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Comment by dilap | Hacker News Reader

How many people are familiar w/ the phenomenon of antibody-dependent enhancement of corona viruses? If you are familiar, how confident are you that it won't be an issue with the current vaccines, and for what reasons?

It's very surprising to me how much support there is in general for outsourcing extremely important, previously personal medical decisions to employers. The concept of autonomy of our own bodies as an important right has taken a major step into the background.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5

(For the record, I did get vaccinated, but it seems crazy to me to mandate or compel it.)

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> If you are familiar, how confident are you that it won't be an issue with the current vaccines, and for what reasons?

I'm extremely confident, because we already have population-scale data on the matter. All evidence points to the vaccines producing marked reductions in infection rates and virtually eliminating severe cases and hospitalizations. It's difficult to even find any cases of vaccinated COVID patients getting severe infections.

Antibody-dependent enhancement of corona viruses was a concern before we had data, but it was taken into account in the risk evaluation process like every other well-known factor in vaccine research.

Let's say we grant that for current variants; how can we be confident it remains true for future variants?

This article is from September 2020 and includes the following passage:

> Should it occur, ERD caused by human vaccines will first be observed in larger phase II and/or phase III efficacy trials that have sufficient infection events for statistical comparisons between the immunized and placebo control study arms.

All evidence in both the human trials and data from the general public being vaccinated has shown the that vaccines (at least the mainstream western ones) greatly lower both the incidence and the severity of COVID-19. That is, ADE is not a problem here.

Where are the prominent voices among researchers and doctors and health officials discussing this? Where are the published papers that have garnered a lot of attention? By all accounts, this appears to be an entirely speculative concern, one among many others that are not well substantiated.

A lot of questions, and none of them asked why one should be able to spread a deadly disease to their coworkers without consequence from their employer.

The unvaccinated are also continuing to mutate this disease, which increases the possibility of it turning deadly even for those that are vaccinated.

Lastly, everyone retains autonomy: The employee is free to work for an employer that does not require vaccination, and the employer is free to require it from their employees.

> (For the record, I did get vaccinated, but it seems crazy to me to mandate or compel it.)

Why not? Regular vaccines are already compulsory for public schools.

All states but 5 have exemption for religion or belief or both: https://www.ncsl.org/research/health/school-immunization-exe...

From the article "we’ll also share more details on an exceptions process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other protected reasons."

Has anyone mapped this data with preventable disease outbreaks?

I've seen articles mapping antivaxxer enclaves with measles outbreaks. I have the good fortune to live next to a Pacific Northwest university town with an extremely low vaccination rate, and the inevitable result did result.

Interesting how prior to the last year, anti-vaxxers were mainly part of the nutty left, and now they've mostly shifted to the nutty right. The wonders of party allegiance...

There was a good discussion of that topic here, of all places:

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19410631&cid=61625009

Basically, it seems to have a very minor impact. There is existing precedent for being forced to vaccinate, though I prefer it be used as a very last resort because I think that being forced to do a thing makes more people oppose it and I'd rather see more light and less heat in the vaccine discussions.

There are real risks to vaccines, but according to VAERS data, they're orders of magnitude smaller than those of the virus itself. If one isn't concerned by a 2% mortality from Covid, it seems absurd to me to worry about a ~0.0002% chance of vaccine injury.

If you were playing an RPG and got a magic item that let you roll 1d1000 every time you died and escape death on every roll but a natural 1, you'd think that was OP. This is effectively what the vaccine is, so it makes no sense to avoid vaccination.

27.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. How much more data do you need to feel confident?

This was a concern during vaccine development and testing but it didn’t turn out to be an issue.

So I’m not sure what you are talking about.

> It's very surprising to me how much support there is in general for outsourcing extremely important, previously personal medical decisions to employers

It's because it's political suicide for any politician who tries. Look at the protests in France. Employers also have the most vested interest in driving up vaccination rates because, for the most part, a drawn-out pandemic hurts businesses.

This is a change from the past though. It used to be preferable to have mandates come from the government and not corporations.

It's definitely the wrong tool for public policy. I just think it makes sense when you look at everyone's motivations.

I’d agree that some employers have a vested interested while others do not. Mainly the ones that don’t rely so much on the social aspect to survive like delivery services, streaming services, video games, etc [1]. Goes without saying that to prolong the pandemic prolongs people’s suffering in order to boost one’s bottom line is morally reprehensible.

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rohitarora/2020/06/30/which-com...

>It's very surprising to me how much support there is in general for outsourcing extremely important, previously personal medical decisions to employers.

I agree, I believe we should have universal government-provided healthcare for all citizens. Employers have far too much control over healthcare in the USA.

> how confident are you that it won't be an issue with the current vaccines, and for what reasons?

Pretty much confident, since a) researchers are well aware of ADE (more than some random person on the internet) b) they take ADE into account when designing and testing the vaccine

The information suppression is incredible. Even the inventor of the mRNA technology Robert Malone isn't allowed to speak about concerns. Truly in an Orwellian society of tyranny.

If you ever worked in a hospital you will probably have half a dozen booster shots you need to take, unless you get one of those exemptions where you say your god doesn't allow you to believe in science. There is precedent or employers mandating vaccines of their employees.

Science is not a "belief".

“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”

Richard Feynman. One of the greatest minds to ever exist

Considering no vaccine is 100% effective, it doesn't seem crazy to me to mandate vaccination (nor to mandate mask wearing) as protection works best when everyone is protected.

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