To preface: I got the vaccine months ago (as soon as I had access), I'm a big believer in vaccines.
With that being said, this policy doesn't sit well with me. None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. Of course, a lot of people have received those vaccines, but I also don't necessarily fault individuals for feeling hesitant (the nuance here is that I think people ought to get the vaccine). mRNA is a new, unknown technology, and the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before. We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.
Both candidates Biden and Harris expressed the need for full trials and transparency in regard to the vaccine before they were in office, then changed their tune after (see: https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1416969060890210305). Biden says:
> When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, Who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, “Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK”?
If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.
This is untrue, researchers have been testing various mRNA therapies on people for 30 years, with it being first done in vitro in 1990 then in vivo in 1992 [1]. Lipid nano particles were first used around the same time.
> the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before
This is only true if you ignore the development of the mRNA vaccine platform for flu, rabies, and zika that predated the pandemic by years. The novel development here was swapping in new protein encoding. If you look at this as a continuation of that process, then it's only a little faster than normal, and a lot of that was due to the FDA switching sequential steps in the process to be parallel.
> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.
This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects.
> Both candidates Biden and Harris
They're both craven, ignorant politicians, who cares what they said when the other guy was in power.
>This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects.
This isn't really what I'm worried about. Right now people are talking long COVID, subtle long term brain damage and it seems like mechanisms are still unknown. So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage. I'd be much more comfortable with the vaccine if the long COVID studies included groups :
- no vaccination/hospitalised
- no vaccination/asymptomatic
- vaccination/not infected
- vaccination/infected
I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.
> I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.
Respectfully, I think what you're really waiting for is this thing to blow over so you don't have to take any personal risk. That's likely to be a fail, as you're just a waiting Petri dish for the live virus to infect.
All kinds of things have risk and the craven merchants of doubt are busy spreading FUD about the vaccine. It's really our only way out of this shit show, because waiting around is just prolonging it.
Or would you like to have a long drawn out conversation about the long term health effects of:
* preservatives
* artificial sweeteners
* high fructose corn syrup
* pesticides
* HPV infection
* influenza/rhinovirus infection
* sunburns
* a night of heavy drinking
Because we can absolutely have a long, drawn out, twisting conversation about all those things.
On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects.
I don't really mind social distancing measures untill people in the risk groups get vaccinated - all of my high risk contacts have been. So I don't get what we need to get out of, my government is already saying they will eliminate COVID measures after summer, UK style.
I'll get vaccinated at some point if I have to do it for travel or what not - right now I'm not convinced - the social arguments don't make much sense to me (variants will come up anyway, you can get infected and spread the virus even if vaccinated you're just reducing risk)
> On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects.
Well if you're feeling conflicted between these things, you're just being willfully ignorant at this point. The vaccine protects against severe COVID, hands down. Long COVID is highly correlated with severe COVID. The data is absolutely rock solid on both of those. And for these nebulous "unknown long term effects" of the anti-vaxers keep scare-mongering with, the data on that is also pretty damn good. There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year. mRNA vaccines have been in use for decades to combat influenza, and there is similarly absolutely no data to support long-term effects from their use. Even a cursory education about how mRNA vaccines actually work, how they create an immune response and don't alter your DNA should be enough to convince most Science-minded, reasonable people. The immune response induced is on the order of any other; there's nothing special about the COVID vaccine immune response! And it doesn't give you an actual viral infection. A vaccine is literally all the benefit with none of the downside. Unlike dummies who think that somehow actually getting COVID is better for immunity. No data supports that conclusion, either.
The vaccine is effective and safe. People who tell you otherwise are just manufacturing doubt and spreading FUD. They are fucking this up for the rest of us. We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern.
> right now I'm not convinced
Well, I'm not inclined to believe that you can be convinced, because you didn't reason yourself into the position you're in now. No one will be reasoning you out of it. We're mostly just combating your further spreading of FUD like your apparent willingness to be a link in the chain in further spreading of the goddamn virus. It's really incredible the selfishness here.
