Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

OrvalWintermute

> Reason 4 - Vaccines can stop your pregnancy or your period and make you stink

> I have seen zero cases of this, and everyone who's had a vaccine to my nose do not smell, and still have period and can get pregnant.

> I'd give this one a 0.000000000000000001% chance.

VAERS is tracking the following:

17,128 DEATHS

83,412 HOSPITALIZATIONS

92,017 URGENT CARE

127,641 DOCTOR OFFICE VISITS

7,532 ANAPHYLAXIS

10,179 BELL'S PALSY

2,631 Miscarriages

8,408 Heart Attacks

10,304 Myocarditis/Pericarditis

26,199 Permanently Disabled

3,875 Thrombocytopenia/Low Platelet

18,925 Life Threatening

31,753 Severe Allergic Reaction

9,734 Shingles

2,631 Miscarriage

15,158 Menstrual Disorders

5,401 Vaginal/Uterine Haemorrhage (All Ages)

The key question about VAERS data is, how bad is the under-reporting of side effects? The allegations of under-reporting ratios are all over the place, from as low as 1 to 3 undercount, to as bad as 1 to 100 undercount.

We really don't know how bad the situation is, or isn't. We just know there are side effects and some of them are non-trivial.

> A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described. It only confirms that the reported event occurred sometime after vaccine was given. No proof that the event was caused by the vaccine is required in order for VAERS to accept the report. VAERS accepts all reports without judging whether the event was caused by the vaccine.

https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/dataguide.html

Also, where are you getting your numbers. When I search the database (after agreeing several times that I read and understood a disclaimer similar to the above), I found 8,225 reports of death

That's interesting data. How easy would it be for you to compare it against the same for say other vaccines? I still think the Covid vaccines probably over-report compared to others, since its the only vaccine I ever got where I got notified about Vaers and told to report, but it be an interesting comparison and would give us a head start. We'd probably also need the count of people who received each vaccine to normalize the comparison.

Though to be fair, and again, I'm a random person online explaining my personal assessment, but in my assessment I also take into account that I assume that smarter people then me have already ran all these numbers, and maybe I'm naive to assume that, but I also don't have the time, know how and the access to all the data I'd need to do so myself.

In that case, I have to either trust institutions and academics of multiple countries who seem to mostly agree +/- a few difference, or I have to trust volunteer effort from generally amateurs on the internet mixed in with some legitimate trolls. And since in my field of expertise, I see often that the internet is filled with more crap than accurate information, I don't really trust the internet as much, especially the information that's easy to find.

Do keep in mind that these raw counts are meaningless, and arguably scare-mongering. Some number of people will have a heart attack regardless of whether they had the vaccine... If all these numbers were zero, we should all get the vaccine simply to live in perfect health forever!

We also know that the usual mechanism for bad reactions to vaccines is allergic reaction, which is easily observed on a short timescale, and basically doesn't happen with the covid vaccines.

> Do keep in mind that these raw counts are meaningless, and arguably scare-mongering. Some number of people will have a heart attack regardless of whether they had the vaccine... If all these numbers were zero, we should all get the vaccine simply to live in perfect health forever!

The question is really fundamentally simple for a massive vaccination campaign

Expected injury rates as a % of the population

Actual / Reported injury rates as a % of the population

Even while accounting for the low likelihood of even receiving reports of things.

We already know that some of the injury reports coming in have been independently verified by other nation's health departments. After all, there is a reason for some of the vaccine pauses among the young and healthy in the nordic countries.

>We already know that some of the injury reports coming in have been independently verified by other nation's health departments. After all, there is a reason for some of the vaccine pauses among the young and healthy in the nordic countries.

Those would not be in VAERS. At all.

Everyone, go get vaccinated, please.

Other countries with their own health systems have independently confirmed these issues.

A friend of mine that happens to be a medical professional in a European country told me of the clotting related issues starting to show up in their own numbers far in advance of it being likewise confirmed in VAERS too.

That is why we know about these issues.

Country A and Country B have problems that show up, they ask which vaccine, which vector, etc, and they draw conclusions.

That reminds me I forgot another reason:

Reason 5 - Quality of vaccine, freshness, poor QA, defective dose

I think this is a likely concern in some countries. The vaccines are challenging to transport and properly keep stable and manufacturing of them happens in many places and was put in place and scaled up very quickly, quality control could be an issue, same as proper transportation and storage.

I would honestly give this one a 5% chance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com