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Comment by Negitivefrags | Hacker News Reader

I wish people wouldn’t conflate not wanting to take this particular vaccine at this particular time with being “anti-vax”.

I am vaccinated. I vaccinate my kids and have done so as recently as a few months ago. I believe in vaccines.

But I’m not ready for this one yet. When it has gone through the same FDA approval process as would be used for any vaccine I will be first in line.

I don’t see why people are so offended by this view. I literally get seen as a crazy person simply for wanting to wait until the same standards have been applied.

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It did go through the same FDA approval process as any vaccine. Full scale clinical trials then FDA review of the results. Getting an EUA means it skipped the normal months-long wait for the FDA to review it, not that it wasn't fully tested. We also now have more safety data on these vaccines than most vaccines ever get, thanks to over 2 billion doses administered worldwide, starting over 6 months ago. There is no real basis in science/risk for your stance.

Not GP.

No, an EUA is not the same thing as the normal FDA approval process. And even if it was, I personally would want more results about long-term effects before I got it.

We’ll know those effects when we truly understand the long-term effects of COVID. Right now we know the short term effects. Having had two relatives my age pass, and being the father of a type 1 diabetic child, I’ll take the vaccine thank you very much.

Please see https://vaccine.unchealthcare.org/science/vaccine-approval/w... and then re-read parent comment.

Notice that the two Approvals are different. They are different in the law.

There is no safety difference between a EUA and a standard authorization. In fact, the opposite of your assertion is probably true - the safety and efficacy data of the mRNA vaccines in particular is far far far in excess of what we have had with other things the FDA has approved. If you want to get up in arms, go read about the FDA approving Biogen’s aducanumab, which has serious safety issues, and no proven efficacy. It's a 50k a year hand out from medicare to a pharma company.

The process the vaccines are going now is updating their rolling submissions to cover all the data since the EUA. What the EUA gave them was really the ability to do the paperwork for general, and start scaling the factory before the phase 3 trials where complete.

source: https://vaccine.unchealthcare.org/science/vaccine-approval/w...

There is a great diagram there that shows the processes.

The virus didn't go through the approval process either. We already know it has serious side-effects. It's self-replicating and able to spread to others. It probably wouldn't even pass animal testing.

The fact that something is not yet fully approved doesn't mean it's harmful. It also depends on what other vaccines are available. You can have a fully approved vaccine that is more harmful than the newer much better vaccine which is still in the process of being approved (but which is already looking extremely promising). The harm could be in the red tape.

Are you familiar with the difference in approvals?

I tried to do some research and found this:

> People think there is a difference in data quality between approval under emergency use authorization, but there really isn’t, he said. “The only real difference is the length of follow-up for efficacy,” he said. Covid vaccines: What full FDA approval means for you

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/covid-vaccines-what-full-fda...

If true it would suggest that we just don’t know how long they are effective for and not that there is some more rigorous side effects testing.

The point will hopefully be moot though as full approval may come second half of this year.

Which particular steps of the FDA approval process are you waiting for and what information will they provide that will convince you the vaccine is safe?

Why are these parts of the normal FDA process more convincing than the fact that millions of real people have already taken the vaccine with high efficacy and minimal side effects?

The only outstanding FDA approval is around the length of protection. The CDC has said that the covid vaccines are safe and effective. Worldwide, there are 900 million datapoints that say that the vaccines are safe. It will be safe for you and your family.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/sa...

> I wish people wouldn’t conflate not wanting to take this particular vaccine at this particular time with being “anti-vax”.

I don't think those same people were brave enough to be 'early adopters' and neither were they participating in the clinical trials since they also love immature and untested vaccines so much at the time didn't they? Like everyone else, they were waiting until they got 'approval' from the FDA and other regulators.

Some trials may not even give the full picture of the side effects involved with those vaccines and the risks are also not known yet until widespread adoption happens. Then you can make a decision on which one to take, if you can. In most cases, the risks are very tiny anyway.

> I don’t see why people are so offended by this view. I literally get seen as a crazy person simply for wanting to wait until the same standards have been applied.

The ones resorting to desperation and extreme hatred towards those who wait and want to know the risks later are those who's businesses require humans physically being present and are unable to adapt.

Even if the approval process were neglected (which is not the case, as other comments said), it would not make sense to refuse to get it.

The choice we have to make is trade a certainty of mass-deaths (either we continue destroying the economy (and many people die) or we let the virus spread (and many people die too)) for a tiny probability of bad side effects for a minority of people.

I can't see any logic under which it makes sense to refuse the vaccine.

I'm not offended by it, but as a 41 year old, it was (and continues to be) pretty obvious to me that risking covid infection was a lot more dangerous than the vaccines.

The risk from infection isn't super high for me, but the risk from the vaccines is considerably lower, even with the relative lack of long term information (I got my first shot in late March, when there was roughly 10 months of data from the first rounds of the trials).

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