You're just being presumptive, overreaching in conclusions and overconfident in your narrative. I've seen two studies linked recently about long COVID. Neither included vaccination as a test variable. Since these two studies were recent and newsworthy enough to link on HN I'm assuming your "There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year." boils down to there is no data because we didn't look for it. There would be no data of asymptomatic long term effects of COVID if we didn't search for that either.
I have 0 problems with people at risk of serious COVID getting vaccinated, in fact I convinced my grandparents to do it. I don't really see what it buys me as a healthy 30 something year-old with no preexisting conditions, other than likely being a day out after the shot.
>We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern.
How does that compute ? I thought nobody actually believed zero COVID is possible ?
Bigfoot is out there, and UFOs. Sorry, I shouldn't mock you. But seriously, epidemiologists, you know--Scientists--without political agendas study this problem very carefully...and do not see any widespread effects from the vaccine after a year. It's not like they forgot to look for it. If you seriously believe they are just being willfully blind to it then you're going to be off a long chain of other rationalizations that are just more hallmarks of the fact that you didn't reason yourself to where you are. But I already suspected that so I am not trying to convince you as much as tag your misinformation for passers by.
> I don't really see what it buys me
This is really the crux of matter. You only think about yourself. One, you are are far higher risk of Bad Things (tm) straight-up getting COVID, especially with Delta and Lambda coming. Again, the data is absolutely clear on that. Two, other people exist. Data shows you are more likely to be infected and more likely to infect others if you are unvaccinated. You help keep this thing festering by offering yourself up as a host. And no, vaccinated people are not doing the same. They are actually taking precautions that protect themselves and others. You're just being selfish and obstinate, and it isn't even principled, you are just worried about vague side-effects that only affect you. Worse, you put vaccinated people at risk too. If you are infected, and also being in contact with vaccinated people, you are just offering evolution more dice rolls to create a more infectious variant that can evade vaccine-induced immunity and infect the people around you. In fact, you tempt evolution to do so, because it's then a selective pressure. It's like giving your crazy neighbor who steals people's bullets and shoots them into the air randomly free ammunition by putting it on the porch with a bow on it instead of locking your shit up in your house. It's infuriatingly irresponsible.
> I thought nobody is actually believed zero COVID is possible?
I said herd immunity, not zero COVID.
herd im·mu·ni·ty, noun:
resistance to the spread of an infectious disease within a population that is based on pre-existing immunity of a high proportion of individuals as a result of previous infection or vaccination. "the level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity varies by disease but ranges from 83 to 94 percent"
Zero COVID was a possibility when infections were low. But back then, people were saying it only affected a few people and didn't even want to wear masks. Irresponsible people brought this upon us and keep it going with continued irresponsibility.
I think you're irresponsible and I'm saying it you explicitly.
>you know--Scientists--without political agendas study this problem very carefully...and do not see any widespread effects from the vaccine after a year.
??
This entire thread is me asking if there's some studies that compare long COVID sideffects with groups based on vaccination. Instead of linking these, since you're already certain (and I would very much be convinced if you can show me) you are saying "believe science" ? And I'm unscientific ?
By all means enlighten me and I'll edit my top post with links to stop spreading misinformation.
So you're just googling post hoc and haven't actually looked into it. How scientific.
This study [1] is what got me interested, they claim gray matter loss compares to control group even in asymptomatic cases but they excluded vaccinated people from what I can tell. I want to see this level of data for the groups I mention and then we have a really good insight. And this data should be possible to get.
Your links are articles referencing self-reports and doctors guesses...
> So you're just googling post hoc and haven't actually looked into it. How scientific.
Actually, I've seen dozens of articles fly by and they all said pretty much the same thing, because the data is so clear that no one really disputes it. I just googled it because it's stupidly easy to find. Nothing's going to convince you anyway, so there's no point in putting in more effort at this point.
