I guess this is as good a place as any to ask: Do we have any other mRNA vaccines in circulation? If so, which ones? If not, how do we know that they're generally safe after only a few months of testing?
Could somebody just explain how scientists know decades-long effects after only months of research? I'm taking a vaccine, 100%, no matter what. I'm pro-vaccine. And even if we're unsure, what we know is the massive numbers of deaths we'll have without a vaccine.
I'm asking because I want more peace of mind about it.
Any long-term effects from a vaccine seems unlikely to be as bad as the virus itself.
But still, is that really the answer? That there's no way to know about long-term effects until it's been out there for decades? I was kinda hoping there was an answer like "what we know from other vaccines is that any bad effects almost always show up in first few months -- never, or almost never, many years down the line."
Afair mRNA and DNA based vaccines are being studied since about 1999 without ever finding side effects that stem from the method itself.
The way it works is actually safer than "traditional" vaccination via dead pathogens, mostly because only a tiny and harmless part of the actual pathogen is used.
The testing is done mainly to make sure that it actually works and the "harmless" bit is actually harmless...
So while a Phase 3 trial is still sensible to make sure that all assumptuions hold, I would argue that the expected side effects of these kind of vaccines are close to zero.
And honestly, even traditional vaccines have very little side effects... Neutering pathogens so that they stay neutered is a pretty well understood technique, and these new techniques basically do that on a genetic level by removing the neutered parts altogether.
that's why there is a lot of concern about their potential long-term side effects. in animal models, one of moderna's older vaccines (not for covid) was found to cause severe liver damage... likely as a result of the nanoparticle formulation they were using, rather than the mrna itself, but who knows.
personally, given the data that i've seen so far, i'd be more comfortable with taking the pfizer mrna vaccine than the moderna one. especialy when you add in moderna's reputation for peak sleaziness and non-transparency, it seems especially risky to be one of their guinea pigs in the general population.
ps I didn't downvote, and upvoted because downvoters didn't identify the reasons why they did.