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Comment by lawn | Hacker News Reader

Here in Sweden almost everyone I've talked with said they would consider taking the vaccine, but that they wouldn't be first in line.

It worries me that so many seem so hesitant towards vaccine and I'll gladly stand first in line, but we're rightly prioritizing the elderly and their caretakers.

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I'd guess part of the hesitation is due to the Pandemrix-caused narcolepsy cases during the A(H1N1) pandemic in 2009. It was just 11 years ago, still fresh on people's minds.

It also doesn't help that the H1N1 vaccines came too late to do much good: while Pandermix was just one of many vaccines, and the only one I'm aware of known to cause problems, in most places they hardly made a difference because infections had already peaked by the time they were distributed widely. Eg here in Canada, I've seen estimates that vaccines reduced H1N1 deaths by about 5% at best. H1N1 still infected around 20-30% of the entire world population, and Canada was no different. A significant % of people were already immune, so natural herd immunity is the main thing that stopped it.

Given how fast COVID-19 appears to be spreading even in places with strict lockdown, I won't be surprised if it turns out that vaccines don't actually make much difference with it either.

Is the narcolepsy caused by Pandemrix permanent or just temporary?

Afaik it seems to be permanent.

Permanent, unless someone innovates medical therapy to fix the damage.

I think part of the problem is we were told it would take 18 months, then in half that time we have a vaccine with a fast track testing process. And then within 24 hours of the vaccine being used in the UK there were reports of people having bad reactions to it due to that group being excluded from the testing. Vaccines have been getting hit hard by anti-vaxers for so long that this seems to have fallen right into their lap with a bunch of easy to use propaganda.

Is it propaganda if it's true events?

Just because the event is true doesn't mean it's presented with the correct statistical context. For example, if, hypothetically, 2 people developed complications from the vaccine out of a treated population of 20 million, a front page headline exclaiming "Covid Vaccine Causing Complications" would be technically true, but also propaganda.

The same goes the other way. We see articles "A young person dies from COVID-19". True, but it aldo true that half of the COVID-19 victims were in the age bracket that is 10 years older than the life expectancy in the country.

"I think part of the problem is we were told it would take 18 months"

We were told a lot of things by the media, nearly all of it oriented towards pessimistic outlooks, worst-case scenarios and often just complete misrepresentation of the science. If you asked the people working on these vaccines back in May, they would have told you 18 months was some made up nonsense.

> We were told a lot of things by the media

This actually came from experts. Maybe not the same ones working on the specific vaccines but ones who have decades of experience within the vaccine space. Just because you read it in the media does not mean the media came up with it. They don't actually make things up. And 18 months was not worst-case it was average case with the best case in the media being Autumn. Just because the best case came out, doesn't remove the point that we were repeatedly told by experts (WHO) that 18 months was a good case scenario. While other experts said that was super optimistic.

"And 18 months was not worst-case it was average case "

It was the average case for a once-in-a-generation vaccine development process with unlimited resources, occurring in 2020, with ample research done on similar virus mere years prior?

If not, then it sounds like a useless "average" that was picked to fill air time and not to represent the best data we had at the time. And who had the best data at the time? The vaccine teams that had already developed the vaccines that are now being injected into the arms of Americans today. But they don't trot out on TV, so they had to grab some filler scientists to pretend they knew what they were talking about.

The two allergic reactions were from health workers who were allergic to vaccines. They knew it might happen and were ready.

People who are allergic to vaccines are not in trials for obvious reasons...

As someone who would heartily be first in line (and even be part of trials if I were eligible), I understand how people can be hesitant to try such a new and fresh vaccine, iff the reason is "it's too new and has been developed way too fast for comfort".

Beyond that though, to hell with people who still somehow think "only those at risk need to be vaccinated".

I somehow came across an acquaintance who was telling me "I can't wait for people to take the vaccine so everything can reopen, but I would never get it myself". Such absolute trashy selfishness.

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