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Comment by xil3 | Hacker News Reader

Why not accept their decision not to take the vaccine? I think this is a choice - it shouldn't be mandated by the government. These vaccines are at best experimental - I'm not saying they don't work, but I am not confident enough in them to take the shot. After they've been used for a few years, and I see that there are no adverse effects, I'm fine taking it (if needed).

I'm not about the conspiracy theories, but I don't just jump on every bandwagon that comes along. I don't care how many have already taken it. Time will tell if it's safe.

If your counter argument is that they have been tested and doctors and other professionals have stated that there is no way of adverse effects in the future, then why is everyone signing a release before taking the shot, freeing all parties of legal action? Nobody will take responsibility if something happens to you from this shot, but they want to mandate it. Interesting.

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> These vaccines are at best experimental - I'm not saying they don't work, but I am not confident enough in them to take the shot.

A drug that has been given 7.5 billion times is not experimental.

Crucially, the mRNA vaccines have a very similar effect on the body to previous vaccines. The fundamental mechanism is the same: stimulate an immune response to a particular pathogen without actually giving someone the pathogen.

> If your counter argument is that they have been tested and doctors and other professionals have stated that there is no way of adverse effects in the future, then why is everyone signing a release before taking the shot, freeing all parties of legal action?

I got my vaccine in the US and didn't sign a release to free anyone of legal action.

Also, the way we know that it won't have adverse effects in the future is that the vaccine doesn't persist in your system. If it's going to harm you, the harm will be in the short term. It can't just pop up again in 6 months.

You shouldn't take my word for it. Do your own research[1], as they say.

1. https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2021/06/will-kids-h...

"Do your own research" is disingenuous. If I do my own research (and I have) and it disagrees with your beliefs, you'll still tell me I'm wrong.

Incidentally, people thinking for themselves and being able to look at studies and talk to (actual) experts directly without the interference of the media or "experts" is exactly why there are so many skeptics, and why the White House, the Media, and Big Tech are doing everything they can to censor the living shit out of vaccine discussion. You people spent years yammering about how great the free, uncensored discussion on the Internet would be: finally the strongest ideas would win out! And then when people didn't come flooding to YOUR ideas, but actually started to move AWAY from them, you screamed for it to all be shut down, post-haste. The game is only good when you win, huh?

> If I do my own research (and I have) and it disagrees with your beliefs, you'll still tell me I'm wrong.

My beliefs aren't beliefs. They are based on widely-reproduced and reproducible scientific research. If all of that research is wrong, it would fundamentally overturn human understanding (such as it is) of the immune system and also require a massive global conspiracy including thousands of scientists.

What in your research has told you that the vaccine is more dangerous than Covid? You also don't know the long-term effects of Covid exposure, right?

> Incidentally...

I'm not sure how to respond to this, but the link I provided was to MIT, not the White House, media, or big tech. I don't know who "you people" is, but I'm not part of any organized group, and "media" and "big tech" are not homogeneous either. Even "White House" isn't, because there are many conservative Republicans encouraging vaccination in conjunction with Democrats.

To you rpoint about censorsip: vaccine discussion (including profit-motivated disinformation) is not very well-censored, apparently[1]. And you are welcome to have open, uncensorable vaccine discussions with anyone you want, including any doctor who will give you an appointment. You just can't do it through some private companies' servers. Some of the major "Big Tech" platforms (WhatsApp, Telegram, private Facebook groups, Messenger, Instagram DMs, etc.) are also fully open to any vaccine discussion.

1. https://apnews.com/article/the-facebook-papers-covid-vaccine...

> Crucially, the mRNA vaccines have a very similar effect on the body to previous vaccines. The fundamental mechanism is the same: stimulate an immune response to a particular pathogen without actually giving someone the pathogen.

If I started a new car company, and it put out it's first mass market vehicle, would you accept me saying "yeah, it's a car, it works like every other car out there, it has 4 wheels and drives down the road", would you assume it has the same reliability and safety record as an equivalent Honda or Toyota?

> Also, the way we know that it won't have adverse effects in the future is that the vaccine doesn't persist in your system. If it's going to harm you, the harm will be in the short term. It can't just pop up again in 6 months.

If someone was diagnosed with cancer (or an autoimmune issue, or dementia, etc) today, when did that diagnosis become inevitable? Yesterday? Last year? How do we know that the harm will manifest itself immediately?

> If I started a new car company, and it put out it's first mass market vehicle, would you accept me saying "yeah, it's a car, it works like every other car out there, it has 4 wheels and drives down the road", would you assume it has the same reliability and safety record as an equivalent Honda or Toyota?

This analogy doesn't make sense.

It's my first mass-market vehicle, but it's already been tested more than 7 billion times. You as the driver are not a crash-test dummy.

Even if you were, your alternative is not "don't drive a car" or "drive a safer car". Your alternative is to get into a car that we know is dangerous (i.e. being at risk of contracting Covid).

> If someone was diagnosed with cancer (or an autoimmune issue, or dementia, etc) today, when did that diagnosis become inevitable? Yesterday? Last year? How do we know that the harm will manifest itself immediately?

Because the vaccine can't continue to affect the person when it's out of their system. The vaccine is entirely gone within a couple of months, and only the immune system's "learning" remains.

And while you're asking these questions about the vaccine, why not ask them about the disease itself? We aren't speculating about the disease, either. We know that it causes long-term issues in a lot of people, potentially including brain and heart damage.

> This analogy doesn't make sense.

Do you truly think this doesn't apply at all? I see a lot of people say "it's a vaccine, we know how vaccines work", just like I'm saying "it's a car, we know how cars work".

In reality, implementation details matter. A Tesla isn't a Ford (and especially wasn't for the first GA model). You can predict some things, like maybe the body will rust in similar places. But what does a gas tank tell you about how a battery will hold up over time?

> Because the vaccine can't continue to affect the person when it's out of their system. The vaccine is entirely gone within a couple of months, and only the immune system's "learning" remains.

This is a prediction that comes from our experience with other makes/models of vaccines, and one that will hopefully come true. In the case of a never infected/never vaccinated person, I'd put my money on that prediction based on what I've heard about covid. For a person who has already recovered, leaning on that prediction feels unnecessarily risky, especially when as you say, we don't fully understand the long term risks of covid either. Why add more risk on top of that?

> A drug that has been given 7.5 billion times is not experimental.

You're supposed to bake a cake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. You can't bake it at 3500 degrees for 3 minutes instead.

Is alpha-gal syndrome fake? If not, then what exactly from the tick bite persists in your system forever afterwards?

Alpha-gal is an immune response. If a vaccine caused the allergy or triggered the immune response, you would see it in the short-term. It wouldn't appear years later, long after the vaccine was gone.

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