Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?

378 pointsNoRagrets840 comments

Assumption: it is available to everyone at the same time. No wait lines.

(Edited to add Assumption)

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I voted WILL WAIT simply because the idea of becoming Will Smith in my own "I Am Legend" city is appealing.

Unfortunately you'll end up stuck in there with mostly anti-vaxxers

So?

So it's going to be worse than a Zombie apocalypse because the only people left on earth will be braindead.

Got it

Keep in mind that Coronavirus vaccine are novel and not field tested, whereas other vaccines are field tested for decades.

I would think 30,000 people tested is pretty close to "field tested".

No, that is beta-testing. Field tested status will hopefully be reached next year when a year of successful deliveries to millions of people is achieved!

I know some people will be cautious about the vaccine, however I do think the majority of non-vaccinated people will be antivaxxers.

Fascinating to know HN is filled with them considering the downvotes my comment gathered :)

Doesn't it scare you more to actually be Will Smith in "I am legend"?

He's alone. All those other people were always hanging out together, chasing stuff, hiding from the sun.

He thought he was saving the world but it turned out there was a whole bunch doing just fine in Vermont.

That's the movie. In the book he realizes the mutants are the new humans, he is the outsider. To them, he is the monster, the one who steals their children while they sleep and experiments on them.

The title refers to he himself being a legend, something from a previous age.

I love the movie and love it, especially the DC with the additional endings but in this case the book really is the better medium IMHO

Out of the topic - I love that movie too, but never heard about that book. I'll try to look for it. Thanks!

I'll take it but only later in the year when it is more widely available.

People at high risk should go first, then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague).

Especially younger people, they need to get pricked. Do you really think they're going to avoid drinking close physical contact in spring? Me neither.

No need to worry about who should go first. They will be rolling it out based on need.

When it's available to you, go get it.

You're assuming distribution will work fairly and optimally. That's very unlikely, especially because the initial rollout will still be overseen by the Trump admin.

You’re assuming that everyone talks about the USA, but they probably don’t.

I find this on the internet, though usually reddit rather than here. I am forever asking folks if they mean the US, and trying to explain to them that there is... a rest of world

America is the largest (primarily) English speaking community in the world and both Reddit and YC are US companies. It's not surprising some assume the whole audience is American.

The US accounts only for about 10% of English speakers in the world.

Honestly it's kind of hard to know what the audience for a site might be. If people are active during your hours and in your language, the assumption is easy to make.

Oh boy, do I hope we don't talk about the US in 2021, anymore. It's been like a slightly different, ever the same car crash you drive by, every day. For four fucking years. I am sure my dopamine receptors look like old, all dries up raisins by now. I wish we as a species could agree stop all news for year or ten. Detox and heal, form new habits like life has value and shit.

It will be overseen by the individual states in the US.

You mean the admin that funded and fast-tracked the development and trials?

You mean the admin that encouraged people not to wear masks? The one that downplayed the virus at every opportunity? The one that held rallies without masks required, but still had people sign waivers in case they got sick?

Is it that one, or some other administration you’re thinking of?

You have a good counter. To add to "don't wear masks" though - WHO, CDC, Fauci all had poor and inaccurate guidance as well. It's like none of these experts have sane defaults when they don't know about something. Kind of hard to believe, really.

Then when they're wrong - they say "oh yeah we lied, we didn't want a run on masks for health workers". Such BS. They didn't know non-surgical/non-(k)n95 masks could be useful.

It's ok to admit when you're wrong. Better than saying you lied. Especially when there's enough distrust of government.

The US administration is culpable. But so are the experts. People need to be able to trust their experts.

Separately - I find it ridiculous we have people that are all about science, except when their agenda conflicts.

We end up with exceptions for religion. Exceptions for protests. Exceptions for filming movies. Whatever. If you have enough influence or can cause enough outrage about something you can get your way.

Nobody has the balls to take hard stances. They create these illogical plans based on who is influencing them.

Is there any official who was consistent and pragmatic with their pandemic plan?

The CDC officially recommended the use of face masks in public places on April 3.

That was forever ago and only a few weeks into the US crises(couple weeks after first lockdowns started). There absolutely was a PPE shortage at the time, and there absolutely was new information coming in about the efficacy of wearing non N95 masks. That's a lot of attribution to malice or incompetence for such a dynamic situation that shaped up in such a relatively short amount of time..

Meanwhile the current admin had their last maskless rally what, just in the past week or so?

My point is that if you're an expert that people are supposed to trust - you shouldn't make statements about things you don't know yet.

You seem to be ok glossing over that because you want to talk about the current admin when I'm not even talking about that. I agree with the culpability there.

Fauci - In March he said "there's no reason to be walking around with a mask" [1] The CDC and WHO were doing the same.

Also regarding the lie, "“We were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and public face head of the federal government’s coronavirus response, told The Street in an interview this week." [2]

You can go utilitarian if you want and say that's cool. Maybe you are ok with them lying to you because you believe them and think that was their only option. My point stands that there's enough distrust of the government. I don't believe they should do that, connect a lie to experts we are supposed to trust, and I don't believe that was their only option to prevent a shortage.

A lot of incompetence.

#1 not having enough masks in the first place, replenishing our supply

#2 talking about things they don't know and

#3 because they were incorrectly claiming cloth masks weren't useful for the public, they ended up parlaying that into a lie to try and prevent a shortage.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23hvLiA2akE

[2] https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/dr-fauci-admits-feds-initi...

No, they mean the administration that still hasn't provided for adequate PPE, that turned down the offer of another 100 million doses of the 95% efficacy Pfizer vaccine, which is available now, and instead bought 300 million doses of the Astra-Zenica 62% efficacy vaccine, which does not meet the task force's minimum efficacy requirements and will not be available until summer.

Wasn't minimum efficacy 50% or greater?

seriosuly? You're arguing that what they did was OK because it was a little above minimum rather than going after the stuff that will help people in the US? They bought 300 million doses of a vaccine that is more relivant to the developing world.....

And even then, the first vaccine to be approved wasn't part of the warp speed program.

Not sure why you would think a vaccine being managed by the government will be rolled out in a sane and consistent manner?

edit As was correctly pointed out, I should mention I'm speaking purely about the US and not any other country.

because believe it or not some people live in countries where the government manages to do just that.

I have already watched wealthy people in Germany and France and China skip the queue.

Outside clinical trials nobody in Germany or France has been vaccinated as there are no approved vaccines in those countries.

> nobody in Germany or France has been vaccinated as there are no approved vaccines

Which creates a force field around the warehouses in which it sits? Come on.

I guess I’ll revise to I know of people with substantial resources, hundreds of millions and billions at their disposal, who have been injected with something they believe to be the Pfizer vaccine.

I'm sure it's possible, but that means effectively that said person is now an undocumented trial participant. They have gotten injected with an unapproved medical product. That's a risk they've taken in order to get in early. The physician that administered it has also committed a crime that can cost them their license to practice.

There are easier ways for people in power to get vaccines. In China, the government has granted exceptional permissions to vaccinate a number of people with a vaccine that has not yet completed phase 3 trials. The list of people who qualify for that vaccine is said to be several million people long. It's much easier to get on said list in China than it is anywhere else. A number of other governments have also made exceptions for political leaders and such, treating them with non-approved medication or vaccines. For example, the sheikh of Dubai has been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine before approval (in a very public display of faith in said vaccine, in order to promote vaccination to the population). Some countries are saying they won't bother waiting for phase 3 trials to end on some products and will make vaccines generally available based on current data. This is the case for Russia (with Sputnik-V) and Morocco (with the Sinopharm vaccine). I consider it highly likely that their heads of state are vaccinated under an exceptional authorization.

JumpCrisscross is on point here, the level of naivte in the discussion is a little much.

This is a global pandemic, trials with 30 000 patients x 5, each one of those vials worth an absolute fortune, there's a 100% chance quite a bit of it has fled into the black market and a sophisticated one at that.

And to wit - there are a lot of people being 'officially' vaccinated right now behind the scenes they're not going to tell us about.

It might be dangerous for politicians to get it early, because if asked by reporters either they have to lie, or say 'yes' and then public outcry.

Special Forces, the Secret Service and some other security personal - just a some examples are going to get it long before we plebes. Among others.

To be clear, you know multiple super rich people that were able to get a vaccine out of a -70C warehouse and keep it refrigerated while it was delivered to them?

A more promising vaccine was developed in January 2020 and requires only -4C

https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(20)30027-1

and has had good results in trials from March.

The link in your comment doesn't have anything to do with what you've said.

OK, try this. https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/a-second-covid-vaccine-may-be...

Also, I'm guessing that JumpCrissCross doesn't know specifically that it is the Pfizer vaccine. It could be the Moderna one.

What do you mean, "try"? You said

> A more promising vaccine was developed in January 2020 and requires only -4C

Which vaccine is this? The link you just posted talks about Moderna, which started trials in August.

OK, try this: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac...

Also quote ..

>as early as July the MIT Technology Review reported that a group of 70 scientists in the orbit of Harvard and MIT, including “celebrity geneticist” George Church, were taking a totally DIY nasal-spray vaccine,

Thank you for clarifying. It's unfortunate it took so long for their trials to start.

This person specifically said it was the pfizer vaccine.

Skip the queue for what? Did they get the vaccine already before it was approved?

This is likely complete misinformation. Why is there so much misinformation on HN today?

> Did they get the vaccine already before it was approved?

Yup. It’s sitting in warehouses ready for distribution. No idea how. And no idea how they trusted it to be legitimate.

Supply chain integrity is a huge issue that normies take for granted. The surest way to lose normie friends is to point out how much faith people put in supply chains.

Or alternately, what the GP is really telling us is that the rich and powerful are easily duped into spending their money on placebos.

> the rich and powerful are easily duped into spending their money on placebos

That was frankly my line of questioning. But at least in the German case, the vials and packaging looked legitimate. And it was a reputable doctor administering it at their home who claimed to have directly procured it, though I’m sure that meant warehouse workers or something in the middle, so who knows.

If that is the case everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game and I can't imagine that this would be the norm, especially since I suspect the thieves will get greedy and screw up quickly.

> everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game

Agree. From how prevalently I watched tests get mis-allocated a few months ago, however, I’m not optimistic about enforcement. Particularly given the political implications it would have for the leaders in power, who are supposed to be doing a better job at this.

I think pre-emptive enforcement of something like this is extremely difficult without getting downright creepy and invasive. The best you can do is drop the hammer on anyone greedy and dumb enough to get caught - and I'm sure there will be some of these! But personally, I prefer vaccines where the chain of custody didn't require massive bribery and risk-taking.

Then you should contact the medical board or whatever the German equivalent is and tell them about this "reputable" doctor. They'd at least lose their license, and for good reason.

Looked legitimate? Do you have any idea how cheap a label maker is?

This could use some elaboration. Have you been in all three of those countries recently? Or "watched" meaning "saw people talking about online" or such? Or something in between?

I was in Germany in October and with the individual the day they took the second shot. France is a professional contact who mentioned it on the phone, as is China.

Same thing happened with tests a few months ago in Palo Alto. Billionaires with boxes of them at their homes while public stocks ran low.

If billionaires want to take part to the clinical trials go ahead. I mean they look for volunteers all the times.

PS: They were no COVID vaccine in October but clinical trials.

Even taking all this at face value, I think the reason so many of your comments are downvoted is that they're sort of off topic for the original suggestion, which was that the government should not be trusted to handle rollout of the vaccine in a safe or fair manner. That would include giving people in positions of power or with a lot of wealth some loophole to legally be vaccinated ahead of schedule.

What you're talking about is literally a black market. The people you are hanging out with are literally criminals, who are at best injecting themselves with an unknown substance provided by criminal doctors. Most of us probably wish to see such people prosecuted.

Okay so first of all I'm almost certain no approved vaccine existed in October, the first one started rollout this week, can you back this up with a source?

Maybe you knew someone participating in a study but that's not queue skipping.

Don't get me wrong I hate billionaires but this just seems like it can't factually be correct.

It doesn't need to be approved to be used, and the results of the trial were likely known for a bit now.

It's easily conceivable that billionaires have been pushing to be 'in the loop' on the meds from the start, and will have gained access long ago to whatever was used in the most promising trials. They can take it as soon as the insider doctors flag that it's ok, likely many weeks before any public announcement, and certainly before any governmental validation.

The value of said vaccines are considerable, there's massive money involved, I wonder if the R&D institutions themselves may have been able to find a loophole to allow for it.

With the sheer number of doctors and patients involved in the trial, and vials worth possibly $100-500K on the black market ... it's bound to get out.

And frankly, who cares? A couple thousand early vaccines is basically meaningless from a public health standpoint. It might even be moral to have publicly auctioned off the first mini batch and put the money into production. It's rational because the 'willingness to pay' of some billionaires for the almost arbitrary early access to a vaccine which will soon be cheap and plentiful ... works well as a 'win win' both for the buyer, and society.

Another possibility is these billionaires were scammed. It can't be too difficult to forge a label and place it on a flu vaccine vial.

They had boxes of which vaccine? They all need to be refrigerated. Is this something you saw, heard about second hand or something you read on an open internet forum?

> They had boxes of which vaccine?

Boxes of the test kits. I was giving precedence. Frankly surprised this is news to so many people. It’s well known in e.g. D.C. circles.

What you have said so far isn't consistent enough to make sense. You said boxes of the vaccine, now you are saying test kits. Test kits have been publicly available, there is no reason a company or a person couldn't buy them. That is not the same as having someone sneak a vaccine out of a -70C warehouse while keeping it refrigerated.

Sorry, you're right, I'm speaking about my country explicitly.

In the UK this is being managed by the NHS (someone correct me if this is incorrect). They do this every year for managing the Flu Virus.

In the UK I don't think anybody has a clue what anybody else is doing :')

I know the anti-administration circle jerk is pretty strong here but the administration actually doesn't have much of any control over the roll-out plan. I have physician friends with reservations for vaccinations as early as next week. There are hundreds of people working on the roll-out plan.

Trump isn't sitting in the Oval deciding which Walgreens are getting the vaccine when.

The US has managed to get the population vaccinated previously, and adults will be in charge of the executive again in a month or so. Unfortunately, that’s too late when it comes to ordering enough of the mRNA vaccines, but it will help to have the pandemic taken seriously.

Wait, I just realized now that universal free vaccination might not be a thing in the US. I live in a developing country with 200 million people, and the dozen or so most common vaccines are free to everyone, and everyone gets it and it is managed by the government. I'm sorry, but it works. Government here has /many/ faults, but managing vaccination for 200+ million's not really one of them.

The coronavirus vaccine is free in the US.

Pretty much, but it's not all covered by Uncle Sam.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is paying for the vaccine doses. It is up to individual's insurance plan to pay for administration of the vaccine. I'm not sure how that works for somebody who lacks insurance.

More details: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/28/health/cms-medicare-covid-vac...

Well, I mean you could go review their plans, if you are so concerned. They will begin vaccinating any day now.

If you're in the US, you can look at the federal planning as well as the plans for your state most likely. From what I've seen, they look pretty reasonable.

So your argument is "government bad". I counter with "government good". See how productive this discussion is?

I think his argument was "government is typically inefficient." is your counterclaim that government is typically efficient?

My claim is that "government bad" and similar broad brush claims about government are completely lacking in content.

But to your point, from sending humans into space to clearing snow off the roads, "government" absolutely destroys the private sector in efficiency and effectiveness for many important things. I'd rather let the CDC work on vaccine distribution protocols than leave it to Taco Bell.

> similar broad brush claims about government are completely lacking in content.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_government_respon...

Or, specifically:

> Due to the slow response to the hurricane, New Orleans's top emergency management official called the effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly desperate city.[10] New Orleans's emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy", he said. "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."[10]

On COVID:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelyncorley/2020/04/10/us-g...

I think that two colossal failures are enough to convey a "The government responds inefficiently and generally poorly to significant humanitarian issues".

> absolutely destroys the private sector in efficiency and effectiveness for many important things.

Maybe. Lots of private sector work is held up specifically _by_ government.

> I'd rather let the CDC work on vaccine distribution protocols than leave it to Taco Bell.

I mean... I agree. But I never suggested we leave vaccines in the hands of chain businesses. I just pointed out that, historically, the US government botches jobs like this spectacularly. The confidence lots of these comments have in the govt efficiently distributing the vaccinations based on need, to me, is not in line with the realities of the US government wrt issues of public health and safety.

As someone else already pointed out, my claim was in fact "government is massively inefficient", with a wealth of evidence to support this claim.

I mean....Republicans have spent 40 years breaking government so they can prove themselves correct.

this is exactly it. based on my demographic, i'm going to be one of the last in line.

I'm not going to be trying to jump ahead in that line because i'm not an asshole and i know other people need it more than I do. but also I'm a little bit of an asshole, so i'm kind of reassured to know that hundreds of millions of people will have gotten it before me, and if there are any issues there will have been plenty of time to sort them out.

The other half of it, for the early days at least, is the fear of lining up with hundreds of people who are more likely to be high risk people. Putting yourself in higher risk.

My pharmacy does COVID testing but only if you show no symptoms. The gov health networks tell symptomatic people to be tested in hospital set up centers. But high risk people are still high risk people, whether they are showing symptoms or not.

It's worth separating the two types of 'high risk': There's 'high risk of having a severe response to COVID' and 'high risk of getting COVID'. The former (e.g. elderly) are not always the same as the latter (healthcare workers) - but there are some overlaps (e.g. care homes).

My hunch is most of the queues for vaccines will be type A e.g. the elderly. Not necessarily more likely to have COVID, but more likely to be at risk of severe symptoms if they were to get it.

I have enough faith in my local health authorities to assume that the line won't be a literal lineup with hundreds of people.

If my local bike shop has figured out the concept of no-contact service appointments by now, I'm pretty sure the health department can do it.

idk about where you live but in Toronto 3+ million people will have to be vaccinated. It's going to be a chaotic mass experiment in the first few weeks. Which I intend to wait out.

CVS does a complete no touch COVID testing via the drive thru.

We don’t have that in then city I live in. I just remember the lines for H1N2 that went out the door and took an hour and required you to sit there for 10min in case you had a reaction.

> avoid drinking close physical contact

I’ve gone whole months without drinking close physical contact!

It's been glorious!

But I’m very nearby to thirsty now!

For the record, I mean not having to be social and abstaining from consuming alcohol. You people are no fun.

> I'll take it but only later in the year when it is more widely available.

Same. Just like first generation Apple hardware, even if looks as good as the M1, I'd rather have other people take the plunge before I do.

In about a year, I may. By then, we'll have 2 years worth of data from the test group - good enough!

If I perceive any serious risk, I won't. Being young and with no risk factors, I have little to gain - so the rational move for me is to leech off the group herd immunity effect.

So people, please, do the right thing and get vaccinated!! Protect your parents and your neighbors!!!

Ok. So you will stay in quarantine in tour home that whole time you wait

Everyone keeps saying this like it's a bad thing! I didn't leave the house for three months back in March, and it was great. The ability to work from home, a functioning Internet, and a pre-existing Brexit stockpile which came in handy unexpectedly early. I would happily be dropped to the bottom of the vaccine queue.

Oh dont get me wrong, i am also ok with quarantine and all. And if others in a more risky position than me need the vaccin they get it before me. But i was talking about the ppl that dont trust the first batches.

If it’s your turn to get the vaccin, take it or you stay in quarantine until you get it. That’s my take

You really get to see who isn't happy with their lives at home. Many for reasons I'm sympathetic to, but a comparable many who really need to reevaluate their shit.

What if every young person with no risk factors (that might be those more likely to be out and about spreading the virus) thought like that?. It sounds kind of selfish to encourage others to be your guinea pigs “so they can protect their parents”

> People who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague)

What if somebody has asymptomatic covid infection? He or she spreads it without intent, you can not blame them.

> What if somebody has asymptomatic covid infection? He or she spreads it without intent, you can not blame them.

Yes, given what is widely publicly known about the disease, I can very easily blame people who are involved engaging in high-spread-risk behavior despite being a-(or, more likely if they are actually spreading it, pre-)symptomatic and who are thereby spreading the virus they don’t know they have.

Harsh. Would you be comfortable convicting those people with attempted murder?

Not who you're replying to, but not for ignorance.

On the other hand, if someone knows they've been exposed and still behave carelessly, I'm absolutely fine with charging people with attempted murder, endangering the public health, or something similar.

I completely agree if you test positive and don't follow the isolation period then that's a problem. However op seems to be saying that if you go shopping (could be classed as high risk?), don't know you have the virus, and pass it on then that's a problem too?

What's the difference between passing this on unintentionally and passing any other virus or disease unintentionally?

> Would you be comfortable convicting those people with attempted murder?

No, attempted murder requires specific intent. For the most egregious conduct when they know they are at particularly high risk of being a spreader, even without intent, if someone actually dies, it might arguably be close to depraved-indifference rather than intent-to-kill murder, but more generally negligent homicide if they actually kill people and reckless endangerment, otherwise, would be closer selections from the generically-common American set of crimes. But I’m not arguing they should be criminally liable; saying that an act is not beyond moral blame is not the same that it technically fits — or, even if it does, should necessarily be prosecuted as — a crime.

If they know it’s spreadable without symptoms, unfortunate, as is is, there’s a level of fault. Stupid is not a term I would use, though.

Mingling with other people at a similar comfort level of contract Covid - that’s just adults being adults. That’s freedom.

But if those people then go to unavoidable places like grocery stores, they’re putting people at risk who don’t have much of a choice.

Is there not home delivery where you live?

Many people can't afford the extra cost of home delivery. And there isn't nearly enough home delivery capacity to support every shopper.

I doubt any one would spread with intent, which is probably criminal.

I was alluding to legal situation and term of Negligent homicide/Involuntary manslaughter; it is defined as "the killing of another person without the intent to kill, but where the person's death occurs as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant."

In the situation of Covid it would be something like infecting another person without the intent to infect, but where the person's health might be endangered as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant (the one who spread the virus).

How does this differ from any other communicable disease with a non-zero mortality that someone might spread either unknowingly or negligently? E.g. influenza just to name one.

When monsters like this in the world exist, I think your doubt is misplaced.

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/hiv-exposure-sex-crimes-sna...

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-03-18/japane...

They still haven’t definitively determined if it’s asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or both that spread the disease.

I sure can, if they're in the US. We're still in lockdown. My state just announced even stronger precautions which go into effect in about 6 hours.

If you are spreading COVID in the US, whether or not you're symptomatic, it's a conscious choice.

Of course you can blame them, given what has publicly been known about the virus for months.

This virus has been primarily spread by people who are pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, particularly indoors and maskless.

At this point, if you're indoors and maskless with anyone outside your family or "pod" you are completely culpable if you spread the disease. Probably not legally, but morally.

So people that are young that have next to no risk from covid should take a highly experimental vaccine with no longitudinal analysis. Not so great risk analysis there.

