect to see significant spread in highly vaccinated areas, but still less and slower than among an unvaccinated population.
- smukherjee19 5y ago
  This is honestly one of my concerns (double-vaccinated with mRNA, no issues and I am not anti-vax). The thing is, before the COVID-19, the world had barely heard of mRNA vaccines and suddenly there are billions of people vaccinated across the world in 2 years. I have no intention of denying that these vaccines have saved millions, if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide. But still, a skeptic part of my brain can't seem to 100% accept the fact, even though it might be a medical miracle. It's that scratch on your back you can barely not reach, and it stays itchy for days and months. On the other hand, vaccines that use inactivated or dead viruses to incite an immune response has been known for more than two centuries, whereas this feels... different. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, none of the other answers to this question in this thread have been proper responses that directly answer the question, except the one about "changing priorities from do no harm to optimize for least harm" that seems to make most sense. So, I'd love to have a direct answer, no analogies, no "imagine how worse it could have been without vaccines", no "disease X kills more people than Covid and mortality for mRNA vaccine for Covid is negligible compared to that", no shifting goalposts, no guilt-tripping for being skeptic, just a straight, direct answer to this question of the OP.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    “…if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide.” No remote way that it saved billions of lives. Covid is nowhere close to that level of mortality. The level of exaggeration that people have allowed themselves to succumb to over Covid is frankly quite alarming.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      What can I do to convince them that it is not as bad as they think it is?
      - cudgy 5y ago
        Sadly. My guess is that for some people there is nothing you can do to convince them. These people believe what they hear on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc and are too lazy to consider documents and statistics that do not support their favorite news personalities. It seems that major news sources have decided to suppress any information that disputes the reductive and simplistic storyline that the vaccine and masks are the perfectly effective and only solution.

johnisgood 5y ago

> Before 2020, no mRNA technology platform (drug or vaccine) had been authorized for use in humans, so there was a risk of unknown effects.[79] The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic required faster production capability of mRNA vaccines, made them attractive to national health organisations, and led to debate about the type of initial authorization mRNA vaccines should get (including emergency use authorization or expanded access authorization) after the eight-week period of post-final human trials. That risk of unknown effects was still there even when it got authorized for emergency use. Has it changed yet? Like... there was a vaccine based on old tech that has been used in humans for decades without side-effects that caused narcolepsy a year or two later, and we got lucky to have been able to make the association. It is not really only about what tech it uses, apparently.

epylar 5y ago
Are you talking about Pandemrix? https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcolepsy-flu.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps... says there was a lot of follow up on that and no link to narcolepsy was found
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- johnisgood 5y ago
  About particularly that, Wikipedia says "In 2018, a multinational study including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists published safety data on adjuvanted pH1N1 vaccines. Sweden was the only country where increased narcolepsy IRs were found in the period after vaccination campaigns. The ability of the researchers to evaluate the Pandremix brand vaccine was limited.", but you can read other ones as well here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Narcolepsy It is quite interesting.
nikolay 5y ago
No vaccine would have been authorized on billions of people before 2020 if it had such prevalent incidence of peri- and myocarditis! But now it's authorized even of toddlers, which have even higher chance for future heart issues! And all this, because politicians didn't have the balls to keep the face mask mandates!
- johnisgood 5y ago
  And in comparison to COVID-19? Do they actually need a vaccine to protect against COVID-19? If not, are we giving it to them in the chance that it reduces spread, or why? It has been said it reduces spread, but this is not what you observe in countries that are >80% fully vaccinated (at least double dose), so I do not get it.
  - cudgy 5y ago
    The vaccine does not prevent spread of Covid. Period. The smallest amount of research proves this to be the case.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Something on the order of 1e4 children aged 0–9 have died from Covid-19 so far, worldwide. They face ~3 orders of magnitude less risk than elderly people (of whom ~1e7 have died so far), but it is still nontrivial and much higher than the risks from vaccination. Small kids also spread Covid effectively. There have been a bunch of places with high vaccination rates where there were outbreaks in daycares. > It has been said [the vaccine] reduces spread, but this is not what you observe This is what you observe. There have been a large number of studies published examining the effects of vaccination rate on community spread showing that the reproductive number of the virus (at least the original and alpha/delta strains) is significantly depressed by vaccination. With omicron, vaccine effectiveness vs. initial infection / mild disease is much worse than with previous Covid variants (though it seems that protection vs. severe disease / death is still robust), so we can expect to see significant spread in highly vaccinated areas, but still less and slower than among an unvaccinated population.
smukherjee19 5y ago
This is honestly one of my concerns (double-vaccinated with mRNA, no issues and I am not anti-vax). The thing is, before the COVID-19, the world had barely heard of mRNA vaccines and suddenly there are billions of people vaccinated across the world in 2 years. I have no intention of denying that these vaccines have saved millions, if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide. But still, a skeptic part of my brain can't seem to 100% accept the fact, even though it might be a medical miracle. It's that scratch on your back you can barely not reach, and it stays itchy for days and months. On the other hand, vaccines that use inactivated or dead viruses to incite an immune response has been known for more than two centuries, whereas this feels... different. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, none of the other answers to this question in this thread have been proper responses that directly answer the question, except the one about "changing priorities from do no harm to optimize for least harm" that seems to make most sense. So, I'd love to have a direct answer, no analogies, no "imagine how worse it could have been without vaccines", no "disease X kills more people than Covid and mortality for mRNA vaccine for Covid is negligible compared to that", no shifting goalposts, no guilt-tripping for being skeptic, just a straight, direct answer to this question of the OP.
- cudgy 5y ago
  “…if not billions of lives by preventing hospitalization, death and further overloading of medical systems worldwide.” No remote way that it saved billions of lives. Covid is nowhere close to that level of mortality. The level of exaggeration that people have allowed themselves to succumb to over Covid is frankly quite alarming.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    What can I do to convince them that it is not as bad as they think it is?
    - cudgy 5y ago
      Sadly. My guess is that for some people there is nothing you can do to convince them. These people believe what they hear on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc and are too lazy to consider documents and statistics that do not support their favorite news personalities. It seems that major news sources have decided to suppress any information that disputes the reductive and simplistic storyline that the vaccine and masks are the perfectly effective and only solution.