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Comment by rpmisms | Hacker News Reader

I used to work for Andy Wakefield, so I have a bit of a different perspective on this issue. The important things that aren't in this are MSG, Mercury, and possibly adjuvants like aluminum, because

> Our vaccine candidate is easy to manufacture, extremely stable and elicits a powerful immune response.

Those are what most of the intelligent anti-vaxxers worry about, except for a few people who object to fetal tissue being used in development, which is not an issue here.

I'm sure some folks will get up in arms about this, but it'll be a huge step forwards in many people's minds, and hopefully will be used as a template in the future.

To clarify: I'm not an anti-vaxxer, but I do think the testing process isn't rigorous enough, and I have seen absolutely awful medically confirmed reactions firsthand, which gives me a slightly different perspective. Vaccines are good, but I want the reaction rate in non-immunocompromised people to be zero

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> I used to work for Andy Wakefield

Interesting, what was that like? Did he actually believe all the claims he was making?

Absolute horndog, no scruples, and a complete narcissist. Basically worse than they make him out to be. Del Bigtree is very similar.

The Tommey family (worked with Andy on Vaxxed) are some of the kindest people I've ever met, and I'd like to see them again.

Suzanne Humphries is possibly one of the smartest people I know, and is incredibly well-read. She's a nephrologist who started charting patterns around people getting flu shots followed by sudden kidney failure, well before Andy did his "research". She brought this to the attention of a researcher, and was promptly dismissed. She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety, which I appreciate as an intellectually honest position. Out of the whole crowd, she's the person I would listen to. She's a bit like Andrew Yang; she doesn't hold opinions, the data is her opinion.

I'm not sure why this is getting downvotes. I'm answering the question.

> She's not anti-vaccine, but is pro-vaccine-safety

I've never heard of Humphries before your comment. I searched and found a long video of Humphries where she says, at the outset:

>> "never has there been a safe vaccine, never will there be a safe vaccine, and it is not possible to have a safe vaccine." [1]

IMO, a reasonable person would call that an anti-vaccine point of view, don't you think? Calling it pro-vaccine-safety seems disingenuous.

Anyways, I agree with you that she seems well read and she articulates her position in a level-headed manner and I'm even open to her being correct. But her position seems to be very anti-vaccine because she tells us that vaccine safety is "not possible" and that there will never be a safe vaccine.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw

Well, if we want to go deep into her body of research we can. She's pro-immunization, but doesn't believe vaccines as we know them are an effective way to do so. The current structure involves harming the body in order to create immunity, and therefore, if no benefit is derived, violates the Hippocratic oath.

I get frustrated with her sometimes, because her ideas are incredibly rational and coherent, but she doesn't understand presentation or how to sell an idea.

I would recommend her book if you want to gain an understanding of the rationalist arguments against modern vaccination:

https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Disease-Vaccines...

It's controversial thought, but it is enlightening, especially if you want to understand why some "otherwise" smart people believe this nonsense

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. Thank you. I appreciate the book reference.

Because I said a wrongspeak.

No problem. Hope you enjoy if you decide to peruse.

Eh. She looks very much like she's just playing to people's fears. If this is the rationalist argument, I wonder what are the irrational arguments.

My early childhood passed in a city where meat was sold on pushcarts and where drinking tap water was an easy way to have an infection. I guess having the unnatural disease matter filled with metals injected into my muscle might have saved me from becoming a statistic.

To all the others saying intelligent anti-vaxxer is an oxymoron, you can be brilliant in some fields and have doorknob level intelligence in others.

I personally don't dismiss his work, but Linus Pauling is probably an example you would like.

I usually consider Ben Carson as a modern and well known example.

I had no idea Ben Carson was a vaccine skeptic.

To be fair, he's only a neurosurgeon, so I'm sure we all know better than him about this.

To clarify, he's only a pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered procedures previously pondered as preposterous. This is actually something he's a recognized expert on, but because he holds a different opinion than you, he must be wrong.

