"Supported by Chan-Zuckerberg initiative"
this will be great for conspiracy theorists
this will be great for conspiracy theorists
We’ve got another made by a company that’s been embroiled in a 4-decade long controversy over asbestos in baby talcum powder that only recently issued a recall, denying it all the way and claiming it’s safe.
I assure you, Zuck isn’t needed for any negativity here. These companies are awful and they’re not to be trusted. Period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
This article does a nice job of going into the nuances
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...
Also, a better link than a wikipedia article: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/history/ind...
The risk of getting a blood clot from the J&J vaccine is 400,000:1. This is less likely than dying of COVID in any age category. 0.00025%.
The risk of dying in a car accident in America is 0.01% every year. So you're 40X more likely to die in a car accident this year alone than get a serious blood clot from the J&J vaccine.
The risk of being injured in a car accident in America is 1.15% every year. So you're 6000X more likely to be injured in a car accident this year than get a serious blood clot from the J&J vaccine.
Nothing in life is risk-free. This is pretty close though.
It’s an experimental vaccine that hasn’t even been out for a year mate. Use some better judgement.
“Oh but it prevents covid” - yeah and that powder helped with the rash too I’m sure.
No, I'm putting my faith in the CDC and VAERS, and an incredibly twitchy public willing to report absolutely anything and everything, in no small part because folks like you freak them out.
> It’s an experimental vaccine that hasn’t even been out for a year mate. Use some better judgement.
Yeah, it's been administered billions of times. Most "experimental" vaccines are given to around 1000 people total. This is like aspartame now - one of the most studied vaccines on earth.
> “Oh but it prevents covid” - yeah and that powder helped with the rash too I’m sure.
This could not be less relevant.
Just wait until you learn what Bayer did during WWII as part of IG Farben. I'm pretty sure they had a Nuremberg trial about it. And yet we still take Aspirin. I suggest you stick to one thing at a time.
VAERS and it’s predecessors did not track this kind of thing even though they were explicitly made with the intention to. Their own workforce was puzzled as to why they weren’t deployed early on to track vaccine side effects.
Look, stick to the basics. If you’re going to appeal to authority find one with some backbone and preferably one with less profit motive.
CDC didn’t make the vaccine. J&J did. Neither knows what it will do over the next N years, and even if they did you’d be the last to know. You’ve got all the evidence you need in how J&J handled the powder case.
So no, I’m not taking the vaccine or the aspirin.
Everyone should question the competency and “trust us we know” attitudes of these companies. They’re the kind of people you only want to deal with when you absolutely have no choice.
The CDC is an apolitical vehicle broadly speaking. It's not perfect, and it has become more politicized over time, sure. It's a sign of their doing their job to adjust their position in the face of a rapidly changing landscape. It's also their job to be pretty conservative.
> VAERS and it’s predecessors did not track this kind of thing even though they were explicitly made with the intention to. Their own workforce was puzzled as to why they weren’t deployed early on to track vaccine side effects.
VAERS has always been there to track Reports of Vaccine Adverse Events. It's by the way an HHS system, not CDC. Do you have any articles to back your assertions? I'm of course open to reading them.
> CDC didn’t make the vaccine. J&J did.
As is tradition.
> Neither knows what it will do over the next N years, and even if they did you’d be the last to know.
The vaccine platforms are decades old and well studied, we know broadly what they do, so we can project their effects.
> You’ve got all the evidence you need in how J&J handled the powder case.
Would you not say it's fair that they incurred liability over the talcum powder, but the government waived their liability over any vaccine adverse effects and so they would have far less interest in covering it up?
> So no, I’m not taking the vaccine or the aspirin.
You... won't take aspirin because of the Nazis? My dude (or m'lady, as appropriate), I'm Polish and I'm over it. lol.
About VAERS this might be interesting...
https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/defining-away-vaccin...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IAzK4a58a7M4ajHKOpqe-9KD9Pd...
This is based on voluntary reporting, which is known to have under reporting where even 10% events are not reported.
Even then the risk is a serious AEFI is 1 in 5095.
I was referring specifically to the incidence of blood clots, not necessarily any AEFI.
I don't know enough about the NZ governments methodology to comment on your source.
Most people are concerned about having any sort of serious AEFI, and not just blood-clots.
So comparing rate of incidence of blood clots to car accidents to imply vaccine safety is a bit misleading in my opinion.
Hm, I was addressing the parent's specific point about blood clots rather than safety in general. I agree with you broadly, however. Worth calling out my wording. Thanks!
Is this not apples and oranges? The odds of a Covid patient dying from Covid is higher, is it not, than the odds of a person dying from Covid?
That is, one must take into account the chances of catching Covid in the first place.
If there is a nasty disease with 10% mortality, and a vaccine with only a 0.001% chance of mortality, there would not be sufficient information to decide whether to take the vaccine... instead, you would also need to know your chances of catching the nasty disease in the first place over some period of time.
