Hacker News Reader

Comment by wildmanx | Hacker News Reader

What shocks me most with this story is that there is a vaccine (Lymerix), and it's pretty effective (76-92 percent after three injections) but apparently some anti-vax propaganda and a class-action lawsuit essentially removed it from the market. Based on a very rare side effect. Wtf? How can that be? Just tell people the risks of side effects, and if they are ok with that risk then the manufacturer is off the hook.

I'd totally take that shot. 59 cases out of 1.4 million is nothing, and even for those it's unclear how they actually were related to the shot.

Sadly, this indicates that the new shot could suffer the same fate. Give it to a million people, some will for sure have some issue, anti-vaxers come with conspiracy theories and convince a few to a class action, and there we go, another few decades without a shot. Gotta be fast this time before it's too late again.

View on HN

I live in Minnesota and am being treated for Lyme disease for the second time in 15 months. It's no joke. The first time I got Lyme, it came with a painful shingles co-infection on top of the usual symptoms.

Now the second time, I am again worried about getting sick with something else while in an immunocompromised state. The fatigue, fever, and back pain that came along this second time was worse than the first. I needed a nap after walking up the stairs.

So, I am curious how bad and prolonged the side effects were in these 59 adverse events. If only temporary, I'd consider it worth it over getting the actual disease.

The article also asks, "Why vaccinate against something that can be cured with antibiotics?" Undiagnosed Lyme becomes harder to treat the longer you wait, and the dose of antibiotics longer and more intense.

(PS: I am so very thankful for doxycycline.)

Have you considered hyperbaric oxygen treatment?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24726678/

I have not. Looks interesting. To be clear, I do not have chronic lyme, but rather have been bit by a tick twice in the last year and a half and got lyme disease each time.

You should play powerball with that type of luck!!! I pick embedded ticks off my body 6 out of 7 days each week, for about 3-4 months each year for many years, and have yet to face consequences...but then, I don't go to get medical attention often, so, who knows, maybe I've had it?

Shingles is caused by varicella (chickenpox) virus that's already latent in your nerves. Really unlikely that it was a "co-infection", it just reactivated because your body was busy fighting Lyme.

I'm not sure what you think "co-infection" means, but you just described precisely that. The reactivation of shingles meant that he was simultaneously infected with two different agents. "Co-infection" (for me at least) implies nothing about how or where the secondary infection came from.

That's fair. It's a really commonly implied thing among the quackier side of Lyme treatment that every tick is going to unload a clown car full of pathogens (used to justify even more unvalidated tests). But, by the definition, it's just co-occurring infections regardless of vector.

I had Lyme twice as a kid too (in suburban Pennsylvania). It's not fun and it's a bit crazy that you can get it more than once. People are usually shocked when I tell them. I knew someone who was temporarily paralyzed on one side because of Lyme that they diagnosed late - it's scary.

I grew up in CT. Had it 4 times, only got the bullseye once. It is no joke, and as you get older it seems to suck more and more. Last time I had numbness in my face as the only symptom, but...thrice bitten, fully paranoid, and I was treated pretty fast.

One thing which is important with a vaccine is that when I was a kid (early 90s) the rate of ticks carrying lyme was in the 10% range or less, while now it is >50%. A vaccine is critical.

I didn't have the bullseye the second time either I was just extremely tired and had a mild fever. That's how it often goes, and if my mom hadn't recognized the nonspecific symptoms it could have been a lot worse.

How do you manage to get it so often? I live in an area that is endemic to Lyme, but it's something that can easily be avoided (much easier than Covid). But I do see reckless behaviour all the time as well, so maybe it is not that surprising.

3 of the times I was under 15. I liked to play in the woods and did yard work. I used deet, etc, but I guess was just unlucky. The last time I was 22, had just moved back to CT from college and got a tick while mountain biking. I noticed it when I checked, but I guess it had been on long enough.

As someone with a dog, I can say it is not easy to avoid ticks. Even with canine medication they pick one or two up every time we go for a hike, ON the trail.

If you consider enjoying nature as "reckless behavior" then the shared understanding needed as a basis for a conversation may be missing. Lying in the grass looking at sky and stars, running through the forest with your dog, go pick mushrooms. That's very natural behaviour, not "reckless". Of course you can sit indoors all day, but I prefer a vaccine and enjoy nature instead.

I live in Sweden, I know several people who got Borrelia infections including my girlfriend, and hers developed into Lyme once. Most caught it and treated it early but some just had a fever and only discovered it was Lyme after months.

It's insidious, if you spend time in nature you are exposing yourself to it. The ticks will be on tall grass, falling from trees, crawling from the ground. How can that be avoided?

