5 ms·

Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? I’ve never encountered a

by rsfern 5y ago

Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? I’ve never encountered any credible hypotheses, whereas we have plenty of preliminary evidence and proposed mechanisms for long term health effects arising from Covid. The vaccines have held up very well at reducing risk of severe Covid, and it’s becoming clear that with appropriate dosing the side effect profile is lower than the risk from infection, even if that risk is relatively low for some demographics. Also, consider the early reports from South Africa and New York that omicron is resulting in more severe disease in children.

peteradio 5y ago
Original antigenic sin could be considered a side effect of getting immunized. Whether it ends up being helpful or harmful won't be known until we've moved our way through multiple waves of different variants (i.e. months years). The die is cast but the result unknown.
- rsfern 5y ago
  Yeah, that is interesting. It does look like a large fraction of the population is going to get omicron regardless of vaccination. I’m not sure what the implications of a breakthrough infection are for this scenario, but I would imagine it would have a mitigating effect
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Here is something interesting with regard to the flu vaccine and the apparent impacts of vaccines year after year: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-adds-more-data-effects-consecutive-year-flu-shots https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-ad... I don't get the impression this is anything earth imploding but its like come'on man, mandates?
ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? The whole goal of a vaccine is to induce a long term effect (a change in your immune system). Should we just assume it can only have desireable long term effects? If some treatment caused (for example) a tiny cancer to form internally, and only be diagnosable years later, what are the odds that we would ever understand the connection (let alone in the first couple years of that treatments use)? And that's for something obvious like cancer. What about weird new ailments, like strange allergies, or anything mental health related? This is why I've never been able to buy the argument that "no vaccines cause long term adverse effects". I can buy that we've never succeeded at linking the two, but that doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies. Other than that, do things only go wrong in ways that we can predict? How many of us have seen our own (or our colleagues) code changes lead to unexpected results that we would only understand after the fact? Even in codebases that we wrote ourselves, let alone in an enormous legacy codebase. My own prediction is that most things that do go wrong weren't something that we envisioned happening beforehand, otherwise we wouldn't have done them in the first place. Of course there are high profile counterexamples of this, but I would expect them to be the exception. I don't have the same faith in the speed of our collective knowledge building abilities that some people do. We accomplish amazing things eventually, but the road there is strewn with the wreckage of prior attempts. This isn't to say I think people shouldn't get vaccinated, just that they should beware of hubris in attempting to force everyone else to.
- rsfern 5y ago
  I agree with your point about epistemological hubris, but this isn’t about mandates, it’s about clear-eyed risk assessment. Without a specific hypothesis, it’s all a big game of “what if”. The scenarios you mention aren’t physically impossible or anything, but there’s just as much reason to speculate that the virus itself could have those kinds of emergent long term effects. For example it’s well known that HPV infection increases the risk of certain cancers. Anyway I can appreciate your point of view, but I don’t think it has much bearing on the people asserting that the vaccine is definitely worse than the virus
  - 5y ago

by rsfern 5y ago

peteradio 5y ago

Original antigenic sin could be considered a side effect of getting immunized. Whether it ends up being helpful or harmful won't be known until we've moved our way through multiple waves of different variants (i.e. months years). The die is cast but the result unknown.

rsfern 5y ago
Yeah, that is interesting. It does look like a large fraction of the population is going to get omicron regardless of vaccination. I’m not sure what the implications of a breakthrough infection are for this scenario, but I would imagine it would have a mitigating effect
- peteradio 5y ago
  Here is something interesting with regard to the flu vaccine and the apparent impacts of vaccines year after year: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-adds-more-data-effects-consecutive-year-flu-shots https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/11/study-ad... I don't get the impression this is anything earth imploding but its like come'on man, mandates?

ifyoubuildit 5y ago

> Is there even any proposed mechanism that would give rise to long term effects (that show up months or years later) from this vaccine? The whole goal of a vaccine is to induce a long term effect (a change in your immune system). Should we just assume it can only have desireable long term effects? If some treatment caused (for example) a tiny cancer to form internally, and only be diagnosable years later, what are the odds that we would ever understand the connection (let alone in the first couple years of that treatments use)? And that's for something obvious like cancer. What about weird new ailments, like strange allergies, or anything mental health related? This is why I've never been able to buy the argument that "no vaccines cause long term adverse effects". I can buy that we've never succeeded at linking the two, but that doesn't give me the same warm fuzzies. Other than that, do things only go wrong in ways that we can predict? How many of us have seen our own (or our colleagues) code changes lead to unexpected results that we would only understand after the fact? Even in codebases that we wrote ourselves, let alone in an enormous legacy codebase. My own prediction is that most things that do go wrong weren't something that we envisioned happening beforehand, otherwise we wouldn't have done them in the first place. Of course there are high profile counterexamples of this, but I would expect them to be the exception. I don't have the same faith in the speed of our collective knowledge building abilities that some people do. We accomplish amazing things eventually, but the road there is strewn with the wreckage of prior attempts. This isn't to say I think people shouldn't get vaccinated, just that they should beware of hubris in attempting to force everyone else to.

rsfern 5y ago
I agree with your point about epistemological hubris, but this isn’t about mandates, it’s about clear-eyed risk assessment. Without a specific hypothesis, it’s all a big game of “what if”. The scenarios you mention aren’t physically impossible or anything, but there’s just as much reason to speculate that the virus itself could have those kinds of emergent long term effects. For example it’s well known that HPV infection increases the risk of certain cancers. Anyway I can appreciate your point of view, but I don’t think it has much bearing on the people asserting that the vaccine is definitely worse than the virus
- 5y ago