Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ch4s3 | Hacker News Reader

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> So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage

This is pure conjecture base on literally nothing. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just baseless. The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. The mRNA vaccines cause you own cells machinery to build virus proteins at which point it works just like any viral subunit vaccine, which have existed since 1970 and include flu vaccines, hep A and B, and few other you may have had already. Billions of people have received those types of vaccines and they don't have long term negative effects, except rarely when someone has an acute reaction right after vaccination. It is true that some people have allergic reactions (a strong an destructive immune response), but they happen within about 4 hours and symptoms usually clear up in a few days.

If the COVID vaccines had some mysterious far off long term effects, it would be the first vaccine ever to do that, and there's no reason to suspect that might be the case. You may find this nature article interesting https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7, it's about general vaccine immunology.

I'm not telling you that you need to get vaccinated, but the particular concern you're raising isn't something you should be worried about.

>The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response.

You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well - it's like saying "we have this black box service we sort of have an idea of what it does and if we send it X/Y/Z we know what happens, it should work the same with W too - I've been in that scenario often enough to know that's an assumption that I'd rather see the data for.

I already saw that people in my peer group reported short term side effects like headache after getting vaccination, have taken days off from work, family members complained about dizziness the day after.

It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies, should be insignificant even compares to money that will be spent on vaccination campaigns - so why skip out on valuable data.

> You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well

I'm not assuming, the whole field of immunology seems to be on board here. We know pretty well how the immune system work and how immunity develops from exposure to foreign material, it isn't black magic. There's no black box here the immune system has been well studied, and we know the inputs as well.

Vaccines are probably the safest medical intervention we have, the reactions you're describing are typical immune responses that are well studied, well understood, and temporary. No vaccine has every caused some long range reaction in the we you're describing.

> It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies

One could, but there's absolutely no reason to bother, because immunology is a well established field and we know what happens after people receive subunit vaccines. The only moderately novel part here is the mRNA which has been tested for 30 years in vitro, in animals, and in people.

There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine. Again, you don't have to take the vaccine, but the thing you are worried about isn't supported by any evidence or research it is amateur conjecture at best.

>There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine.

By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible aince these people don't even know they had the infection and shouldn't be studied either.

Saying that the immune system is well studied and we know what happens when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects is again overreaching.

And I'm not saying my "amateur conjecture" is likely true, I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things - especially when you're vaccinating a huge % of population in one step (other required immunisations happen generationally)

> By the same logic brain effects of long COVID on asymptotic cases is impossible

No, not at all. The virus binds to ACE2 receptors on cells, where are all over you body and in your circulatory system. You could be infected and fight it off without acute symptoms and still have enough systemic damage from the virus and immune response to have lingering effects.

> when we don't even know the mechanism behind the long COVID sideffects

We do, it's cellular damage from the infection. This is well studies with the flu and various other viruses. What we don't know is why it seems to effect some people and not others, the risk factors, and we're still parsing through symptoms to put together a full picture. There's no mystery as to how this happens. When researchers say they don't know why brain fog is a symptom, it doesn't mean they have no clue how it happens.

> I'm saying given the surprising sideffects of COVID on asymptomatic cases it's not really unreasonable to check this kind of things

It isn't surprising though. Plenty of viruses can cause lingering systemic damage without sever acute symptoms. The long covid cases were appearing as early as late April 2020 in the US, and clearly wen't caused by the vaccines that weren't available for a year. This whole what if scenario is just baseless FUD.

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