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Comment by macksd | Hacker News Reader

It isn't entirely the typical anti-vax nonsense or outlandish conspiracy theories, though. mRNA vaccines are entirely new and I don't believe we've had even traditional vaccines start getting used outside of trials so quickly before. This is new ground, and not without its own potential risks.

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It's important to understand that antivaxxers are wrong not because they make a risk analysis of vaccines, but because they make that analysis based on flawed data. They severely undervalue the risks of the various diseases, and severely overvalue the risks of the vaccines, and land in the wrong conclusion that every single vaccine therefore is bad for you.

But they're not wrong in making that risk analysis in the first place.

I do not belong to a risk group for covid-19. I don't live with anyone in a risk group, I don't hang out with people in a risk group or even meet with them. So I don't mind being at the back of the line for this vaccine, the risk of the disease is negligible to me, while the risk of the vaccine is unknown. I don't mind waiting and seeing what happens after millions of people have gotten the vaccine before I get it myself. That minimizes the risk to me.

But my dad belongs to a risk group, so for him the same risk analysis gets a different result, because his risk of dying is a hundred times greater than my risk of dying. So he will try to get vaccinated as soon as he can, as he should.

> They severely undervalue the risks of the various diseases, and severely overvalue the risks of the vaccines, and land in the wrong conclusion that every single vaccine therefore is bad for you.

What's the data look like for long-term effects of an mRNA vaccine?

What are the long-term effects of vaccines everyone is talking about? This is not a loaded question, I'm asking in good faith.

And I ask because even the rarest documented effects occur within 3-4 months of administration, which is hardly long-term.

There may be a case for a specific Lyme disease vaccine, but thanks to the anti-vaxxers, the whole thing was withdrawn (against FDA recommendation) before the actual reason could be found.

I think the bigger concern in this case is that we don't know. And the overwhelmingly strong historical case for vaccines that exist doesn't really apply that well here since it's a pretty new approach of essentially doing gene therapy to get your own body to produce the protein that triggers the immune response. And as far as I know (and admittedly, my slightly more-than-average time spent researching this still rounds down to nothing) that technique has only been used in humans on a fairly rare disease so far. I'm definitely optimistic from the data so far. I'm more likely to get it since I know I'm done having children anyway. If I was high risk I would probably get it. But I'm not high risk. I'm also optimistic I could survive a COVID-19 infection. I'm not rushing out the door to get my hands on either to be honest.

Exactly. This is a new type of vaccine that was rushed through testing being deployed widely for a disease that kills less than 1% of people who get it.

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