If you're so concerned, don't get the vaccine. But I'm begging you to please stop spreading baseless FUD about long term side effects. There is 0 evidence or any theory at all that could account for that.
> So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage
This is pure conjecture base on literally nothing. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just baseless. The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. The mRNA vaccines cause you own cells machinery to build virus proteins at which point it works just like any viral subunit vaccine, which have existed since 1970 and include flu vaccines, hep A and B, and few other you may have had already. Billions of people have received those types of vaccines and they don't have long term negative effects, except rarely when someone has an acute reaction right after vaccination. It is true that some people have allergic reactions (a strong an destructive immune response), but they happen within about 4 hours and symptoms usually clear up in a few days.
If the COVID vaccines had some mysterious far off long term effects, it would be the first vaccine ever to do that, and there's no reason to suspect that might be the case. You may find this nature article interesting https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7, it's about general vaccine immunology.
I'm not telling you that you need to get vaccinated, but the particular concern you're raising isn't something you should be worried about.
>The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response.
You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well - it's like saying "we have this black box service we sort of have an idea of what it does and if we send it X/Y/Z we know what happens, it should work the same with W too - I've been in that scenario often enough to know that's an assumption that I'd rather see the data for.
I already saw that people in my peer group reported short term side effects like headache after getting vaccination, have taken days off from work, family members complained about dizziness the day after.
It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies, should be insignificant even compares to money that will be spent on vaccination campaigns - so why skip out on valuable data.
> You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well
I'm not assuming, the whole field of immunology seems to be on board here. We know pretty well how the immune system work and how immunity develops from exposure to foreign material, it isn't black magic. There's no black box here the immune system has been well studied, and we know the inputs as well.
Vaccines are probably the safest medical intervention we have, the reactions you're describing are typical immune responses that are well studied, well understood, and temporary. No vaccine has every caused some long range reaction in the we you're describing.
> It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies
One could, but there's absolutely no reason to bother, because immunology is a well established field and we know what happens after people receive subunit vaccines. The only moderately novel part here is the mRNA which has been tested for 30 years in vitro, in animals, and in people.
There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine. Again, you don't have to take the vaccine, but the thing you are worried about isn't supported by any evidence or research it is amateur conjecture at best.
>There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine.
By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible aince these people don't even know they had the infection and shouldn't be studied either.
Saying that the immune system is well studied and we know what happens when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects is again overreaching.
And I'm not saying my "amateur conjecture" is likely true, I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things - especially when you're vaccinating a huge % of population in one step (other required immunisations happen generationally)
> By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible
No, not at all. The virus binds to ACE2 receptors on cells, where are all over you body and in your circulatory system. You could be infected and fight it off without acute symptoms and still have enough systemic damage from the virus and immune response to have lingering effects.
> when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects
We do, it's cellular damage from the infection. This is well studies with the flu and various other viruses. What we don't know is why it seems to effect some people and not others, the risk factors, and we're still parsing through symptoms to put together a full picture. There's no mystery as to how this happens. When researchers say they don't know why brain fog is a symptom, it doesn't mean they have no clue how it happens.
> I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things
It isn't surprising though. Plenty of viruses can cause lingering systemic damage without sever acute symptoms. The long covid cases were appearing as early as late April 2020 in the US, and clearly wen't caused by the vaccines that weren't available for a year. This whole what if scenario is just baseless FUD.
> None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved.
On one hand, I can't wait for the Pfizer vaccine to be fully FDA approved in September. On the other, everybody who uses that argument today will simply forget about it and move goalposts.
Exactly this -- people have just seized on the the "not FDA approved" line because it sounds reasonable if you don't really understand how FDA approval works or what it really means. As soon as it's approved, the goalposts will absolutely move to "well, I don't trust the FDA".
For those "waiting for FDA approval", have you ever taken a vitamin supplement? Guess what, you're putting not-FDA-approved chemicals into your body.
