Blind rage against anti-vaxxers causes blindness to real risks.
> However, according to the EMA, the benefits of both mRNA shots in preventing COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks, the regulator said, echoing similar views expressed by U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization.
"Take Pfizer over Moderna if you're under 30" isn't the anti-vax position.
Only idiots, rational people would say
for sure the risk for vaccine A is not exactly equal with B for each individual, and that person would ask for real data and not some speculation for a youtubger that bearly finished high-school or some fake news website shared on Facebook.
Just to remind people, the risk for X complication is just a number , you always need to remember that the risk might be smaller for you (or larger) but it might be much larger for someone in your family/friends so don't forget the otehrs when you try to pretend you know how to calculate your own risks,
If you want to blame something for the unhealthy state of public discourse around vaccines, blame anti vaxxers. It is their anti science stance during a health crisis that is both irrational and has removed all nuance from healthcare discussions.
I'm not so sure about that. I think there's valid healthy skepticism about the mRNA shots but the loudest people protesting are firebreathers with no coherent argument or thought
When did we have discussions and thoughts and reasoned policy change on the _time_ aspect of safety testing? While some things like asbestos have uses, safety concerns can take years to be discovered.
Once you get to the point of doing the large phase 3 trial the timeline for these vaccines was much less compressed. Also much easier to test a vaccine when the virus is spreading all over the place quickly.
Also there just aren’t historical examples of vaccines having “hidden” long term effects. All side effects that happen after 6 weeks also happen much more frequently before 6 weeks.
1. I can't speak for others, but my skepticism stems from one idea: it's foolish to tamper with your immune system unless absolutely necessary or there's absolutely no risk, because you can't undo it later. At this point we can safely say the covid vaccine poses some risk relative to other vaccines.
That being said, for some individuals the vaccine is absolutely necessary. For other's such as children and young people whose bodies are still developing, the cost-benefit tradeoff is dubious.
2. "safe and effective" has proven to be a false statement. It might be fair to instead phrase it as "better than nothing, for most people". That's what the tens of billions of data points tell us so far.
Yet this is undermined further by reports such as "Aaron Rodgers, unvaccinated, sick with COVID, has mild symptoms and is doing fine" and "Fully Vaccinated NFL player hospitalized with COVID-19".
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/vaccinated-nfl-playe...
3. We don't have a good way of tracking and reporting adverse events. VAERS has a lot of systemic problems -- self-reporting isn't 100% reliable in scientific terms, but simultaneously studies show vaccine related adverse events are typically under reported.
"and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported." https://digital.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/publicatio...
4. By extension of VAERS, we don't have a good way of relating the vaccine to adverse event. ex. If someone gets vaccinated, and a month later dies of a blood clot, how do we prove or disprove the correlation? With food, drugs, and medicine, the only useful way is long term clinical trials.
I don't think we even have a causal relationship between the vaccine and myocarditis at this point, but rather an undeniable correlation. This says something about our scientific ability to measure safety.
5. There have been whistleblower reports about the honesty and reliability of the original vaccine trials. I take this with a grain of salt, but it highlights the lack of transparency and forced compliance endemic in the medical industry.
6. As time goes on, more articles and studies are released that cast doubt on the safety of the vaccine. This recent study shows (in vitro) that the mRNA induced spike protein is observed to cause damage at the cellular level in a way that hinders DNA repair and antibody creation. (Published: 13 October 2021)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/10/2056
To be clear, I don't want to forecast "vaccine doom" because everyone I know and love has the vaccine. I truly hope the science disproves any doubts about safety.
But until then I reserve the right to speculate and make my own risk assessment.
Also any “whistleblower” complaints about the studies are ridiculous at this point. Billions of people have taken the vaccines, we are overflowing in data about how safe and effective they are. There isn’t a coverup that half the human population is in on.
Further, it comes off as tone deaf to care about long term COVID effects but not that of vaccines.
I agree we're overflowing with data, my stance is data-driven.
I think it's wrong to discount whistleblowers, but you can pick and choose who you think is worth listening too.
I think it's fair to challenge my _ability_ as an interpreter more than bias, but rarely do we have the opportunity to defer important life altering decisions to others and still retain confidence they will prioritize what's best for us over themselves.
Prove it. You won't be able to because no such relative measurements exist.
But yes, my concern is with apoptosis and whether or not it happens correctly in both scenarios.
My impression is that viruses thoroughly destroy cells, but the mRNA method naively exposes the nucleus to the spike protein without doing all the other things viruses do.
Maybe the spike protein does the same damage in both scenarios
Maybe apoptosis correctly resolves all the risk
But people with wild imaginations like myself are wondering if between the virus and the vaccine if we didn't just drastically increase the risk of cancer and auto immune deficiencies across the whole world. Something we won't observe for years to come.
The problem with risks and probability is that human brain does not process probability numbers well, so it is all or nothing.
Anti-vaxxers point of view: I do not understand what 0.0001 is, round it up to 0.5 - OMG vaccines kill.
Vaxxers point of view: I do not understand what 0.0001 is, let us round it down to 0. Vaccines are harmless.
Second point is way more rational, although of course also incorrect.
I’m not sure where you are getting this characterization of people who are pro vaccines but it doesn’t apply to anyone I know who took the vaccine. Yes, there’s some risk of side effect as with most medicines. But you still take them because the benefits far outweigh the risks. Pretty sure the average person who took the vaccine is able to wrap their head around that concept.
That's quite different. Most people are not Bayesian thinkers. They mostly react based on how they feel about things.
I think what people fail to understand is that this isn't a one time problem. It's not bad math being done. It's one of the first major displays of an on going collapse of trust in Western institutions.
These are the same people who said two weeks to slow the spread, then proceeded to lockdown for months and put your business into flip-a-coin odds for insolvency.
It doesn’t matter how many credentials are next to their names - you are never listening to them ever again.
And neither will your family who depended on your business or saw you lose your business.
Someone did a computer simulation of this, showing that just 1-2% running around and spreding the virus was enough to undo the effects.
So here we are now, almost 2 years later and the family business you pretend to protect have lost costumers, their business and maybe also few family members. Things would have gone so much better if we didn't have these "freedom lovers" dragging their feet, damaging the economy and in the end filling up ICU beds while waiting for their Herman Cardon award.
What also comes to mind the Randal Munroe's "What if - Could we eliminate the common cold if we all self isolated long enough?"
In theory yes, but the severe degree of isolation and spreading required would likely not parse well with supply chain economics .. which given not everyone grows their own food, is also required to live.
edit: there's also news now of COVID spreading to deer and possibly other animals, making this scenario even less viable.
It certainly isn't the fault of freedom lovers or any single group. This is blaming the other team and basic tribalism.
Virtually no accurate, trustworthy and useful information about the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines is available. The public health and media establishment is far too biased in favour of vaccines and far too biased against anything that might discourage people from taking it. In such an environment it doesn't matter whether you understand Bayes theorem or not. You can't just do some calculations and understand the risks.
Analysing all angles and making informed decisions is sort of the exact opposite of pushing your head in the sand.