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Comment by protoman3000 | Hacker News Reader

While we now get the results from various COVID-19 vaccines I see a societal issue brewing up. How will we deal with the perceived uncertainty of the safety of these vaccines and the surrounding (dis-)infodemic?

I read recently that in some European country (was it Germany?) the willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19 went down from 80% to 60%. With these numbers policy makers will have a hard time convincing the broad population that they can rely on a due process and be safe. In the meantime there is a proliferation of false information and fake news, while in the past there was not much media coverage of significant side effects from a rushed swine flu vaccine [1].

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/7/27/9047819/H1N1-pandemic-narcolep...

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It depends what's more effective: These groups are different: do you jab first those who can most easily spread it, those who would most easily get it or those who would most severely be impacted if they got it.

I think whilst we all want to be safe, ultimately in a year or so, most of the population won't be getting this shot on a regular basis.

For me it's a simple risk proposition, how much at risk do I feel my children or I are from covid. For my children it's a slam dunk; their risk from covid is statistical non existent and weigh that against vaccines that may or may not have long term negative impact on them.

For me, it's not quite so simple as that. I will vaccinate my children, partly to protect them (though the risk to them is low, as you say), but mostly to protect me and my wife, and more importantly our elderly parents. None of the vaccines are 100% effective, and if I can reduce the chances of my kids bringing Covid into the family, I will.

By the time the vaccine is available for my kids, hundreds of millions of people will have already been vaccinated, and there will be very extensive safety data. Part of the requirements for emergency use authorization is extensive monitoring of safety, so if there's any problem with one particular vaccine, it will be known by then.

The timescale is still so short, "very extensive" it will not be compared to previous vaccines tested over many years, a decade.

This issue seems to solve itself. When the risk is higher/more unknown in the early stage, groups that have high/known risk with Covid can take the vaccine. As time passes, more and more data will be gathered on the vaccine risk so the group that can make the correct statistical call to take the vaccine grows. Whether healthy children will take it in 1, 2, 5 or 10 years deepends on what the statistics turn out to be and whether it's required to protect others.

Just to be clear, you have no solid evidence on the long term negative impact on children for either the virus or the vaccine. We have no long term data on anything related to this disease.

But for the deadly virus you interpret the lack sufficient evidence on children as no risk, for the vaccine as as a sign of risk. How do you justify that inconsistency?

>But for the deadly virus you interpret the lack sufficient evidence on children as no risk, for the vaccine as as a sign of risk. How do you justify that inconsistency?

Not the person you're replying to, but looking at similar viruses, there's basically never been a flu-like virus that has no short-term symptoms but serious long-term symptoms, however there have been rushed vaccines that had serious long-term symptoms.

From my perception it’s not that easy. Recently there have been research papers released that estimate long term effects also with children comparable to young adults. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they are right and that we know that COVID-19 has significant long-term risks for children. How do you outweigh that against the uncertainty of risk of the vaccine?

>> estimate long term effects also with children comparable to young adults

So, like nil then? I still can’t find anything beyond dramatized anecdotes to suggest any special danger beyond what is commensurate with the symptoms.

If even one gets sick after taking vaccine the media will jump on it and focus on nothing else for days / weeks.

I think getting people vaccinated is going to be a huge challenge.

As long as there is a shortage of doses it shouldn't matter too much.

Just from a software perspective: never install the big version upgrade. Usually the X.0 versions still has bugs that only come out at huge roll outs. I am inclined to wait a few months to let early adaptors test the vaccine.

Medicine is a bit different though and every country probably has institutes checking the vaccines independently. A lot of eyes are on this probably. No company wants to be the company that botched the corona vaccine.

It's likely that the majority of people on HN are not going to be early adopters, and that other groups will get the jab first.

It depends what's more effective, as these groups are all different: do you jab first those who can most easily spread it, those who would most easily get it, those who would most severely be impacted if they got it, or do you jab those who are most diligent, enthusiastic and first in the queue?

I'd even wager that most healthy adults around the world will not be getting the vaccine (but that might be a negative story to run with) but that's at less odds than just healthy, enthusiastic, low risk people getting the jab first.

That option might not be available in the short term. Spain for example aims to vaccinate almost the whole population until summer 2021. What are you going to do when you don’t think it’s version X.1 yet?

Wait.

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