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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

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This article will likely get picked up by other media vehicles and sensationalized, but the writing on the link is very sober and very clear that they are just investigating.

I actually liked it a lot and will save this for when people start spreading the "gloom and doom" version of this news that might be coming soon.

The text of the article is more sober, but the title alarms me because I know a lot of people will look no further, and will spread more vaccine paranoia. There's already plenty of that and the press has been chasing clicks.

If you have a group of 10 million people, a certain number of them are statistically likely to die within the next 24 hours, vaccine or not. So a lot of spurious correlations are going to happen with mass vaccination, and many of them are going to end up in headlines. It's already happening[1] and the press is going to be responsible for a non-zero number of deaths from people who don't understand that it's sheer coincidence.

[1] https://nypost.com/2021/01/13/pfizer-cdc-probing-death-of-fl...

True. The title is more dire than the actual content of the article.

It's good for people to post this information, and then for others to explain its significance or lackthereof.

Self-censorship and other forms of information suppression just inhibit this process of people becoming exposed to different information and thereby better informed.

I agree, when the information is presented in a clear fashion with all the background facts already understood by the reader.

However, when the average person is so easily misled by spurious correlations, you must present these coincidences with a great deal of background to explain why one event followed by another doesn't mean that that event was caused by the previous event. That context is rarely given, leading multitudes of laypeople to wildly misinformed confirmation bias.

Discussing whether the current vaccines are suitable for all population segments is a valid conversation. Should these

> very frail patients with very serious disease

have gotten the vaccine?

Yes, they're first in line for that very reason and also the most likely to die for reasons unrelated to the vaccine.

These are now being skipped for that vaccine.

The Covid jab is to vaccines what IV saline is to drinking water.

We should be scrutinizing it extensively because it is unproven technology being rolled out at an unprecedented scale for a virus that has an extremely low fatality rate.

In short: if we fuck this up in any way vaccines will become nonviable in the majority of the western world, and with good reason too.

Edit: since people don't seem to know what the covid jab actually is, but enjoy downvoting and flagging: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...

In short: it does not use a weakened version of the virus like every vaccine up till now, it injects mRNA instead. That mRNA gets inside your cells and causes the cells to express a protein that is common to the virus. Other cells react to this by creating anti-bodies against that protein.

It is a misuse of terminology to call it a vaccine given that word has nearly two centuries of meaning, and if some people have a bad reaction to it then it drags down proven technology along with it. It is closer to temporary genetic modification than it is to regular vaccines.

That 95% of the anti-anti-vax crowd I've talked to have no idea about his bodes ill for scientific literacy and will make any possible backlash against it even worse.

> The Covid jab is to vaccines what IV saline is to drinking water.

I don't quite get this comparison. Are you saying the covid "jab" is almost a vaccine but isn't, in that saline is almost tap water (minus minerals/contamination plus 1% NaCl)?

I think he's referring to how when you're really dehydrated, you give people IV saline because it is a much faster uptake. I honestly don't know the mechanism and am not looking up why right this minute, but my inference from his comment is he's claiming the COVID vaccine hits way harder than a normal flu vaccine.

I've already had an anecdotal report from someone who received the vaccine that it 'floored her' for an entire day.

I hope this helps your understanding.

> That mRNA gets inside your cells and causes the cells to express a protein that is common to the virus.

That's what a standard vaccine with an attenuated virus does as well.

No viruses contain nucleoside-modified RNA or DNA.

If any virus did we would all be dead since they completely circumvent the immune system.

No, we wouldn't, because the proteins of the virus are what the immune system responds to, not the genetic material.

And obviously the proteins coded for by such genetic material do stimulate immune response, otherwise mRNA vaccines would have no effect.

23 people died. These are the very people we were trying to save, why we shut everything down, right? But I guess we don't feel as strongly about their deaths because it was our vaccine that did it.

Looking forward to 2021

Older people dying is not the only reason for the shutdowns. Health care being overwhelmed is another main reason, and it’s not just old people that end up in hospital.

The 45 - 64 age group has occupied the most hospital beds during the pandemic in my country (Scotland), and probably yours too if you dig out the stats.

> because it was our vaccine that did it

What makes you think that

It contributed to their deaths in the same way covid contributes to the death of someone with underlying conditions. Or what, will you say that it was the underlying conditions that killed them, and not covid? ;)

We don't know that

We are pretty sure that Covid caused the vast majority of those excess deaths

Very old people were not part of volunteer group, so this vaccine do have more severe side effects than extrapolated. They are changing the regime and skipping some of the frailest due to this. The vaccine will still provide protection for most.

How do you know it contributed to their death? How would it do so? There are clear ways underlying conditions can contribute to death by covid, but I’m not aware of any such thing with the vaccine.

Why do you think the vaccine did it?

Also fully Vaccinating is the only good way to end lockdowns. If you dislike lockdowns and want them to end and regular life to resume you should be be happy that we are Vaccinating and not make unsupported accusations

Difference is you can't transmit a vaccine to someone else, isn't it?

These appear to be elderly patients in care homes. The CFR if they get covid is pretty horrifying. If I was 90, I'd take the vaccine.

Indeed. My grandmother is 90 and got the vaccine yesterday, which was a huge relief to her and the rest of the family.

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