During summer we have to check ourselves for ticks every single night, my girlfriend lives in a house inside a wooded area, I have a big garden on my house where deers are commonly spotted (this past month I've been visited by one every single day).

No, it's not easy to be avoided if you leave the house, just laying on my lawn or garden grass is enough to get me paranoid about it. My housemates have already found 3 ticks stuck to them.

Please, if you know an easy way to avoid all of this I'd love to hear it but so far I only know to be cautious and vigilant.

>Please, if you know an easy way to avoid all of this I'd love to hear it but so far I only know to be cautious and vigilant.

I'm late to this so don't know if you'll see it, but I live in rural New England and ticks have become ever more horrendous here, yet I haven't had a single one in, a decade at least? The big thing for me has been getting a solid set of permethrin utilizing full coverage clothing (look for branding like "Insect Shield"), including socks and a hat with neck protection, combined with occasional judicious usage of repellent (I suggest 20% picaridin instead of DEET, something like Sawyer Products which has almost no smell and won't melt polymers that deet will). Having clothing that one can just put on for going out and boom high protection makes it so convenient vs applying repellent that I never fail to, and it has done exactly what was promised. They don't last forever, after 50-70 washings they need to be replaced, but if using them in a focused way for outdoor usage that can last a good while.

I'd still absolutely leap at a vaccine if available, but physical/chemical protection does work so the trick is making it convenient enough and enough of a habit to be 100% consistent about it.

something that can easily be avoided

How? Just working in my garden for an hour or two and I have a a good 1 in 4 chance of getting a tick bite.

How long were the ticks on you before you removed them?

How was it diagnosed?

> Just tell people the risks of side effects, and if they are ok with that risk then the manufacturer is off the hook.

If a for-profit corporation includes a warning in a EULA they're off the hook?? That's definitely not the principle we should use to evaluate new drugs.

If the company decided to take it off the market, when there are always lawsuits about new drugs, what should we do? Should we liberate the drug from the company and let others sell it? The system we have now lets Medical Doctors decide when a drug should be approved, and when it should be on the market.

I do not want to have to ask doctors permission to get the medicine I need. Make them like lawyers where they are advisors only. If that has a side effect of letting companies off from some liability, then I will accept that trade off.

> I do not want to have to ask doctors permission to get the medicine I need.

That's how it works in most countries, but not the US. Here we have a government regulatory agency (the CDC) to protect people from the ill effects of the free market. I like it that way.

You're mixing up a few things here. Every drug has a list of side effects. They are known, that's what your doctor tells you, and then you make an informed decision whether you want to take the drug or not.

It's not Medical Doctors that decided to withdraw approval and then removed it from the market. The approval was all fine. What was not fine was the public perception. Because the anti-vax campaign was very effective. Too many people started to think it's too fishy, so out of caution didn't want the shot anymore, so it became unprofitable to keep it on the market, so the manufacturer pulled it. (A bit surprising they didn't sell the IP or license it cheaply to somebody more adventurous..)

That's how your life can get impacted if the anti-vax lobby gets too strong, and that's what scares me. They can mess up their own health as much as they like, but once my life gets worse because of it, I have a problem.

If the product causes provable harm then company should be prosecuted criminally by the state to determine if the testing done was sufficeint and there was no faul play.

But letting random people sue manufacturer because they have some symptoms at later point in time than the time they took the vaccine is just recipie for what already happened on case of Lyme vaccine. Everybody looses except for lawyers and people loose the most.

You're suggesting a fundamental change to the legal system in the US. The idea that we would depend on the Government pursuing criminal charges... that's scary to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tort

Criminal charges in the US are pursued by the Government. The idea of private citizens deciding whether to press charges is widely misunderstood; District/US Attorneys can take a victim's wishes into consideration when deciding to charge a defendant (it may be difficult to win a case when the primary/only witness is uncooperative or conversely even if someone has been the victim of a crime the DA may not pursue a case because they feel they are unlikely to get a conviction) but the decision entirely lies with the Government.

Now, as you linked. Civil Tort's are entirely within the realm of private "citizens" (companies count as people too) to bring forth on their own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_charge

There’s some more info about that vaccine that might interest you. https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles...

More on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

There is a difference between vaccine skeptic and anti-vax. Imagine if we didn't have people watching over our tech industry because that would be anti-tech, or our banking industry because that's anti-bank. No, we call them skeptics because we realize that's very different than someone who says "abolish tech and banks."

I'm all for being critical. I'd find it terrible if side effects are just ignored. I wouldn't take any vaccines if that's the case.

But in this case, the facts are on the table. There is no scientific basis in pulling the vaccine from the market. But there was enough propaganda to stoke so much fear that everybody got scared and that was that.