There will be other more traditional vaccines in the next couple of months

While noble to give to the more acutely affected people first, I think distribution at random makes more sense since that decreases the ability of the virus to grow. I'll let the epidemiologists be my guide however.

I believe the theory is, if the virus kills 85-year-old care home residents at 300x the rate it kills healthy under-30s, one dose given to the former is worth 300 doses given to the latter.

Depends on your goal. It the goal is to prevent deaths and reduce hospital occupancy then it make sense to give it to those most likely to die or to be hospitalized. If it spreads asymptomaticly that's not a big deal.

That only makes sense if you don't know anything about who is most at risk.

needs an edit for the assumption. also, half of the planet is already in Spring

Half the geography, maybe. Maybe 12% of the population (at most).

indeed, and if by geography you mean land mass, it's actually closer to 12% than half

Geographically, yes. By population... not even close to half.

it's a global pandemic

What does that have to do with the population distribution and the fact that most of the land and people are in the northern hemisphere (and therefore, objectively not in spring)?

the question should be what does covid have to do with that

> ”then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague)”

Many such people will have antibodies already. As do I. I’ll get the vaccine if it becomes a requirement to travel or whatever, but I see no need for it in the short term if you’re low risk and already had Covid.

Having antibodies does not guarantee immunity.

We don’t have enough information yet to say how protected someone might be from being infected again if they have antibodies to the virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...

How long IgM and IgG antibodies remain detectable following infection is not known.

...

it remains uncertain to what degree and for how long individuals with antibodies (neutralizing or total) are protected against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 or what concentration of antibodies may be needed to provide such protection.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/anti...

> "Having antibodies does not guarantee immunity."

Sure, but it seems to have worked so far. And if having natural antibodies doesn't give long-term immunity, then will vaccine-induced antibodies? We don't know.

> "How long IgM and IgG antibodies remain detectable following infection is not known."

Having detectable antibodies is not the same thing as immunity.

Fauci says reinfection isn't an issue he is concerned about.

There's no evidence that getting the vaccine doesn't mean you can't still be infected and spread it to others (you just don't get sick). So giving it to super social/stupid people up front may not help, because they can still spread it and probably think it's no big deal anymore because they're vaccinated.

It still helps the at risk people to take it asap as you won't be a carrier, doesn't it?

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but don't the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines not grant sterilizing immunity, aka you can still be a carrier if you're immunized?

This is my understanding.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03441-8

As far as I can tell this is currently unknown, it has not been studied.

My complete layman understanding would be that it should at least somewhat prevent the spreading because replication has to be limited if a vaccine works and replication is also an important part of giving the disease to others? If less cells are infected you can't cough out the virus as much? But the exact timeline is important here, obviously. Again, complete layman, I know basically nothing about this.

I predict that public employees will wrangle their way to the front of the line, needs be damned. They are very powerful in CA.

I predict cynicism will predict silly things.

Your opinion is not grounded in fact or reality.

Bizarrely, Prison Officers' unions are arguing that prisoners should get ahead of people who haven't committed crime to get the Coronavirus Vaccine. See this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/policing/2020/12/11/h...

This is just the beginning. There will be plenty of such public employee unions that will be jockeying for access over private citizens. And these unions spend huge amounts of money on their preferred candidates in elections to the State Legislatures, among other governments.

It's my civic duty to take it as soon as it's offered to me, even if there's some minuscule chance that there will be an averse side effect.

That said, I'll likely be towards the end of the line given my health and occupation.

Why is it your civic duty? What will you having this vaccine do for anybody but yourself?

Lowers the risk you are infected and infect other people and/or take a bed in a crowded hospital

> Lowers the risk you ... infect other people

Not necessarily:

> Pfizer chairman: We're not sure if someone can transmit Covid after vaccination

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25298299

People that don't know that might be confident they don't need to keep distance or wear a mask anymore.

This is old news, at least one vaccine is reported to provide sterilizing immunity, so the expectation is swinging towards the idea that probably they all will.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

> the impact of these COVID-19 vaccines on infection and thus transmission is not being assessed. Even if vaccines were able to confer protection from disease, they might not reduce transmission similarly.

> Challenge studies in vaccinated primates showed reductions in pathology, symptoms, and viral load in the lower respiratory tract, but failed to elicit sterilising immunity in the upper airways. Sterilising immunity in the upper airways has been claimed for one vaccine, but peer-reviewed publication of these data are awaited.

Italics are mine.

> These observations suggest that we cannot assume COVID-19 vaccines, even if shown to be effective in reducing severity of disease, will reduce virus transmission to a comparable degree. The notion that COVID-19-vaccine-induced population immunity will allow a return to pre-COVID-19 “normalcy” might be based on illusory assumptions.

I can't sense any tone of favorable expectation in the link you shared.

It's still your civic duty to get the vaccine just like distancing and mask wearing. Just because it's not proven to be a silver bullet doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

I never said otherwise.

The reason why I'm backing h3cate and the reason why he probably spoke up is that the notion that this is a civic duty invites the idea that it's sure to protect other people, when it hasn't yet been proven to do so.

Indeed, one should get it on the chance that it does, but I'm betting a lot of people will assume the vaccine suffices for others' protection.

The vaccine probably won't make any vaccinated a guaranteed superhuman which 100% breaks the transmission: even with 95% efficacy, we know that 1 in 20 will get the symptoms, for the start, and we know that the virus has to replicate in the body, at least in the upper respiratory pathways, before the immune system fights it down, also in the bodies of the vaccinated.

However, those who get the vaccine, by lowering their own chance to get sick, will contribute to the well-being of everybody: once most people are vaccinated the number of cases needing hospital has to eventually drop.

If the amount of virus produced in the body of vaccinated drops just for some percentage, the chance of transmission in some occasions will somewhat drop, even if it won't be zero. That will help everybody.

Still, there is reasonable probability that there will be a period of time when it will be hard to explain to many that they should keep behaving like potential virus carriers even after they received the vaccine (masks, distancing etc). If they do that then they will contribute to the earlier end of pandemic and directly and indirectly protect some vulnerable. By still behaving like potential carriers they will reduce already mentioned chance of transmission and contribute to health of everybody else. It's somehow non-intuitive. Also non-intuitive: some percentage of all vaccinated will with such behavior directly protect themselves too, simply because even 95% isn't 100% -- that 95% means one of 20 still gets sick, on average.

Then it won't be the first time during this pandemics that "dumbing down" the message isn't the best way to communicate.

Whoever cares about those who are most in danger, and even whoever just cares about the economy, should once again try to understand the nuances and then explain them to those who don't.

The bed point is good, what's the current data for ICU bed space in your country?

My county has less than 15% ICU bed availability.

And what was the average availability for the previous 5 years?

It was hovering around 30-40% 2 months ago, and was around 56% in May. Unfortunately historical data is hard to find since most gov/hospital websites only seem to show covid related data.

But that's because the pandemic actually emptied out most hospitals. ICUs are not built for Easter Sunday. Here's an article with pre-pandemic numbers: "Although average ICU occupancy was only 68% in 2005, some hospitals, especially academic medical centers, regularly face occupancy levels exceeding 90% (Wunsch et al. 2013), often requiring the rationing of scarce critical care beds."

http://www.elisalong.com/uploads/1/0/9/7/109701801/long_math...

Sounds like ICU capacity is roughly appropriate for normal-times peak demand to me.

The average occupancy you quote is consistent with the “2 months ago” capacity quoted by GP.

The pandemic emptied hospitals and put many other kinds of therapies, surgeries etc. on delay, because it's dangerous. Hence the need to get vaccinated so we can resume.

...No it doesn't. It only "decreases the likeliness of symptoms". It doesn't affect transmission.

Other replies to my comment already mention it (and have sources).

Its a good question let me answer - some people can't get the vaccine. Right now, it's banned for people with allergies. Babies can't get it. For some people, they can never get it due to their immune system.

Their only chance is never coming into contact with a contagious person, so that means as many of us need to get the vaccine as possible to ensure that doesn't happen.

Can anyone clarify what "allergies" mean in this context?

I have a (now really mild) allergy to some pollen; as s child it made me miserable for two months (late April to early June) with nose constantly running, puffy eyes.

Now I barely sneeze twice a day and only in some specific areas... never got tested so I don't know which plant I am allergic to (and if it is the plant getting extinct or my body getting better at handling it).

Would this prevent me from taking the vaccine?

From what has been reported in the UK the people having reactions are those that have to carry epi pens. However I am not a doctor, somebody who's studied medicine for years will be able to give you more info

Do you have a chicken egg allergy, or have had a significant reaction to any b other vaccine? The former and you probably can't take the vaccines being rolled out at all, the latter and you need to proceed cautiously.

The Pfizer vaccine is not egg-based. I don't believe any of the three in late stage trials are, actually.

No I assume pollen's fine, I would maybe double check literally at the point being administered with personally, but the news was about severe reactions, anaphylactic shock, people that need to worry about what's in what they eat. And it came up 'in production' because they didn't have anyone in the trial with such an allergy; surely they had plenty of hayfever in there, statistically.

Thanks!

Where is it banned for people with allergies? Source?

From the UK 2 days ago: “People with a history of significant allergic reactions should not have the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab, regulators say.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55244122

It will help stop the spread

Same as a mask? Keep him from transmitting it to other people.

Kind of, see other comment. There's no guarantee by Pfizer that the vaccine keeps people from transmitting. They've said that. It seems they've only tested that the one getting the vaccine doesn't develop symptoms. Hence h3cate's

> What will you having this vaccine do for anybody but yourself?

We don't know if the vaccine can substitute the mask for the time being.

You mean like any vaccine? They’re CYAing because no vaccine is 100% effective. It’s that simple.

Having the vaccine decreases the probability that I spread the virus.

Assuming this is a good faith question: while this is not guaranteed, it is highly likely a vaccine will prevent disease transmission (given how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines help create an antibody response to coronavirus's spike protein), breaking chains in viral spread.

Edit: correction to better reflect the mRNA vaccine mechanism.

Assuming this is a good faith response: Maybe and maybe not.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/health/coronavirus-nasal-...

> Without a strong mucosal response, injected vaccines may be less likely to produce so-called sterilizing immunity, a phenomenon in which a pathogen is purged from the body before it’s able to infect cells, Dr. Durbin said. Vaccinated people might be protected from severe disease, but could still be infected, experience mild symptoms and occasionally pass small quantities of the germ onto others.

I’ve also read that levels of exposure inversely correlate to outcomes: all else being equal, being exposed to less virus leads to better outcomes.

"What will you having this vaccine do for anybody but yourself ?"

COVID is contagious meaning it's as much about those around you as it is yourself.

Second, in order to beat COVID we have to have a certain immunity threshold i.e. 75% or whatever, meaning, your participation in that effort matters.

It is our 'civic duty' and I'm proud that the top commenter (at the moment I write this) has put it in those terms because that's a good way to put it.

* because there are people who, due to age or immuno-compromisation or allergic response, cannot safely take the vaccine, so those who can safely take it should help contribute to herd immunity

* because there are many people out of work whose livelihoods depend on the types of establishments closed or restricted by COVID (restaurants, theaters, etc)

* because safely interacting with other human beings in-person is generally good for mental health

How do you know if you cannot safely take the vaccine?

It's my civic duty not to, because people are trying to make it mandatory and we have to set a precedent that mandating it is unacceptable.

I honestly think I would have said otherwise a year ago. But after seeing the mishandling of COVID-19, I no longer have faith in my countries ability to use emergency powers scientifically.

You’re ignoring that you getting vaccinated is not about you, but about protecting others. As long as the R value is above 1, every person vaccinated is protecting others more than themselves. Even at 90% effectiveness herd immunity is critical to stopping the pandemic.

I fully support people’s right to opt out of social goods like the vaccine, but I’m afraid you should be refused access to many social services your presence would threaten: schools, transit, libraries, etc.

We accept that we have to get a license to legally drive a car on public streets, why not accept a vaccine to access public spaces during a pandemic?

Societies already compel a number of behaviors for unrestricted participation, I don’t see vaccines during a pandemic as being particularly onerous.

> no longer have faith in my country

I don’t know what country you live in, but many countries have the same assessment of many vaccines. Even if you distrust one country there are likely many more positive assessments you can turn to.

> You’re ignoring that you getting vaccinated is not about you, but about protecting others.

No I'm not. I'm not at all worried about contracting covid. At my age and health, the science is very clear that COVID-19 poses almost no risk to me. The only reason I'd bother with a vaccine is to protect others.

But protecting others doesn't just mean protecting others now. It also means protecting others in the future. Bad government is a _serious_ risk.

> I don’t know what country you live in, but many countries have the same assessment of many vaccines.

I wasn't talking about science in relation to vaccines. I was talking about science in relation to the entire policy. I do not believe my government (Canada) is making decisions based on science in its use of emergency powers in general. That's pretty clear by the fact that they're unable to justify so many of the decisions made with actual numbers and models.

Emergency powers are dangerous tools. We hope they get reserved for situations where the benefit is worth the risk. But after seeing how badly, and unscientifically. government has handled the entire pandemic, I want to see those emergency powers further restricted, so they aren't so easy to use in the future.

edit: Note how Trump has told the FDA chief that his options were to approve the Pfizer vaccine or resign: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/12/11/trump-steph...

What a terrible precedent for science.

> I do not believe my government (Canada) is making decisions based on science

As a Canadian currently living in the US, it seems to me like Canada has handled things better out of the two countries... less than half the deaths per capita, and they managed to avoid the hospital overloading that happened in some states. Putting a lid on international travel early on seemed to make a big difference for Canada, as well as having a nationwide quarantine requirement.

I understand the sentiment though. When I visited Canada this year, the border agent read me sections of the Quarantine Act and I was pretty astonished at the extent of federal powers and penalties that had been created on such short notice. The maximum penalty for violating quarantine is a million dollar fine and three years in prison.

> less than half the deaths per capita

There's so much luck involved in those figures at any given point, not to mention the influence of different definitions and testing strategies, that I wouldn't make the claim that Canada is doing better or worse based on stats like that. Just look at the huge differences between different states (and in Canada's case, provinces).

After all, two months ago you might have said that Sweden did much worse than the EU. Yet at this moment, the EU average reported deaths-per-capita is just slightly below Sweden's, with many countries significantly above.

Yeah, Canada was looking really good compared to the US back in the summer... but recently things have kind of gone to shit for both countries and the outcomes are pretty indistinguishable now. I don't really know enough to comment on what changed, maybe random chance is a big factor like you say.

The only good thing is that my family and friends in Canada have stopped making smug comments about the superiority of the country...

I don't think most Western will mandate it. But there is a strong logical case for doing so, or at least denying access to certain public spaces and services if you refuse.

I don't think our politicians generally have the balls to do something that controversial though.

Denying access to public spaces and services is one step removed from mandating it...

Yes. I think you could make a case for doing that. I don't think it will happen.

I think it depends on how many people take the vaccine willingly. If enough people are vaccinated, the spread will effectively stop and countries can start to reopen.

My hunch is that enough people will be willing to take the [apparently small] risk and we won't have to pressure anyone. Also, for at least the next few months we won't even be able to meet the demand for vaccines, so it'll be a while before that's a concern.

Yes, that seems to be the case. Society can tolerate a certain level of antivaxxers without losing herd immunity.

Why mandate what people would do voluntarily anyway.

I have become more and more skeptic regarding our governments. The people who failed to protect us and the economy, now are going to "sell" us the solution. Where is their part of the accountability of what's happening?

I have invested in big-tech and bio-pharma companies, so I should be happy, but I am not. I cannot be happy when so many people are closing their small businesses and so many others die because of how the whole situation was handled.

I do not have a problem with the masks or the fact that we eventually will all have to take a vaccine.

However, the problem starts before that and doesn't end with the first vaccine we are going to get:

- Phase 1: Governments fail to protect the people during February-March by not banning travel from the infected areas.

- Phase 2: People should wear masks, socially distance, close their shops, self-isolate, etc. At the same time medical stuff should overwork and over-risk their lives.

- Phase 3: People should take the vaccine. At a low price initially, but big pharma will increase it at some point, (when they are done with the mass beta testing).

- Phase 4: People should keep taking the vaccine (at least that's the main story for the moment). They might end up having to prove that with a "vaccine passport".

I don't have problem with Phase 2. I follow the guidelines, since February, before they were guidelines of any Western government. Apparently, Eastern countries have faced similar outbreaks and there was plenty of information on what people there do.

I don't have a problem with Phase 3, either. I want to do as much to protect myself and others.

However, the current narrative is that people who do follow Phase 3 and then 4 (assuming they can take the vaccine but chose not to) are the "bad" people who do not care about the others. And they should be marginalized and even ostracized from the society.

>>> Where is the accountability for the governments?

They, before everyone else, put peoples' health at risk.

But I forgot. They "saved" the economy (only of some big tech companies and, eventually, the big pharma).

You're the kind of guy who doesn't wear a seatbelt and speeds through red lights to protest the government telling you what to do? Or are you smart enough to understand why it's important that we have rules that mandate certain behaviors? (Not that getting vaccinated will actually be mandatory.)

Mandatory seatbelts happened slowly, not in an emergency, after years of debate and clear scientific research.

You can't compare that to the current situation with COVID-19. Remember that we've accelerated testing so much that we literally don't even know yet if these vaccines actually provide a mortality benefit: there just isn't enough data yet. You can't even compare this situation to other uses of vaccines. Not that I'm even aware of us ever successfully stopping a serious pandemic with a vaccine (with H1N1 the vaccines came too late to do much good, and the pandemic was much less serious than we thought).

Some countries simply can't deploy them yet, as their laws don't allow for emergency approvals: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/emergency-vaccine-approval-not-...

> after years of debate

And also years of screaming about rights being abused while people died unnecessarily in car crashes. Today, the people who resisted seatbelts are rightfully regarded as fools.

Are you an epidemiologist? How effective is your ability to personally judge the scientific debate here?

And those who volunteered to wear seatbelts before they were mandated were safer than those who refused. And saved society money and their friends and family grief by not dying in a preventable way.

So wear your seat belt, get your vaccine when offered, and when we’re finally able to safely go into restaurants, please do not annoy the hostess with long rants about how it’s your civic duty to not wear pants because the government mandates it. She’s not going to care about the political theory — she’s just going to need you to leave.

'Civic Duty' and 'mandatory' are separate things.

Thankfully, if we have enough rational adults who do their civic duty, then we'll be ok to let the tin-foil hats not take it.

> It's my civic duty not to, because people are trying to make it mandatory and we have to set a precedent that mandating it is unacceptable.

Feels a bit like not letting the taxpayer-funded fire department turn their hoses on your burning house because you're worried about "socialism".

COVID is your house burning down while your family and friends are still inside it. Maybe get on with solving that problem first and then worry about the (currently totally speculative) spectre of mandatory vaccines later.

I completely agree. The economy will recover when the pandemic ends, and I am going to contribute to the end of the pandemic in any way I can. Then we can end the massive business closures and massive eviction crisis that we're currently seeing.

Getting the virus under control is how we help the economy. It's not a trade-off between the two, it's both or neither.

I believe it is your civic duty to not go around infecting people. There is more than one way to achieve that.

Yes, of course, and I'm doing that. But staying cooped up at home and not going out at all is pretty stressful in terms of mental health. I can't wait to be able to go to restaurants and travel and see my parents and all of that.

You’re ignoring the knock-on effects of life during a pandemic. Vaccination is the only way to regain normalcy.

You can lock yourself in your home and literally never go near another human being, but is that really an alternative?

Because even going to the grocery store has risk.

So yes: never leave your home and never have company, or get a vaccine.

Think about it like one of the many vaccines you got as a kid and never, ever worried about because they never took up any mental space for you to be concerned about it.

I'm surprised to see such a high percentage of "NO" responses. I'm genuinely curious to understand why

Reasons I’ve heard:

- The rushed nature of the vaccines. “Fastest approved vaccine” is not re-assuring if you don’t understand what trade was made for that accelerated timeline.

- “I’ll just stay isolated until it dies off”

- “I don’t trust western medicine”

- “I don’t trust the FDA or big pharma”

- “I don’t care if I get covid . People at risk can take the vaccine”

Don’t forget how many people don’t even take the flu shot.

> Don’t forget how many people don’t even take the flu shot.

That's a funny comparison from a UK perspective where the flu shot isn't even offered to the general population (only the elderly, vulnerable or those whose work in healthcare or similar). I'd say there is much more reason to take the COVID vaccine than the flu shot.

Are you sure about that? I know you can easily get it in a local chemist for about a tenner, I’m nearly sure you can book it with your GP if you’re willing to wait a bit longer

What are you talking about?

Most companies offer the flu jab to their employees for free, and otherwise it's like a tenner to save yourself the risk of 2/3 days of feeling horrible.

Fwiw, every time I have taken a flu shot, it has guaranteed 2/3 days of feeling horrible.

That said, I don’t get the flu every year (iirc, I’ve had it twice in the past 20 years).

You forgot: - "There's no correlation between CO2 and temperature"

They spent 2 decades building technology platforms that enable rapid development of vaccines for specific diseases.

The specifics of the Moderna vaccine took 2 days once they had the genome of the virus. But there was an awful lot of work done before then.

Can you elaborate on what you mean it took 2 days? is this akin to a programmer creating a simulation for weeks and then taking an hour to ingest the input data into the simulation?

They got the genome (and I imagine other data) from scientists in China, identified what they believed would be a good target for the immune system and designed the mRNA sequence that would trigger immunity to that target.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7492076/moderna-coronavirus-vacci...

It’s very similar to your analogy. Basically, they have a ginormous database of how genes express themselves in various cell types, and they can run fancy queries against this database to identify which cells are most likely to be compromised by a virus of COVID’s shape.

From there, the process of developing the vaccine is training the body to fight blobs that function like COVID does.

The first shot introduces some COVID-shaped blobs, and your body develops some antibody factories to fight them, and keeps some around just in case the scary blobs come back.

The second shot introduces some more blobs, and your body reacts by producing even more antibody factories. “Trick me twice, shame on me”, in nature.

The hard work was building the database. Which was only possible because of the genome project and cell project.

They were also working on SARS and MERS vaccines prior to this so they had a really good head start that they should target the spike protein.

Plus:

- "These are the first mRNA vaccines ever released. We don't yet know the long term effects."

To biologists in this field, I suspect this statement reads something like “this is the first Python client for our Node gRPC service, we have no idea if the language interop will work”.

It ignores all of the hard work over literal decades that has gone into the work of developing mRNA-based medicine (gRPC and protobufs), which was developed literally for situations like Covid-19 (polyglot services communicating over network interfaces).

Yes, mRNA is basically magic from a distance. So is all of modern technology. But it’s built on and hardened by iterative experiments, not conjured from thin air.

Edit: before you downvote, these are reasons I’ve read/heard. They do not represent my own views.

1. This is an mRNA vaccine and is the first of it's kind to be widely offered. This appears to be different than the rest of the vaccines out there for other illnesses.

2. There isn't a perceived benefit for many people: the vast majority of people won't get sick or be impacted in any way.

