Comment by wrl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wrl | Hacker News Reader

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> As far as "belief" goes, you're the one on the side of belief here.

No.

We don't understand why COVID hits some people harder than others. We don't understand why some people end up with "long COVID" sequelae and some don't. I don't particularly want to roll those dice from immunological naivety.

The vaccines were free. The biggest risk I would have faced was myocarditis, and the risk even for that is higher from a COVID infection than from the mRNA vaccines.

Furthermore, getting vaccinated means that we all get back to a place where COVID is less of a big deal societally. While the data does show that vaccinated individuals can transmit Delta, it shows that they do so for a shorter period of time, and anything we can shave off of R0 is a good thing. Perfect, enemy of good, etc.

Getting vaccinated was close to no skin off my back. I had a sore arm for a few days. The payoff is that I reduce the (admittedly small) risk I did have, and I'm part of the herd boxing COVID in.

What's the downside?

> What's the downside?

We don't know what we don't know. That's the downside. You've just taken an experimental drug which has yet to be approved by the FDA, and was designed using novel technology we haven't broadly tested on humans. What's more, the companies providing the shots cannot be held liable for these vaccines.

Who's to say we don't discover issues with mRNA delivery 5 years from now? That risk seems much higher to me than the risk of long COVID for individuals such as yourself (and me).

Covid19 already has well-known short- and mid-term downsides for >> 1% of grown-ups infected. The hard “downsides“ are so dangerous that we had trouble to properly treat the sick.

BNT/Pfizer has so little short- and mid-term downsides that it is difficult to properly spot them statistically, even after about a half billion vaccinations.

Both may have long-term downsides, but: all vaccinations we know didn‘t have any long term downsides. The problems were either visible immediately or they were relatively rare so that they were only detected after a significant number of people had been vaccinated. The downsides of Covid-19 are not rare compared to that, for any age. There is no reason to consider the vaccine more frightening than Covid19. On the other hand everything about the virus SARS-CoV-2 and the disease Covid-19 is experimental because this virus has not been tried on humans until now! The infection it causes is way more complex than the immune reaction BNT/Pfizer causes and it definitely would not have passed a phase-1 study.

If you are afraid of BNT you should basically panic about Covid-19.

"I'm part of the herd boxing COVID in."

The 'rona is in cats and deer, so it will be around for approximately forever. Vaccinated humans still get it and transmit it, though may have less severe symptoms. Will you please explain what you are boxing in?

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