Yep - and I live in Minnesota, I've had Lyme's before but it thankfully was an obvious rash that taking strong antibiotics for a few weeks took care of. I would take it if I could.

> Yep - and I live in Minnesota, I've had Lyme's before but it thankfully was an obvious rash that taking strong antibiotics for a few weeks took care of. I would take it if I could.

Yeah, me too. I got Lyme's (in my backyard) and just finished up my treatment a few days ago (only 10 days of doxycycline). I had the rash, but now I'm concerned that some infections don't show one. I'd jump at a vaccine in a heartbeat.

Spelling quibble: Lyme Disease, not Lyme's Disease. It is named after Lyme, Connecticut.

The thing is, we have that process at multiple levels from peer-review and the many stages of government approval and it's rigorous to the point that people have questioned whether it's causing problems due to delays and costs preventing development of vaccines for less widespread diseases and increasing costs.

COVID-19 has provided a great example of how well this process works: even the emergency use authorizations required multiple levels of clinical trials and the anti-vax propagandists mining the VAERS database for talking points can do so because there's a requirement to make a public report of anything which happens after someone is vaccinated even if there's no real suspicion that it was related to the vaccine.

The process has its flaws. Poorly designed drugs make it through the FDA process. Blind following is foolish. Skepticism is healthy. I don't get software updates as soon as available because, even with the testing, peer reviews, flaws still happen.

Further, there were big political and financial reasons to push the vaccines through. Those are all conflicts of interest. Pfizer had millions of doses manufactured before approval. If trial results didn't look good, they certainly had the incentive to "massage" the results to get it approved and get those millions of doses sold rather than a huge loss.

As the original poster shared, it should be a considered a reasonable position to be skeptical of small scale results. Pfizer's position appears to have scaled well (Moderna as well). 100s of millions of doses across diverse populations show its relative safety and efficacy.

I'm not saying it's perfect but rather that the skepticism you're looking for is found within the process where many scientists who are not employed by the vendor review the test results, methodology, and side effects. By the time something gets through approval, it's been tested in thousands of people with monitoring over a substantial time period (even the EUA COVID vaccines were monitored for a period of time longer than vaccine side effects have historically been observed) and reviewed by hundreds of people.

We actually have an interesting example which I think validates that process even though it comes in the unlikely form of the FDA's recent mistake approving Aducanumab. There is a lot of criticism, including IG investigations, over the approval because it was approved despite having failed to go through the process successfully. The Phase III trials were cancelled after they concluded that the drug was not successful, the FDA's internal scientific review found it did not meet the mark, and the outside scientific advisory panel rejected it so strongly that multiple panel members resigned after it was approved anyway. That to me seems like a pretty good argument that the process was doing what we expect and the way to avoid expensive mistakes is to follow it.

You are welcome to be skeptical. But in the meantime, don't cause me to not be able to get a potentially life-saving drug. You may think it's a money grab or not tested enough or a conspiracy or a conflict of interest. Fine, don't take it. But I still want it. 1.4 million with ridiculously small number of question mark cases are good enough for me. They don't have to be for you. But let me have it. I pay for it.

I don't think any skeptics caused you to not be able to get a potentially life-saving drug. If they have, please show examples. Lyme disease is not life threatening. GSK didn't go through with distribution because it didn't make business sense.

If the system is susceptible to anti-vax propaganda thwarting approval of a good vaccine, doesn’t it also follow that the system is susceptible to big pharma lobbying for the approval of a bad vaccine?

If this wondrously robust multi-layered process buckles in the face of a few hysterical anti-vax groups, you should ask yourself how robust it remains in the face of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate with politicians in their pockets.

I think you're confused on several points: the vaccine was approved following extensive safety tests but the lawsuits caused the manufacturer to decide it was not worth manufacturing. The U.S. regulators consistently found no connection between the vaccine and the complaints, so the _scientific_ side worked but the legal / business side let public safety down.

Similarly, it's no secret that companies have a vested interest in promoting their products but it's not like Pfizer says “Trust us, we employ doctors!” and the FDA says “Sounds great, no need to check!”. Each step of that process involves peer-reviewed publications, public data releases, and reviews by panels of scientific experts. It is quite valid to say that companies need to be strictly regulated to keep everyone honest but we don't have any indication that this has been happening and anyone who thinks the process is just a large pharma company waving money at doctors to buy silence really needs to learn how cut-throat academic competition is — the career benefits to being the first to report that plot would be huge! Remember also that this happens in many different countries around the world so that hypothetical conspiracy needs to be kept secrete by a multinational group of hundreds or even thousands of people.