>If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision
If this were mandating that every resident of NYC must be vaccinated, I would agree. But it's not doing that. It's only saying that anyone wanting to dine (or possibly shop, too) indoors, that is, in spaces we know to have higher contamination and spread rate, they need to be vaccinated. People that are hesitant can still go unvaccinated and that's fine, but they have to keep to areas where contamination and spread are less prevalent.
From Alec Karakatsanis's excellent Usual Cruelty on plea bargains:
> “the Constitution requires that every guilty plea waiving the constitutional right to trial by a jury of one’s peers be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary.69 But no one who works in the criminal system thinks that contemporary plea bargaining produces voluntary agreements. The vast majority of plea bargains are accepted by people who are told that they will be imprisoned for longer if they do not give up their right to a jury trial. Many of these people are in jail and are told that pleading guilty is the only immediate way out of jail. In no other cultural context would the word “voluntary” describe this arrangement. Should my coworker ask a person out on a dinner date but tell the person that, if he does not accept, he will be placed in a cage, no one would view the person’s agreement to dine with my coworker as voluntary. That’s not how we understand “voluntary” actions.”
Plea bargains are a totally different world, I'm not trying to compare this decision with plea bargains. What I would like to illustrate, through the author's example, is the process by which modern governments reduce the individual's agency in a de-facto manner, while de-jure asserting that individual's rights are upheld. People have been stuck inside for so, so long, keeping them out of restaurants if they don't get vaccinated is surely just manipulating their decision making toward getting a vaccine they may be uncomfortable getting.
I suppose I don't really get what good this does. If a person decides to not get vaccinated and then decides to dine indoors, who are they harming, other than potentially themselves, by making that decision? I wish they would get the vaccine, but I also do respect their rights to judge the information available for themselves without severely restricting their ability to live their lives.
Who are they harming? Literally everyone else in the space that is now more likely to be exposed to someone with the virus (and who has taken fewer precautions to avoid being contagious)
People’s rights to swing their fists around wildly end at my face
Minority communities have the lowest vaccination rates. They were also discriminated against in the past. Your argument is same as justifying segregation by saying "how being required to dine separately from another race is a severe restriction on someone's ability to live their life?"
> Minority communities have the lowest vaccination rates.
Do we know if this has more to do with unethical bosses not allowing paid time off to get vaccinated, or more to do with echo chambers about vaccine safety, or something else?
There's definitely overlap between these, of course (an anti-vax boss might create both of these problems in their workplace).
If you look at De Blasio's announcement of this "Key To NYC" program, the stated purpose sounds pretty clearly like trying to pressure people to get vaccinated. He gave the example of how successful it was with mandating city workers get vaccinated. Making it clear that this is to show New Yorkers that the way to participate in normal life is to be vaccinated. Sort of a "enough is enough, it's time to get vaccinated" attitude.
Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days.
> Maybe you think his real purpose is what you described rather than his stated purpose, but if he were hiding the ball I'd expect it in the other direction. It's rather jarring, really. But I suppose authoritarianism and paternalism are becoming more normalized these days.
I don't think de Blasio has a real purpose. I think he's doing what his advisors and experts are recommending he do and he's trying to make it sound purposeful because the political like sounding purposeful.
It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores. Then if you want to eat you have no choice but to get it. What about denying healthcare for unvaccinated? Another easy step.
> It’s not a small stretch to imagine expanding it to all grocery stores.
When Covid first broke everything shut down. That is, everything except grocery stores, which were open to all. So yes, I think it's a big stretch to imagine it expanding to grocery stores.
Yes, because no one ever breaks the rules of the road right? I mean, you've never driven over the speed limit? Parked in a non-parking space? Driven through a red light? Yes, what a great example lol.
Your response to a claim that the state has a compelling interest is an argument that enforcement is incomplete. You do see how these things are orthogonal, right?
