Literally half of my team have said they will not get the vaccine when it's available to them. One citing a podcast which talked about how the vaccine causes programmed cell death and the other because "it's all a bit suspicious".
Great guys, intelligent and generally good to be around. I didn't know how to react when I found out.
I am vaccinated. I vaccinate my kids and have done so as recently as a few months ago. I believe in vaccines.
But I’m not ready for this one yet. When it has gone through the same FDA approval process as would be used for any vaccine I will be first in line.
I don’t see why people are so offended by this view. I literally get seen as a crazy person simply for wanting to wait until the same standards have been applied.
No, an EUA is not the same thing as the normal FDA approval process. And even if it was, I personally would want more results about long-term effects before I got it.
The process the vaccines are going now is updating their rolling submissions to cover all the data since the EUA. What the EUA gave them was really the ability to do the paperwork for general, and start scaling the factory before the phase 3 trials where complete.
source: https://vaccine.unchealthcare.org/science/vaccine-approval/w...
There is a great diagram there that shows the processes.
The fact that something is not yet fully approved doesn't mean it's harmful. It also depends on what other vaccines are available. You can have a fully approved vaccine that is more harmful than the newer much better vaccine which is still in the process of being approved (but which is already looking extremely promising). The harm could be in the red tape.
I tried to do some research and found this:
> People think there is a difference in data quality between approval under emergency use authorization, but there really isn’t, he said. “The only real difference is the length of follow-up for efficacy,” he said. Covid vaccines: What full FDA approval means for you
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/covid-vaccines-what-full-fda...
If true it would suggest that we just don’t know how long they are effective for and not that there is some more rigorous side effects testing.
The point will hopefully be moot though as full approval may come second half of this year.
Why are these parts of the normal FDA process more convincing than the fact that millions of real people have already taken the vaccine with high efficacy and minimal side effects?
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/sa...
I don't think those same people were brave enough to be 'early adopters' and neither were they participating in the clinical trials since they also love immature and untested vaccines so much at the time didn't they? Like everyone else, they were waiting until they got 'approval' from the FDA and other regulators.
Some trials may not even give the full picture of the side effects involved with those vaccines and the risks are also not known yet until widespread adoption happens. Then you can make a decision on which one to take, if you can. In most cases, the risks are very tiny anyway.
> I don’t see why people are so offended by this view. I literally get seen as a crazy person simply for wanting to wait until the same standards have been applied.
The ones resorting to desperation and extreme hatred towards those who wait and want to know the risks later are those who's businesses require humans physically being present and are unable to adapt.
The choice we have to make is trade a certainty of mass-deaths (either we continue destroying the economy (and many people die) or we let the virus spread (and many people die too)) for a tiny probability of bad side effects for a minority of people.
I can't see any logic under which it makes sense to refuse the vaccine.
The risk from infection isn't super high for me, but the risk from the vaccines is considerably lower, even with the relative lack of long term information (I got my first shot in late March, when there was roughly 10 months of data from the first rounds of the trials).
"Great" and "intelligent" only to the extent that you have actually tested their civic maturity and intelligence, you mean. Democracy is in trouble because education has become a narrowing of the understanding, not an expansion of reason and civic principles.
Meanwhile, the pandemic of ignorance is a lucrative resource for ludicrous discourse.
To me, anti-vaxx means someone who is positively against vaccines, as in "vaccines give people X, so people shouldn't get vaccines", where X is some undesirable condition, autism, thrombosis, etc.
Being skeptic, but not against vaccines is not anti-vaxx. If someone says "I don't know if vaccines are safe", I don't think that's an anti-vaxx stance.
In fact, if you don't know about biology or virology, the "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is a totally reasonable stance to have, and not getting a vaccine is also a reasonable decision if you're not sure about the safety.
I personally don't know if COVID vaccines are safe, and I still got it, but I understand that I'm taking a risk by getting the vaccine without understanding it, because I figured the risk of not taking it is higher, but my estimation was relatively uninformed.
Eh - after hundreds of millions of doses I think it's functionally equivalent most of the time. It's not a huge surprise to me - I've worked with otherwise intelligent people and then find out they're deeply religious or even creationist.
Sure strictly speaking "I don't know if vaccines are safe" is different - but in practice there's not some deep level of analysis going on, people that don't like vaccines are just falling into cognitive bias and using motivated reasoning to dress it up.