In regard to the Lyme disease vaccine issue, you are glossing over a very important component of the story.

Due to public pressure, the FDA reconvened to take another look.

While the FDA did not change its opinion (except for requesting some additional labeling and studies) the effect was disastrous for marketing. Sales plummeted. And, it was no longer worthwhile to pursue. The ‘official act’ of the FDA reconvening arose solely due to pressure.

That’s my point.

If anti-vax groups can cause the FDA to “take another look” at a drug that has already passed muster, it is obvious and not fairly deniable that the agency is not immune to political pressure.

makes you wonder how much "public pressure" came from the operators of quack lyme disease message boards and alternative treatment providers...after 4 times having it, I'm happy to say, in Doxycycline I trust. just don't go reading Lyme disease message boards without a tinfoil hat on.

If some dozens lunatics can do this, what can an army of sharp professionals with zero morals and a multi-billion dollar budget can achieve?

The FDA was created because of the nefarious unethical conduct of doctors/pharma.

Yet some HN posters seem to think the organization exists to protect us from skeptics.

What a twisted view.

>but it's not like Pfizer says “Trust us, we employ doctors!” and the FDA says “Sounds great, no need to check!” Each step of that process involves peer-reviewed publications, public data releases, and reviews by panels of scientific experts.

All these "steps in the process" are completely meaningless when there is a revolving door with big pharma and FDA. This is nothing more than safety/peer-review theater.

Example: Scott Gottlieb FDA commissioner 2017-2019, currently sits on the board of directors at Pfizer.

Are you really going to put up a stink and fight on an approval if the end goal is cushy job at one of these companies? You can bet if you just "push it through" you will be looked on favorably for one of these jobs, but if you put up resistance and actually want to do due diligence, well then you will never be considered.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

Except hard evidence is created during the trial. The statistical procedures to evaluate things are standardized.

Can you please cite these safety tests?

Like all vaccines, they were tested in animals and subsequently by human volunteers _before_ reaching the Phase III clinical trials. Those are double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled experiments which are generally considered the gold standard for medical testing which test cohorts of people who are exposed to the threat and compare both positive and negative outcomes across those populations without either the recipients or the experimenters knowing which people are in which group until afterwards.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X0...

> An adjuvanted recombinant vaccine (LYMErix™) has been approved in the United States for the prevention of Lyme disease in adults, and has demonstrated both safety and efficacy. A clinical trial of over 10 000 adults showed 76% efficacy following the third dose of a 0, 1, 12 schedule. Accelerated schedules demonstrate equivalent levels of protective antibody. Up to 100% of children 2–14 years of age achieve seroprotective levels of antibody. Booster doses induced protective levels of antibody in more than 96% of recipients when administered at months 12 and 24. Only mild or moderate, transient vaccine-associated adverse events have been reported after immunization. The vaccine is a safe and effective method of preventing Lyme disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

> The OspA vaccines proved effective in animal models and safe in human volunteers [18]. Both manufacturers conducted clinical trials in a race to gain the first license for their vaccine [19, 20]. In the LYMErix™ phase III safety and efficacy trial, researchers enrolled 10 906 subjects between 15 and 70 years old who lived in endemic areas and randomized them to receive either the three-dose Lyme vaccine regimen or placebo injections. Vaccinated individuals showed a 76% reduction in Lyme disease in the year following vaccination [20], with no significant side-effects noted. Based on these promising findings, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved LYMErix™ on 21 December 1998.

Apparently, you just created an account to challenge this comment.

Do you not understand the FDA approval process? Or do you not understand how to Google that question yourself? Or is it something else?

Seriously. What possessed you to create an account to challenge this comment without doing any research at all, yourself?

>Do you not understand the FDA approval process?

There are industrial-grade chemicals fully FDA approved for ingestion by the US populace which are outright banned by various European countries.

Which of my questions do you think you answered?

Wasn't trying to answer your question...just pointing out that FDA approval means fuck-all. Seems you've put quite a bit of value to it either way. Good luck on your path.

> just pointing out that FDA approval means fuck-all

That's a real high quality contribution there.

It's the kind of thing that's made HN so... different... over the last year (or four)

>It's the kind of thing that's made HN so... different... over the last year (or four)

You think so? I thought it was the youthful boot-lickers and random "software developers" constantly marketing their "web apps". Also, feel free to express your emotions, I feel that you may be hiding your true feelings with that word - "different". It seems you don't feel the same, but I'm not concerned about quality of "contributions" on a random message board on the internet...I'm just having a random conversation with random strange strangers. It seems you've held the HN board at as high of a pedestal as the FDA approval process (but perhaps I'm projecting).

