Of course, this is novel tech. So perhaps we should expect a few differences. But typically HN is more appropriately skeptical of such innovations and would not cheer on government mandates that require them for 12 year olds immediately after FDA emergency authorization ends.
mRNA technology isn't new, but even if it was, it's still wild to claim that a delivery mechanism that's less invasive than traditional vaccine techniques is somehow magically more dangerous.
Also, tons of existing vaccines require boosters, and not all vaccines produce sterilizing immunity -- the COVID vaccines are not unique in that regard.
Studies looking into well-documented severe side effects, such as myocarditis and pericarditis (that we did not know about when we started vaccinating in winter 2020), as well as a litany of menstrual issues for women, have been given 5+ year runways while we all act as test subjects.
For individuals who are at-risk for COVID-19 (a small minority of the population), these vaccines make a lot of sense. For the rest of us the jury is still out and it's extremely dispiriting to see intelligent people neglect the (frankly terrifying) history of overzealous American pharmaceutical intervention and experimentation.
On the subject of boosters, it's quite disingenuous to compare the tetanus booster shot that you need once a decade, to a treatment you need 2-3 times per year, as is currently case with the available mRNA covid vaccines.
Then again, tetanus is not a viral infection. I'm having trouble finding a single instance of viral vaccine that requires regular boosters. I certainly have never received any. And have never had any recommended by my doctor, nor was I required to have any to work, participate in public life, fly on an airplane, etc, in my adult life.
Edit: heading to bed soon and rate limited so responding to yunohn below:
1) Clearly you have not looked at the statistics for age-stratified IFR. We have had restrictions that some think have protected them from infection but that is largely irrelevant. 30% of the population was never able to lock down because they were providing medical care, keeping the electricity running, etc, and we know from these individuals that people under 65, without complications like severe obesity or diabetes, are extremely unlikely to have severe or life threatening covid cases.
2) Yes I have heard of the flu shot. Every year they come up with a new formulation that targets the viral mutation that they predict has happened over the past year. Are you under the false impression that covid boosters have been modified for the delta or mu variants? They have not. Israel is re-vaccinating its entire population with the exact same Pfizer vaccine it started with last winter. This is an apples to oranges comparison you're making. One that does not bode well for the long term effectiveness of the shots we all received in April.
What do you mean by this? You’re saying COVID affects only a minority? Are you also forgetting that this pandemic is raging despite so many people WFH? Imagine post-WFH when the economy reopens and life is more “normal”.
> I'm having trouble finding a single instance of viral vaccine that requires regular boosters
Have you heard of the flu shot?
It's not new, mRNA technology has been around for decades.
> For individuals who are at-risk for COVID-19 (a small minority of the population)
The absolutely wild cognitive disconnect here between saying that people shouldn't be scared of a novel virus who's long-term affects are generally unknown, but that they should be very scared of a decade old technology that, and I repeat, is less invasive than traditional vaccines.
Tell me that you're bad at risk analysis without actually telling me you're bad at risk analysis.
> it's quite disingenuous to compare the tetanus booster shot that you need once a decade, to a treatment you need 2-3 times per year
Oh come on, the disingenuous thing here is claiming that COVID vaccines are going to be a 3-time a year treatment indefinitely. You have to know why this is deceptive framing.
Also, it's disingenuous to compare the current debate over booster shots to the situation with other diseases that we have completely under control. We wouldn't be getting booster shots if an out-of-control unvaccinated population wasn't helping the virus mutate. And even with the mutations, the current vaccines are still incredibly effective. We arguably would not need booster shots at all if more people were vaccinated, the risk calculations being done here are partially based on the fact that even vaccinated people are being exposed to way more COVID than they ought to be, because a substantial portion of the population has apparently decided to make it their personal mission to preserve the disease.
Part of this is the fault of COVID coverage being unnecessarily gloomy: the mRNA vaccines for COVID work incredibly well, and while there may be additional benefits to booster shots, the existence of booster shots in no way means that the existing vaccines aren't doing their jobs. It just turns out if there's a really easy way to boost effectiveness that carries very few downsides, that it's worth doing that -- particularly in a world where unvaccinated populations are largely doing nothing to prevent themselves from spreading the disease. In that world I'll take an extra 5-15% protection if I can get it for free, I'm happy to get that. I'll also take an extra boost to protection against getting the virus in the first place, even if the current vaccine means it's extremely unlikely to be fatal. Getting even mild COVID is unpleasant.
Also, while we're on the subject of tetanus, this is actually a kind of apt comparison because you don't only need a tetanus booster every 10 years -- the 10 year booster is a recommended precaution based on the idea that you're not going to be regularly sticking rusty nails into your skin. If you step on a rusty nail, getting a tetanus booster immediately is recommended if you haven't gotten a shot within the last 5 years.
And boosters are also recommended in other situations, like malaria and chickenpox. No, they're not recommended to regularly happen every year, but as mentioned above A) malaria isn't currently running rampant and mutating in the United States, and B) COVID vaccines also probably aren't going to require regular boosters outside of a seasonal shot, and it's utterly disingenuous to look at an (extremely common) 2-dose initial vaccine and argue that this is equivalent to a regular vaccine schedule.
> Every year they come up with a new formulation that targets the viral mutation that they predict has happened over the past year.
No, you're way off base with this. Flu shots do lose effectiveness over time, that's why it's (generally) recommended to get the shot in mid-to-late September at the earliest. Getting the flu shot too early in the year will make it less effective for you during flu season. A flu shot will give you around 6 months of protection which... completely coincidentally, is roughly the same time table that's being recommended for current COVID boosters.
Also, the flu shots aren't always targeting completely novel strains every year, there are resurgences of the same strains across multiple years. One of the side effects of quarantining in 2020 was that certain flu strains dropped so low that we were hoping they would go extinct and we could stop vaccinating for them.
> It's extremely dispiriting to see intelligent people neglect the (frankly terrifying) history of overzealous American pharmaceutical intervention and experimentation.
Nobody is dismissing anything, but understanding the history of American pharmaceutical corruption is not the same thing as becoming needlessly paranoid about every scientific advancement, to the point where you're using words like "gene therapy" to describe a medical procedure where its single most well-known, defining characteristic is that it doesn't change your genes.
At that point this isn't about healthy distrust of the system or being prudently skeptical about new technologies, it's just a misunderstanding of what mRNA vaccines even do in the first place. And it's particularly not a healthy distrust of the system to treat the risk of vaccine complications as equivalent to the risk of long-covid complications. When we start arguing that the vaccines are more dangerous than COVID, it just becomes an inability to do math -- regardless of your age or what demographics you fit into. For the most part, for most people, even if you're in your 20s-30s, you are way less likely to experience harmful effects from a COVID vaccine than you are from COVID itself. The risks are just not the same.
mRNA vaccines are not gene therapy. They do not alter DNA.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-mrna-gene/fa...
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210719/covid-19-vaccines-n...
https://www.genomicseducation.hee.nhs.uk/blog/why-mrna-vacci...