3. It apparently doesn't stop people from getting or becoming transmissions vectors. So, if you get the vaccine and it makes you less sick, then you may take "riskier" actions than if you were to get it and actually have some symptoms. (IOW, why take it?)

4. Some people can't take it due to allergy concerns?

This is just what I've found in my online research.

Regarding point 3 - isn’t it just that they haven’t studied that yet? The trials for the mRNA vaccines did not test for asymptomatic carriers, so they don’t know if it prevents transmission.

Not sure about the testing, but as someone else pointed out to me, if you touch someone with dirty gloves, dirt will rub off.

I am not sure if asymptomatic transmission has been confirmed or not. I kept hearing that if you didn't have symptoms then you couldn't transfer it, but given the uptick in cases, it wouldn't seem like that is the case.

> I am not sure if asymptomatic transmission has been confirmed or not.

It's been confirmed, from early experience e.g. with the Diamond Princess and USS Theodore Roosevelt. It seems to be rare.

But paucisymptomatic transmission -- transmission before symptoms have manifested in people who will eventually be symptomatic -- is much less rare. So just quarantining people with symptoms doesn't work.

> But paucisymptomatic transmission – transmission before symptoms have manifested in people who will eventually be symptomatic – is much less rare.

The definition you give is for presymptomatic not paucisymptomatic (the latter is basically having trivial/mild symptoms that don’t raise complaints), but transmission in both cases is a significant risk, much more so than true asymptomatic transmission.

Yes, sorry for eliding this.

> 3. It apparently doesn't stop people from getting or becoming transmissions vectors. So, if you get the vaccine and it makes you less sick, then you may take "riskier" actions than if you were to get it and actually have some symptoms. (IOW, why take it?)

From what I've seen this is not established at all. They are careful to say that they don't have conclusive proof that the people who were in their study were not ever contagious - but that doesn't mean that they were contagious either.

They have simply called out that further studies will be needed before we can say whether and to what degree.

It's also not binary. Even if a vaccine is not 100% effective at preventing asymptomatic disease and transmission, it's likely to have some effect.

And, of course the #1 reasons even in tech circles: ”BILL GATES IS GOING TO MICROCHIP AS ALL” or ”Covid is just a flu, it’s not going to affect me”

There are like 5 vaccines

Doesn't that concern ironically mean we should take the Russian one?

Bill Gates would only pollute the Moderna one, if those theories factored in geopolitics at all.

Please don't set up strawmen just to knock them down. It's too easy to cast everyone who has some rational scepticism as nutjob's, but that just alienates those who could otherwise be persuaded by civil discourse.

I'm not setting strawmen, this is my actual experience. Tech is not immune to this kind of conspiracies.

There's a difference between having seen examples of it, and of it being pervasive and a dominant force. All too often, we attack the weakest arguments of our opponents and ignore the more sane opposition.

There's good reason to ignore the nutjobs and focus on the rational opposition, steel-manning our foe so to speak. It makes our thinking more clear and our arguments stronger.

Even bothering to oppose the insane elements by definition does not convince anyone of anything, since no sane person on either side agrees with the insanity. All it does is momentarily make us feel superior, but it's a fleeting and counterproductive endeavour.

You do yourself a disservice when you mock people who hold opposite viewpoints.

I'm sorry but I'm going to mock anyone who suggests that Bill Gates is going to microchip people through the vaccine. These people are choosing to ignore reality, and should be put in the same boat as Flat-Earthers.

On the other hand, people are of course free to have a healthy scepticism about a new-form of vaccine, and I will happily respect that.

The microchip is not a opposite viewpoint. It is a fantasy that is trivially debunked.

It is on the same level of the viewpoint that the vaccine is unicorn blood.

Indeed the microchip is not the opposite viewpoint. The opposite viewpoint is "I won't take the vaccine" or "I won't take the vaccine right away". GP is saying the #1 reason for that viewpoint is that people think they'll be microchipped.

People keep forgetting that the vast majority of people under 45 that get in never have any idea that even had it and over 97% of deaths are people over 45.

Some of us are over 45. Some of us have regular contact with people over 45. Some of us know people who've died of COVID who are under 45.

Not trying to be snarky, but just curious: do you know anyone under 45 who has died from it?

I know someone who is under 45 who got it & had to be put on a ventilator. It was close, and thankfully, she made it.

(I also know someone else under 45 who got it, and was symptomatic.)

Yes. Fuck all those guys over 45. How dare they continue living.

In reality it's more like over 80. Yes the incidence of severe cases does go up with age, but it's the very elderly who are most at risk. I'm 54, I had it, and it was a couple of days of slight nasal congestion and a very mild sore throat. If it had been any other year I wouldn't have paid it any mind at all and would have probably attributed it to the dry winter air.

My dad is in his 50s and he was in the hospital for a week near death on a ventilator. I know within 2 degrees of separation at least 6 people who have died. All were in their 50s and 60s. How they commit the crime of being older.

People keep forgetting that death is not the only effect this virus has and many of the side effects afterwards are quite bad.

There have been more than a few cases with people losing taste/smell, heart and lung damage that may be permanent, and other nasty effects that we are still learning about, truly heartbreaking stuff when it is young people who were training for or attempting to become high performance athletes their entire lives just to have it stripped away because of this virus.

People keep forgetting that mortality isn't the only side-effect of this disease.

Who the hell do you think looks after the old and vulnerable? Mostly the under 45s! Therefore the under 45s should really be making sure they don't get it.

1. mRNA technology has been in varying phases of human trials since 2013. The trials conducted by Pfizer and Moderna were absolutely massive compared to normal study sizes. While this will be the first mass-distribution vaccine using the technology, it's not untested. Further, the results so far suggest it's far more effective than the Oxford vaccine.

2. It's really curious to see people saying, on the one hand, that they're uncertain about a vaccine because of some unexpected long-term impacts, and then saying on the other hand that they're unconcerned about unexpected long-term impacts from a brand new and as-yet-poorly-understood disease. There are still a lot of question marks about covid-19 and researchers are still discovering far more "quiet" impacts in apparently healthy individuals, including blood clots and pericarditis.

2a. Overall though I'm in favor of anybody avoiding this vaccine that wishes to. The disease would continue to disproportionately affect the populations of people who believe it's a hoax, or believe it's not a serious health risk, or believe it's a conspiracy, or believe the vaccine is a conspiracy, or believe that vaccines in general are conspiracies -- and we could do with fewer of those people.

3. As two other people have already pointed out, the researchers have only been cautious about not stating something that they don't know to be factual. It's funny: when researchers are cautious, people read too much into it and draw bad conclusions, and that leads to the kinds of research press releases that other people then criticize for making statements unsupported by evidence. Researchers have repeatedly stated in various media that there's no reason for them to expect people to be infectious after taking the vaccine, they merely haven't tested for this specifically.

4. The people they're talking about here are the sort that need to carry an epi-pen with them wherever they go. If you are one of those people, then yes, at this time there's an uncertain amount of risk associated with these vaccines. The situation is still developing and there should be better information available as the vaccines are distributed.

Hi,

Your post is insightful, but it could really do without the inflammatory death-wishing in 2a.

I appreciate your direct but non-confrontational reply. FWIW I'm quite carefully staying behind the line of "death-wishing", in "it is what it is" territory.

Multiple social issues throughout 2020 have together completely exhausted my usual compassion and optimism towards people. 300,000 Americans and 1.6 million people worldwide are dead but many millions more still don't see this as a public health emergency. Moreover, beleaguered medical workers have been harassed everywhere online and fist fights and other assaults have been reported across the country that were started by wearing a mask. And then there's the cyclopsian intersection in the venn diagram of "people who are aggressively anti-mask" and "people who are unconcerned with or even violently opposed to the health and safety of anybody outside their tribe".

From an entirely pragmatic standpoint, the freedom to choose one's own destiny is arguably the most important human right. All of the information necessary to protect yourself and those around you from this disease is now widely available. Most people who wish to minimize their risk of exposure can do so, with the notable exception of the many medical workers who have been, not asked, but demanded, to put themselves at risk in the service of people who believe those same medical workers are part of some vast conspiracy.

So, I'm asking honestly here, to you or whoever else: convince me to care about the plight of terrible people.

wishing someone is not around != a wish for that someone to be dead.

Do these vaccines prevent a person from spreading the virus? I've heard a number of times that these will prevent the person who got the vaccine from getting sick, but that it won't prevent them from spreading the disease. If that is the case then I could understand why a young healthy person would not want the vaccine as the risk to them from covid is extremely low.

Why would getting the vaccine increase your risk at all?

The vaccine is not field tested, so there is a risk in the unknown. The Canadian government at least is warning that some people may have an allergic reaction and are creating a tracking database to find out who is most at risk to such. Also, people are not perfect, so the entire supply chain poses some risk in delivering a bad batch of vaccine.

In short, you should not be injecting things into your system unless you really need them.

> The vaccine is not field tested

what exactly would you call phase 3 trials for the various vaccines that were done on thousands/tens of thousands of people?

Not enough to know with absolute certainty what will happen when millions of people get it. Especially unforeseen reactions that take several years to appear.

As much as you trust each of the (5?) vaccines, you yourself can not know for certainty.. there is some doubt. You may judge that that uncertainty and risk is minimal and well worth taking the vaccine, another completely rational person may decide that it is not worth the risk.

The point of my post was that there is real and legitimate risk, be it ever so small. Anyone who pretends there is zero risk to the vaccine is misrepresenting the truth and doing a disservice in the effort of persuading rational adults that vaccine delivery is being lead in an honest and forthright way.

Well luckily we _do_ know what happens with a great deal of certainty when you get actually infected with covid, and it turns out it sucks pretty hard.

i find this "better the devil you know" mindset really weird when the "devil you know" is an extremely infectious virus that has killed _three hundred thousand_ americans (not to mention more worldwide), and thousands more by the day.

these hypothetical vaccine side effects that have not come up during any of the trials that have been going on for _months_, across thousands and thousands of participants, would have to be pretty insanely bad in order to outweigh the negatives of millions more people contracting the actual virus.

Those are certainly arguments you can make.

But you have to acknowledge that there are huge incentives for the drug manufacturers to have a successful test and a healthy scepticism until they have been truly independently verified isn't unwarranted.

Also a pure, as tested, vaccine doesn't magically appear for your inoculation, there is manufacturing, and delivery, and other potential contamination points along the way. It means what goes into your system isn't necessarily what has shown to be safe; not a huge risk, but a risk nonetheless.

It would have made me feel better if you had started out your reply by saying.. "yes there are risks to this vaccine, but..". That way I would know we're working from the same starting point and I could trust that your views are calm and considered, and that you accept the reality that there is indeed risk to taking a foreign substance into your bloodstream.

Many of us know people who have had Covid, and it wasn't a very big deal. Even fat old Donald Trump shrugged it off in a few days; granted he had the best medical care possible. That's not to diminish the loss of loved ones that have surely been taken by Covid. But it can make one question the statistical importance of Covid in the larger scheme of things.

Again, i'm not really arguing with your points, just that they need to be presented with honesty, we shouldn't put a religious halo around vaccines; we should be clear about the risks too.

Trump received the Regeneron antibody treatment. He did not shrug it off. There aren't enough such treatments for everyone who would benefit from it.

That's really not the point.

Regardless, for some rich people those treatments _are_ available. And that may well lead them to the completely rational choice of avoiding the risks associated with a vaccine.

Everyone is different, and can arrive at different decisions completely rationally.

A large portion of those who get COVID19 do not even feel any symptoms.

You have a 0.5-1.0% chance to die from COVID-19, a higher chance to be hospitalized and experience serious consequences from that. And the chance to contract the disease is very, very high in many countries right now.

The vaccines have been tested in 30-40,000 people each. The typical serious side effects for vaccines are something like 1 in a million or 1 in a few hundred thousand. Even if the vaccine had an usually high level of side effects, odds are it's still far, far less harmfull than contracting the actual disease.

0.5-1.0% chance to die from COVID-19 assumes an even distribution across all people infected. Which just isn't true, it very much depends on your current state of health.

And again, my main point is that we should be honest about the risks and not pretend they're zero.

I looked this up for a comment some time ago, and for someone in the 20-30 years range, the chance to die was somewhere aroun 1:10,000. That's still far above what you would usually expect for serious side effects of a vaccine (and I'm comparing death with serious side effects right now, so the actual comparison would be even more favorable to the vaccine).

I'm not in the risk group, and I would take the vaccine right now if it was offered to me. Even in the worst case the potential risks are below what a real COVID-19 infection would entail.

It's not just age range, it's individual health, down to the specific person, not a group. Also you have to multiply the risk by the chance that you will actually contract Covid-19, which is very dependent on lifestyle etc.

I'm not trying to talk you personally out of getting the vaccine, I don't think it will turn you into a zombie or some foolishness. I'm just asking you to understand that it is a rational decision for some people to arrive at a different answer.

If you live in the US or in Europe, I don't think the chance to contract COVID-19 is low enough to get anywhere close to where you could make that kind of argument. We're really good at developing vaccines, and they're a category of drugs that is by far the most sensitive to any kind of side effect. This disease is dangerous enough and also widespread enough that I don't see any plausible argument that would make the vaccine more dangerous than the disease.

And the risk is actually almost entirely age-dependent, the other risk factors weren't that significant in studies.

It's not the age of somebody that determines how the virus reacts. The statistics you're referencing categorize age as a proxy for some real-world vulnerabilities that vary in significance by age. That is, worse outcomes due to Covid exposure tend to be more prevalent as age advances.

But that says absolutely zero about any single individual. Each individual, regardless of age group, can have more or less susceptibility than their age group. It is an _individual's_ health and other risk factors that decide the outcome for that individual -- not their membership in an age category. Therefore, each individual must decide their own risk tolerance and remediation plan.

CDC best estimate IFR for COVID-19 is as follows:

0-19 years: 0.00003

20-49 years: 0.0002

50-69 years: 0.005

70+ years: 0.054

So only age 50+ have at least 0.5% chance to die from COVID-19. These numbers also include everyone in that age range, e.g. the obese, diabetic, immunocompromised. If you know you are healthy, your odds are better. As a healthy 27 year old and something of a fitness fanatic, my odds appear to be 99.98% of surviving at minimum. Due to the reasons I just mentioned, in addition to being on the younger end of the 20-49 age range, my odds are actually quite a bit better than 99.98%, although I don't know the exact number. I'll roll those dice over a vaccine that has been rushed, and will get the vaccine some years in the future if no problems emerge.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Sure that's possible and you are well within your rights to choose this path of action.

But – excuse me for putting this bluntly – it is obviously very selfish. If everybody calculated their risk like you do, the result would be that the pandemic drags on for a few years, a lot of preventable deaths happen + probably a terrible economic downturn. You have the choice to sacrifice a little bit (meaning a tiny chance of vaccine complications) of your own health for the greater good – or you can slack of others doing it for you. Because that's what's going to happen, most people voting "yes" on this thread are making the same calculation you are but deciding to sacrifice a little bit of their own health.

Time has value, it takes time to get it. Also there are unknowns to any new medication and side effects of some vaccines. Of course there's also unknowns to getting covid, but it's at least internally consistent to favor one over the other.

Because it's a new vaccine and the mRNA ones are a completely new type of vaccine. They seem safe in limited use over a short period of time, but we don't know yet what effects they may have in the future.

Also there is an aspect of if you are young and healthy your risk of serious effects from covid is low. Even if your risk of problems from the vaccine is low, if your risk of serious effects from the disease that the vaccine treats is also very low then why bother taking any action.

Nothing is 100% yes or no, but it's safe to say that the vaccine helps reduce the spread of the virus.

Vaccinated people can spread the virus on a (there's a better term for this) surface level, which is why it's still important for them to wear masks and wash hands.

Hypothetical example of how it can spread: an infected person sneezes on a vaccinated person right in the face. That vaccinated person then rubs his face all over an non-vaccinated person. Really high chance the non-vaccinated person is infected.

I also want to emphasize that a vaccinated person that came in contact with the corona virus is far less contagious than an asymptomatic person.

>>Vaccinated people can spread the virus on a (there's a better term for this) surface level<<

i think you are looking for "disease vectoring"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(epidemiology)

For young people, the risk of death is low, but even young people can suffer from long Covid: <https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4470>.

I have heard rumors in the medical field that it’s possible that having had COVID might be considered a preexisting condition in the future. Imagine having COVID now, fully recovering, then developing an unrelated lung disease 10 years later just to find out that insurance won’t cover anything to do with it because they’ll just blame it on COVID.

I've heard rumors in the medical field that it's impossible that having had COVID might be considered a preexisting condition in the future.

That paper doesn't show what you're claiming, because it lacked a control group. They explicitly say so:

"The authors observed that neither symptoms nor blood investigations were predictive of organ impairment.

“Causality of the relationship between organ impairment and infection cannot be deduced, but may be addressed by longitudinal follow-up of individuals with organ impairment,” the authors said."

The paper took 201 people who self-reported as long Covid sufferers, and found that 66% of them had something that could be characterized as "organ impairment" when a whole-body MRI scan was conducted. It's not at all clear that this would differ significantly from any random group of people whom you stick in a whole-body MRI scan (let alone a group of people who had recently recovered from any other viral illness). Which is why we don't do them.

Thus far, ~all such "long Covid" research has been anecdotal and/or uncontrolled. The evidence quality is quite poor.

We know about as much about “long covid” as we do about the long term effects of the vaccines. So surely if you’re going to make that argument it should apply both ways?

Early thinking is that the virus still lives in the throat and can still be passed if you have had the vaccine. You won't get sick but the whole problem with this virus is people spreading it because they have not yet developed symptoms. Short answer, it doesn't look like it no.

I've had Covid-19. As far as I know we still don't know if having it leads to immunity but wouldn't having it and recovering be "better" than a vaccine? If so, why get a vaccine for something you are immune to?

There has been people in several countries who have got Covid twice so having it does not equal immunity.

No. You’re talking about 2 or 3 cases out of millions. It’s very rare to get it twice.

As far as i know, there has been multiple cases in Finland alone. There has been multiple news reports regarding to it. We just don’t know the extent of it yet.

If your immune system failed to get trained by the virus, wouldn't that apply to the vaccine also?

No. The vaccine is a concentrated flood of the proteins that are necessary for the immune system to target the virus.

There are vaccines that cause better immune response than the disease it protects against.

Those "repositives" are not infectious cases though.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

"There was a low repositive rate in recovered COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. Results of virus culturing and contract tracing found no evidence that repositive cases in recovered COVID-19 patients were infectious, which is consistent with evidence from other sources."

Same paper also states that asymptomatic cases are much less likely to be infectious.

Better to say the vast majority of them are later viral shedding or very minor, probably not contagious cases.

There's probably been a few reinfections, and some decent documentation of a couple. If you repeat an experiment millions of times on diverse individuals, you can expect some variation.

There have been cases when genomic analysis was performed during the two infections and it "showed genetically significant differences between each variant associated with each instance of infection".

So reinfection actually is possible.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

As far as I know the number is way lower than the immunization of the Vaccines and the false positive rate of the tests.

Having it and recovering from it still occasionally leaves your body altered/damaged in a way we're not sure how to predict/treat. As far as we can tell, the vaccine does not cause the same amount of damage that actually suffering from the disease can cause.

Getting it early and getting immunity works great for fairly mild things like chicken pox, which is less likely to leave permanent/long term damage. But not for something where so many people report that they've still never fully recovered from even months later.

I had it in March at age 33 and I’ve got this barb? Maybe you’d call it in my right lung. X-Rays showed up fine but still noticed it for months where it was a constant pain every breath, even though oxygen levels are fine. It’s finally only a sometime thing now instead of every waking moment.

My wife didn’t get off so “easy”, she coughed for about five months straight until one day she just finally stopped coughing.

I’m in the same boat. I had it and it was super mild so I already...

- have very likely immunity or at least a much better response the next time

- despite having been exposed to it the first time having had super mild symptoms so I don’t need protection from a non threat

- coronaviruses mutate a lot slower and people who had sars-cov-1 still had a t-cell immunity even 10 years after their infection and there is little reason to believe that sars-cov-2 couldn’t be similar

Given that I won’t be offered the vaccine for a long time I luckily don’t have to decide and know that I won’t have it at least until enough production testing was done.

> it was super mild

It might be that weaker cases give less immunity. If you were exposed to smaller amounts of the virus in the first case.

But I was exposed to a really high dose as my wife had picked up COVID at work and I was caring for her, even sleeping with my face right in front of her face all night probably getting exposed to a shipload of virus with every single breath.

There are some diseases where the vaccine is more efficient at promoting an immune response than the actual disease.

Tetanus is the most well-known example here. That's why it makes sense to vaccinate you even after potential exposure.

Tetanus is highly fatal, 2015 saw 209,000 infections with 59,000 deaths. That includes people who are treated with the vaccine after potential exposure.

It's not a good example of something to which people develop natural immunity, because if you are infected, you'll probably die, and even if not, suffer life-changing injury.

I see immunologists stating that the immunity from the vaccine is likely to be better than from infection (even saying directly that people that have been infected should still get vaccinated).

Edit, here ya go: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-covid-survivors-immun...

> It looked at all these components of immunity up to eight months after infection and found that some of these "memory" cells responded to the coronavirus, or parts of it, in more than 90% of people, said Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist who participated in the study. "This is good news," she said. The decline in response was slow, a sign that immunity could last a long time. But Weiskopf emphasized that "nobody knows" how things will look in a year or 18 months.

> Worldwide, there have been less than 30 cases of known re-infection among COVID-19 survivors, although more are suspected. Experts said the numbers would likely be much higher if most people had not developed immunity.

> "I think that tells us that there's some level of immunity after you've recovered from the primary infection," Wherry said. "We don't know how durable that is."

It's hard to read even this article as anything but "It seems there is a high level of immunity, but we don't know for sure, so let's be careful."

I don't know any reason to say otherwise, except if you are afraid people will get infected voluntarily for immunization.

Another question you may ask is why get a vaccine for something your body has proven it can fight?

Because you can unknowingly transmit it to someone who simply cannot take the vaccine (allergic people, pregnant women, etc).

True. I was just trying to provide an alternative to the "I got it so I'm immune" argument.

I’m no anti-vaxxer, but the current situation feels like a scam to me. “Hurry, take this vaccine, save lives!” I’m being asked to suspend critical thinking and accept a chemical into my body under duress and time constraints. “Take it now, this is your time! It’s finally available to you. Don’t you want to resume your normal life?” I’d rather wait and see, even if waiting carries a small, known amount of infection risk. That’s much better than the unknown risk of taking a brand new vaccine in hurry. “While supplies last!”

This sums it up pretty well. I'm not opposed to vaccines, and probably have had a lot more than the average HNer, but I feel like I'm being "sold" this a bit too hard... question everything, as they say.

There is an obvious reason you are being "sold hard". Because this vaccine will save lives and end the pandemic. Just because some person or group conveys urgency doesn't mean you're being scammed or that they're lying.

It's both sad and funny to me that this is the reaction people are having.