Not sure what your argument is though? You don't like the term fuck-all (sorry, English is not my native tongue), or you don't understand that the FDA process is ementhal-cheese-like by comparison to European standards?

His comment contained information (namely that the FDA process is not particularly strict compared to European standards) whereas your comment had zero information. On an objective level, he had a higher quality contribution.

Go easy on the arrogance over substance.

I recently created an account...sorry? damn

Oh the law firms doing all those class actions are not doing this for free either..

There is no requirement to post reactions to VAERS; it's completely voluntary.

Amazing. "Most reports to VAERS are voluntary" - https://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html

What's the under-reporting multiplier? Why would anyone except for those affected, or god forbid, their families pursue and report bad events?

Just extra paperwork for no or little money.

They literally killed this vaccine, so it's anti-vax by definition in result.

Not even proven side effect. Just something that might be theorized to be the effect of the vaccine.

It's really haunting that exactly the same FUD that tanked safe and efficient Lyme vaccine hinders covid vaccines adoption. And people wonder why companies that make covid vaccine wouldn't budge on being exempt from litigation on the basis of percieved side effects.

The difficulty with that exemption is that either a good or a bad actor would ask for it. A good actor to avoid being the target of frivolous suits and a bad actor to have cover for their actions. Because a good or bad actor would behave the same in this respect, people bring their own conceptions to the table and see what they expect to see (in either direction).

I think it is presented that way by some, but in reality, the existence of the exemption and VAERS may also help with monitoring both actors more closely, by reducing the perceived stakes and costs of tracking side-effects. Thus the exemption could help catch and punish bad actors faster, and protect good actors.

Legally speaking, I expect the exemption says something about not lying to the FDA in the fine print, so true bad actors would not be able to hide behind the exemption either.

Yet they don’t have such an exemption for penicillin, or aspirin, or any other similar drug.

The liability shield is precisely why I am Covid-vaccine hesitant. And Pfizer’s track record of honesty when it comes to their drugs is significantly bad. Combine that with the aggressive attempts to silence even a discussion of the vaccine’s side effects makes me extremely skeptical. When “everybody” says something is “safe and effective” and the people profiting “bigly” from that something while also being shielded from literally any liability… Well, that’s enough to make me zig when others zag.

A simple arthritis drug advertised on TV has to disclose the litany of side effects — so extensive as to be comical and yet even mentioning Covid vaccine side effects can get you silenced on social media — something is just very wrong about that. You want me to vaccinate my four kids just because the government says “trust us?” Nope. I’m a grown up. I also have a scientific research background. But when even scientific papers get removed (specifically pre-Covid papers on masks and influenza,) then I’m even more likely to mistrust the “experts.”

To be clear (not that I should have to,) I don’t have the Covid vaccine, but I have all sorts of others. So do my kids. I have vaccines covering everything from Yellow Fever to Japanese Encephalitis and everything in between. But this current vaccine effort reminds me too readily of the anthrax vaccine they were giving us in the Army in the early 2000s. All sorts of neurological issues were reported in many soldiers — often so bad they had to leave the military. And then, as now, it was “safe and effective.” And a rotavirus vaccine in 1999 was pulled from the market because of a rare but serious side effect. Yet the Covid vaccines have a much higher instance of rare but serious side effects compared to that, but everyone is running around saying that the benefits outweigh the risks. Mathematically, for my age and health, that just isn’t true. Ans it’s certainly not true for most healthy children. My point isn’t to debate the vaccine though, my point is to call attention to how the debate is censored. I could very much be wrong in my concerns. Or I could be right. But the fact that we can’t even have a discussion about it is the real problem. We could also apply this to masks. Calling attention to the lack of RCTs and the over-reliance of observational studies gets you branded as an anti-science caveman extremist. Musing as to why control groups were vaccinated (thus destroying long term safety and efficacy data points) also make you an outcast.

What we are seeing isn’t science. It’s politics wrapped in an appeal to authority. The effort to over-censor literally everything contrary to Faucian doctrine has backfired and created a significant group of resisters who, frankly, have little trust in governments.

Why don't they understand the pathway for the side effect and figure out a diagnostic test for it so people who're hesitant/worried (or everyone does it to protect everyone from the side effect) so they can be screened out from getting the vaccine then?

Why don't they just solve world peace and faster-than-light travel?

Because these things are hard. Lacking the ultimate solution, a small step is better than nothing.

Or do you only walk because cars and trains are too slow to get you to the next solar system so why bother ...?

I'll disagree on the behalf of people who are harmed.

> 76-92 percent after three injections

That's not a lot. Like sure if herd immunity was on the table it might have been, but lyme has an animal reservoir. Like if I had 76% immunity I would still panic every time I saw a tick, so then what is the point?