He's not even antivax, he just thinks that newborns shouldn't receive a full round of shots immediately after birth, but that they should be spaced out. What an idiotic, uninformed individual.

I don't think Carson's anti-vax.

I think he's being used as an example of someone who can be brilliant in one specialty while demonstrating /u/magashna's "doorknob level intelligence" in other fields like Egyptian archeology.

Precisely. I remember hearing him in his debates years ago and the jokes about "well it's not like he's a brain surgeon...what!?"

Ben Carson's views on pediatric vaccines might or might not be well founded but his views on Egyptology certainly proves the point well that expertise in one area doesn't prevent one from being very poorly informed in another.

>pediatric neurosurgeon who pioneered procedures previously pondered as preposterous

"Practitioner" would have made a beautiful 7x combo

Ooh, nice. Thanks!

For those unaware of who Andrew Jeremy is, this is from Wikipedia:

> Andrew Jeremy Wakefield is a discredited British ex-physician who became an anti-vaccine activist. As a gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he published a 1998 paper in The Lancet claiming a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and autism.

I don't know how you qualify an intelligent "anti-vaxxer". I've had colleagues, that were otherwise intelligent people, vehemently refuse to listen to the evidence. They let their fear of autism drive their decisions. In doing so, they opened their children, and the communities they live in, to measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella... all of the things we'd nearly eliminated.

Unless the child has allergies to the vaccine, or a compromised immune system, it isn't reasonable to leave the child without vaccination. Intelligent people have more complex ways of rationalizing the decisions they make based on fear. It doesn't make the decision intelligent or wise.

Either way, better vaccines will be a boon to all. Hopefully, it will also ameliorate the fears of some "anti-vaxxers". My own fear is that because irrational decisions are already not based on evidence, these people will be unable to consider or accept new evidence, even when their specific rationalizations have been accounted for.

Meh

The flu vaccine is formulated each year to match the predicted strains expected to cause most human suffering that year. Influenza has a segmented RNA genome that makes it more likely to mutate and change its antigen expression. The flu vaccine saves a significant number of lives each year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Replication https://www.cdc.gov/flu/news/flu-vaccine-saved-lives.htm

The shingles vaccine bolsters immunity towards the chicken pox virus so that even when depressed your immune system has enough T-cells against the virus that it does not reactivate. Shingrex is 97% effective at preventing shingles.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25916341

The flu vaccine is important to get.

* Every year the vaccine is updated to match the new mutation which is why you need to get one every year.

* Some years the vaccine is not fully protective, but it will still reduce the severity and duration. This could mean the difference between life and death for at-risk populations: old, young, immune-comprised.

* If enough people get it, it provides herd immunity for people who can't take it such as babies less than 6 months.

I know someone with a child who has an immune condition who can't get the flu vaccine. The father didn't think he needed to get it because he didn't think the flu was that big of a deal, and it's not for most healthy people. Well he gets the flu, gives it to his son, and the son ends up in the ICU. Thankfully the son survived. The father now always gets the flu shot.

Yeah, that's my problem. Vaccines are oversold, so to speak. Everyone has a story about getting the flu immediately after getting the shot.

My big thing is safety and accountability. Currently, if a vaccine is harmful, the company that makes it has no liability, /and/ there's no control/test testing. The only way they're tested is by giving people the same shot with and without the viral component.

Problem is, saying anything that makes vaccines not sound like unicorn blood makes you one of "them", and you obviously want everyone to die of polio.

People do sometimes get sick with mild symptoms for a day or so after receiving the flu shot, but is nothing compared to the actual flu.

Yeah, last year was the first time I had symptoms from the shot. As someone who actually has had the flu, it felt like the final few days of the real flu, after the fever has broken, the worst is over and you are finally better and on the upswing.

>Yeah, that's my problem. Vaccines are oversold, so to speak. Everyone has a story about getting the flu immediately after getting the shot.

No, it's because the average person has no idea what they are talking about and do primitive correlation.

After a flu shot you can very well feel unwell as your immune system ramps up to eliminate the inactive virus. The real flu is actually nasty. Most people just have colds and never experience full blown flu until they finally do and regret.