Well, there IS a pandemic. So there IS a good reason for "selling it" "a bit hard". It will literally save lives and end a world-wide economy-crippling disease.

Now I agree the process was quicker than usual, that it brings up a lot of questions. But it's the studies we should question, the efficiency, the long term effects. The way it's sold and "advertised" is just equally as dramatic as the disease it's trying to stop, in my opinion.

"It will" is a strong choice of words. The root of the matter is I don't, personally, trust the people doing the selling.

It varies by region but where I'm from, back in April-ish, we were sold: "just two weeks of lockdowns and the virus will die out! everything will be back to normal!". So we did. Businesses shut down, transit basically stopped running, our downtown core was a wasteland. Everyone parroted "stay safe, stay home" back and forth at each other and sat at home for a few weeks. It sucked, everyone had a bad time, lots of busineses had to go out of business, but we all were told it was for the greater good and it'll be worth it. And... it didn't do shit.

Now here we are again. Odds on, in a few months, it'll be either "turns out this vaccine doesn't protect you as well as we thought", or "turns out it only protects you for six months", or "turns out the virus mutated so the vaccine isn't effective at all anymore"? In exchange for, what, testing not only a new vaccine, but a whole new method of vaccination on yourself? Whether that's worth it to you or not is a personal choice, but "it will literally save lives and end [the disease]" is firmly TBD.

Out of curiosity, where are you from, that you were told the virus would "die out" after just two weeks of lockdowns?

And also, can you back your claims that the spring lockdowns "didn't do shit"? That's not at all what the numbers show.

I don't know where you're from that you heard that. But from where I'm from, we were told that:

- it was just only the beginning of a massive sh*tstorm, not just "2 weeks of lockdown and we'll be ok"

- the lockdown in April was to mitigate as much as possible the first wave

- a second wave would almost definitely arrive in the winter (hello! it's here! we're in lockdown again, pretty much as planned)

- nothing will be back to normal before we get the vaccine, and even then, it would take months if not years for it to be a thing of the past, and that until then we'd have to do our best to follow the guidelines.

You can't compare scientific proof that something works vs. a government decision taken to "mitigate things".

The spring lockdown helped free beds in hospital and ultimately it saved thousands if not millions of lives worldwide. Period. This is UNDENIABLE.

Also, maybe if some people weren't so doubtful that these decisions were for their own good and stopped throwing tantrums about their "fundamental right to breathe air", we wouldn't have had a second wave at all. Maybe.

That doesn't make any sense. The worse the virus is the less you should need to "sell" the vaccine.

If it was a rushed vaccine to prevent you from becoming a zombie you wouldn't need to sell it.

If it was a vaccine for the common cold you would need to sell it.

Of course, you're right, it doesn't make sense and that's not how it should work. Unfortunately, science and medicine are fields that are largely driven by money. Laboratories don't really care about a vaccine for a disease in Africa that nobody will be able to afford or invest in. They will turn to better markets. There are multiple reasons, the most obvious one is that they're private companies, their goal is to make profit. The second one is that it's a field that requires a lot of resources. So you need a big ROI.

One of the reasons the vaccine for COVID-19 was produced so quickly is not because of some sort of conspiracy, like they had the antidote all along or something. It's just that when there's a real buck to make, it becomes a race between these big pockets companies.

That's one side of it and I don't know enough to cover every aspect of it. Also, it's just my opinion of course and how I see this.

Edit: I'm doubtful about a zombie vaccine being given for free. Most likely in a Walking Dead type scenario, where the economy would completely go down, there wouldn't be any financial incentive to keep the searches going, and no money to back up the researches either. So we'd be scr*wed I think. :o)

There’s been far too much ‘noble lying’ going on during the pandemic for me to have trust in any of these institutions anymore. Aside from the fact that I’d be skeptical of any drug that was rushed to market (especially if it was the first of its type to ever be brought to market), I simply don’t trust anybody involved to be honest about its safety. Even the reporting on how the roll out is going is highly questionable. All reports of potential side effects are disclaimed with weasely statements “no evidence it’s linked to the vaccine”.

If I were in an at risk group I might have a different perspective, but as it stands I’m happy to wait and see how it goes. If I end up never having to take it, even better.

Now that the vaccine is rolling out, all I hear is that only select groups are getting it now, and that the majority of people must wait. By the time most people even get the option to take it, thousands of others will have tried it. There is no rush.

If you're not in one of the early target groups, I would assume that tens of millions will have received it before you - in the USA alone. We should have a lot of data to look at in a short amount of time.

It has been through human testing for 10 months or something like that? We've also had stay at home and social distancing guidelines for about the same amount of time and I think we've had the opportunity to see what effect that's had. I think in this case what you're highlighting is number of people vaccinated, so you'd like to see more people vaccinated first, rather than increasing the duration of analysis of the existing people that have been vaccinated.

> accept a chemical into my body under duress

Yeah, you're an anti-vaxxer.

Please don't post flamebait or unsubstantive comments, and especially not personal attacks, to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I ignore all of the COVID vaccine messaging histrionics. The level of ignorance and political maneuvering out there is astounding.

When I'm afforded the option to get the vaccine, I'll make an assessment of risks based upon data we have at that time vs the risks of contracting COVID.

If I had to make that decision today, I'd take the vaccine. But by the time I'll likely be able to get it in February or so, we'll have millions more data points that I'll be able to consider.

Dito on this. Also what happens after the vaccine? Is there even something like "after" the vaccine, we are supposed to get this vaccine every 4-6 months until what?

A series of questions/answers I've had with doctors and nurses and quite a few intelligent and educated people. (PhD's, MD's and RN's included)

Q: Does all medicine go through a rigorous efficacy testing that is certified by the FDA?

A: Yes.

Q: Do vaccines?

A: No.

Q: Why?

A: It would be unethical.

This is surprising to people who don't know how vaccines are made.

edit: removed hyperbole

So what is the reason given for it being unethical? Of course I realize there is a tradeoff involved in delaying the rollout of a vaccine but I don't see how that is related to the way vaccines are made, specifically.

To truly prove the efficacy of a vaccine you would have to intentionally give a test subject the virus to see if the vaccine actually works.

It's not been done once by modern western medicine because it would be unethical by modern medical practices to intentionally infect a person.

Efficacy is still tested with vaccines because there is a statistical expectation of contracting a given disease.

If you give 40,000 people a random mix of placebo and vaccines and then monitor whether or not they contract the target disease, you get an indication of efficacy by comparing the vaccinated group to the placebo group.

If it's never been done then I don't understand how this is specifically problematic for the covid vaccine then.

What, why would you need to do that? That's not how preventive medicine is tested.

Please explain how would your proposal be any more valid than a proper controlled study where you do the treatment on portion of your participants and wait how it works out for them.

Yeah, none of that is true. See today's news about pressure on the FDA to certify the vaccine.

Show me one double blind efficacy study of any vaccine.

It's never been done that I have seen.

Edit: removed hyperbole

WTF?

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&biw=2326&...

Look up "efficacy" it has a specific medical meaning. Those tests are not about efficacy.

Scientific method require each person be equally exposed to the virus under strict lab conditions.

Scientific method uses statistics and can make reasonable assumption that for large enough randomised groups the collective exposure is the same without strict lab conditions. From the group size and number of infections, you can calculate the confidence of the result you find.

Keep in mind that even under strict lab conditions your results would never be 100% certain.

There is double blind studies that tests efficacy of new vaccines for diseases that already had an approved vaccine. And those studies do find differences in efficacy (just because the old vaccine was 96% effective doesn't mean the new one can't do better) as well as in occurrence rate of side effects.

There have even been studies where the vaccine that you get in the control arm of the study is the vaccine against Meningitis and then after a year or two they do give you what ever vaccine you had not received yet. (Sorry, forgot against which disease the vaccine under test was protecting.)

And of course there is double blind studies where you get three injections, one of which is saline, two are active. They are given a few weeks apart, you don't know the order and they check antibody level in the blood every week.

Is this an American thing? If you didn't have efficacy testing you'd have the vaccine available in March probably?

Vaccines go through phase 3 testing which is about efficacy. (And some other properties) What do you think is missing from them?

None of them intentionally give the live virus to their subjects.

That would speed up the test, sure. But as far as the quality of the results goes, why is that different from the existing test where a large number of vaccinated (real and placebo) subjects gets exposed/infected? It's still testing efficacy.

Challenge studies get performed on non-human (animal) test subjects (this was done for the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine), and there's a volunteer human challenge study planned in the UK for January. A challenge study is one where you intentionally give a live virus to your subjects.

Arguably, releasing your subjects into an environment full of live virus, such as the United States, is a kind of challenge study, which rapidly delivers efficacy data. This is why approval could happen so much faster than usual for these vaccines.

This is some real forest for the trees bullshit here.

It likely would have been good to do challenge trials with the vaccine groups (to speed up the testing). It would of course not be nice to do it with the placebo group.

But you are plucking a single evidentiary standard out of some dark place and then asserting that it is the only useful one. Of course it is not, and Phase 3 vaccine trials are well designed to provide clear evidence of effectiveness. Go look up the Pfizer result going around on the memes if you don't believe that.

I will take it after a year or two. The US did a great job at politicizing the virus such that I don't really trust that pharma companies actually did their due diligence with regard to testing and safety measures. I accept that doctors and scientists will take it under the guise of them "knowing it's safe", and I accept that lots of people will say "If they're doing it, you should too", but I think this strategy just generally ignores common sense. Doctors use and prescribe drugs all the time with unintended adverse side effects, the difference here is that those side effects are known and well studied. A vaccine that showed up to save the world (and also start a culture war in some countries)? I do not accept that the powers at be have verified this drug's safety.

I think that this vaccine is a choice, and once it's readily available it is still a choice. If you choose not to get it, you are accepting the possibility that you might get COVID and die. Once the vaccine becomes available to my age group and health demographic, the people that actually need it will have been given the option to make their choice as well.

These things aren't cut and dry, but probably what you mean is that without the vaccine you're increasing the possibility of passing the disease on to at risk groups.

Not sure why you're telling me what I mean?

At risk populations have the same choices I have. I will choose to wait because I am not at risk. The risk level is obviously a factor that should play a part in making an individual's choice.

Now, for the people that _cannot_ get the vaccine for whatever reason, ultimately my decision is definitely more selfish, in that I am taking precautions in favor of my own safety as opposed to theirs. I guess I don't think this is unreasonable though?

Yes, emphasis is sometimes not clear, so just highlighting that you yourself are unlikely to die as you highlighted, but the increased likelihood of passing the disease on to those who can't take the vaccine is of greater emphasis

Hey, we don't really know how safe it is to the extent we understand other drugs. But we've bounded the risk to be much, much less than COVID in almost all populations. (This may not end up being true of adolescents, but there's substantial reasons for adolescents to get vaccinated even if we cannot yet prove that the risk is lower than COVID.

> I think that this vaccine is a choice, and once it's readily available it is still a choice. If you choose not to get it, you are accepting the possibility that you might get COVID and die.

Generally, a whole lot of the reasons why we take vaccines is to provide collective protection. E.g. it's not critical that I be vaccinated for pertussis because of my own risk of whooping cough.

First, I appreciate you having a legitimate conversation about this stuff instead of dismissing my arguments for the aforementioned political issues. I think skepticism is fair on both sides.

> But we've bounded the risk to be much, much less than COVID in almost all populations.

Are you sure? And by sure I mean, there is enough data to prove this statement to be true? How?

> Generally, a whole lot of the reasons why we take vaccines is to provide collective protection.

This makes, sense, but is "collective protection" a right now thing? Or is collective protection the goal of a vaccination program over the course of 5-10 years? If the latter is true, is the stance of "I will wait 1-2 years until there is actual data" even at odds with this idea?

> Are you sure? And by sure I mean, there is enough data to prove this statement to be true? How?

Reasonably sure. Even looking at the low death rate 25-34 population, deaths have been about 4 per 100,000 population with only 15% infected so far; a natural trek to herd immunity will presumably kill 6-12 more per 100k. There will be even greater amounts of morbidity and hospitalization, too, than outright death.

Compare to ~22000 dosed in trials; two of the vaccinated died from causes that don't look related to the vaccine, and four of the placebo group died. This mostly lets us exclude a high death rate from the vaccine. Several in the placebo group ended up hospitalized from severe COVID; none in the vaccine group ended up hospitalized from COVID or vaccine related side effects.

Indeed, the entire judgment call made in emergency use authorization is exactly that: the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

> This makes, sense, but is "collective protection" a right now thing? Or is collective protection the goal of a vaccination program over the course of 5-10 years?

It's a "right now" thing. We can get all the way there in 6 months, and get significant benefit in 3 months. To be clear, the former doesn't mean "cases knocked down to zero", but instead infections knocked down by >95%.

> Compare to ~22000 dosed in trials; two of the vaccinated died from causes that don't look related to the vaccine, and four of the placebo group died. This mostly lets us exclude a high death rate from the vaccine. Several in the placebo group ended up hospitalized from severe COVID; none in the vaccine group ended up hospitalized from COVID or vaccine related side effects.

How frequently are vaccine side effects measured 1-3 years out? How frequently do vaccines present side effects on the 1-3 year timeframe?

> Indeed, the entire judgment call made in emergency use authorization is exactly that: the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

Had that judgement call not been made in one of the least competent governments in US history, I think it might carry more weight, no?

> the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

I would challenge this statement in that I don't believe it possible to fully understand the risks yet. Is 22000 over ~three months the normal amount of time a vaccine trial runs (I am asking somewhat rhetorically, in that we've heard time and time again that this is not the case)

> How frequently are vaccine side effects measured 1-3 years out? How frequently do vaccines present side effects on the 1-3 year timeframe?

Basically never: negative effects are overwhelmingly weighted to close to administration. This could, of course, always be the first vaccine to really do this. Indeed, most childhood vaccine trials have been about a year long.

Much more interesting / troublesome is what immunogenicity is at 1 years / 3 years / 5 years. That's why vaccines have failed at the end of their trials: efficacy isn't durable enough, not that too many people get side effects 2.5 years in.

There's a fair chance we'll find that these vaccines don't offer great long term protection. So far protection seems to be holding up OK... But that's next year's problem.

> Had that judgement call not been made in one of the least competent governments in US history, I think it might carry more weight, no?

We have plenty of other competent regulators making the same choice, and the review process followed seems reasonable. The pressure from the top to speed it up further is yucky, I admit.

> I would challenge this statement in that I don't believe it possible to fully understand the risks yet.

Well, sure. We can't know exactly the probability that it will turn us all into vampires a year from now. We can't exactly know the risks from letting COVID-19 doing its thing unimpeded, either. But the former risk looks pretty small and the latter risk looks pretty big, and it's not like we've not studied both pretty extensively.

> We can't exactly know the risks from letting COVID-19 doing its thing unimpeded, either.

Really? We've got a lot more data on COVID than we do on the vaccines.

> Really? We've got a lot more data on COVID than we do on the vaccines.

Sure, but we don't know much about long-term morbidity tied to COVID infection, or exactly how many people it will get in the end. Even if I've got it all wrong--- the vaccine is riskier than our current data implies in the age 24-30 group, and fewer people from age 24-30 will get it because things burnt themselves out earlier-- what about the risks of long-term morbidity from COVID-19 infection in this group? Even that alone dwarfs likely vaccine risks. A whole lot of people are getting hospitalized, and even only 5% of them ending up with some degree of long term disability is daunting.

There's big error bars all around, but they largely don't overlap, and COVID has profound downside risks.

> Sure, but we don't know much about long-term morbidity tied to COVID infection

I would say the same about the vaccines though. It seems like a lose/lose but one of which has a much greater sample.

I suggest that Western culture's understanding of risk is immature. Is it the case that driving at the speed limit is safe and driving 5% faster is dangerous? Of course not. Driving at any speed carries risk; driving faster, on a given road, in given conditions, is usually more dangerous; and society needs to decide the degree of risk it will accept. (This applies especially in cases such as driving, where the benefit of speeding accrues to the driver, but much of the risk is imposed on others without their consent.)

A better approach to the safety of the vaccine is to ask whether it's safer to take it or to abstain, and who bears the risk in each case. I accept that the numbers won't be the same for everyone: they depend on age, sex, gregariousness, medical condition, culture, job, and perhaps (I don't know) ethnicity. However, people I know who've had Covid-19 say it's brutal: even if it doesn't kill you, it can give you a really rough time. I know of four friends of friends who've died of it, including one in his twenties. And let's not forget long Covid, which can strike at any age. Set against that the clinical trials that the vaccine has undergone, with trials halted if even one person became seriously ill. Finally, there seems to be at least a reasonable possibility that being vaccinated will reduce a person's ability to infect others.

All in all, any of the leading vaccines available in the West look like a better bet, for me and the people around me, than just crossing my fingers and hoping.

Should I take it now or wait? There seems little doubt that vaccines will be refined over the coming years. A vaccine taken in 2023 will probably be safer, and certainly better understood, than one taken in 2021. But someone who waits two years has endured two extra years' risk of suffering, spreading and possibly dying from Covid. You would have to think that vaccines are much more dangerous than I do for that to be a reasonable trade-off.

No, you are accepting the possibility that you may get COVID and die and that you may be spreading it to other people who may contract it.

Most people in this thread seems to be forgetting that second part.

> that you may be spreading it to other people who may contract it.

Yes, but, given my age/health, wouldn't the people already at risk already have been offered the vaccine? And if they opted against it, they also made their choice?

And for the people that are unable to get the vaccine for whatever reason, isn't that a scenario in which I feel it's either me putting my safety at risk instead of them putting theirs?

I am sympathetic towards people that are allergic or for whatever other reason cannot get the vaccine, but in the same way that they opted to not take the vaccine to protect their health, is that not exactly what I'm suggesting? I do not feel the vaccine is verified safe and am attempting to protect my health?

Curious what you think.

There are a lot of half-wits, especially in tech, who think reflexive contrarianism is a sure sign of intelligence and wisdom.

I'm imagining an anti-vaxx Bill Gates conspiracy theorist whose day job is a distinguished engineer at Microsoft.

Why do I need the vaccine? I can just just setup rsync on a Linux box instead.

Right now its 310 YES to 39 NO. From what I've been reading in the (fake?) news, surveys and polls in the USA, I'm actually surprised to see so many yeses.

Well - The hacker news community is not even remotely representative of the U.S. population (nor typical pops in other countries I suspect). If you thought it was, then you'd think 90% of everyone in America voted for Biden. But it was much closer to 50-50. So these forums are only useful for understanding the positions of people on these sorts of forums.

Yes there are other countries in the world on this forum, you'll find Trump is not favoured in many countries like Germany where opinion polling was around 9/10 disproving of Trump. Many grains of salt to get that to 50/50

Some of this can always be explained by the "lizardman constant": https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Also, ballpark 20% of Americans already had the disease, and the benefit for them (while still there) is lower. Also pregnancy. So multiple reasons why 10% is probably not crazy. For what it was worth, I was also a bit confused by the order, as I think they randomize it or something and almost tapped the wrong one.

Immunity from having COVID lasts about 3 months, it seems. Immunity from the vaccine will last for a year or more and will still work as expected even if you had COVID. “I’ve had COVID” is a bad reason to refuse the vaccine.

This is simply incorrect, although I don't blame you for thinking so since there were some sensationalist news articles tripping over themselves to imply that it was the case.

Rates of COVID reinfection remain vanishingly small.

Mind to share sources about the immunity lasting only 3 months?

From what I read, Corona-virii are in general slow to mutate and infected people should be immune for a longer time. Also, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this idea that a vaccine should neatly work in a way that it would be recommended to take it on every season smells of a pharma PR submarine.

It comes from a misunderstanding: antibodies last around that long, but so far no one's T-Cells have stopped reacting to the virus. Immunity lasting only as long as the antibodies is also how I understood it to work until mid-summer.

Yeah, I remember an article from October claiming only 5 cases of reinfection. To me these are more likely to have happened due to the people having compromised immune systems than to some specific property of the novel corona.

Experts say active immunity likely lasts for years. Antibodies drop off potentially quickly but that’s not a big deal if you have active immunity.

Agree. There is always a few people who put no just to be an ass

> I also think most of us don’t know someone who believes reptilian aliens in human form control all the major nations of Earth.

Really? I know multiple people who genuinely believe this. Yes you'll always get some constant of random picks, but you also have to understand that our social circles hugely limit us from representative samples of the population's opinions. The only people I know who have actually been in crazy cat lady houses were because they worked as repairmen, since there you'll get a sample of the population which needs their furnace looked at sometimes

Pregnant women or women who are planning on becoming pregnant should not have it according to UK government guidelines. That’s a pretty good reason to click NO.

Or a pretty good reason to click "I WILL WAIT"

"FOR NINE MONTHS"

I think you're also not supposed to take it while breastfeeding. So it could be 9 months plus a year or more.

Also people with allergies. This was found out after two people that got the vaccine had allergic reactions to it (no idea how severe)...

Those two had severe pre-existing allergies (to the point where they carry epi pens), and had non-fatal reactions to the vaccine.

If you’re in the 0.1% of the population with severe allergies, you should skip most vaccines. Herd immunity is a thing, and (most — probably these) vaccines will protect you by making the people around you stop spreading it.

If you’re in this category, you’d have already been told so by your doctor.

If they were “said so by their doctors”, how come they still were injected by the doctors?

Also, most people carrying epi-pens don’t know full severity of their allergies since there is no way to test it.

No your final point isn't true. These people were administered the vaccine by their doctors. The simple fact of the matter is that this vaccine hasn't had rigorous testing like other vaccines hence them finding out new information about after it's been administered

Um, you do know that alcohol is something that pregnant women should avoid?

Will you quit drinking alcohol?

I was under the impression that this is common knowledge. Most pregnant women I've known did, indeed, forego alcohol during their pregnancy.

I think everyone in this thread has left too much of their argument tacit and the meaning has been lost. I read it as:

1. Why do many people say no?

2. Well it isn’t recommended for the pregnant [therefore either a large proportion of hn is pregnant or the vaccine is generally bad]

3. [not many people on hn are pregnant so] do you also refuse alcohol because that is bad for the pregnant?

4. [I think you’re suggesting that pregnant people often drink alcohol so I put it to you that] in my experience pregnant people don’t drink alcohol.

5. This comment

My point was that "unsafe for pregnant women" does not imply "unsafe for not-pregnant or unsafe for not-women".

I'm surprised you would find that novel.

Yes alcohol should be avoided if pregnant. Smoking as well. Cat litterboxes can pose a risk.

Many other products are removed because of unknown risks.

Note that there are differing professional opinions on this. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine recommends no special exclusion of pregnant women from vaccine trials or vaccine campaigns: [1] [2]

“Despite the categorization of pregnancy as a high-risk condition for severe COVID-19, hospitalization, and mortality, pregnancy remains an exclusion for participation in vaccine trials. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and other leading organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, have consistently advocated for the inclusion of pregnant and lactating women in vaccination trials, particularly when the following criteria are met: (1) pregnancy poses increased susceptibility to or severity of a disease; (2) the best approach to protect the infant is through passive placental antibody transfer, which provides the most efficient and direct protection to the newborn before an infant can be vaccinated, and (3) there is an active outbreak.”