The point would be that every time you see a tick, you could be 76-92% less worried.

Doesn't this mean that if I were to get bitten by an infected tick the odds of contracting limes disease would be at least 4x lower?

Seems like a big difference to me even at the low end of the range.

Maybe I'm misapplying the efficacy stat though?

You would still have to monitor for ticks and if symptoms appear (more rare) you would treat it with antibiotics and be fine. This is a minor benefit.

You comment makes it sound like the worst part of Lyme disease is the anxiety over having to check for ticks. This is inaccurate - preventing 3/4 of Lyme infections is a massive net win.

Lyme disease can be horrible. The value is in vaccine is to prevent most cases, not to eliminate the annoying tick checks.

>You would still have to monitor for ticks

This part is true no matter how effective the vaccine is. Ticks are gross, diseased or not.

Ticks are insects, not gross. They're just animals looking to eat, just like you and I.

If a kitten latched onto my skin to just hang out and engorge itself, that'd be gross too. Being gross isn't a matter of intent or etymology, it's an action.

You're making judgments about animals that are wholly inappropriate for their "actions". Seems to be trendy on HN to call things gross lately...maybe its the new generation?

> you would treat it with antibiotics and be fine.

Funny how you are confirming the sentiment in the article. I'd suggest you read it.

That's in the ballpark of pretty much every effective vaccine ever deployed.

They are never 100%. This misconception seems to have gotten prevalent with COVID and the mRNA vaccines being "only" 90-95% effective. That is staggeringly good, better than most.

> mRNA vaccines being "only" 90-95% effective

Against alpha...

...and only if you're relatively healthy already, not obese, no history of blood clots or heart conditions, and are consistently getting between 6-8 hours of sleep two weeks before and after getting your vaccines.

"Not panicking" is not the goal of the vaccine. The instinctive reaction of the human brain around panicking the same amount over an X chance versus a 4X chance of something happening is a brain bug, not a reason to avoid a vaccine.

That 76% (or more) reduction in risk of your panic turning into serious disease is the reason to get the vaccine even if you're still panicky.

I understand where you are coming from. You will be worried about ticks with or without the vaccine. I will too! But I think the vaccine isn’t for making you stop protecting yourself from ticks (it can’t do that, as you noted). The important part is it’s a small poke for a better chance at staying healthy. If you are worried in both cases, the question becomes is the time/cost to get the shot worth the result. So if you walk in the woods a lot the answer is very likely yes. If you never go near ticks then maybe not.

Another way to think about it is if there was a vaccine to stop car accidents that is only 75% effective, is it worth getting the shot even though I’ll still be afraid of car accidents? Absolutely! The shot is unbelievably easy to get and probably cheap. It doesn’t solve everything, but it is so easy to do it’s hard not to be worth it.

Your calculus forgets about side effects. If the gain is very minor then it only takes minor side effects to swing the balance.

You are welcome to compare the number of cases of suspected-but-not-confirmed side effects with the number of people getting Lyme every year.

You may find a difference of a few orders of magnitude.

Don't worry pal I gotcha here:

1. Form The High Church of Vaccination

2. Claim vaccination as a sacrament

3. Watch the craven fascist majority of the US supreme court (i.e. all of the ones that fashion themselves as lil Scalias, but have terrible writing that reeks of double standards, if any at all, and dog whistles to their base) try to somehow toss the case for not having standing while trying to not undo any of the religious exemptions that they've blown open in the last decade or so (e.g. from Hobby Lobby to the recent shadow docket thing in NYC against Cuomo)

How drinking bleach became a Church ‘sacrament’

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/genesis-ii-church-bleach-cure...

Well their orange-haired chubby savior did say how good of a disinfectant it was. Top it off with some disinfecting UV light in a tanning bed and you have the bedrock of a healthy life....oh wait I mean cancer.

No, thank you. I've learned what science is. It's pretty cool, you should look it up.

Do you think I'm anti-science? Hopefully the sarcasm of the parent comment was not lost on you.

I wish Lymerix was available because I no longer want to have to hike or bike in the great outdoors head to toe in clothing design to avoid tick intrusion, much less worry that I was bitten on an exposed part of my skin. Now I'll just have to do it because my skin is designed to be a solar panel for vitamin D production in the dreariest parts of the Irish winter...

Your parent comment was written in a way to discredit vaccinations as a concept and insinuate that it is cult-like. You may want to double-check your understanding of sarcasm. It works exactly the other way around.