The risk of the vaccine is an open question that's being answered over time (consider things like ADE that caused mRNA vaccines to be put on hold prior to the pandemic). On the other hand, COVID has a pretty well defined risk being that we've seen it for 2 years now, and it's from a familiar family of viruses. We also have to consider vaccine effectiveness; is it robust to variants? over what timeline is it effective? does it reduce transmission? etc. If it is less effective in any of these categories, the risk:reward grows larger, and not taking it begins to make more and more sense.
Lastly, you have to consider when comparing these numbers, that there's a non-null probability you won't ever catch COVID. I'm not at risk, and I believe I probably have natural immunity, so I see no reason to expose myself to additional risk; it wouldn't help anyone any.
> ... On the other hand, COVID has a pretty well defined risk being that we've seen it for 2 years now, and it's from a familiar family of viruses.
So, to be clear, you're saying that 2 years of observational data on COVID is conclusive because COVID is very similar to other viruses (SARS, MERS) which we have on decades of observational data on.
And yet you're saying that almost a year of observational data on COVID vaccines, over 3 billion doses delivered, is inconclusive even though it's also based on decades of study of similar vaccines. Vaccines developed using the same platform - both mRNA and viral vector vaccines are decades old. And in some cases, the studied vaccines were developed for SARS - the same virus you credit towards understanding of COVID. Should credit not also go towards understanding of the vaccines?
Is this not inconsistent?
At this point the COVID vaccine has been studied, trialed and monitored more than probably anything else you've ever interacted with in your daily life. Most vaccine trials are run with one thousand people, not three billion.
> Lastly, you have to consider when comparing these numbers, that there's a non-null probability you won't ever catch COVID. I'm not at risk, and I believe I probably have natural immunity, so I see no reason to expose myself to additional risk; it wouldn't help anyone any.
There's a very high chance you will catch it unless you mask and vax. Even then there's a pretty high chance.
You have no reason to believe you have natural immunity - you almost certainly do not. This is at best wishful thinking.
You're exposing yourself to more risk through inaction. But worse, you're putting your friends and family who cannot get the vaccine for actual reasons instead of gut feeling at risk.
Generally vaccines have a much longer trial and study period, this has been rushed due to emergency circumstances.
>But worse, you're putting your friends and family who cannot get the vaccine for actual reasons instead of gut feeling at risk.
How so? It's currently up in the air whether or not the vaccines reduce transmission.
I still disagree that I'm exposing myself to more risk by inaction. My risk is already nearly 0, so I don't really care to minimize it further anyway, but by vaccinating I'm taking on a lot of uncertainty (in personal risk, effectiveness of the vaccine over time, transmission reduction, etc), so it's impossible to assess properly with these unknowns. I would much rather just get COVID. You don't see an issue with that, right?
mRNA vaccines were first published in 1989, so 32 years ago.
At this point we've vaccinated more people against COVID with mRNA vaccines than the number of people globally infected with COVID proper. At this point we know more about the risk profile of mRNA vaccines than COVID.
> Generally vaccines have a much longer trial and study period, this has been rushed due to emergency circumstances.
Yes, generally vaccines have a much longer trial period - with a tiny fraction of the participants.
The average vaccine phase II trial has 2,854 participants, and 29,844 in phase III [1]. So far, 4.62 billion doses of the COVID vaccine have been delivered. Since most are two-shot, we can generously round that down to 2,310,000,000 people in this 'trial.'
'Rushed' is the wrong way of looking at it. It went faster, yes, but there's a reason. Since you can't knowingly infect people with ebola to test the efficacy of an ebola vaccine, you get a few thousand people, immunize them and then you wait. And wait. And wait. During the massive outbreak in 2014-2016, only 28,000 people in the world caught it.
On the other hand, by mid-2021 17% of America had caught COVID.
Proving it worked was a much faster exercise.
That it went faster doesn't mean it's less safe, and it certainly doesn't mean isn't effective. It only went fast because it was possible to prove its efficacy so quickly.
The data is clear: hospitalization rates are 15-200X higher in the unvaccinated and death rates are 8-87X higher. Even with Delta. [2]
Why do you think getting it to market faster means its less safe?
> I still disagree that I'm exposing myself to more risk by inaction. My risk is already nearly 0, so I don't really care to minimize it further anyway, but by vaccinating I'm taking on a lot of uncertainty (in personal risk, effectiveness of the vaccine over time, transmission reduction, etc), so it's impossible to assess properly with these unknowns. I would much rather just get COVID. You don't see an issue with that, right?
Your risk of a negative outcome from a vaccine is lower than your risk from infection, and they're both very low. The negative outcome from a vaccine is very low for everyone, while the risk of a negative outcome from COVID is low for you.
> I would much rather just get COVID. You don't see an issue with that, right?
Of course I see an issue with it. The vaccine causes your body to produce a subset of proteins from the COVID genome. A controlled, inert subset. You would rather your body produce whole live viruses that mutate, evolve and want to kill you. That makes no sense.
I agree vaccines aren't a panacea for transmission, but I know they're less risky than whole live viruses shooting out of you lol.
I'd argue that's dark ages thinking but even they were pro-vaccine because they were anti getting sick. Shouldn't really be controversial in this the year of our lord 2021.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551877/
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-brea...