“In general, SMFM strongly recommends that pregnant women have access to COVID-19 vaccines in all phases of future vaccine campaigns, and that she and her healthcare professional engage in shared decision-making regarding her receipt of the vaccine. Counseling should balance available data on vaccine safety, risks to pregnant women from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and a woman’s individual risk for infection and severe disease. As data emerge, counseling will likely shift, as some vaccines may be more suitable for pregnant women. mRNA vaccines, which are likely to be the first vaccines available, do not contain a live virus but rather induce humoral and cellular immune response through the use of viral mRNA. Healthcare professionals should also counsel their patients that the theoretical risk of fetal harm from mRNA vaccines is very low.”

[1]: https://www.smfm.org/covidclinical

[2]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.smfm.org/media/2591/SMFM_Vaccin...

Not on HN, though.

Why not?

Because last I checked, HN was not pregnant women's favorite forum.

You could create a poll if you doubt it, I trust my gut :)

Poll created - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25397737 As I think it is also a good discussion on Gender Identities.

Since I'm being downvoted for what I thought is a common sense answer, here is a more elaborated one:

1. HN is a mostly technical forum, with a technically inclined user base.

2. Statistics show that there are less women working in Tech than men [1,2]. This can be translated in interest in Tech.

3. Only a fraction of those women would be on HN, and only a fraction of them would be pregnant.

4. One more data point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520342

You can therefore safely assume that it's a very tiny number, which can not explain the NO responses of this poll.

[1] https://www.womentech.net/en-fr/women-technology-statistics

[2] https://www.isemag.com/2020/10/telecom-the-latest-stats-on-w...

Dead people and newborns also should not take the vaccine. What’s your point?

The poll’s intent is to understand why one would not want to take it, not whether they should. The government already makes that choice for you. See “People with allergies should avoid the vaccine.”

Ah yes, typical HNer.

Well, dunno if I should explain my reasoning but here goes...

For the same reason I never got a rabies vaccine until having to work in close proximity with rabid animals. Up until that point, my chances of dying from rabies were pretty slim to none.

Likewise, my chances of severe complications, death, or even experiencing any symptoms at all are slim to none. The at risk people around me will be likely vaccinated, so i'm not putting them at risk.

Now, the rabies vaccine came with some known risk, a bit higher than others, hence why it's only given to people who request it or need it.

This covid vaccine is brand new, rushed, the manufacturers are legally exempt from liability for damages the vaccines cause most places in the world and it's a mostly new technology not really tested or used before.

There are potential side effects, these side effects are potentially long term and severely debilitating and despite being a low risk, it's still a higher risk for me than experiencing anything terrible from covid.

So, why put myself at some unknown risk from some unknown thing over something that, is more than likely not, going to cause me severe problems?

It's not known with any kind of certainty which carries more risk of long term side effects. Or aggregate harm if you want to look at it that way.

The vaccines do seem to reduce risk of severe Covid, across age groups (One didn't have any severe disease in the vaccine group).

Here's my answer the to "why". We need to achieve herd immunity and you're part of that.

Get it for the sake of other people. Someday the tables may be turned and you'll be hoping others make a sacrifice for you.

Why? It's a disease with a 97% survival rate. A huge majority of cases are asymptomatic. As in zero symptoms, zero negative health effects, none.

Why does it even matter either way? 3% of the population is severely at risk from this. 3%.

If those 3% of people are vaccinated, then why does it even matter if anyone else is?

For one because 3% of 7 billion is a lot. For another, because a good percentage of those who survive will have super long recovery times and suffer needlessly. For a third, because are you willing to risk it being considered a preexisitng condition and not having your lungs covered by any medical insurance in the future?

And lastly because it’s really fucking dumb to skip it because “I’ll only kill 3% of my friends and family.” Don’t be a nitwit. Get the fucking vaccine.

> If those 3% of people are vaccinated, then why does it even matter if anyone else is?

They can't all be. A significant chunk of the people at risk are also immunocompromised, which means the vaccine will be counter indicated and they rely on the disease not reaching them.

In order for the disease not to reach them, you need herd immunity.

Also, do you want to have a normal life again? Take the damn vaccine. We won't get to looser restrictions without achieving herd immunity, and herd immunity needs 60 percent of people, not the 3 percent at risk.

"I'll let others get it and be part of the 40 percent who want to have a normal life ASAP but won't do anything to contribute to that" is the most selfish shit.

You're presupposing that the vaccines make you incapable of becoming contagious - that has yet to be proven.

Yes, that line of logic requires this to be true. But although it hasn't been proven in the field (since, you know, we have just started handing them out), it is the desired (and likely) outcome of the vaccine.

This entire exercise in waiting for the vaccine was so we could get there.

> There are potential side effects, these side effects are potentially long term and severely debilitating and despite being a low risk, it's still a higher risk for me than experiencing anything terrible from covid.

Your risk perception is way off. Like orders of magnitude off. You're also assuming the risks of catching COVID are known and minor, but the risks of a vaccine are unknown and possibly off.

In reality it's the inverse. We have well over a hundred years of research into how vaccines interact with our bodies, as well as similar knowledge of things like manufacturing safety, injection best-practices, etc. While the exact mechanism of the mRNA vaccines is new to vaccines, it's been studied very closely in tens of thousands of people over several years (there have been several mRNA vaccines in the pipeline, but due to less immediate advantages their approval is slower going). It's mechanism is new for vaccines, but well understood.

COVID on the other hand is a virus where some of the immediate, worst effects are known and feel safer. But that's completely not true. The immediate effects we know are very dangerous (As a 39yr old male, I stand a 1/2000 chance of dying if I get the disease) and you're not factoring the risk of unknown long-term effects, which are unknown. It's entirely possible that damage done from the virus could have long-term hidden consequences that we won't know for many years.

So then you're left with your risk of catching the virus. Of course, this varies greatly based on behavior and region. You may feel safe, and you may indeed be relatively so, but of the hundreds of thousands of people who found out they tested positive today I'm willing to bet a good chunk of them felt just as safe as you.

>I'm willing to bet a good chunk of them felt just as safe as you.

Except, I don't care if I test postive or not. If I get sick enough i'll go to the hospital i'll deal with it the same as I would any other disease that puts me in the hosptial. Until then, i'll keep doing what i've doing wearing a mask when I need to and respectfully maintaining distance from people.

The 1/2000 could be valid for your age group (we will need to check the real number of people who caught it be sure of the IFR) but is not necessary accurate for you (could be more or less).

In France, in Marseilles, they studied all people who died from covid in the hopsital during the first episode. They calculated the Charlson score for each patient. What they found is that very large majority of people who died have a low life expectancy and all expect 2 patients have one or more co-morbidities (cancer, diabetes, etc).

So if you are healthy then you real risk is below the average of the same age group.

Young and healthy, don't really care to get covid as risk is very low. But the vaccine is new we never know what we could discover about its effect in 10 years

We also don't know what the effects of covid are in 10 years.

This argument, while technically true, is relatively dismissive of all that we have learned about the virus.

Of primary importance, COVID-19 appears to be easily and completely cleared by the human immune system and does not appear to become latent by settling in immune privileged areas or by integrating itself into the human genome or body in any other way (like Epstein-Barr, Herpesvirus, HIV, etc.)

Outside of the mainstream media and in the medical research literature COVID-19 has been thought to be easily "curable" since early on in the pandemic. In my opinion there appeared to be more uncertainty around the FDA and the rapid development timelines than there ever was around whether or not an effective and complete treatment could be developed.

A severe infection or cytokine storm may obviously cause lasting damage. I do not mean to suggest that everyone will be off the hook in the future!

You're correct in principle, but when weighing the "unknown long term risks" of a vaccine versus the "unknown long term risks" of COVID itself it really needs to be an apple to apples comparison.

We know both the virus and the vaccine will be out of your system within a short period of time. So any long term effects would have to be derived from what happens while they're in your system. The vaccine generates a few proteins, which your immune system learns to fight off in short order. The virus generates similar proteins, but continues to replicate many times over, attacking your cells and triggering a much more severe immune response as it goes.

So while there are unknown long-term risks for both, I think it is pretty safe to say the number of vectors for long term consequences are much more numerous with the virus.

I think my original comment was maybe misconstrued. I stated plainly that COVID could cause lasting damage just as any other virus. It just doesn't seem there is much to support that it causes damage above and beyond that of other viruses are capable of and for which long term therapies and treatments exist and are well understood. Certainly there isnt anything that I have seen which substantiates that COVID itself can persist in the body and continue to wreck havoc after the body is able to clear the infection, but no doubt it can do serious and potentially lasting damage.

I absolutely cannot agree more strongly that the long term consequences of any of the COVID vaccines will be far fewer than those of the virus itself.

What do you think about all these people with long covid then? I've seen studies suggesting that it's pretty common, as well as anectodal observations, although I don't have any links handy off the top of my head.

I'm not a doctor but as I said in my earlier comment, I think the literature supports that most of this is just damage from the directly infected cells (lung, organ, nerve) that the body will eventually mostly repair given appropriate nutrition and time. But certainly for some people certainly there may be permanent damage.

A better way to state my point was to say that other diseases can cause exactly the same types of cell damage, and having, say, reduced lung function or some neuropathy going forward after a COVID infection are not themselves new and novel medical problems.

I have had COVID despite my best attempts to do everything possible not to contract it. For complete transparency here, I have a strongly vested interest in knowing the truth of this matter. I agree that there is not a strong consensus yet. Sorry I do not have great references at hand to share right now either.

There's nothing particularly special about this vaccine (EDIT: okay, the mRNA is a little special), and we data information about long-term negative effects of past vaccines ([0] has positive events, plus several false positives[0]). Overall, sure looks like the risk is substantially lower than the risk of COVID-19 is, including for a young, healthy person.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

From a community perspective, no, because AFAIK no vaccine confers sterilising immunity, so my being vaccinated isn't likely to help reduce transmission. I will be very happy to see human studies that prove otherwise. It's be shown that AZD1222-vaccinated macaques still spread virus, with upper respiratory viral loads the same as controls.

From a personal perspective, no, because my age-based health risk, and my local community transmission rates approach zero, so vaccination has negligible upside at this point in time and space for me.

I might see data that could change either perspective and my willingness to be vaccinated. Also if I need to travel internationally I may be willing or forced to do so.

maybe they're environmentalists? seems like a deadly virus is good for global warming and habitat extinction.

any other reasons?

That's an interesting take. There are a lot of negative affects caused by covid too. Disposable masks, boxes for shipping, social distancing means you need to build more so people are spaced out, public transit is inefficient since everyone is, etc.

Running the AC or heat all day as people work from home probably isn't helping.

I was always pro-vaccination, but this is the first time I see a vaccine developed so quickly, and like many others, it makes me uneasy.

If I'm not mistaken, some countries like France still remember such vaccines that went wrong. Russians have zero trust in their government and its Sputnik vaccine.

I will get the vaccine eventually, but I don't mind not being in front of the queue.

There are barely 80 votes at the moment of writing this comment, of which barely 10 are a "NO", so it's a bit early for "high percentage". (Edit: Now it's 73/(798 + 279 + 73), less than 7%, so the point stands.) But I'm a "NO", FWIW. And while I'm not surprised by the "high percentage" of "YES" votes because of HN demographics, I do not approve. I mean, I don't really care what other people do with their lives, but this shouldn't be expected to be the default choice.

For the record, vaccines are not a controversial topic in my country like they seem to be in the USA. Kids are vaccinated at school, I received numerous vaccines during my life, some of them totally optional and quite expensive, which I paid for anyway, because it felt like a safer way to be. And of course I do not think vaccines are an evil plan of Bill Gates to... I'm not even sure what the crazy conspiracy theory about that is supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure there is some.

But I am a crazy conspiracy theorist in a sense that I firmly believe that COVID-19 is hugely overhyped. Of course, I'm scared and ashamed of saying that, because nowadays this seems to be a stronger version of saying "Hitler did nothing wrong", but you are asking about "why no", so here we are.

Basically, it's a trade off between reasons to do it and reasons not to (as always).

Is there a reason to avoid doing it? Well, yes. Basically, expectation that everyone should do it is that reason: the topic is insanely hot, and it's never a good thing. This is a huge business opportunity for every pharmaceutical company that gets to push their vaccine right now, and this is some hastily cooked shit you expect me to take. Some of these vaccines are quite a novelty, which is not a bad thing on its own, but this is unlike most vaccines I have ever taken, which are basically decades old and literally millions of people have taken them before me. Maybe it's totally safe, maybe it isn't. No couple-months-long trial will ever answer that.

Is there a reason to take it? Well, sure. Like there is a reason to take a flu vaccine. Which I don't do, because there are new mutations every year, and there are countless more versions of "common cold". Yes, people die of that, and it's never a pleasant experience, and I live in a cold climate, where this is a very common seasonal thing, but it's just how things are. It's ok. And I'm not going to elaborate on all "Hitler did nothing wrong" thing, because what I've said so far is more than enough to trigger someone, but, well, I know people that had been sick with COVID-19. I contacted them in person when they were already sick, and it just so happens that neither of us was wearing any mask. I wasn't really a responsible citizen all the time. It doesn't seem that the stakes are much higher than with a flu. For some of people it seemed to be more like a really light version of a common cold.

So there's a little of "no" vs a little of "yes" and it just so happens that "no" overweights quite confidently.

Maybe it is fair to say that I should've voted "I'll wail", because this "no" isn't final. But then no "yes" is final either, anything can happen, the last year should've taught us that if anything. And I don't have any specific date I have to wait for. The point is, currently I'm not going to do that, and I hope it stays this way.

> I firmly believe that COVID-19 is hugely overhyped

I've read your concerns and take the gravest possible offense to this. It's not just about the new coronavirus, but what comes next. Tools like crispr are now within the means of the nuclear boyscout, who can unleash an airborne pathogen upon humanity that performs genetic engineering at scale. All that's required is the will to do so. Stuff like that frightens me far more. If the reaction to this new coronavirus is what's needed to help humanity prepare, then we're likely to be far safer and healthier down the road.

It's not about what happens to you or to your healthy friends. The major difference here is the long incubation period. You catch the virus, you become contagious, you pass it on, and a few days later you develop your mild cold symptoms. You go through it and you are fine. But by allowing yourself to get infected in the first place, you have spread the virus to an unknown number of people. Down the road, perhaps months later, if not enough people have vaccinated to end the pandemic, you may have indirectly caused deaths among the more vulnerable.

Information on contagion: https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/10/exposed-to-...

Surely the same logic applies to all infectious diseases, and we should all get yearly flu shots, permanently practice social distancing, wear masks, etc. lest we maybe be complicit in the deaths of the vulnerable?

In some countries people wear masks when they have any respiratory diseases and do not touch the strangers they are greeting, which seems sensible. Otherwise, it depends on the parameters of the diseases you are trying to stay safe against.

The thing about the flu is that you develop symptoms earlier, so the window of oportunity for unknowing transmission is shorter (on average). From what we know at this time, it's a less deadly disease than COVID-19. And it mutates quickly, with each season bringing new strains. I think if it was possible to erradicate it completely through vaccination that would be something worth considering, too. Nobody likes that it exists.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm

https://bgr.com/2020/10/21/coronavirus-death-rate-vs-flu-cdc... (sourced)

Thanks for your post and FWIW I don't think your views are crazy, selfish, unsympathetic or offensive at all.

If only the global attention and resources that have gone into the covid crisis could be channelled into the many equally, or more serious issues affecting humanity and the planet today (e.g poverty, oppression, war, over population, pollution, tuberculosis etc.). But they are not the new hot shiny problem, just our boring, faulty and irreplaceable legacy system.

From what I'm able to gather, a COVID infection produces robust immunity in most people, which is expected to last several years.

Having recovered completely from such an infection, I should be fine without it, and vaccines generally don't feel great and are not, in fact, without risk.

I think vaccines are a wonderful technology, to be clear. I'll get one for COVID only if it's standing between me and, say, getting on an airplane or entering a foreign country, which, let's be real: it probably will. States see like a state, after all; you can't just be immune to infection, you have to be legibly immune.

My parents just recovered from COVID and were told by their doctor that the current thinking is getting COVID gives you immunity for at least 90 days. Could be more, but they are not telling people to rely on it beyond 90.

Where did you get the information that it was several years?

Even 90 days is a bit optimistic; people have been reinfected soonwr than that. You can rely on 30 days pretty safely. 90 days is stretching it.

This again. When will it stop? Yes some people get reinfected. These are extremely rare. Usually it is because of the weakened immune system.

Others should be fine for months:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6521/1227

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4257

I just keep pointing out that this is, in fact, how vaccines work, and hoping for the best.

To whom it may concern: vaccines simulate the process triggered in the immune system by recovery from infection. They don't float around in your body for years: they create immunity the same way the disease itself does. More or less: obviously you don't get sick!

Which is great, I hadn't been that sick in ten years, it was pretty awful. Please get vaccinated if you haven't gotten COVID. If you have, well, maybe you want to do it just in case? I do not.

A lot of misinformation out there...

I elected "NO" because I have already have had COVID-19 and verified antibodies, and an mRNA vaccine is unlikely to provide any additional level of protection. I believe this should have been a separate option.

I abstained from voting for the same reason. It seems likely that people with a high enough level of antibodies will at least be at the very back of the line for vaccination.

How were you able to verify that you have developed anti-bodies?

There’s a blood test you can pay for.

Two nasal swabs taken when I had symptoms did not give a positive result (Abbott Labs IDNOW test), so after I recovered I requested an antibody panel and was tested for COV-2 IgG and IgM. Tests were done on Abbott Labs equipment (though the results sheet did not specify the particular assay - there are 2). My results were a high multiple of what would be considered 'positive' for both and were consistent with the timeframe of my illness. More info here: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019...

My insurance covered the cost of all my testing as it was done in conjunction with a televisit with my GP. I hear that it is available for approximately $60 if you just pay retail for it. If you give blood at your local blood bank, many are offering the antibody test as an incentive to donate.

Like many others (from reading the sister comments) I voted "NO" because I already had Covid-19, not because I don't trust the vaccination or vaccinations in general.

I feel reasonably confident my overall health is good enough that if I got COVID it would be OK.

The vaccine, while probably fine, seems like more of a wildcard to me. It seems like a low-probability lottery ticket to bad news, whereas COVID seems like a lower-probability lottery ticket to bad news.

(Of course, the government may force the issue. I hope not, though. My body, my choice and all that.)

You should be adding up the probability of complications to all your loved ones that you unknowingly spread it to should you get infected, too.

(The same reason I usually get a flu shot: it's not that I can't withstand the flu, it's that there are those around me who might not withstand it. I don't want to be responsible for having passed that on to someone.)

I'm not telling anyone I had the vaccine when I didn't. They're free to avoid me if they want.

Many things we selfishly do endanger others. Ever driven a car?

But honestly, in my gut, I don't feel like I'm endangering people. I'm doing the thing that I think will most likely make me healthy, and that will most likely result in best outcomes for others, too.

I may have some bias here because the only 2 times I've gotten the flu as an adult are the two times I got the the flu shot, like you're supposed to do. So maybe that's just coincidence, but my operating theory now is, no more flu shots until I get the flu again. If I do, then I'll reconsider.

> Many things we selfishly do endanger others. Ever driven a car?

Yes, and I take various precautions when doing so to reduce the risk to those around me. But, driving a car gets me from point A to B. There's a trade-off. Near as I can tell from the available data from studies on the new vaccines, the risk and consequences of getting COVID outweigh the risks and consequences of getting the vaccine, perhaps by several orders of magnitude.

The number of both cases & deaths have reached nation-wide highs, and basically all states are seeing upticks in prevalence, likely to be made worse by Christmas. The tests on the vaccines have shown it to be effective, and have had minimal side-effects (I've heard some reports of non-life-threatening allergic reaction, and 1 more serious case that is being investigated. There were 43,000 people in the Pfizer study alone, I think. That is significantly better than the confirmed COVID-19 case rate. https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pf...)

> I may have some bias here because the only 2 times I've gotten the flu as an adult are the two times I got the the flu shot, like you're supposed to do. So maybe that's just coincidence, but my operating theory now is, no more flu shots until I get the flu again. If I do, then I'll reconsider.

It's just coincidence:

> studies show that flu vaccination reduces the risk of flu illness by between 40% and 60% among the overall population during seasons when most circulating flu viruses are well-matched to the flu vaccine.

(https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm)

i think the only place i disagree with you is that in my mind we really have no idea about longer-term possible side effects of the vaccine. it's a totally novel, new kind of vaccine, right?

i agree the flu shot is probably coincidence, but at least until/if i get the flu w/o it, i'm going to be guided by my first-hand experience for now. if i get the flu again, i will do more research and reconsider.

It's nice to believe this, but having a flu jab is only proven to protect yourself. It's not sterilising immunity so you can still become infected, shed virus, and infect others while asymptomatic.

It's quite dangerous if a lot people don't get that the covid vaccines also aren't proved (and are unlikely) to contain transmission. Risk is folks think that we will not longer need to care about hygiene, masks, isolation, quarantine and tracing once most people have been vaccinated.

> It's nice to believe this, but having a flu jab is only proven to protect yourself. It's not sterilising immunity so you can still become infected, shed virus, and infect others while asymptomatic.

This directly contradicts the CDC:

> Getting vaccinated yourself may also protect people around you, including those who are more vulnerable to serious flu illness, like babies and young children, older people, and people with certain chronic health conditions.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/keyfacts.htm

This isn't a contradiction at all. GP is saying it isn't proven to protect others. Your CDC quote says it "may" protect others.

I don't know the actual science here - but they could very well have zero evidence that it protects others and still correctly say that getting the flu vaccine may protect others.

The overlooked differentiator: Vaccine "bad news" is not highly contagious to your family, friends, and colleagues.

I'm young, I was in good overall health, I took precautions, I developed covid symptoms 2 weeks ago and I'm fighting it off in a hospital right now. I came in with partially collapsed lungs and pneumonia. I'm expected to be here until next week. This virus is something from hell. It is a miserable and scary experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

I would take a vaccine (only Pfizer or Moderna) and the associated risks over the experience I'm having now 10/10.

Sorry to hear that; wishing you a speedy and full recovery.

I voted NO and here's my reasons: I believe there's enough science to support my expectation that if/when I get covid it will be mild to no symptoms case - my body can take care of it without a vaccine. And for the vaccine - so far I don't like the odds - reportedly 0.6% of population have allergic reaction to it. I'm not a big fan of auto-immune issues so I'll take my chances elsewhere.

The no response isn't that much higher than the Lizardman constant.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

Reckless disregard for normal bioethics is likely what created and released novel COVID19 in the first place, and the "fast-tracked" vaccine is the same thing again. Just get a tan instead.