> It's putting a scarlet letter on these people and shaming them for making their own choice about their own bodies.
Yes, that's how de Blasio phrases it, but I think there's more to it than how he's talked about it.
The way I see these mandates is an effort to have people maintain a person R-naught of less than 1. How each person achieve that is up to them. They can wear masks, they can get vaccinated, they can avoid places with high transmission rates (such as indoor dining/shopping), or a combination of all these things. And ideally we find more options for people to take so that that everyone can help achieve a personal R-naught in a way that best fits their needs.
Ultimately, the goal is to create a win-win scenario where on a personal level individuals can choose what degree of transmission prevention they want to pursue, and on a social level we're organized so that everyone is (hopefully) not infecting others, or doing so so sparsely that the infection rate is going down.
The goal now is to find a comfortable equilibrium in which society can continue to do its thing without explosive outbreaks of Covid. These sort of mandates help get us there. This is all still very new and we need to find more methods in which we can reach that equilibrium, and we should continue to look for them, but we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like.
> we can't let Covid-19 run rampant until we feel we've all the options we like.
What makes you say this? There is literally no other city in our country doing a lockdown like this. Many places are still opened up and not experiencing a surge. Even in Missouri, cases have dropped in many regions in the last few days without such lockdowns, and hospitals have not been overloaded.
Expansion of covid wards is not overload. Mortality rates aren't skyrocketing, and people aren't dying in the streets like we saw in Italy and China in the first weeks.
Don't get me wrong, there has been an increase in cases and the R0 needs to be lowered. But draconian measures aren't necessarily required, as Greene County MO's recent infection rates have shown[1]. The R0 sits at below 0 now, and hospital case loads have stabilized.
I don't understand calling it a nanny state. The government punishes you for not wearing a seat belt, children are excluded from school if they aren't vaccinated, drunk driving is illegal. Other than fda approval is the covid vaccine any different? if you're worried about the long term side effects and thus choose not to get vaccinated shouldn't you expect to not participate fully/freely in society (a la children's vaccines or repeat drunk-driving offenders)?
> We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.
By that logic, we have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of COVID-19, and how they might compare to the unknown of the long term side effects of vaccines.
We do know that many COVID-19 patients have had very bad effects over many months (I'm thinking of long COVID here), not to mention the possibility of death. We don't know what it'll be like 5 years from first getting COVID-19, but we know long term problems happen from the virus.
Compare that to what's known about the vaccine: we haven't seen any indication that the vaccine is causing very bad effects over many months in any significantly large percentage of the population.
You lose all credibility when you bring up the Biden/Harris comments.
At the time we were at the point where it was a real possibility that Trump would push out the vaccine regardless of the status of trials, etc. Trump kept saying dates and deadlines for all sorts of things throughout the pandemic that had no basis in reality, to the point that pushing out the vaccine early was a real possibility, just to make him look better.
THAT is what the Biden/Harris comments are referencing.
Could they have been more clear? Absolutely. But I'm confident that you personally know the difference and that you're just deciding to peddle that bullshit to further whatever right wing agenda you have.
If the vaccine had been rushed under trump it would have been malicious, but if the vaccine is rushed under Biden it's kosher?
This is partisan logic and pointing it out doesn't make someone right-wing.
It wasn't rushed under Biden, at least in the sense that it didn't skip any steps or ignore trial data (the whole vaccine process was as quick as possible under both Presidents, of course).
There was a real worry that it would be maliciously rushed under Trump.
Imagine this: Trump guts the FDA leadership and installs fringe scientists. Those scientists then skip steps, ignore trial data, and push out the vaccine.
If you think that was a far out possibility, then you're likely right-wing. The Scott Atlas situation alone should convince you that this was possible, let alone everything else about Trump.
> If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.
Do people feel the same way about schools requiring vaccines, or children getting the MMR, Hep B, or Polio vaccines?