No, but it does the mean the long term risk are not defined as well. What if, for example, this causes reproductive harm, or some harm to the offspring? I personally believe this is very unlikely, but it's too early to know at the moment. Or, what if the ADE risk is real, and vaccinated individuals aren't able to combat variants as effectively, perhaps even reacting worse to reinfection? It's simply too early to evaluate so many risk here. On the other hand, I can be pretty sure COVID won't cause birth defects, given that no coronaviruses do.
>hospitalization rates are 15-200X higher in the unvaccinated and death rates are 8-87X higher
Well, of course - there's a lot more unvaccinated people and cases, what else would you expect? And I'm not at risk of being hospitalized anyway, so I still see no reason to try and mitigate that risk. My time would be better spent ensuring my car is operating safely, or a million other things that could decrease my chance of harm more substantially.
Regardless, taking the vaccine is pointless beyond self-preservation if it doesn't reduce spread, and at the moment that's unknown, and complicated by the fact that some 'variants' seem to side-step the vaccine. Sitting on the side lines and waiting for more data seems reasonable to me.
That's why we have 32 years of study on mRNA vaccines are almost 50 years of study on viral vector vaccines.
> What if, for example, this causes reproductive harm, or some harm to the offspring?
You have no basis for that. What if it causes some people to grow a third arm? A fourth testicle? Again, we've studied the vaccine and know that it does not affect the germ line.
> Or, what if the ADE risk is real, and vaccinated individuals aren't able to combat variants as effectively, perhaps even reacting worse to reinfection?
The data that I linked you shows otherwise?
> It's simply too early to evaluate so many risk here. On the other hand, I can be pretty sure COVID won't cause birth defects, given that no coronaviruses do.
No mRNA vaccine has caused that either lol, nor has any viral vector vaccine. So why would it start now? It's as likely to do that as it is to grow in a bonus nut. [1] Note that the CDC does not specifically cover my bonus nut theory, so who knows? I'll keep an eye out for it tho.
"There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men." [1]
I mean why would they? A viral vector vaccine is a virus, just like COVID (well, more specifically, an adenovirus) which doesn't infect germ cells.
> Well, of course - there's a lot more unvaccinated people and cases, what else would you expect?
That's up to 200X higher per capita in the un-vaccinated population vs the vaccinated population.
> And I'm not at risk of being hospitalized anyway, so I still see no reason to try and mitigate that risk.
Everyone is, at different rates, and your rate is strictly higher than after vaccination.
> Regardless, taking the vaccine is pointless beyond self-preservation if it doesn't reduce spread, and at the moment that's unknown, and complicated by the fact that some 'variants' seem to side-step the vaccine. Sitting on the side lines and waiting for more data seems reasonable to me.
The infections from variants are still hundreds of times less severe in the vaccinated.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...
Yes, in which they were largely viewed as non-viable and a shelfed idea at least in part due to issues like ADE. The research here was not extremely active, nor was it done on humans to the extent it is now.
>You have no basis for that.
Correct, but I have no basis to believe that some unseen risk is not present too. Given that I'm not personally at risk for COVID, I think there's wisdom in waiting a couple years (at least) to see how it unfolds. And there is a basis for ADE fears, which you ignored in favor of joking about growing a spontaneous third testicle.
>do you not think anyone has had a child since they were vaccinated?
One child would not imply it's impossible for _some_ child to have a defect.
>The data that I linked you shows otherwise?
Can you point me to where this was? The 'data' is still very immature regardless. I'm sure I could source data that comes to the opposite conclusion. It's important to view these things in aggregate, not lean on the studies you agree with. Right now, I'm finding studies that disagree often, so I think waiting for the data to mature a bit is reasonable assuming I'm not harming anyone by doing so.
>The infections from variants are still hundreds of times less severe in the vaccinated
You missed my point here - the point is that they can still get infected, not that they aren't expressing symptoms as severely.
...
Birth defects were just an example, like I said I view it as unlikely. The point is that there's a potential for unseen risk here. You've devolved into being a bit rude now, and I found your lack of skepticism tiring anyway. The data is all over the map currently, yet you seem rigid in your position - that's bad practice. You keep making arguments about the vaccines being effective at symptom reduction, but that's never been the point I'm trying to engage, since I agree with that and there is pretty conclusive data there. I will say that you can find data to the contrary (see Israel's recent stats), but mostly I'm saying that a) as someone who's already _not_at_risk_, there's arguably no net benefit to society in me taking the vaccine, so long as transmission rate reduction is largely an unknown (and even in that case, I'd prefer natural immunity) and b) there's a possibility of unforeseen and unwanted side effects / repercussions due to the vaccine - this is true despite you belittling this idea.
I'm not at risk, so I don't care about minimizing it or how effective it is. There is a possibility I may be a host to transmit COVID to people at risk though, so I care about that. As of now, natural immunity looks much more enticing than vaccination for someone like me. Why are you so opposed to this? I won't be hospitalized, so you don't have to worry about me, and I presumably will spread it similarly to how vaccinated individuals will.