I know it's not the answer you're hoping for, but some people have medical issues which make taking any kind of vaccine too dangerous.

I will get it, but once higher risk individuals have gotten their needs. I'm healthy, not immunocompromised, and WFH by myself. There won't be enough to go around at first, and others like front-line-workers, elder, and at-risk-patients need it before I do.

I can continue to keep the travel to zero, and only leave home for the bare needs until then. I consider it my civic duty.

I'll not going to rush out and get one. I have no interest in being a beta tester for something like this. The stories of how bad the test kits were is enough to keep me away from v1. Fortunately I'm not in a high risk group and I'm not forced into a situation where I have little choice.

I have a peanut allergy so I will likely wait based on the allergic reaction news.

I was onboard being first in line until the allergy reaction news. I have a severe allergy so I think that means I'm waiting as well.

That's only the AZ/Oxford vaccine right? Pfizer hasn't issued a warning.

Other way around, it's the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

Opposite: the Pfizer vaccine has allergy warnings.

Not only yes, but fuck yes.

We could have knocked this way down by wearing masks. As a long distance truck driver I see few people wearing masks, mostly counter workers who want to keep their jobs. A few truckers who want to get into the store, a few more "civilians." I see a lot of freedom fighters daring anyone to say something to them.

California is about the best I've seen.

I always wear a mask except when I'm in the truck, regardless of signs, and regardless of whatever a state's rules are at the moment.

Since we're not going to wear masks, the vaccine is our only hope.

I want to prevent my infection, for myself obviously, but equally so that I don't spread to anyone.

If a problem is discovered ... I'm old, and I've lived long enough. I'd be happy to contribute that bit of data.

I dont think there is room for ambiguity here. When the government calls you for your shot are you going to say: ill do what you ask of me? Or are you going to say: nah thanks/ Just let me wait a bit and then maybe? The choice in this case is pretty binary. You dont get to have your cake and eat it too.

With it being a seasonal jab you probably can :/

I can't reply to your other comments as they are flagged but be aware that posting supporting links to a disreputable UK tabloid with a history of deceptive journalism probably won't create a great impression among your intended audience.

Missing choice:

4. I overcame COVID already

Otherwise those people will probably answer NO, which can lead to poor interpretations.

That option is PHI though and would itself receive skewed results because of that.

The NO option arguably also becomes PHI, if carried through; i.e. "I refused the COVID vaccine".

I’ll take it because I don’t have much other choice. I know my current employer is going to be asking me to fly to 10+ cities this year because I’m “essential” and I don’t want to risk being asymptomatic and spreading it to my less-than-healthy parents.

I'll wait until I see no adverse effects in 6-12 months, and I'll be damned if I let someone inject it into me before that!!

TIL we can create polls on HN

Yeah what is this magic?

By the time they would let me get it, it'll be the GOTY version with all the release day bugs patched.

Those who think the economy will recover should at least read this book

https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-capital-effectiveness-useless-...

Could you expand some, for the rest of us who didn’t read the book and can’t draw any conclusions based on your statement and the summary on the amazon page?

We're entering another great depression and it's not b/c of the covid crisis which only hastened the process. The depression has deeper roots and should have come anyway but hasn't been recognized by mainstream Western economical science b/c of its decades long monoculture of sorts. Economics only recognizes recessions, the cyclic crises, but has no models or even a suitable language for describing another type of crises. This type of crisis was known in the USSR as the fall of capital effectiveness.

The problem is that the dominant global economical model has the limit which has been reached. The limiting factor is supply chain length which at some point inevitably makes investments too risky. This idea has been briefly presented by the author in [1] among other submissions.

[1] Mikhail Khazin, The Bretton Woods System: Beyond All Repair? Bretton Woods: The next 70 years (p. 181) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320622832_Bretton_W...

For some reason I get a blank screen on HN polls on my normal Chrome configuration, javascript error trace:

  Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'querySelector' of null
    at HNComments.markupToNodeList (hn.js:397)
    at HNComments.apply (hn.js:666)
    at Object.doAfterCommentsLoad (hn.js:1265)
    at Object.loadMoreLink (hn.js:1243)
    at Object.doCommentsList (hn.js:1070)
    at Object.init (hn.js:797)
    at hn.js:1913

Works in Incognito, so must somehow be related to one of my extensions; but it's not uBlock Origin, which would normally be my first suspicion. Anyone else have this problem?

You can slowly enable some extensions in Incognito until it happens again.

Will definitely take it considering my age.

But technically I am already immune for a few months at least as I managed to contract it a few weeks ago. Fortunately me and the wife did not end up in hospital but it was not a pleasant experience.

I'll take it, but the headline "White House orders FDA chief to authorize Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Friday or submit his resignation" in WaPo is absolutely horrifying.

What the hell were they thinking. There's already enough vaccine hesitancy before people found out that this was rammed through under political pressure. They're going to (continue to) get people killed.

Fairly odd view to take given that other modern, western countries have already approved it...

I will wait a few months to see if there are any immediate obvious side effects. I will of course continue to quarantine at home in the mean time to an extreme degree, as I have done since March

How many of the yes voters took the seasonal flu shot? Genuinely asking

This is a great question, and I wouldn't be surprised if the answer was quite low. Not because people are against it, but because people don't make the effort to get it. This will be a big hurdle for the covid vaccine as well I think.

A quick Google search tells me that in the US, 33.9%–56.3% of adults get the seasonal flu shot (children are higher at 46.0%–81.1%).

I did.

The harder part was getting elderly relatives the seasonal flu shot safely. Going to the doctors is unsafe right now if they have no specific appointment otherwise.

Luckily they did a "drive through" flu-shot event, and we got it for them that way. Essentially just stick your arm out the window, jab, and go.

I voted yes and got my flu shot this year.

I didn't because it's really hard to get it in my country this year. It's been prioritized for those highly at risk. At this point I'm likely not going to bother given how difficult it is.

Usually I do take it fwiw.

I voted yes. I get a flu jab every year, including this year.

Voted yes, get the flu shot annually.

It's not recommended for me in my country (Germany) to take the seasonal flu shot, because I'm not over 60. I suppose it might be similar in other countries.

The assumption is a pretty important aspect. Everyone agrees healthcare workers + a few other groups should be among the first to benefit from covid immunity.

But that's what, 5-10% of the population? There will be waiting lines for the other 50-70% of the population needed for herd immunity.

I hope to see us all act in a civil way, waiting our turn and being kind to each other during those times. I will take it when without asking for any special treatment (neither to be inoculated sooner, nor later).

No.

Already had covid, was dizzy for like a day or two and breathing was a little tougher than normal. Doubt I could get sick again or that it would be much of an inconvenience if I did.

There are different strains of COVID-19 with different effects.

Unfortunately my vaccine choice is somewhat limited by medication I'm on, and therefore I may have to wait for the right type of vaccine.

This is why it's important that everyone who can take it does take it, because there's a percentage of the population who can't, and we are only protected when the community reaches some level of heard immunity.

If you're able to take it please do.

This is an important and under-considered factor when people are deciding about getting vaccinated. Other groups of people who can't currently get vaccinated, at least in my country, include children and pregnant women. They all deserve protection.

I wish you safety and good health until a suitable vaccine becomes available to you.

The number of people who can't get vaccinated will certainly be lower than the number of people who got infected already and are immune.

I had Corona, it’s quite unclear what I should do.

Is there a mathematically optimal means for distribution? (eg, 2 persons in every household or somehow best spreading out to achieve the benefits of herd immunity). I'm not in the most vulnerable group, so I'm okay with waiting. But I wonder if targeting 'likely vectors' would be most effective. Administer in airports for anyone incoming?

Yes, definitely as soon as I'm able. I won't be in the first batch since I'm not in the medical field. I think the majority of issues will be worked out by that point. I don't plan to change my behavior much until we reach herd immunity, but it will be nice not to have to worry as much about getting the disease.

I voted "yes," but in practical terms, "yes" and "I will wait" are one and the same thing.

Will be actively doing testing, and will likely be among the first wave of "guinea pigs". Still going to take it, unless science says otherwise at that moment. There's a lot to be said for taking this more seriously than the current WFH group on HN (which seems to be quite a large one).

Interesting- the options in HN polls are listed in random order. You can tell by refreshing the page.

Yes, but...

I live in an Eastern European country where this is unfortunately not a purely medical, but partly a political question as well. The pandemic handling our government has implemented is very untransparent.

They made it very unclear which vaccine they ordered from. There were some statements that indicated the Russian one. I would gladly take any of the "Western" vaccines, but I do not really trust that the Russian or the Chinese ones work at all. I would rather choose medicine based on science, not politics.

We have a website where we can pre-apply for vaccination by filling a form with personal information (gov id, social security number etc). Nobody knows what the purpose of this registration is, because supposedly we already have a vaccination plan that would allow anyone to be vaccinated. A few days ago it turned out that the data entered to this website is handled by a shady company that supplied software for the last election and has close ties to the governing party.

The government has already been caught lying about many covid-realted issues, if my choices are "blindly doing what they tell" or not doing anything, then a "no" answer might be the lesser bad choice.

Remember, for many of the people on here, you are taking this for others, not yourself.

I would urge my parents to continue quarantining and take it once most other people have taken it without side-effects. I don't see why I would take it as I'm young and I've probably already been exposed at this point.

But I'll be last in line, white-collar work-at-home, privileged person that i am.

and to be clear, that's fine with me.

Will have to wait 7 months or more because of my age (30s). So I will wait

Yes - all of my grandparents are immunocompromised so I want to be very careful around them. Not to mention it will probably be a requirement on college campuses once it becomes generally available.

TIL u can do surveys on HN

The how is left as an exercise to the reader^W hacker

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

This is the first poll I took part in HN. How does one get to do one?

As soon as possible. I've got a bicuspid heart valve, and while its in good shape, I really want to stop having to worry about suddenly needing to replace it.

We have officially entered the age of distrust.

Immediately. And recently begun idly wondering if people are going to be jumping the queue. (and how they might do so...)

Highly disagree and you should stop pushing that narrative.

It is your basic human right to decide what happens with your body. And I can not blame people to reject the current vaccine situation.

Don't push the shaming narrative, it is pathetic.

I WILL WAIT for Months, just to make sure that it will work 100% to others. I am not taking that risk.

that depends, YES, if I need to travel a lot in the near future, or I WILL WAIT if I don't need to travel much.

If you voted YES and were able to choose among the available (Western) vaccines, BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna or Oxford/AstraZeneca, which one would you take? Does it matter for you?

Why did you specify western?

“ Russia approved the vaccine after trying it on several dozen subjects in a non-blind study and ahead of Phase 3 trials, which are key to establish its safety and efficacy, drawing skepticism from the international community and accusations it could have jumped the gun for political gains.”

It's not clear what you are quoting, but there are vaccines besides the russian one. For example there is also the Chinese CoronaVac.

I think there are completely reasonable reasons for people to consider these vaccines as well. Some have larger phase III trials, and some are tested in different demographics. for example, Arabs might be more comfortable with trials that were run with predominantly arab participants.

I don’t want to have to decide. So, I’ll get tested and hope that I’ve unwittingly already had it.

I'm a little cautious about this mRNA vaccine. Novavax though looks awesome, it produces some insane amount of anitbodies and uses a very well established vaccine tech.

I wonder if the distribution will reach permanent residents as well at the same time as citizens.

Beware multiple options are possible

If it's a condition for international travel, which in some way it likely will be, then anyone wanting to travel won't really have a choice. Given that, I'll be getting it. Australia is in a bit of a weird position in that I have no idea what level of virus circulating we'll tolerate even post vaccine though, and I must admit it's concerning that we might reduce deaths by 99% with the vaccine but still not tolerate any infections.

Given a limited supply of vaccine and the order it will be administered, I don't understand how airlines can entertain this policy.

Supplies won't be that limited by the middle or end of next year, and yes, some airlines are waiting for that (it's fun being in Australia - you actually cannot leave.)

The problem with this question is that there are likely to be multiple vaccines. Each will have its quirks.

The first round of vaccines will require two doses a few weeks apart. Each one of those requires a visit. Failure to get the second shot will likely lead to severely reduced efficacy.

The first two vaccines likely to be available in the US will be mRNA vaccines. They are based on an entirely new platform that's never been deployed at scale. That's going to lead to some surprises - possibly good but maybe not so good.

Later vaccines will be more traditional such as the adenovirus-based vaccine being developed by J&J.

Numerically, we're likely to see severe reactions or even death in hundreds or thousands of cases at least. The clinical trials are being run on tens of thousands of patients only, and can only pick up so many reactions. As hundreds of millions get vaccinated, we'll see the full range of effects, some of which could be serious even with the safest vaccines. It's important to keep this in perspective as the news of incidents starts to come out.

I sometimes hear the statement "I'm waiting until it's proven safe." If that's you, you might want to ask yourself what evidence you'll need to know the vaccine is safe.

I was a vaccine trial participant and got injected 6 months ago. I'm still alive. AMA.

Are you a zombie?

Nah

Monosyllabic responses are exactly what I would expect from a zombie.

Pfizer? Side-effects?

Oxford. Side effects were just a day of feeling half-crummy. Not a big deal.

Well that is way better than a week and half in bed feeling like death warmed over.

Curious do you feel crummy after other vaccinations like Flu, MMR, etc? Or was this the first time with those symptoms from a vaccine?

First time. The side effects were not a big deal at all, but they were more than I get from a flu shot.

Do you know if you got the real thing?

I'm pretty sure I got the real thing, but they are still working on the trial unblinding procedure with the regulator.

They want to keep the trial running as long as possible to get longer-term data (understandable) but it is also potentially unethical to not tell someone if they got a placebo if they are at-risk and a known-good vaccine is otherwise available. I'm in the UK where they are already vaccinating thousands of people everyday with the Pfizer one, so I expect them to figure out the unblinding details very shortly.

Did you do an antibody test after to see if you got the placebo or the real thing?

Have you felt kinda lousy/lethargic/sickly since then, more so than usual?

No, I've felt fine after the initial day or so of side effects. With the booster shot, I had similar but even less intense and shorter side effects.

FWIW, I usually get no side effects with a flu shot but others get more so I'm sure it varies person to person.

Did you ever find out if you were given the real vaccines or the placebo?

I totally forgot polls existed on HN. Wow.

Edit: It’s amazing what you forget after 10 years on a website.

Yes because I want to travel and hang out with people and eat in restaurants and ...

I am going to wait. I am concerned about the amount of time and the record of the companies that have created the vaccine.

I work remotely and live on my own, so my exposure to other people most of the time is pretty minimal and I am convinced anyway I may have had it already (I had some sort of illness in April which included a sore throat) though I would have no way of knowing unless I have a anti-body screening.

Wow, I assumed there were no longer polls on HN because I haven’t seen one in years

I will take it as soon as possible.

I don't have allergic reactions.

The risk of the vaccine on 50k people has proven safer than a random sample of 50k people exposed to Covid-19.

FYI this just came out today:

White House chief of staff told FDA chief vaccine must be authorized Friday or he needs to resign

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/11/politics/white-house-fda-chie...

"I will wait" and "No" are really the same answer.

I will move into the 65 and over cohort in a week. Can't wait.

More than a Third of Adult Americans Are Unwilling or Unsure about Taking a COVID-19 Vaccine

https://greenwaldresearch.com/more-than-a-third-of-adult-ame...

Those who voted no, why?

I am worried about potential long term risks of the vaccine. We didn't know COVID could have long term side effects until well into the pandemic. It's a tough choice to make, what if the vaccines cause long term problems? What if I don't take the vaccine and get COVID and develop long term problems...

It's hard to trust pharma companies. I lost a lot of people to overprescribed opioids and that shook my trust in the healthcare industry.

I don't at all miss the "life" precovid, and my job doesn't require me to be in office or travel. My family is closer nowadays than before. So I'm not chomping at the bit to get the vaccine.

It's funny to me there is a dead comment answering you question. Wish I could unflag it. EDIT: Found out how to. Why flag a comment that's answering a question?

I'm curious to hear people's rationales for 2) and 3).

I voted to wait. It's because I'm in an age and fitness bracket where I'm unlikely to be in serious danger from becoming infected, and a lifestyle bracket where I'm unlikely to be infected at all. I expect supply will be limited at first, so someone staring down a lot more risk than I am should get it.

> I voted to wait. It's because I'm in an age and fitness bracket where I'm unlikely to be in serious danger from becoming infected, and a lifestyle bracket where I'm unlikely to be infected at all. I expect supply will be limited at first, so someone staring down a lot more risk than I am should get it.

That's my situation too, but I voted yes under the assumption that I won't be allowed to take it until all the higher risks groups have gotten it.

But I'm in America and assumed in January/February that we'd handle this pandemic far better than we actually did. So maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised again to find the first doses allocated by some corruptly shortsighted system like an auction.

Thats not a choice. You are forced to wait until more at risk people get it. The question is, when it is available to you, will you take it or wait.

Also your logic relies on false assumptions. You are not likely to get seriously ill from the virus. You are still just fine, get the virus and be infected.

Waiting:

- I'm young & healthy and want to wait until people who are more vulnerable than me have gotten theirs.

- I wouldn't ever run .0 releases in prod. I don't have a pressing need for the vaccine and can afford to see if there are any unexpected side-effects or complications with other diseases and conditions that don't show until its given to a larger population.

- I am currently very sick and so receiving any vaccine would be dangerous for me.

- I've already gotten COVID so I should be the last person in line.

Never:

- I already know that I'm allergic to something in the vaccine.

- I have a weakened or compromised immune system and can't take most vaccines and my doctor says this is no exception.

- (I don't know if this one is true) I've already gotten COVID so I don't need the vaccine.

I'm not sure if this is the dogfood version or not.

3) since I'm not sure about quality of vaccine available in my country. Will wait until more statistics will be gathered for it, or until other types of vaccines will become available for purchase.

Ignoring "I'm in a low risk group that won't get it for months", which is true, the vaccine available here has storage requirements meaning it's only given at a number of central locations. Travel + potential for lining up for hours == no for me.

When it's a 10/15 minute job at a local pharmacy like the normal winter flu jab then by all means I'll get it.

I already had it. No need to get vaccinated for something I've already had where the current research is indicating that immunity is either permanent or very long-lasting.

Yes, hopefully the mRNA version! Excited to try new technology.

The last thing we should want in our bodies is "new technology".

This is not a gadget for you to be excited about. This is not a Captain America or Spider-man origin story. This is someone writing code in most complex language you can think of and testing it in production without any way to do a roll-back.

The virus is mRNA telling your body to make more, the vaccine is mRNA telling your body to make a small useless spike. Our bodies are amazing in their resiliency, we are constantly reading mistaken mRNA throughout our lives.

This is a great breakthrough to be able to use this to our advantage.

> Our bodies are amazing in their resiliency

Collectively, sure. Individually, each potential source of error and unexpected stressor can act differently and cause the complete opposite effect of what was desired.

Just by virtue of its novelty, any "breakthrough" brings so much uncertainty and unbounded risks. It is irrational and downright dangerous to think that individuals should accept these tail risks just because on the average things look good.

I will wait because I don't fully trust it yet.

Sort of a biased audience to begin with though, no?

I have 4 family members in trials (2 Moderna, 2 Pfizer). I would volunteer for challenge trials if given the opportunity. I got the swine flu vaccine in 2010ish.

I would take basically any covid vaccine in a heartbeat. Personally, I see it as a moral obligation, since it is a necessary step to end the pandemic, and avoid impacting those that cannot take any of the vaccines.

Historically, vaccine side effect profiles are at most as bad as just getting the disease itself. There are early examples of contaminated vaccines (polio with SV40 in the 50s), but we’ve learned a lot about vaccine production since then.

I don’t expect to have the chance until ~July or later.

People voting for NO, whats your main point?

Maybe they already had COVID-19, are in the high allergy group, are under-18, or hit one of the other medical exclusions (e.g. HIV, pregnant/trying, auto-immune disease, etc).

There are legitimate "No" votes just on purely medical grounds. I voted Yes though.

One reason I've seen is that the companies behind the vaccine have not actually disclosed how the mRNA gets inside the cell. They have said its some type of nanoparticle lipid mixture that is able to get inside your cells, but they haven't disclosed publicly or to the review panels what it actually is or how its made, since its proprietary tech. [0] Back in 2017, Moderna was taking a similar approach, wrapping the mRNA in lipid nanoparticles, but found that it had safety issues, and never made it to human trials. [1] Hopefully they have fixed their problems, but nothing I've seen has outright proven that its safe over the long term.

Personally, I can kind of understand this reasoning, I would prefer to know exactly what is going into my body and how its made, and that information should absolutely be made open. Something I also wonder is that moderna had a bunch of mRNA vaccines set to go to human trials, and I wonder where they went. [2]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7553041/

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/

[2] https://www.biospace.com/article/why-secretive-5-billion-bio...

Please, by all means, wait.

I would love to move up in line.

Yes, but I won't be an early adopter.

Yes. Which and when? Very much TBD.

The demographics data behind current polling are interesting: https://i.imgur.com/nu1ZfE0.png

Younger people are much less likely to take the vaccine than are older people. People under 45 years old are evenly split between wanting the vaccine and not wanting it. Black respondents are also much less likely to report willingness to the vaccine, perhaps reflecting historic distrust of the medical system.

Question—have there historically been any comparable vaccines whose problems have become apparent long after the shot (> 6 months) while having seemed fine before that?

Comparable, I don't know. But during the swine flue influenza, the Swedish government rolled out a large vaccination campaign, encouraging everyone to get vaccinated. Unfortunately, it turned out that children in a certain age could get chronic narcolepsy from the vaccine Pandemrix. About 230 children have been reported suspected to get this side effect from the vaccine.

Pandemrix caused many cases of narcolepsia not only in Sweden, but in Finland too. (And other countries, but in lesser numbers)

Apparently there are two types of narcolepsia, type 1 is an autoimmune reaction against a hormone which regulates wakefulness and sleep. Pandemrix caused the type 1 in some people.

The whole situation is quite well known in Sweden and Finland. Over the years, there have been news articles and documentaries on TV, and so on. It is very sad to see young children injured for life because of a vaccine which was supposed to be safe.

The majority of the cases got symptoms in a few months, but some after 1.5 years.

To crown this whole debacle, internal GSK documents with signals of safety concerns were ignored (Pandemrix adverse effects were compared to an almost identical vaccine called Arepanrix). [1]

I took the Pandemrix back in the days. I'm definitely not an "anti-vaxxer", but sorry, I won't be the first in line for another rushed pandemia vaccine.

[1] https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/glaxosmithkline-fails-...

Edit: reword sentence

Interesting fact; the vaccine probably didn’t increase rates of Narcolepsy at all https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...

...in the USA. And actually, EMA has similar information on their pages on the whole Europe level. But that is beside the point.

The point is not the H1N1 vaccines used in the USA in general, the point is not Arenaprix, Focetria or even Pandemrix used on populations of non-Finnish ancestry, and the point is not the use of adjuvants in general.