>I wish Lymerix was available because I no longer want to have to hike or bike in the great outdoors head to toe in clothing design to avoid tick intrusion,

Unless you're in the 5% of the population that's genetically predisposed to poor health outcomes from Lyme disease, I would not worry. Even if you are, I certainly would not worry to the effect of covering yourself from head to toe on a nature hike. The stress from your worry, is likely causing the type of inflammation that would prohibit your body's natural immune system from attacking a pathogenic bacterium.

>but apparently some anti-vax propaganda and a class-action lawsuit essentially removed it from the market. Based on a very rare side effect. Wtf? How can that be?

It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it literally gave people lym disease.

Why are vaccinations a political thing now, and if anyone raises any questions whatsoever on any vaccine they are "anit-vax".

> It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it literally gave people lym disease.

Again, 59 of 1.4 million. I call that "very rare". About half a million Americans get Lyme from ticks, every year. You do the math. Even if there is a causal connection to the shot (which has not been established) then that's still orders of magnitude lower than the risk of actually getting the bacteria in you if you somewhat frequently visit the woods. And if you don't, just don't get the shot. Your call.

So yes, that's a textbook "anti-vax" sentiment. It's not based on the actual scientific evidence but uses people's overall fear of vaccinations. And it hurts everybody, because the result is that even people who want the vaccine can't get it. Otherwise I wouldn't actually care. Let the anti-vax people suffer if they choose to, but leave me out of this.

>Again, 59 of 1.4 million

Source?

The article we are discussing here. You read it, right?

(And the article got that number from the FDA.)

hmm... we need to compare rates of infection, not raw numbers since only a small number of the population ever received the lime disease vaccine, and both populations reside only in part of the US.

In any case, I agree with the underlying point that it's a travesty that the vaccine was taken off the market due to fear-mongering and unproven allegations.

It's a testament to the failure of the judicial system to protect against frivolous lawsuits.

That is what was done.

> The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients. [0]

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

My dad spent 2 months getting over a nasty Lyme infection a few summers ago. Not fun at all.

I have a few scars from tick bites that I was lucky didn't cause any infections. Sign me up for whatever vaccines I can get for tick-borne things. I'd love to see the Lyme disease vaccine come back and I'd love to see something for AGS.

> It wasn't "very rare" and the side effect was that it literally gave people lym disease.

It sounds like it didn't actually do that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Vaccination:

> Subsequently, hundreds of vaccine recipients reported they had developed autoimmune and other side effects. Supported by some advocacy groups, a number of class-action lawsuits were filed against GlaxoSmithKline, alleging the vaccine had caused these health problems. These claims were investigated by the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control, which found no connection between the vaccine and the autoimmune complaints.[170]

> Despite the lack of evidence that the complaints were caused by the vaccine, sales plummeted and LYMErix was withdrawn from the U.S. market by GlaxoSmithKline in February 2002,[171] in the setting of negative media coverage and fears of vaccine side effects.[170][172] The fate of LYMErix was described in the medical literature as a "cautionary tale";[172] an editorial in Nature cited the withdrawal of LYMErix as an instance in which "unfounded public fears place pressures on vaccine developers that go beyond reasonable safety considerations."[25] The original developer of the OspA vaccine at the Max Planck Institute told Nature: "This just shows how irrational the world can be ... There was no scientific justification for the first OspA vaccine LYMErix being pulled."[170]

Same thing happened to silicone breast implants. Lots of class action lawsuits claiming leaking silicone caused health issues. Lawsuits bankrupted Dow Corning. There was no evidence that it caused issues and you can still get silicone implants today.

Yeah, when the science was in the symptoms claimed to be caused by the implants were more common in women without implants than in women with implants.

"Possible side effects" includes any condition that arose during the trial, whether or not it was directly caused by the vaccine being tested. Source: a family member has a job that involves drug trials.

> Why are vaccinations a political thing now

You could flip that upside down and ask why people are questioning the experts. Despite having almost no knowledge of statistics, epidemiology and other required skills. Vaccines with rare or almost no side effects are being called into question.

We could flip it sideways and ask "why question anything at all?"

We should not be guileless. Whether I have a piece of paper that shows others I'm an "expert" or not, I still question. I ask things like "why is this contemporary vaccine XYZ so politicized?" and "why are companies and governments paying people to take it?"

In other arenas, we say that if you receive something for free "you are the product". So I ask "why is this contemporary case any different?"

The above is only an example. I reserve my right to question. I will note that I'm in no position to dictate to others. I will also note that very few people are currently in a position to dictate to me. I desire that status quo to remain. Anything else is despotism.

