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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

I also find the censorship to be deeply disturbing, but for me that's counterbalanced by the fact that the arguments against vaccination are so dumb. The best argument is basically, "It's not researched enough and it might kill you." But so what, doing things that might kill you on the basis of limited data is like a basic part of being an adult.

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Yeah, over 2 billion people have been vaccinated against C19. It's a pretty good sample size. Probably less people have tattoos.

The long term studies are not due until 2024. It would be too early to tell.

Have any of the studies released data yet? I was under the impression that even the data from the short term studies wouldn't be released for another couple of years.

Good point, tattoos have been around for ever. Bad comparison from me.

I'm actually excited about the new mRNA tech and the massive boost it got from the money during C19. I think lockdown is toxic to society and risks can be taken on vaccines to open things up.

I'm optimistic for humanity and thankful we had a mild-ish pandemic that was fatal for a relatively small percentage, but allowed us to improve our biotech so much in such a short time. This will surely help us next time.

This article for example:

https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2021/03/23/no...

> Good point, tattoos have been around for ever. Bad comparison from me.

The various commercial tattoo inks haven't, though. They're classified as cosmetics and aren't tested or approved by the FDA at all: https://daily.jstor.org/why-doesnt-the-fda-regulate-tattoo-i...

In the history of vaccines, virtually all side effects show up in the first few months. It isn’t too early to know they are safe.

It isn't too early to /think/ they are safe (a subjective judgement since they do harm a small percentage of people, just like the debate whether the virus is 'bad' or not). It is impossible to know with certainty if there are long-term effects, and predictions made from past events are obviously uncertain.

Is this a standard that you've applied to all medical care you've ever received, or is this particular to this vaccine? For example, have you ever taken medicine or received a treatment that was invented in the past 50 years, and if so, why didn't you feel the need to wait for an entire human generation to go by first?

Treatment is usually for a condition that is acute or severely altering one's quality of life. The calculation is how any unknown long term sides weigh against the immediate danger or reduction in quality of life. It is an entirely different calculation for a prophylactic that may have unknown side effects.

At this point we can rule out any serious, acute side effects since people aren't dropping like flies after getting vaccinated. What's left are long term side-effects, and in my mind these would have to be pretty severe to compete with "long COVID", which seems to have pretty nasty neurological symptoms in some cases in addition to the characteristic loss of taste/smell.

Either severe, or very common. Hopefully time will tell.

In fact, over 3.5 billion people have been vaccinated (with at least one dose). It's about 45 % or world population. I'd say it's amazing, though there's still quite some way to go.

Our World In Data is a great source for this and other covid-related data for the world and individual countries.

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Crossing the street is also potentially deadly.

Not crossing it, staying home all day until you starve or go insane from isolation is more deadly.

So we choose to cross the street.

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