Does cautious science make the state less of a nanny? Isn't the critique of nanny state about whether the state is acting like a parent, knowing what's good for you?
People who have already gotten covid infection are extremely unlikely to get it again and some reports are saying that they have stronger immunity than vaccinated ones. This is not the case for things like polio. Plus based on Israel, the vaccine is also losing efficacy after 3-6 months so they are giving a 3rd shot now. That's not the case with polio vaccines.
We didn't get this vaccine out of nothing in 9 months. Every time there was a corona virus scare in the past (i.e., SARS and MERS) there was research into vaccines. After the panic dies down, these got shelved, but they served as a starting point. We've been developing this vaccine on-and-off-again for the past 20 years.
As I clearly mentioned, this vaccine is not FDA approved. We have no idea of the long term effects. I find it fairly reasonable to not want to be a test subject.
Do vaccines being approved by government make the government not a nanny state? Isn't that still a matter of government knowing what's good for you, as a parent would?
Perhaps you have no idea, but the people closest to this science, including the countless government agencies around the world that have given authorization, have a pretty good idea. The design and length of clinical trials is not arbitrary, but your personal idea of "long term" is arbitrary.
Do we have data on 5, 10 years after usage? I'm fairly certain that there won't be anything either (based on what experts have said), but we should withhold making assertions without data to back it up, right?
Well, mRNA vaccines have been in human clinical trials for over 10 years now, so if 10 years is your metric you may want to look in to that. My greater point is that to you and I - people who do not research the human immune system - 5 or 20 or 40 years may all seem like reasonable metrics. The people closest to the science disagree with us, at least in part because they cannot identify any mechanism for these vaccines to possess stealth side effects that only emerge decades later.
I don't care if this data exists or it doesn't. Even without this data, there's no good reason to think that the vaccine has a higher chance of long term complications than COVID itself, which makes the decision to get vaxxed an obvious one, even for young people.
Yes, training your cells to mass produce a new protein we're not familiar with is absolutely safer than your trained immune system possibly encountering a mild viral load, with the proteins attached to the shells as normal.
Anyone who doubts the safety of this new immune system programming is obviously either a science denier or a paid [insert foreign country] shill.
This is silly because of the strong evidence that has emerged about long COVID. We know there are often significant long-term complications to COVID. You can see things like reduced grey matter volume in people who have had COVID across multiple regions of their brain. Yet for mRNA vaccines there is simply no reason to expect anything remotely this bad. You're positing that there could be surprise side effects into the future that will, with non-trivial probability, outweigh the long-term side effects from COVID (e.g. literal brain damage) that we've already observed. If long COVID wasn't a well-established observation, then I'd grant that you have the ghost of a point.
To be fair, vast majority of those scientists also claimed the lab leak theory was impossible and a conspiracy theory and 1.5 year later flip flopped. If it was so easy to silence scientists on such an obvious issue, what else were the dissenting scientists silenced on?
The frustrating thing about weaselly antivax nonsense like this is that if you just google your question, there is a clear answer:
> Over 20 women enrolled in the initial adult Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial became pregnant during the study period, and none suffered pregnancy loss or perinatal complications.
I understand that some people are not as plugged into the internet, or have various difficulties understanding information, but I doubt that describes you as a hacker news commenter. There is really no excuse for you to be ignorant about things that you can find an answer to in mere seconds.
Right, I am only arguing that we are not flying totally blind here. Is the risk 0%? No, never. But the people who know the science best think the risk of something occurring beyond the timeframe we have good data for is very, very low. And the idea that there is a certain amount of years or decades, or a certain life event that changes the expectations of how this impacts human health, is something that we are only guessing about. Whereas the people with the knowledge and background to make educated guesses generally have little to no concern.
That's an appeal to authority and we know there's a big problem with censorship right now. (Medical) doctors and professors who ask questions about the effectiveness of vaccination policy have a high chance of getting fired. In my country a researcher got fired a few months ago after publicly saying there's no guarantee that getting vaccinated means you will no longer spread the virus. By now he's been proven right of course, but meanwhile he did lose his job, his income, his reputation, and his voice in the media.
