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Comment by johnisgood | Hacker News Reader

Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.

Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.

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> Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.

There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.

> Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.

People shouldn't exclude that from the list of possibilities. But people _should not_ take it into account with their decision-making. If they are going to give weight to the future possibility of negative side-effects coming to light, they should also give weight to the future possibility that positive side-effects may come to light.

Said simply, there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now".

> There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.

Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :) I did add "personal experience", so yes, of course, it is anecdotal.

> there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now"

OK, time will tell regardless.

> Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :)

I never said I don't believe you. I just said there was nothing scientific in your reasoning. It's completely obvious that not all people get covid that are exposed to people. I've also been exposed to covid and not been infected. But it's just anecdotal information. I could get covid and die just the same. Drawing any conclusions off of these individual occurrence is not very intelligent.

Why I was mentioning that is because I personally would not like to get the vaccine because: I am in my twenties, I have an immunological autoimmune disorder (and I recently developed allergies, to my luck), and I have not caught COVID-19 despite constant exposure to it.

Does it sound a good enough reason for not getting vaccinated?

I don't think you should take into account the fact that you haven't gotten it despite being exposed. But yeah if you have a disorder that increases the likelihood for complications of course you should take that into account. (I also presume you've spoken to doctors about this.)

But none of that has to do with the issue that something may happen in the future. You are making your choices with the information you have _now_.

I suppose it is possible that some people may be more immune to COVID-19 than others. I am curious about this. I hope there will be research on this, but that is just for my curiosity.

By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.

For Americans: https://www.axios.com/republicans-coronavirus-vaccines-discr...

> Republicans push to ban "discrimination" against unvaccinated people

I am sure many people are against it, but if we push people to get the vaccine because of society and its people, then surely they should care about those who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. They are currently unable to get a job here.

I mean it basically _has_ to be true. We all have different bodies. We are have different levels of health. We are of different ages. I find the question highly interesting as well and it might very well be that you or I never will get the disease regardless of vaccination. In fact I hope that that's the case for both of us. But it doesn't change the fact that it isn't reasonable to assume it's true just by our experiences. There are probably an enormous number of people just like us that one day get covid after a year of presumed exposures.

It might be genetic as no one on my mother's side got COVID-19, and a lot of family members on my dad's side got it. It is interesting. Even my dad's mother got it and they do not visit anyone nor get visited, only the GP visited them to give them the vaccine, and they got COVID-19 a week later.

It might be genetic and it might be anything else. It might just be dumb luck. We should expect this sort of thing to happen to people based on pure randomness alone. You should never expect to win the lottery. But you should expect _someone_ to win very often. If you were to win, it wouldn't be evidence that you somehow are luckier than others.

> By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.

I _do_ care. Which is why I find those who choose unnecessarily not to get the vaccine for unspecified and irrational fears all the more unforgivable. Their selfish irrationality is despicable.

This is ridiculous. The body as anything in nature is always struggling to stay in balance. To maintain this balance it had millions of years of evolution to optimize strategies that counteract external and internals effects. But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).

In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).

I honestly don't understand your post.

> But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).

What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.

> In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).

It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already. But yeah if your point is that there are many people who for cultural/societal/ignorance/etc. reasons act irrationally, the of course that's true. I just don't understand why you're pointing it out.

> What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.

Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.

> It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already.

You are talking about possible future unknown effects. No it hasn't been proven at all. They aren't even looking for possible long term damage.

Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there: "The COVID-19 vaccine has gone through the same clinical trials and safety checks as all other licensed vaccines, however the vaccine is new and long-term side effect information is limited."

https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/newsfeatures/covid19-up...

> Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there

The bullshit you have to sign before receiving the vaccine here is not downplaying anything here at least, but not that it stops people from signing it; they might as well just sign their rights to health care away altogether.

We literally have to sign our rights away for compensation in case something happens to us due to the vaccine, ANY time in the future. If you have complications from the vaccine, you cannot sue anyone, and you cannot get compensation from anyone.

They tell you straight that it is a new vaccine and we have no information with regarding to its safety, especially long-term, and that you are receiving the vaccine at your own risk, and that you are on your own if something bad happens.

How sketchy is that? More than 5.6 million people signed it. If needed, I will dig it up and translate the entire thing, but I think it is obvious what it is about. :)

> Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.

I'm not supposing it's safe in the long term. I'm supposing _nothing_ about the long term because we don't have that information. Maybe it is not safe in the long term. We'll find out some day I guess. Maybe it will lead to unexpected health _benefits_ in the long term? Who knows? So why would you weigh the potential dangers over any other potential advantages of taking it?

Anyway here are two serious questions to you:

1. Specifically how long is long enough before you'd consider the vaccine safe (compared of course to all the problems that can be caused by not taking the vaccine).

2. Do you feel ashamed allowing your fellow citizens to take on this potential risk and you forgoing when it helps end the pandemic for you and them? (Feel free to ignore this question if you are vaccinated, but are just being argumentative.)

1. Normal vaccines take 5 to 10 years to be approved. Covid mrna therapies have been rushed and they aren't even experimenting it correctly. The only data they are taking is what goes in the VAERS database, but if you even try to mention those numbers you get the usual answer that those numbers are meaningless. So tell me: if someone wants to know what the benefit/risk ratio of the therapy is, where should the numbers be found?

2. You cannot force people into taking experimental therapies even if you tricked half of the population into taking them.

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