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Comment by collias | Hacker News Reader

It definitely hasn’t been clear “for a while now” that the vaccine is safe. They do seem to be effective, though.

It really depends on what your definition of “safe” is. The vaccines have stated side effects, some of which can severe. The side effects are relatively rare, but non-zero.

The other component is time. We’ve proven that the vaccine is mostly safe…for at least a year out. After that, we have no data.

You don’t have to look that far back to find things that were deemed safe at one time have disastrous consequences years down the line. Cigarettes, asbestos, etc.

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Getting Covid is not safe, like at all, so it’s so bizarre to me that anyone would look at the safety profile of a vaccine in a vacuum. Any medication has rare side effects. Tylenol has rare side effects that can be severe. Covid has direct effects that are common and severe.

Cigarettes and asbestos are not vaccines and are thus evaluated totally differently (and at a totally different point in time). In past vaccines monitoring, bad things happen right away versus long term:

“Serious side effects that could cause a long-term health problem are extremely unlikely following any vaccination, including COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccine monitoring has historically shown that side effects generally happen within six weeks of receiving a vaccine dose. For this reason, the FDA required each of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines to be studied for at least two months (eight weeks) after the final dose. Millions of people have received COVID-19 vaccines, and no long-term side effects have been detected.” [1]

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/sa...

I never claimed getting covid was safe, only that we don’t have long-term data on the vaccines.

Re: things like Tylenol, the difference is we have a ton of long term data on that, and the interactions with things like alcohol or other drugs are well known.

The fact that the FDA made a point to say that the vaccine was studied for eight whole weeks is worrisome, for something that most of the population will be forced or at least coerced into taking.

Don’t forget Vioxx!

I have never heard of Vioxx and just looked it up…wow.

Great example.

Only someone totally ignorant of the difference between a vaccine and a pain drug, in terms of how they are tested and approved, would use 'what about vioxx' as an indictment of vaccines.

> ... as an indictment of vaccines.

Nothing here is an indictment of vaccines per se. However, it is legitimate to have concerns over a process the rules stated at the outset were thrown out, possibly for personal profit and political motivations.

Also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280087 for a link to an articulate consideration of a number of concerns regarding this approval.

> Shortly before the FDA approved Vioxx in 1999, drug maker Merck launched a study it hoped would prove that Vioxx was superior to older painkillers, because it caused fewer gastrointestinal problems. Instead, the study would eventually show Vioxx could be deadly, causing heart attacks and strokes.

> Five years after Vioxx's launch, Merck withdrew the drug from the market. By that time, Merck had sold billions of dollars of the drug worldwide.

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and...

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