So how is it possible to have an honest, open discussion (not to mention conduct proper science) in such a highly censored environment?
(For the record, I'm not antivax and not against these new vaccines, and I think it's also worrying in and of itself that many people like me feel this needs to be said every time in these discussions in order to minimize the chance of name-calling and personal attacks.)
Higher or lower than the chance of hospitalization for women of childbearing age for covid-19? Many people suspect that the answer to this question is "we don't really know". But public health agencies are trying to boost vaccination rates, period. So they say "just get the vax". It's getting exhausting trying to parse out the truth from the various "noble lies".
This leads many people who already mistrust "the system" to tune out future guidance and legitimate information. Black Americans, and Republicans, for example.
I upvoted this. I strongly agree that public health communication has been awful at times and has absolutely diminished trust. Especially the recent f*ck up at the CDC where they spread disinformation about vaccinated people and their ability to spread the Delta variant.
Referring to unsettled science as "disinformation" seems premature. Is it not the case that we have some preliminary evidence that this may be the case? I've seen lots of criticism of the study that led to their updated guidance about this. Confounding variables, etc. But these are experts giving us their expert opinion. Surely it should at least be considered a possibility worthy of more study? Does referring to it as "disinformation" create a chilling effect around truth seeking?
Are there other studies, or a "preponderance of evidence", so to speak, that refutes their position? I'm not aware of any. Most often I hear people make "common sense" or "just so" arguments about vaccines in general and how they work. Nothing specific about the covid vaccines. The majority of which, at least in USA, utilize novel tech.
Fair points, and I don't stand by calling it disinformation. This particular incident has just really frustrated me. I'm not sure exactly what the CDC was thinking by elevating this study so much, or why it was leaked before publication. But it does look suspect to me.
The limitations discussed in the paper seem to have been completely ignored by the media. That isn't surprising at all, but it is a little suspiring that the CDC made a such a quick and resolute policy change based on a study with such obvious (and some might say peculiar) limitations.
Just as they had a good idea that vaccinating would effectively make the virus transmissible, just as they had a good idea about masks working and not working, just as they...
Not sure what point you are making, but vaccines work and are neutralizing the pandemic in places with sufficient coverage. The Delta variant does spread more aggressively to recovered or vaccinated people, but very, very rarely sends them to the hospital.
It is definitely not reasonable for a healthy young person who hasn't had COVID yet to skip out on the vaccine, given that the long term complications from COVID are almost certainly going to be worse than any (if that) associated with a vaccine, and getting COVID eventually is pretty much guaranteed now.
Israel is reporting the vaccine efficacy goes down by 50 percent in 3 months and down to 16 percent in 6 months. Now they are talking about a 3rd shot. If despite all this, the FDA somehow approves this, I doubt it will convince people. This is especially relevant for millions of people who have already gotten immunity via infection itself.
With that being said, this policy doesn't sit well with me. None of the currently available vaccines in the US are FDA approved. Of course, a lot of people have received those vaccines, but I also don't necessarily fault individuals for feeling hesitant (the nuance here is that I think people ought to get the vaccine). mRNA is a new, unknown technology, and the vaccine was rushed faster to public access than any other vaccine before. We have absolutely no idea if there are any long term side effects of these vaccines.
Both candidates Biden and Harris expressed the need for full trials and transparency in regard to the vaccine before they were in office, then changed their tune after (see: https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1416969060890210305). Biden says:
> When we finally do, God willing, get a vaccine, Who’s going to take the shot? Who’s going to take the shot? You going to be the first one to say, “Put me — sign me up, they now say it’s OK”?
If the vaccine is as effective as it seems, then this decision feels positively nanny state to me. It takes away an individual's agency to inform themselves of the risks on both sides and make an informed decision.