People are wildly inconsistent and many people believe insane things. Critical thinking and accuracy are not the strength of most of general humanity. Even those in favor of the vaccines didn't arrive there from reading about them for the most part - they just picked a tribe.
Thankfully there's a small percentage of humanity that's pretty good at accuracy and they're working to save the rest of us.
Then they should also avoid all medications, since similarly to vaccines they probably don't have a deep enough understanding of biochemistry and pharmaceuticals.
In the end, trust in medical interventions is based on trust in the institutions that produce them, the individuals that administer them, and to some degree the public statistics around their efficacy, because it's not really possible to know exactly what the outcome will be in your individual case.
oh, but they do avoid medications. At least I do and am lucky to be able to. ( I'll make an exception for this vacine though )
> trust
Trust is a desparate last resort measure. Avoid it if you can.
That's not really a stance, that's just a statement of fact. The problem comes when people assume that this statement of fact about their knowledge imparts any information about vaccine safety.
I'm broadly of the opinion that someone who "do[es]n't know about biology or virology" should:
A) keep their opinions on biology and virology to themselves, and
B) listen to the people who do know what they're talking about when their decisions will affect others.
It's all fine and well to make decisions based exclusively on your incomplete personal understanding when it only affects you, but that's not the case with vaccination.
> and not getting a vaccine is also a reasonable decision if you're not sure about the safety.
Imagine you're standing at the edge of a river. There's a bridge to cross the river, but it looks a little rickety and you're not too sure it's safe. Alternatively, you could try to swim across the river.
Now imagine that you've just seen 3.75 million people get eaten by sharks trying to swim across the river, and there's a team of architects who have inspected the bridge telling you that it's safe to cross.
I would not describe anyone who tries to swim as behaving reasonably.
NB: throughout this comment "you" is used as a generic third-party pronoun to describe any individual, not you personally.
In raw numbers, the vaccines are many times safer than flying or driving, yet there still remains this irrational response to the vaccine.
In reality, people scared of the vaccine should really be more concerned about the many other things found in their day to day life that have a better chance of killing them.
I think it's a little unfair to label everyone "anti-vaxx" who are weary of the emergency approved, no long term testing, first time ever, mRNA vaccines. For those people, encourage them to look into the more conventional Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Even then, I wouldn't consider them anti-vaxx until full FDA approval has completed, at least for the J&J vaccine.
At some point I can only treat people who still give these lame -- and untrue -- justifications for why they like vaccines, "just not this one", as anti-vax.
> which is still in development
Correct. There have been no long term studies, no MRNA vaccines have been fully approved, and the COVID vaccine is the first MRNA vaccine to be given to the general population.
Even if you grant that computer scientists are more intelligent than the norm, I find that doesn't help very much. Often, I encounter some computer nerd who has constructed a crystalline tower of logic that's resting on a rickety foundation of evidence and experience.
On the other hand, we don't know what long-term side-effects the mRNA vaccines have (besides a much lower death-rate and potential herd-immunity... which is why I got vaccinated) and there are definitely articles [2] which point out that it's not always benign to humans.
[1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/dishonest...
You and I are clearly hanging out in very different tech communities if you're finding people who believe in homeopathy.
And then there’s the immunity through exposure https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.07.21256823v... https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v... Hell even in this thread someone has tried the won’t someone think of the children outrage by talking about spread to a grandchild. Well that chart up there shows youngsters in the uk have nothing to fear.
Also, nobody said your body is not about you. GP suggested the vaccine is not about you. Indeed, it's not. We vaccinate not to protect ourselves, but to protect society by reducing the spread of disease. The fact that it will also protect you is of course great as well. This is nothing new, and has been the same for every other vaccine.
No they aren't, because I can and do limit my risk to such people in other ways. And they can and should limit that risk as well themselves, in other ways than getting others vaccinated. Why?
Because the space outside your home isn't some "safe space" where you won't ever get infected. As a general rule, you are responsible for your health and safety, nobody else is. There are other people with different health strategies out there, even people who are not afraid to get infected.
> We vaccinate not to protect ourselves, but to protect society
Society changes, and it does not need protection via compulsory vaccines, except the 1984 kind. People and their rights need protection.
This is a stupid proposal for a rule. I call it a proposal, because even a cursory study of the evidence shows it is not a description of general practice, and doesn't reflect the laws that most societies have enacted for themselves.
If it were the actual rule, then you would never be able to eat any food. Most people have the decency to stay home when they're sick, unless they fear for their security by doing so, out of consideration for other people's health. Most people take reasonable measures when making and storing food, even in the absence of laws creating some obligation, because they have consideration for the health of those who will eat it.