Investigation found that the incidence was no higher than for unvaccinated individuals (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/):

>By 2001, with over 1·4 million Lyme vaccine doses distributed in the United States the VAERS database included 905 reports of mild self-limited reactions and 59 reports of arthritis associated with vaccination [29]. The arthritis incidence in the patients receiving Lyme vaccine occurred at the same rate as the background in unvaccinated individuals. In addition, the data did not show a temporal spike in arthritis diagnoses after the second and third vaccine dose expected for an immune-mediated phenomenon. The FDA found no suggestion that the Lyme vaccine caused harm to its recipients.

I see nothing to say it gave people Lyme disease. The *claim* is that it caused the same sort of arthritis that Lyme disease can cause.

Note that the class action suits were settled without paying the "victims" anything. That shows they were garbage from the start.

You know, its not impossible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID. The absolute overconfidence in its long term safety is based on nothing other than wish full thinking. There are early signs, and warning from Doctors now. They just ignored and gaslighted by corporate media, and sadly people like you that don't know the history of previous accidents with vaccines. Early Polio Vaccines caused 40,000 children, and more than 50 paralyzed.

The deep irony here is that you wrote "its not impossible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID."

While it's clear from the rest of your post that you meant the vaccines, you accidentally ended up making your own counterpoint! It is ABSOLUTELY possible for millions of people to have long term side effects from COVID, the disease.

It would be a brand new thing for a vaccine to give so many people side effects so long after the shot. No vaccine has ever given people side effects that didn't show up within about 6 weeks.

Yes, some people had side effects from the Polio vaccine. But you know what was far more likely to cause lifelong side effects? Polio!

>No vaccine has ever given people side effects that didn't show up within about 6 weeks.

Why do you believe this is?

I assume you mean the vaccine.

"Long term effects" here doesn't mean what you think it means....

In the past, long term side effects were still occuring with weeks or few month after the shot. However, the statistical signal may be delayed for years or decades to manifest.

It's very hard to think of a way how anything could cause side effect years down the line. Vaccines do not contain beryllium or asbestos. The mRNA vaccines do not even contain mercury or other heavy metals. Mind you, 'none' means less than a can of tuna. They do not remain in the body for long. None of it.

That's why people aren't too worried, rationally. Long term effects whould have shown already.

If you indeed mean COVID, I agree. There may be late long term effects, because of the diffuse organ damage and persistent infections.

Of course any strong immune stimulation may slightly increase or decrease the risk for derailing or aging the immune system. Which may sooner, e.g. autoimmune disease risk, or later, e.g. lymphoma risk, manifest.

For COVID it's a silly debate, because you will get infected or vaccinated in any case.

The claim was that in some individuals the vaccine caused an auto-immune reaction. It seems to me that anyone who had that problem would have developed the same problem if they got the disease.

Some people are worried, just you never get here from them because they are either censored or drowned out by the corporate press.

Here's a doctor, you don't usually get to hear from raising concerns you don't seem think to exit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUE5EBPt-lU&t=1128s

Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist, appears to make serious claims related to covid vaccines without supporting evidence. Searching his name reveals he's being given a voice by some of the right-wing media, but if there was substance to what he had to say, other doctors, researchers, scientists, etc, would eagerly jump to verify and act on it.

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/04/scicheck-idaho-doctor-make...

why would they?

judging from comments on this forum alone, it would be a career suicide in this political climate.

I'm confused. Do you mean the millions of "long covid" cases which already exist today? Or the estimate that about 70% of all people who got the vaccine will be dead within 3 years?

I know which of these two I consider gaslighting.

>Do you mean the millions of "long covid" cases which already exist today?

Long covid has yet to be scientifically proven.

post-infection syndromes are well established, and not unique to coronaviruses. It can occur after an infection with ANY pathogen, including covid-19.

after any critical illness, doesn't even have to be an infection, with an ICU stay where intubation was required, the odds are ~50% you will be left with a permanent injury for life. However even after relatively moderate infection a permanent lifelong injury may remain.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21161-post-in...

It's not like injuries are binary: dead or alive.

you could also end up alive, but in a wheelchair with oxygen for life.

There is a huge spectrum in between, anything from vague brainfog, properly known as executive dysfunction, to partial or total paralysis due to a neuropathy often requiring mechanical ventilation, narcolepsy, organ failures, autoimmune conditions, and so on and so on.

None of this is new, nor controversial.

I compiled these links a month or so ago (an aeon in Covid-time):

Brain damage - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01693-6

Pulmonary function - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7997144/

Cardiovascular disease - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0413-9

No doubt. I've posted this in several threads on HN already. But what I'm stating stands - people (mostly media) are starting to treat and report on "Long Covid" as if it's own disease. You are left with permanent long term issues from cold, flu, and all other infections.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com