The flu is far more common than you're starting though. That the cold is even more so doesn't mean that most people don't know what getting a flu is like.

Do you have specific examples of a vaccine manufacturer causing harm and escaping accountability?

Also, how would you do control testing for vaccines?

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

This exists because of a bill sheltering vaccine manufacturers from all liability.

As for control testing, you give some people a saline solution, others the shot, and others the shot with no virus. Put the issue to rest.

Again, what the heck. I'm answering the question.

Do you have any specific examples? I know why vaccine compensation exists, and it's not to hide wrongdoing.

Wait, why do you need the third group (saline solution) as part of the control?

Here's a list of cases. https://www.mctlaw.com/vaccine-injury/cases/

The saline is to rule out effects from the preservatives and adjuvants used. The viral component of vaccines isn't what anti-vaxxers usually worry about.

Those cases seem to be "had bad reaction, using system", do you have any evidence of wrongdoing that isn't tied to "shit sometimes happens when you vaccinate"?

My understanding, although I am not a doctor, is that it boosts your immunity to the virus itself because they inject you with a active (but very weakened) version of the virus. That way when your immune system is depressed, its response is still much better than it would have been otherwise. More antibodies produced, less chance the dormant virus can reactivate. Really interesting, honestly.

It's more complicated, there are many variants. Some use a live weakened version of the virus/bacteria. Some use a dead versions. Some use only a small part of the surface of the virus/bacteria that is enough to be recognized. (The last is similar to the approach in this vaccine.)

[In some old vaccines, they used a somewhat related similar virus/bacteria that was close enough to make you get the immunity, but not to cause the illness. I'm not sure if this method is used still today.]

I imagined it was more complicated, I was just giving it the layman 10,000 foot overview.

Why do you find the flu shot questionable based upon something you learned, incorrectly, high school? Read the CDC report on the flu vaccine[1].

Your "theory" on shingles is inaccurate. The chickenpox virus can go dormant and resurface as shingles. Read the Mayo Clinic's overview.[2]

Basically, you are entirely wrong and are spreading inaccurate information, stop it.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-benefits.htm [2] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/shingles/symp...

I've never seen the shingles vaccine marketed towards people who had chicken pox, just the opposite. On my vaccinations forms, I always saw a checkmark for the shingles vaccine that said something along the lines of "had chicken pox", which was essentially an exception.

What? Shingles is caused by the virus that causes chickenpox, which lays dormant in your body after you have had chickenpox. So you should especially get the shingles vaccine if you have had chickenpox.

>intelligent anti-vaxxers

Oxymoron.

> intelligent anti-vaxxers

No that's an oxymoron if I have ever seen one.

The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe. As far as I know this also applies if there were issues in the manufacturing even if the vaccine itself is safe.

Vaccines are very important and most make sense but we are at what appears to be a tipping point where profits may go over the general well-being of the public.

We need proper oversight.

> The primary issue is that vaccines are becoming a very large percentage of pharmas profits

[Citation needed]. Vaccines are practically sold at break-even cost, and in fact in the last few decades many companies have exited the vaccine market entirely because there was so little money to be made.

> as well as there being protections for the industry to prevent people for suing them if a vaccine turns out to be actually unsafe

These liability protections exist because vaccines are so unprofitable. If you didn't have indemnity for a product that both

a) gets distributed to almost everyone, and so even tiny probabilities of side effects result in large absolute numbers of cases

b) has a tiny profit margin

no one would ever take on that risk, and the only way for vaccines to get made would be from nationalized industries.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/265102/revenues-in-the-g...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/merck-pfizer-sanofi-pasteur-...

Vaccines do have shitloads of oversight and its world wide. Do you think the US FDA is somehow the only org in the entire world that's checking vaccines and drugs?

By oversight I mean are vaccines being pushed that are unnecessary for everyone to get (for example yearly flu). Are government officials being lobbied to pass laws requiring vaccines that are not needed etc.

I believe the vaccines them selves are safe and tested.

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