The point is the problem which GSK's Pandemrix used specifically in Sweden and Finland created.

If you read that page, it refers to a paper from 2018. If you look closely, 4 authors received money from GSK, but it is not relevant. The relevant parts are that the paper: 1. Actually found increased rates in Sweden, "Other than elevated narcolepsy IRs in the period after vaccination campaigns in Sweden, we did not find..." 2. Did not examine Finland at all.

The most impacted country was skipped since it was the other signalling country. This may seem weird, but the purpose was to establish whether Pandemrix and/or other H1N1 vaccinations were generally safe elsewhere.

And, so, yes. There is no conspiracy, in general, H1N1 vaccinations are safe, for most people.

However, let us now go to the specifics.

There were and are unfortunate Finnish and Swedish children, who have HLA DQB1*06:02 and who, together with the proteins present in GSK's Pandemrix, possibly in combination with exposure to A(H1N1), developed narcolepsy because their orexin-producing cells in the hypothalamus were somehow damaged through an autoimmune response.

So, interesting fact: use of Pandemrix increased narcolepsy rates in Finland and Sweden. This connection was due to the genetic specifics of Finns and the contents of the vaccine itself.

My point, which I want to re-iterate, is this: these kinds of connections cannot be seen with some months of clinical testing, especially not when there is an immense pressure to succeed. Any company getting problems with their vaccine would see their stock price collapse.

I saw and remember what happened the last time. Now I want to see more testing before I commit.

Agreed. "The Pandemrix experience" is fresh enough in people's mind here that it surely will decrease willingness to be vaccinated against Covid. I will not rush to get it, but if for example I could no longer work from home, I would get it then.

Oh wow I see, thanks for the pointer! Looking it up now, it seems the increased risk was 1 in 18400, or 0.005%. [1] So I guess it was rare enough that it could easily not have shown up during trials either.

One key point in my question that I'm stuck on, though, if you happen to know the answer: how long did the effects take to become apparent in those children? Were they immediate or did they show up long after vaccination? (I'm mainly wondering how long people should expect to wait before side effects become apparent.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix

I don't know but from what I recall at the time, it became news after most people were already vaccinated. It was long enough that it was too late to act on it in a real sense.

Ouch, okay thanks!

This actually isn’t really true. Europe jumped the gun out of caution, but multiple later studies have found no link. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...

Please see my reply to your other comment with the same link.

There is a link in Finland and Sweden with narcolepsy among people who have HLA-DQB1*06:02 and who got Pandemrix.

Except in Sweden, which I talked about. Read your own citations before making statements about truth.

We’re about to get 10 million data points.

To me it doesn’t look like they have a lot of data yet.

Don’t these studies typically need to go for much longer?

The Pfizer study:

43,448 patients ages 16 and up.

19,000 vaccinated patients

170 people caught the Coronavirus

Of the sick people:

- 162 received a placebo

- 8 received the vaccine

They typically need to go for much longer for two reasons:

1. You normally don't expose so many people to an untested medicine, so trials tend to be smaller than this. In this case there was no shortage of volunteers, and the larger the trial the faster it can reach a certain level of confidence in a result.

2. Normally, with vaccines, you need to wait a very long time for enough people to contract the disease and measure how effective it actually is. In this case, there are so many people infected in the general population, that reaching the required number of participants infected happened much faster than usual. In fact, when the trial was planned in the spring, it was expected that it wouldn't reach its required 164 infected participants until sometime in late summer 2021. The reason this happened so quick is that the number of infections in the general population exploded, and so the required data was available much earlier.

They want the long-term study to continue, without giving those with a placebo the vaccine.

What are the next steps and goals?

There is actually a plan to gradually offer all placebo group patients the vaccine. This will be done in small groups at a time, in order to not inform all remaining participants which group they are in. The plan is to have all placebo group participants be offered a vaccine before the end of the trial. This doesn't break the trial, because there is already a good confidence level for the efficacy results, and the side effects investigation can always use additional participants. This also enables in-patient control, where you can compare the placebo condition and the treatment condition within the same patient.

1. I stay in Australia where the prevalence of Covid-19 is really really low however my parents stay in India and if either of us were to visit each other, I'd prefer all of us vaccinated and even then we'll not be socialising with the extended family. Reason being that the vaccines so far have proven to be effective in preventing disease if someone is infected but no proof yet on whether they prevent transmission/infection as well

Apart from handling the pandemic in the worst way possible, my country (Sweden) also had the misfortune of being one of the few countries mass-vaccinating against swine flu. This was completely unnecessary and resulted in hundreds of people getting narcolepsy. Even though this was an isolated case of a bad vaccine (Pandemrix) it affected the public opinion a lot, so I'm worried that people will be afraid to take the vaccine now.

You might not know, but that’s been discredited since. The vaccine didn’t cause narcolepsy.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history.... and https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...

Interesting. Didn't know at all. It seems like "common knowledge" here in Sweden.

The CDC report isn't mentioned here by the way but should be (in case someone reading this is versed in Wikipedia editing): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix#Adverse_outcomes

This is great news anyway and definitely something I will tell people worried about the vaccine so thanks!

The CDC and the EMA both say that Pandemrix did not cause anything. But that information does not match with what happened in Sweden and Finland.

In Finland and Sweden, a small number of young people with specific genes who got the Pandemrix vaccination developed narcolepsy in much higher amounts than expected.

With a larger clinical trial and some more time, those tragedies could have been perhaps avoided altogether.

https://www.nature.com/articles/gene20171 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-39...

It'll be months before it's available to the general public, at which point any quirks should have been discovered and I'll feel comfortable taking it.

One exception: I read that the Pfizer vaccine can cause problems for people with severe allergies. I have a severe nut allergy, so it's possible I fall into that camp. Still, there are other vaccines on the way and we should know more as they all roll out to frontline workers.

Easy - I will take it as soon as it becomes available.

But that's a trick answer. I live in the antipodes. They seem putting the covid vaccines are going the same validation process they put every vaccine through, and that takes time. So an antipode YES is about the same as a USA I WILL WAIT, but with a big implied dose of I trust my government to get it right thrown in.

Gawd, I feel so smug.

Interesting to see the HN crowd poll more likely to take the vaccine (~85% at the time of this comment) compared to Americans polling at 60%. https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/11/10/harris-poll-co...

I am not American.

There's your answer, fishbulb

Other than helping yourself and others being vaccinated also means you don't get hit by the full force of a virus. Not just covid but the damage done by any virus is lessened after being vaccinated. Even if you do happen to get infected even after being vaccinated (which is still possible). A full strength virus from the wild versus being infected after being vaccinated is quite different.

Yes, but I'm in a pretty isolated context currently so if that continues I might delay it not because I don't trust the vaccine but because it just wouldn't make sense (EDIT: be worth the hassle for anyone and consume a by the beginning limited resource). (But then there is a good chance the context changed when vaccines are available for the general public in Germany ;-) )

I plan on taking it, but I would be lying if I said I weren't a bit anxious about taking it given it's the first vaccine of its kind.

(reads news)

"The F.D.A. accelerates its timeline to authorize the Pfizer vaccine to Friday evening after a threat from Trump's chief of staff: The White House told the F.D.A chief he should start working on his next job if he didn't get the vaccine authorization done Friday, an official said." -- NYTimes

... I think I will select, "I WILL WAIT"

The FDA doesn't actually approve drugs, it has an independent group of scientists/professors that approve them.

It's actually just an advisory committee and the FDA can act on the advice however they like.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...

Like, the FAA? I think governmental institutions lost much trust the past few years. If big pharma execs band together to publicly state that they will not go onto a fast track on administration wishes, something is very wrong with institutions. And I wouldn't trust a pharma exec farther than I could throw my grand piano.

How do you make an HN poll?

ive had SARS-1 back in 2003 it wasnt fun. ive had SARS-2 it was like absolutely nothing and was confusing the lab because i tested positive for the SARS-2 covid virus but had antibodies to it. i am now a donor of plasma for antibody infusions, and i expose myself to the virus everytime i can and have not tested positive for the virus.

you need 2 shots due to the way the virus interacts with the immune system on first time ever exposure. the 2nd shot actually sets you up for lasting immunity so it is CRITICAL, to get that second dose, or, _not recommended_, but a second exposure to the live virus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(immunology)

long and short of it is, it would be a waste of resources for me to be vaccinated, it wouldnt do me any good and my body will no longer allow the virus to incubate.

Yes, as soon as possible.

Here is where risk analysis come in. Lower chance of vaccine rare side effect short term vs long term and vs getting Covid in those periods, which also has its own set of less rare side effects.

The best bet is get it the fist chance you are offered it as most people won’t get it right away and you will already see most of the effects.

I answered No because I already had it, so I may be n/a? But if they still want me to take the vaccine, i will.

The recommendation is to get vaccinated even if you had it.

<<3>>

However, this will likely be taken care of for me, because I'm 1) not an essential healthcare worker, 2) not a senior citizen and 3) live in a large urban area. Those people will get the vaccine first, and in mid-june (or later) based on the fallout of the vaccine if things seem normal I'll get it.

That said, something like ~50% of Americans said they won't get the vaccine (we'll see what really happens when folks' doctors say it's ready and they should get it) so maybe nonessential non-senior citizens might be able to get it faster than expected

Apologies, there's a new Pew survey out a week or so ago that says intent to get the vaccine has risen

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/12/03/intent-to-get...

Yeah, I would assume the majority of the people answering 3 would probably be required to wait anyway.

I'm 31 but Type 1 diabetic so I'll be interested to see how early I can get it. The main risk factor for COVID seems to be Type 2, but with how much Type 1 can ruin just about every aspect of your health, I wonder if I'll be able to get in line sooner. If I can, I will.

In the best case, supply constraints nicely follow the change in risk/reward this way. Then by the time you are eligible, the risk profile looks right...

Yep, politics aside I'm very pro vaccine. Vaccines have done amazing things for the world and anti-vaxxers especially those with resources to influence hundreds if not thousands of others are horrible people.

However, a vaccine that's been rushed through gives me pause. To be honest, I'm mostly worried about cognitive and cardiovascular side effects. I've distanced thus far and remain covid free even though I've been in NYC the whole time. It'd be stupid to throw all that away because I got side effects from the vaccine.

Unfortunately, I think the pledge of past presidents to be "vaccinated on tv" is poorly thought out, largely because it will basically just sow conspiracies that they "just had saline injections to influence the masses".

Which one? By the time non-high risk groups get vaccinated there will be more versions available based on more traditional platforms. I would prefer a more traditional one than a highly experimental one like the mRNA ones.

I guess we will know more about the mRNA ones soon as the British has started large scale vaccinations.

The process has been too rushed and now the white house is interfering with the approval process. If the vaccine is not safe, then administering it to everyone at once could be as bad or worse than COVID. I'll be looking to the CDCs/FDAs of other countries because ours is tainted at this point.

Why don't we just give it to the old and sick people? Why would everyone take it?

Because I'm not a front-line worker, or obese/overweight, or in a nursing home, I will have to wait anyway. While I certainly believe in vaccines, I don't know if I'd want to be the very first anyway. Let other people get experience with it for a couple of months first.

I’ll take it and I’ve already had and recovered from COVID. We know virtually nothing about the viruses long-term effects. Anecdotally there’s quite a bit to be fearful of.

At least with the Pfizer vaccine there were only 2 in 10,000, reported to have serious side effects. Much better odds.

Depends on what other people do. If no one takes it I’ll take it. If everyone takes it I won’t take it. We need 50-80% vaccination rate overall. So, if I take the values of this survey which is at 70% vaccination rate at the moment, I would take it to be on the safe side.

Not sure. I had COVID recently, so according to the current research I should be good for a few months at least. I guess will see that science says then and act accordingly. In any case I'd be at the end of the line for people who need to be vaccinated.

If the authorities in my state encourage my population (20s, male, low BMI) to take the vaccine, I’ll take the vaccine.

It’s a risk, sure. But the older people have borne the risk so far. I can’t speak for other young people but I feel personal responsibility to take it ASAP.

Which of the several vaccines?

Edit: original order was broken so removed number.

Edit2: seriously, which vaccine are you trying to poll for? Before most of us have a chance at whichever jab you’re talking about, there will be several vaccines available to most HN readers.

Yep definitely. I've already had the rona, and while it didn't do anything severe to me, this madness with governments killing small business needs to end. It looks save and the promise of mrna vaccines is quite extraordinary.

As late as possible. I'm perfectly capable of continuing this quarantine and man others are not. Plus I'm happy to wait until I'm satisfied that the vaccine my family and I get is maximally effective.

I'll take it, but still mostly isolate for a while. My infant son is likely to get a vaccine a year later in the best scenario, and I'm not about to expose him to this thing if at all possible.

"EVENTUALLY" should be an option. I'm low risk and was full time remote even before this. Better to let high risk, health care and service industry people have first go at the vaccine.

would wait for people who are higher risk

To the people who are going to wait because they want it to be tested more:

What kind of concerns do you have? Would you feel more comfortable taking a Adenovirus/inactivated vaccine instead of an mRNA vaccine?

I don't get why they don't take 10% of the initial supply and auction or sell at a high price. It would increase the perceived value of the vaccine and let market forces evaluate safety.

There is more than one vaccine. I will probably take a particular vaccine if I am convinced it is safe and if it's mandatory or something I see almost everyone else doing.

I don't belong to a high risk group so I don't think I need it for now. There are priorities. Also I'm not risking my otherwise good health with a beta vaccine to prevent the low risk of dying from COVID.

I totally trust science but not companies and governments that are in a mission to save "The Economy" and their fat-arsed pockets.

I'm not saying that a company shouldn't care about making profits. But let's not forget some pharma companies' scandals from the past. Would you rush to consume some magical piping hot medicine/vaccine someone made? Is it ready yet? Is it tested enough? Is it safe for everyone?

And guys, please. The economy is not all those people who lost their job. I don't think any country's government cares about them. Market changes are here to stay. This is not going to be reversed. We aren't going back to "normal" after covid.

It baffles me that some people wants herd immunity. But are against vaccination.... That's really what herd immunity is about folks. So yeah 1)

What if the coronavirus vaccines don't work well enough? I still have doubt about it and not really sure to take it.

I've been kind of astounded at the number of people I've seen who claim that they won't be taking the vaccine, no matter what.

Depending on if the sequence matters. If I take vaccines on a later date will give me a higher effectiveness rate, I will do so.

YES

Yes

YES

Yes

I will be taking it asap, I'd rather face the risks of taking a tested vaccine than the risks of getting or spreading Covid.

Yes as soon as it is available. The positive of being immunized greatly outweighs the hypothetical risks of taking the vaccine.

Why take a vaccine for something healthy people like me fight off in a day or two? It doesn't make sense.

I can take a Zinc tablet, and some Vitamin D, or HCQ, etc.

Now older and sicker people should think otherwise, or those who interact regularly with those populations.

And yes, I know asymptomatics allegedly, potentially, in some rare cases, might possibly spread it to people who may get seriously ill. That is what we called "nature" before 2020.

Because it will take days for you to notice that you have it and you will continue to spread it. Even if you do not die from it, others that caught it from you might. If you are vaccinated it might be that you do not spread it anymore. It seems that there is no data yet for the current corona vaccines, but other vaccines prevent spreading so the new ones might as well.

But those people that may get it and who are at risk should have gotten the vaccine.

Many of those highly at risk (the immunocompromised) cannot take the vaccine and rely on herd immunity. It's the same story as with every other vaccines. (Why does it have to be repeated every time?)

Very simple: If you want to go back to a normal life, you want herd immunity. You want 60+% of people vaccinated. NOT the 2-3% who are highly at risk.

Furthermore, please remember that, much like many other diseases, you can still suffer severe consequences from COVID-19, and you can still die from it, even if you are healthy.

Not wanting the vaccine because you have "low chances of dying" is like not wearing a seat belt because you have "low chances of getting into an accident". Wear your fucking seat belt.

Such is nature. I don't want to take even a 0.1% risk of some vaccine side-effect to protect a theoretical person. Sorry, not sorry.

waiting just because I am not at imminent risk, and other people should take priority

Two mice are chatting at the water cooler:

“Are you going to take COVID vaccine?”

“What? Are you crazy? It hasn’t been tested on humans yet!”

I'm going to wait until the first batch goes through then I'll decide whether I want it. I'm hesitant a bit about this vaccine because it was developed so rapidly, they didn't do the usual testing period and the FDA allowed for a fast-track process. I'd rather have waiting until they tested it thoroughly with multiple trials, instead of just one.

mRNA vaccines are fantastically specific in their biochemical action because of how they were designed for use as treatment for specific instances of cancer and this and their significant history of testing gives me high confidence in their safety and effectiveness.

I will wait because I a tiny bit skeptical. The first people to get it will be a huge study group and the results will, I expect, convince me to take the vaccine as well.

But, you never know if the vaccine accidentally turns us all into infertile beings. Which would be awesome, and I'll line up to get a shot. I hate humans.

That study group already happened.

From what I read it seems people who are young and not otherwise at risk don't really need to take the vaccine as it doesn't inhibit transmission (results not concluded but very likely it does not). In any case it is unlikely it will be available to you if you fall in this demographic anyway.

I have not seen any information that it likely does not inhibit transmission. All I have seen is that we don't have data on this. AFAIK, every other vaccine on the planet inhibits transition. Do you have a source?

No vaccine can entirely prevent transmission of an airborne pathogen that replicates in the upper airways - there's not enough blood flow there, so some replication will always happen before the immune system reacts sufficiently, and during that time transmission is possible. However, all available data suggests that the vaccine-initiated immune response would dramatically reduce the transmission probability by both reducing viral load and reducing the time window for successful transmission. This effect has not been measured with this particular vaccine because it can only be measured for a very short period immediately after infection. It's very hard to do this unless you intentionally trigger an infection and that's why we have no data. (This is called a "challenge study" and it's been done with animals but not humans. There's a plan to do one with volunteers in January.)

Lots of anti-vaccine fuckers have latched onto the "it can't prevent transmission" part of this and are using it to discredit vaccines. Lots of people with insufficient information are repeating this statement because they don't know better.

That matches my understanding as well.

100%, zero hesitation.

If vaccines restrict travel, then a lot of young people wanna get vaccinated

there is more than one vaccine. also the first wave of vaccines are focused on reducing symptoms and deaths. the vaccines that actually prevent viral infection altogether, are still in development.

I will wait, we don't know yet the total effects of the vaccine.

i'm terrified of needles, gonna wait till at risk people have it and then going to face my fear.

FDA approved, im not scared of whats in the vaccine, i just hate the idea of getting stabbed.

seems mostly blue collar lower class here that are emotionally hyped up for the vaccines. seems to make sense.

I'd like to travel out of the country, and I imagine vaccine documentation will become a part of airport customs processes for a year or two.

easy for me to say yes, nothing seems weird to me about a vaccine helping stop the pandemic with immunity

I will wait for a safer vaccine.

I think there's a difference between:

(a) I WILL WAIT because I don't trust it yet, and

(b) I WILL WAIT because I want to let the more at-risk people to have access it to first

That seems to be lost in the poll

Or (c) I will tell everyone that I'm waiting so that more at-risk people can have access it to first, but secretly I'll be happy others are field-testing it for me...

That's similar to mine. I will get it as soon as I can, but I'm also glad that "when I can" is not "first".

The incentives seem to align: if I were a front-line at-risk worker I'd be much more accepting of possible risk than in my present situation of staying at home all day.

Speaking as someone who already has some (but not all) well-understood vaccines contraindicated and has to figure out which category covid vaccines will fall in...

(d) telling myself that (c) is how I feel is how I assuage my feelings of disappointment at being old enough decision makers believe I'm likely to behave responsibly, but young enough + no apparent extra risk factors enough that I'm likely to be near last to get access.

nailed it! Don't tell anyone..

Or (d) I will wait to see if Corona mutates so much over the next year that the vaccine is a yearly process.

Edit: I feel like some people didn’t notice the mink culling in Denmark which was caused by fears that version of the virus would make the vaccines useless.

Even if there was another strain, why would it make the current vaccine useless when the current strain still exists?

So if the strains change every year because the virus mutates so much then the current strain wouldn't be so common. It's basically what happens with the flu. Also a new strain can be more infectious, which I believe was the case with the mink strain.

The current strain is very common. If you haven't noticed, it's actually a pretty big problem.

There are multiple strains. And in various parts of the world it's a differents strain that is common.

I'm not telling anyone else to get it, I'm just stating I am going to wait and see if the problem is actually solved before acting like it.

But you did say it would be "useless" if there were different strains and now you are saying "there are multiple strains".

I haven't seen anything about the current vaccines not being effective to what is already out there. If that is true then what you are saying is wrong, because the fact that the vaccines can treat what is now filling up hospitals and killing thousands per day means they are the opposite of useless and in fact one of the most valuable things in existence right now.

Even the regular flu shot was recommended as being more important this year so that there would be less spread and less to deal with.

> I'm just stating I am going to wait and see if the problem is actually solved before acting like it.

No, that isn't what you said. That might be what you are trying to claim now that you said something ridiculous.

> But you did say it would be "useless" if there were different strains and now you are saying "there are multiple strains".

Yea... That's what the experts are saying, you know the scientists. Are we not to believe them now? And the experts have said if it mutates alot that a vaccine could only ve good againist a certain amount for a certain amount of time. You see a vaccine could work againist strain 1-8 but then stop working on strain 9+.

> I haven't seen anything about the current vaccines not being effective to what is already out there. If that is true then what you are saying is wrong, because the fact that the vaccines can treat what is now filling up hospitals and killing thousands per day means they are the opposite of useless and in fact one of the most valuable things in existence right now.

Overall, this paragraph is moot because you failed to understand my original point, which I'll explain further down when responding to another line. But the fact you haven't heard anything about how a brand new vaccine just being rolled out this week. And I believe there were thoughts it wouldn't work againist the mink strain that Denmark had to cull it's entire mink population to stop.

> Even the regular flu shot was recommended as being more important this year so that there would be less spread and less to deal with.

Who said that? Last I read, they were expecting the flu to be pretty much non exsistant this year due to all the measures to stop corona stopping the flu. They seen this in the south and expect it to be true for the north.

> No, that isn't what you said. That might be what you are trying to claim now that you said something ridiculous.

Ok... I said something ridiculous? I repeated something the experts said. The flu vaccine is needed to be done every year, why? Because the virus mutates so much that it's only good for one year and then useless.

My original comment was merely there was another option. It didn't advocate for anything, didn't state any opinion, etc. You seemed to misunderstand a rather simple thing and on a massive scale.

You seem uninformed on this matter. The experts have been saying for a while, even if we get a vaccine (which we have) it may not to stop it as it may only work for a short period of time. And the fact they won't be able to vaccinate everyone in a timely fashion due to production limits, means corona could be around for decades.

And if you're going to carry on saying I said something come back with the quotes or please keep your thoughts to yourself.

I think the implication is, if it's available to you, the at-risk people have already had a chance to get it. At least that's what I've heard from the rollout strategy.