When you go out in the street or to a pub, there is no expectation and no rule that everybody is completely sterile.
Your health is primarily your responsibility, not other random people's you may encounter.
This is like saying people should be able to drive on the opposite side of the road.
My understanding is that vaccination is supposed to reduce the severity of the covid-19 disease, if you were to contract it. It does not prevent you from the viral infection itself.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/vaccine-q-a-can-a-f...
- Asking the tiny fraction of the population who are immunocompromised to remain locked down until the safety of vaccines has been empirically verified?
- Or asking healthy humans to take an experimental vaccine with no recourse should they suffer adverse effects?
When is the vaccine safe and no longer experimental, according to you? We have now given over 2 billion vaccine doses around the world.
The moral thing to do is protect idiots from their own stupidity because we value their lives still, but recently I'm questioning that.
Then why can’t I sue should I have an adverse effect?
The definition of experimental has no relation to the ability to be sued.
Being selfish and risking others?
Being kind and not holding others hostage because you don't believe in science?
I'm in agreeance that people should get the vaccine, but I'm under no illusion that for a normal (selfish) person, the cost-benefit is a little wonky.
Agree with this statement as such.
Except that you do not have a right to force others to do anything that they are not in agreement with. You have a right to protect yourself and stay home. I support that. ( Just putting it the way opposite to how you have phrased it )
> Going out in public as a spreader is not a right
Anyone out in public could be a spreader, vaccinated or not. The science is not as clear yet. You should protect yourself.
> the people you infect should be able to hold you legally liable
Why only for Covid-19?
Perhaps a fair comparison would be if we required those who do not wish to get vaccinated to have a relevant medical degree to prove that they know what they're doing?
I'll admit that this does nothing for high-risk groups that can't safely vaccinate for one reason or another, but I don't see that as a good reason to try to encourage someone to do it that isn't comfortable.
and the hospitalization rate of catching the virus are much higher than the death rate for 20 year olds. death rates drop off halving roughly every 8 years. hospitalization rates only half roughly every 16 years. so as a 20 year old you run ~1/200th of the risk of death as an 80 year, but you run 1/13th the risk of hospitalization compared to an 80 year old. that is still very non-zero.
there's literally no downside for any age group to getting the vaccination. even with 12-18 year old kids the risk of hospitalization and MIS-C is around 1-in-12,000 and the rate of side effects from the vaccines are much lower.
not to mention that we don't know how often the real virus triggers things like type 1 diabetes in kids and things that they'll carry around for the rest of their lives (which we expect to happen because other viruses cause them, and SARS-CoV-2 against completely naive immune system with no inherited T-cells is almost certain to be worse).
It's the propaganda of the big pharma mafia that tickles your narcissism so you get a kick out of feeling like superior for being 'one of the good guys' who is not against the vaccines.
On the one hand you have know-it-all anti-vaxxers. And just as bad are the people who are know-it-all pro-vaxxers. Both groups have a toxic attitude and mindset of "I know the absolute truth without any doubt and the other group just needs to be educated".
The first thing anyone with an unbiased critical-thinking mindset should notice is the fact that if vaccine safety was such an obvious no-brainer, and given that vaccines are meant to benefit the recipient, it would not take this much effort and force to get people to accept it. It would not remain a controversial issue for this long.
Any topic that is so clear-cut and obvious will not remain controversial for this long. The average person has no special interest or benefit in being "anti-vaccine". If the pro-vaccine folks were so convincing it wouldn't need this much force and effort to convince the other group to take the life-saving drug.
Pro-vaccine people need to drop the self-righteous attitude and treat the opposing group as equals. Instead all they do is belittle and mock them.
And if the only answer you arrive at is "well because those people are stupid .. misinformation ... disinformation ... and they need to be educated" you need to stop and re-evaluate yourself and leave just a tiny bit of room for the possibility that you may be wrong instead of taking a "I'm absolutely right without any doubt" stance.
And yet you're no doubt familiar with the concept of Flat Earthers, so this is clearly false.
I remember when anti-vax meant multi level marketing, crystal healing yuppies or home schooling ruby ridge bible thumpers refusing to get their kids the MMR shot. The definition has significantly relaxed, to the point where just saying "yeah I'm not really worried about this one, I don't think I want to do it" is anti-vax. Lots of people would like to continue making their own medical decisions using their own risk assessment.