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Comment by grillvogel | Hacker News Reader

my wife has a phd in drug development and is concerned about the speed in which this was released and the lack of long term safety trials. is she antivax/antiscience?

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Of course not. But we have to work with the data we have. Which currently says that the vaccine is safer than the disease. Considering hundreds of millions in many different countries have the vaccines it is fairly reasonable to believe that it is safe, considering that we're not seeing deaths associated with it. You always have to do cost/risk balancing. But if a hundred countries are all taking the same action and there's millions of people having already been "experimented" on (some for about a year, i.e. doctors who got the vaccines first) it reasons that there isn't much risk. Countries don't agree that much on anything, not even a pandemic response.

All the experts are concerned too. I work in vaccines (not claiming to be an expert) and I'm concerned too. Long-term safety trials take time, and so the question is how long are you willing to wait for the data? Its a shitty situation all around with the loss of human life, the impact to the economy and the politicization of every damn thing.

>lack of long term safety trials. is she antivax/antiscience?

I don't think so, but in our cultural climate those who bring up real, substantive questions about the process can be brought up. It is a shame since the MRNA vaccines are new for such widespread usage.

For me it came down to risk/reward. A year of being a hermit and the impact on my family tipped the scales.

When I had both doses and the time after I had no reaction. Others in my family had some sort of reaction even if it was just a sore arm. Does that mean it didn't work? No idea and there isn't a long term study to look at to learn from.

Doesn't mean her concerns are warranted when the vaccine has been given to hundreds of millions and we have data on it.

A phd is just a certification. Take from that what you will.

There were many technological advancement that allowed the release of the vaccine faster than ever. Often the long pole and vaccine development is the testing period. The thing is, when a non-trivial percentage of the population is actively infected, you can test really quickly. At this point the vaccines have made their way the tens or hundreds of millions of people, where the usual phase 3 clinical trial lasts a long time, yes, but only involves 3 to 30,000 people.

It’s a question of risk management. We have to weigh the cost of action against the cost of inaction.

I have no basis on which to form an opinion on your wife :-) but everyone’s been reacting differently to this situation. I’m encouraging people to follow the vast quantities of data.

How would you test the potential long term effects of these new vaccines in an accelerated fashion?

We don't know what the long term effects of either the virus or the vaccine are on a human. Hell we can't possibly even have data on what the long term effects are on humans. It doesn't matter how many people have been exposed.

Luckily we know how vaccines work. There’s nothing particularly new about this one. Vaccines arent magic; you trigger an immune response by getting a part of the virus into your body. It’s a pretty understood process.

So let me ask you instead, how many years would make you feel comfortable? Five? 10? 50? I prefer to rely on the wealth of existing information, and knowing the cost of inaction is much greater than action.

> How many years would make you feel comfortable? Five? 10? 50?

How long do you plan on living?

To give a vaccine to say, an 8 year old child, with no health concerns and excellent natural immunity to a disease (better than say, for seasonal flu), then it stands to reason that you would need so much data to show that the absolute risk reduction was greater than 0 (and not below 0), that the question is barely even worth considering; why not just wait until the child reaches a suitable age, at which point we'd already have the data?

I wasn't actually talking about children, however, while they themselves are not at elevated risk from COVID, children are little filth monsters who spread disease to everyone around them. The risk is they pass it on, and we are talking about aggregate population risk.

Nothing is risk-free, and demanding 80 years of data to know a vaccine has absolutely no long-term results when vaccine risk profiles are pretty well understood is not a reasonable ask.

there are between 0 and 1 years of data right now. most vaccines take many years for approval, 80 is a bit of a stretch

I was responding to the statement "how long do you plan on living?" made with respect to children.

However, there's far more than 1 year of data on mRNA and adenovirus vector vaccines.

The thing is lay people really have no basis for saying "there's not enough data" and "it's too fast" -- the scientists who study this are the ones with the background to make that assessment. All we really have are gut feelings and anecdota.

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