It looks like some people in the comments are interpreting it differently

Also you might split up the "No" answer as "No, because I've already had COVID and recovered" vs. "No, I'm an anti-vaxxer" (or something).

It might be a good idea to get the vaccine even if you've already had COVID. There's not been any CDC recommendations about it, but here's what they do say.

> There is not enough information currently available to say if or for how long after infection someone is protected from getting COVID-19 again; this is called natural immunity. Early evidence suggests natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long, but more studies are needed to better understand this. Until we have a vaccine available and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices makes recommendations to CDC on how to best use COVID-19 vaccines, CDC cannot comment on whether people who had COVID-19 should get a COVID-19 vaccine. [1]

Suffice it to say, I'll do whatever the CDC recommends. I've already had COVID, so I'm guessing I'll go last. But at the same time, I'll get the vaccine if it is recommended.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

Surely there is also not enough information on how long after vaccination someone is protected. This doesn't seem like a strong argument to me.

If infection with the actual virus doesn't confer immunity, I don't see much reason to think that the vaccine will work any better.

Everything I've read has suggested that people who've had COVID should still get the vaccine anyway, as it could act as a booster. And that, whether through natural immunity or a vaccine it looks likely that we'll need to get it 'topped up' after awhile.

Has there been medical advice anywhere that people who've had COVID don't need to get vaccinated?

The vaccine is still indicated for those who have had Covid.

And many people claiming (b) also feel (a). Practically there is no difference between those options.

Depends on how people read the line saying that it's available to everyone and no wait lines. The way I read it was, yay!, vaccines for EVERYONE.

Isn't that covered by the prompt?

> Assumption: it is available to everyone at the same time

This reads like "everyone who wants it will get it"

ITT: people who leave comments without reading past the title.

And there's another option:

I WILL WAIT because I have severe allergies and people say not to take it...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25358753 UK has warned people with allergies not to take the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine.

I'm not aware of any localities or nations that are just dumping the vaccines off at a pharmacy and letting people do what they want. Everywhere has a roll-out plan, with healthcare workers and high-risk individuals prioritized over the totally healthy mid-20's athlete. So (b) in your list isn't really a concern. If you have access to it, you should get it.

I agree. This is a bad poll that can be used to derive whatever meaning you want to derive from it. There’s no reason we can’t have fifteen more specific options listed.

Is it no because you don’t need it because you already had the virus? Is it no because you’re allergic to vaccines? Is it no because the virus is a hoax?

People could be conflating those two reasons.

Well, I was completely unaware that HN supported polls. This is a pleasant surprise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097578 (which led to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25097685)

Evidence that no one reads the FAQ! https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Thank you!

Are their guidelines on what should and what shouldn't be made into a poll question?

My assumption is that it follows general post guidelines:

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic

What would be the catastrophic consequences of this guideline if HN started a TV channel with news that would "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity"?

> Evidence that no one reads the FAQ!

Turns out you could confirm this suspicion with a poll.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25393758

Ha! Although I have read the FAQ numerous times, but I don't regularly check it. Maybe it needs an RSS feed :-P

To guarantee no one reads it?

I thought the bit about polls had been there forever. Someone could check that via archive.org - but you have to use the older URL which was probably http://www.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

It's been there at least since 2008 - https://web.archive.org/web/20080518203408/http://ycombinato...

Why would I read the FAQ if I don't have any questions?

For questions you don’t know you have. I read the iperf man page earlier for laughs, discovered the -B option which I’d forgotten existed.

Manuals make sense to read to learn something. I'm not going to seek out an FAQ unless I have a question. I guess I don't like FAQs in general. They're usually not really FAQs, but more of disorganized manual.

Seems like a discoverability issue.

Evidence that there is room for improvement in HN's user interface.

And I did it wrong. I thought you had to enter 1,2, or 3 in the text box...

After seeing my comment that just had '1' in it, I figured it out.

For science: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25392036

I pulled down a copy of HN earlier in the year for analysis and was shocked to find polls among the data. It was a very small % of the total content, small enough I assumed it was an old feature that got removed.

Wow... if I had made that statement, I would have been immediately down-voted and my comment removed for not "following the rules". And then I wonder why certain 'mods' or overzealous persons have it in for me...

People who don't realize that they are alive today because their parents trusted doctors and took the vaccines. These things sort themselves out, over time :)

EDITED to remove most of the post.

Does anyone have information on possible side effects?

"High risk" for a vaccine is still a lower risk than that of catching/suffering/dieing from covid. It is a numbers game, a balance between risks. It isn't a magic pill to stop evil in its tracks.

I completely agree -- but what I'd like to understand is what those risks are from the vaccine. In Canada, the risk from COVID is high, but not as high as that in the US.

Do you realize how horrible it is to disseminate conspiracy theories that you heard from a "friend" who heard it from "a doctor"?

You're part of the problem.

Noted.

The executive summary of the FDA report[1] on the vaccine lists observed side effects in the clinical trial population as well as their incidence rates. Briefly, it is comparable to a normal flu shot.

Derek Lowe, who's worked as a chemist doing drug discovery for 30 years (for whatever that experience is worth to you), wrote an article[2] talking about that report and gives his take on the question of safety.

He's also written an article[3] about how it's likely people will wrongly attribute things that would have happened anyway to having taken the vaccine.

For a techie analogy: Have you ever been roped into doing some computer support for a friend or family member? Fixing a printer, installing a driver, cleaning malware, etc.? Have you ever experienced someone you helped coming back to you the next week blaming you for some new issue that's cropped up because "It must have been you when you worked on it last week!", even though it's because they went to some scummy website or similar? The vaccine rollout is going to be that scenario times a billion.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download [2] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/09/th... [3] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/12/04/ge...

LOL, the nerds of sillicon valley discussing the effectiveness of the vaccine. What is this? A group of 50 year old ladies with Facebook?

I'll take "nerd", but there's nothing wrong with a group of 50 year old ladies discussing this on Facebook, either.

My plan is to not take it, but I have a feeling that it will be mandatory sooner then later, so it will be unavoidable.

My reason for not wanting to take is, because I'm very weak mental health-vise and wouldn't want to interrupt my body while I'm healing with current medication (Flouxetine), I fear that vaccine affects could swing me a bit too much into the wrong direction and then poof I'm dead.

Just my thoughts though, I do think that vaccine are life changing and allow us the comfortable life that we have now.

Edit: I'm from Slovenia, not the USA!

I'll take it as soon as I have access to it. I'm ok even with the Oxford/AstraZeneca one. I'd be ok even with the Russian one (I live in the US, so there's pretty much zero chance this would become available here).

If it's available from private clinics for hundreds of dollars before it's available for free, I wouldn't take it. I'll wait until my turn comes for the free vaccine.

PS: I fully trust the FDA. Once they give their authorization, I have no hesitations to take the vaccine. It goes without saying that I wouldn't take the Oxford/AstraZeneca or any other vaccine if it hasn't received the FDA EUA.

"No" people, why not?

I've had Covid-19. As far as I know we still don't know if having it leads to immunity but wouldn't having it and recovering be "better" than a vaccine?

If so, why get a vaccine for something you are immune to?

If you don't know whether you're immune but do know that the vaccine works on most people, the vaccine seems a good bet.

Again, has there EVER been a case where a vaccine is somehow MORE effective than getting and recovering from a virus?

I ask because the answer seems so obvious, of course not.

Yes, and it's not exceedingly rare https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-cent...

Yes, the HPV vaccine results in dramatically better immunity than from the disease itself. [https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...]

Honestly, introspecting, I’ve got no good feeling about it, and no case made for it has convinced me, yet. Under these circumstances I don’t do things.

Thanks for sharing that.

Remember Thalidomide? Remember asbestos?

I'll wait.

The vaccines have already been tested in tens of thousands of people.

Thalidomide had been tested as well. That alone is not conclusive. Afair there had been hints of its ill effects in animal trials.

I'm really interested in the people who are saying 'no.'

I won’t be getting it, on principle. But the vaccine itself probably won’t hurt, if you don’t care about the context.

> on principle.

What principle?

Everyone has the inalienable right to decline the vaccine for any reason, including:

- They think it will be bad for their health or public health

- They think it is some UN microchip plot

- They have a moral objection to how it was developed

- They think it is the actual “mark of the beast” from the Bible

The people who decline will be in the minority (at least visibly), and they will be bullied relentlessly by the visible majority, so to protect our rights I have to stand with them.

I am not sure I follow. I understand that people have the right to reject the vaccine, but it doesn't mean that I on principle should reject it as well.

If you don't want to take it for any reason whatsoever, fair enough. It's your right. But at least be honest and defend your choice on its own instead of hiding behind some "principle" that doesn't really exist.

The principle is simply: It is important to exercise our rights.

In a different circumstance, I would probably only get it for convenience, because I don’t really believe in messing with peoples’ immune systems without a much clearer benefit. I’m not convinced about the long-term public health benefit of flu shots either. You may disagree, which would not surprise me.

But again, that thinking is irrelevant in this case, because exercising liberty is FAR more important than “staying safe”.

You should really find the comments I made on the thread before jumping to any conclusions about whether I disagree or not.

The point I'm trying to understand is that you are basically saying "I am not getting because I don't want to and it is within my rights to not take it", which is totally fine. But I am failing to see how this is a "principled" statement. It's like saying "I will smoke a pack of cigarettes in my bathtub because I am free to do so". Claiming any "principle" stand there is based at best in circular logic.

The glaring difference between this situation and your analogy: There is no faction of “ban smoking in the bathtub” zealots getting ready to bully, intimidate, and otherwise coerce the people who want to smoke in the bathtub.

Like it or not, this is a political issue, and your choice has a political effect.

Faction or not, you still have not established a principle to justify taking the action in the first place and so far all you've got was some circular logic. That's all I've objected to in your original post.

I don’t trust the US government and would prefer to wait and see if there are side effects. Are there risks to taking a vaccine that was rapidly produced? We won’t know until we know, and so I will wait at the minimum.

So no, I won’t take it until I see how it plays out in society. And if I am persuaded by the evidence, I might take it. I’ve taken only 1 flu shot. As someone in mid-20s, I have low risk and honestly would prefer getting the flu to injecting myself with a vaccine. So I’ve elected to stop getting flu shots and take the risk. For now, I think 18 hours of suffering isn’t that bad. When I’m over the age of 40, or over 60, or at whatever age I decide, then maybe I’ll reconsider if I prefer to get sick or take a vaccine that may or may not work, given the multitude of strains of the flu.

For now, I wash my hands, wash my food, keep shoes outside, and stay home if I’m sick. Responsible self-quarantining and healthy diet are my strategies to avoid contracting or spreading sickness.

> I’ve taken only 1 flu shot. As someone in mid-20s, I have low risk and honestly would prefer getting the flu to injecting myself with a vaccine. So I’ve elected to stop getting flu shots and take the risk.

This is a very selfish take. Unless you're living your life without any human interaction, then you're contributing to the spread of the flu and soon to be covid which impacts people who are at risk.

Someone just replied saying that they "fundamentally don't care" if they spread the virus because "we'll all die of stupid things". They deleted it or a mod removed it.

Are these the people downvoting me?

My answer is "I will wait", but most honestly it would be "No, unless the vaccination rate gets to a point that is not high enough to achieve herd immunity but is large enough to be considered safe and free from unexpected side-effects". Reasons:

- It's too new - not Lindy.

- I am reasonably convinced that I had it back in February, when people were not talking about it. It was very different from every year that I got the 'flu and I experienced anosmia, which never happened before. I still take all the precautions possible, but for all intents and purposes, I consider myself already immunized.

- I'm already working from home, my social life is the one of a parent of two small kids - i.e, almost non-existent, occasionally meeting small groups of either family or close friends. My parents are on the other side of the ocean and aside from them I haven't much interaction with people that could be at-risk.

- If herd immunity is achieved with ~60-70% vaccination, why take the risk when the social butterflies and those with key activities (health care workers, teachers, people working in retail) will likely be rushed to take it?

(Okay, I try to avoid complaining about downvotes, but downvoting a comment from someone that is just providing personal opinion? You can do better than that, HN...)

Sign me up. That data looks good. Anyone waiting, or objecting to getting it is ignorant.

The vaccine should be given to BIPOC people first as pointed out by VOX [1] because they have a higher mortality rate from the disease. Once POC in at risk segments have received their dose then we can give it to others. Its interesting to consider the inequality outcome here, ie if we dont give it to POC first, and they cant return to the office when others can, then they will end up losing to office politics.

[1] https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/10/2/21493933/covid-...

As much as this makes sense from an epidemiological perspective it's only going to inflame more resentment and likely from the same demographics that are vaccine skeptics. Public health officials are unfortunately going to have to factor in PR and politics if they want get the most people protected.

The current knowledge, is that the Pfizer mRNA vaccine:

1) Claims 95% efficacy.

2) But it was not widely tested. Meaning they didn’t test it on people who had allergies. Or who could have an allergic reaction to it.

3) Health officials are now warning people who have allergies, to NOT take the Pfizer vaccine. (Uhh.. what?)

4) The Pfizer mRNA vaccine will not prevent you from getting sick. It will just prevent major malfunctions from severely harming you, or killing you.

5) Taking the Pfizer mRNA vaccine might end up making you a non-symptomatic transmitter of the virus.

So.. you’re literally a walking and breathing virus transmitting zombie?

Good grief. It’s a choose-your-own-adventures world with this Pfizer mRNA vaccine.

Meanwhile.. no word from the western media about China’s vaccine using the traditional method of an inactivated virus.

Most of what you said is false.

1) this has now been peer-reviewed (iirc) and confirmed by multiple countries’ regulatory agencies. It does have 95% efficacy.

2) actually, it was tested on people with allergies and they were aware that some people would be allergic beforehand.

3) this is actually pretty common for people with SEVERE allergies, as it is in this case.

4) this is not true at all. It prevents 95% of symptomatic infections, i.e. getting sick.

5) we don’t know this. It’s possible, but you’re wrong to state it as a fact. For all we know, it could prevent asymptomatic transmission too.

I WILL refuse it if they try and make it mandatory, no matter the consequences. Because of it being untested and me thinking this will be used as a test run to see what the government can force on us.

If they make it voluntary, I will wait, because of me being suspicious of long term consequences.

Vaccines are far from untested.

The same societies that manufacture and test vaccines are those that stand to benefit from successful vaccines...

Vaccines in general are well tested, yes.

The covid vaccine isn't, along with being basically the first of its kind of vaccine. (mRNA)

It is being tested in clinical trials though...

In either case, your answer is NO to the poll.

I don't see how the second one means "NO". IMO it falls under I will wait.

Heck no. I dodged conscription on principle in my homeland, even though the expected risk to my health was far less severe.

If the mythical "civic society" thinks that my taking the risk is important, they should feel free to offer a fair payment in exchange, as they do to soldiers these days.

I'm genuinely curious as to why people have so much faith in big pharma after the whole benzo crisis that's hit America. Weren't these same companies paying doctors to get people hooked on Xanax?

False equivalence

Sorry, please can you explain for a dumb person?

Are you suggesting that we'll get addicted to the covid vaccine? This thing isn't designed for repeat customers.

Not at all, I'm not suggesting anything, I am just asking a question. The current thinking is that you will need to have regular boosters of this vaccine so yes it is designed for repeat customers if that's the case

"So much faith"? People are just following the science. Are you really arguing that because one bad situation has occurred involving pharmaceutical companies, we should assume every new drug or treatment is bogus or based on evil motives?

Okay, please explain the science that people are following. As for the one bad situation, please take a look at this list - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutic.... this is the top 20.

I'm not going to explain how clinical trials work and why you should trust that process. Again, bad situations do not invalidate all work being done in a field.

Are we talking about the same process which allowed companies for decades to hide trials which where not in their favor? Or until recently where not obliged to publish the trial results? Not to forget, many trials are not reproducible either.

Compared to the "hard" sciences, medicine has not very high standards. And trials are completely profit-motivated, that's a bad incentive. These trials are conducted by the same companies who had no qualms to sell highly addictive stuff to people. Why should I trust that the data they publish is the data they collected?

Unfortunately it's impossible to have this conversation when the person is saying "I'm following the science but I won't explain the science to you". You may as well run into a brick wall

No. The onus is on you to explain why experts who have devoted their entire lives to groundbreaking vaccine research are wrong. It's like arguing with a 5 year old.

Bahaha why should the onus be on me, who is not a scientist, to explain the science that I don't know and nobody seems willing to explain?

If somebody said I've discovered time travel and the onus is on you to prove me wrong you'd call them out.

Explain the science or gtfo

None of those criticisms apply to these vaccine studies. There are many issues that can arise in trials, of course. But the current batch of 3-phase mRNA-based vaccine trials have all been intensely scrutinized at every turn. I think it will be difficult for you to argue otherwise, but feel free to enlighten us about the data corruption conspiracy if you have some evidence.

They didn't pick up the reactions people with allergies have in the "intense scrutiny". What have they tested it for? What sort of scrutiny did this vaccine come under?

Why would you not explain this? By explaining it you answer the question. It seems like a strange thing not to explain?

Too many people are claiming they are following the science but instead are playing politics.

I agree with you on this one. If you try and have a rational discussion about the pros and cons of this vaccine it seems like a lot of the people for say: "we believe in the science" or something along those lines but then will give zero real insight into said science

Also too many people are claiming they are following the science but don't know the first thing about how science works.

Edit: not accusing anyone in particular, just e.g. when some mayor says "we're following the science" I know he's just parroting what he's been told because he has no scientific training whatsoever.

Next time somebody tells you they're just following the science, simply ask them to explain it so you can understand.

In 2020 there’s science and The Science. The latter seems to be more religious in its application and what it means to its devotees. That makes life difficult.

I don't think it's religious per say but it is definitely ingrained in the my team Vs the other mentality us humans seem to have

Politicians, having long ago squandered their own credibility, are now working their way through someone else's. But it's not an easy partnership. Politicians, especially during an emergency, need to produce fast, clear, consistent answers; science, as I'm sure you know, is about the gradual and painstaking accumulation of knowledge, and about nuance and qualification and uncertainty and interpretation. Scientists love to be proved wrong; politicians can't stand it.

They will make money on the vaccine too

They made money off benzos too

Orwell: Predicted a dystopian surveillance state where every word is monitored, unacceptable speech is deleted, history is rewritten or deleted altogether and individuals can become 'unpersons' for holding views disliked by those in power

Revelations: Predicted that "both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, are to be marked on the right hand or the forehead,so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark"

It's as nonsensical question as "Will you stop your car when you see red traffic lights?". If it's not obligatory it's useless or at least at high risk of being so. So I consider such poll too preposterous to even deserve an answer.

Are you aware of any free countries where vaccination is/will be obligatory?

Italy, France, Romania, among others.

I will not be taking anything under any sort of widespread social pressure or appeals to authority. I fundamentally lack trust in modern medicine and society in general to the point that it doesn't matter what "scientific evidence" says. Modern medical care gives us robotic, heartless nonsense like "routine" circumcision. Humanity cannot be trusted to act intelligently and empathically on a collective level.

I'm a skeptic asshole who second guesses claims just because I have access to Google scholar and sci-hub, a good for nothing contrarian made dangerous by the internet. Adult hall monitors trying to shame people over anything covid-related are disgusting people. I'll take the firing squad before any injections.

To some degree it doesn't matter what sort of revelations or facts I come across, not that they can't or won't change my opinions. They will, and I can admit being wrong. I'm very much interested in an empirical worldview. This is different, however. It's "fuck you, I don't trust you to work in my best interests".

> I'll take the firing squad before any injections.

You know that firing squads aren't usually working in your best interests, right?

>I'm a skeptic asshole who second guesses claims just because I have access to Google scholar and sci-hub, a good for nothing contrarian made dangerous by the internet.

Watch out everybody, we got ourselves a badass over here.

I thought I was on Reddit for a second. This is some m’lady level edgelord stuff.

> Modern medical care gives us robotic, heartless nonsense like "routine" circumcision.

That's more of a religious thing.

cant tell if parody

> It's "fuck you, I don't trust you to work in my best interests".

While I'm not sure that the rest isn't edgy satire, I definitely agree with this. This vaccine in particular has become a political talking point and moral soapbox.

The people talking about it and making it their soapbox aren't the ones making it.

The people yelling that vaccines are bad usually know nothing about how they work. The politicians trying to take credit for them as miracle pills have had nothing to do with the research. And most of the people telling you to get vaccinated have had no involvement in the vaccine's development.

You can think all the people above don't work in your best interests. That doesn't mean the researchers and scientists developing those things also are.

It's fucking depressing to see how many people are so readily distrusting just about everything that makes the modern world the most incredible achievement in human history. They'll use and abuse every advancement in health care and technology all the while shouting their bloodshot eyes out against 5g, vaccines and whatever scapegoat of the day they decide to pick.

Wait, you would literally rather die than get the injection?

Color me skeptical.

Fck no! Definitely not. Not only is the amount of misinformation from both governments and the medical industry regarding Covid widespread, but everybody seems to ignore the fact that many more people are suffering and dying from issues much much more devastating, relevant and important to combat than this so-called pandemic that I find the current state of affairs extremely mind bugling.

WHO (Accidentally) Confirms Covid Is No More Dangerous Than Flu:

https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/08/who-accidentally-confirm...

Oh, yes, I know, this is going to be down voted before anyone actually reads the information in the article!

People saying "NO" or "I WILL WAIT" should be ashamed of themselves for falling for misinformation and harming the rest of us.

(Unless people are confused and saying "I will wait" when in fact they're going to be forced to wait until their turn comes around)

You should be ashamed of trying to shame people into taking a new and still widely untested treatment.

I've had Covid and we STILL don't even know if that makes a person immune. Has there ever been a case where a vaccine is MORE effective than actually getting and recovering from a virus?

Seems like the latter would be "better" so why would I get a vaccine for something I am immune to?

> Has there ever been a case where a vaccine is MORE effective than actually getting and recovering from a virus?

Eradication of diseases and massively decreased death counts due to vaccinations. That's a pretty strong argument to support the idea that the vaccine is more effective than letting a disease rip through a population.

I think you are misinterpreting their post.

They are saying that vaccine-induced immunity is not likely to be more effective than natural immunity (of which we are already uncertain about the effectiveness)

If you’re already immune, I guess it won’t affect you anyway, so you might as well get it to be doubly sure (your first case could have been a false positive)

Having Covid already is probably a fine excuse to not get the vaccine. We'll know soon enough how much immunity it gives you, but it seems to give plenty for now.

But unless it wasn't clear: I'm pissed at the massive amount of people saying they won't take the vaccine because of conspiracy theories. Not even the HN can escape them, apparently. I literally just saw and commented on someone spouting one in this thread just 20 minutes into the thread. And I got downvoted for calling them out, even when they agreed and took it down.

And then thinking that this vaccine which has been properly trialed and not rushed is going to somehow be worse than, for example, 1 in 1000 people in the UK already dead. Seriously?

So yeah, I'm going to shame people.

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