"The authors observed that neither symptoms nor blood investigations were predictive of organ impairment.
“Causality of the relationship between organ impairment and infection cannot be deduced, but may be addressed by longitudinal follow-up of individuals with organ impairment,” the authors said."
The paper took 201 people who self-reported as long Covid sufferers, and found that 66% of them had something that could be characterized as "organ impairment" when a whole-body MRI scan was conducted. It's not at all clear that this would differ significantly from any random group of people whom you stick in a whole-body MRI scan (let alone a group of people who had recently recovered from any other viral illness). Which is why we don't do them.
Thus far, ~all such "long Covid" research has been anecdotal and/or uncontrolled. The evidence quality is quite poor.
Vaccinated people can spread the virus on a (there's a better term for this) surface level, which is why it's still important for them to wear masks and wash hands.
Hypothetical example of how it can spread: an infected person sneezes on a vaccinated person right in the face. That vaccinated person then rubs his face all over an non-vaccinated person. Really high chance the non-vaccinated person is infected.
I also want to emphasize that a vaccinated person that came in contact with the corona virus is far less contagious than an asymptomatic person.
i think you are looking for "disease vectoring"
Also there is an aspect of if you are young and healthy your risk of serious effects from covid is low. Even if your risk of problems from the vaccine is low, if your risk of serious effects from the disease that the vaccine treats is also very low then why bother taking any action.
In short, you should not be injecting things into your system unless you really need them.
what exactly would you call phase 3 trials for the various vaccines that were done on thousands/tens of thousands of people?
As much as you trust each of the (5?) vaccines, you yourself can not know for certainty.. there is some doubt. You may judge that that uncertainty and risk is minimal and well worth taking the vaccine, another completely rational person may decide that it is not worth the risk.
The point of my post was that there is real and legitimate risk, be it ever so small. Anyone who pretends there is zero risk to the vaccine is misrepresenting the truth and doing a disservice in the effort of persuading rational adults that vaccine delivery is being lead in an honest and forthright way.
i find this "better the devil you know" mindset really weird when the "devil you know" is an extremely infectious virus that has killed _three hundred thousand_ americans (not to mention more worldwide), and thousands more by the day.
these hypothetical vaccine side effects that have not come up during any of the trials that have been going on for _months_, across thousands and thousands of participants, would have to be pretty insanely bad in order to outweigh the negatives of millions more people contracting the actual virus.
But you have to acknowledge that there are huge incentives for the drug manufacturers to have a successful test and a healthy scepticism until they have been truly independently verified isn't unwarranted.
Also a pure, as tested, vaccine doesn't magically appear for your inoculation, there is manufacturing, and delivery, and other potential contamination points along the way. It means what goes into your system isn't necessarily what has shown to be safe; not a huge risk, but a risk nonetheless.
It would have made me feel better if you had started out your reply by saying.. "yes there are risks to this vaccine, but..". That way I would know we're working from the same starting point and I could trust that your views are calm and considered, and that you accept the reality that there is indeed risk to taking a foreign substance into your bloodstream.
Many of us know people who have had Covid, and it wasn't a very big deal. Even fat old Donald Trump shrugged it off in a few days; granted he had the best medical care possible. That's not to diminish the loss of loved ones that have surely been taken by Covid. But it can make one question the statistical importance of Covid in the larger scheme of things.
Again, i'm not really arguing with your points, just that they need to be presented with honesty, we shouldn't put a religious halo around vaccines; we should be clear about the risks too.
Regardless, for some rich people those treatments _are_ available. And that may well lead them to the completely rational choice of avoiding the risks associated with a vaccine.
Everyone is different, and can arrive at different decisions completely rationally.
The vaccines have been tested in 30-40,000 people each. The typical serious side effects for vaccines are something like 1 in a million or 1 in a few hundred thousand. Even if the vaccine had an usually high level of side effects, odds are it's still far, far less harmfull than contracting the actual disease.
And again, my main point is that we should be honest about the risks and not pretend they're zero.
I'm not in the risk group, and I would take the vaccine right now if it was offered to me. Even in the worst case the potential risks are below what a real COVID-19 infection would entail.
I'm not trying to talk you personally out of getting the vaccine, I don't think it will turn you into a zombie or some foolishness. I'm just asking you to understand that it is a rational decision for some people to arrive at a different answer.
And the risk is actually almost entirely age-dependent, the other risk factors weren't that significant in studies.
But that says absolutely zero about any single individual. Each individual, regardless of age group, can have more or less susceptibility than their age group. It is an _individual's_ health and other risk factors that decide the outcome for that individual -- not their membership in an age category. Therefore, each individual must decide their own risk tolerance and remediation plan.
0-19 years: 0.00003
20-49 years: 0.0002
50-69 years: 0.005
70+ years: 0.054
So only age 50+ have at least 0.5% chance to die from COVID-19. These numbers also include everyone in that age range, e.g. the obese, diabetic, immunocompromised. If you know you are healthy, your odds are better. As a healthy 27 year old and something of a fitness fanatic, my odds appear to be 99.98% of surviving at minimum. Due to the reasons I just mentioned, in addition to being on the younger end of the 20-49 age range, my odds are actually quite a bit better than 99.98%, although I don't know the exact number. I'll roll those dice over a vaccine that has been rushed, and will get the vaccine some years in the future if no problems emerge.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...
But – excuse me for putting this bluntly – it is obviously very selfish. If everybody calculated their risk like you do, the result would be that the pandemic drags on for a few years, a lot of preventable deaths happen + probably a terrible economic downturn. You have the choice to sacrifice a little bit (meaning a tiny chance of vaccine complications) of your own health for the greater good – or you can slack of others doing it for you. Because that's what's going to happen, most people voting "yes" on this thread are making the same calculation you are but deciding to sacrifice a little bit of their own health.