Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show | Hacker News Reader

Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

reuters.com

67 pointswalterbell114 comments

I see a lot of complaints of people about the fact that Pfizer required legal immunity against side effects.

This is a must for any vaccine manufacturer, otherwise the vaccine is just not commercially feasible. That's what killed Lymerix, and why we don't have Lyme disease vaccine anymore. If the government does not back it up, the manufacturer won't stand a chance.

Even if the vaccine has a good safety profile, a 0.1% rate of side effects applied to millions is still a lot of lawsuits.

This also happened with the DPT vaccine in the 1980s. Manufacturers kept losing lawsuits based on junk science until they could no longer afford liability insurance. This is why the US congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act that protects manufacturers from lawsuits.

That is a signal your laws are bad and squelching valuable innovation. Giving random one-off exceptions when you personally feel like it is a terrible way to regulate commerce.

Vendors should be able to grade their vaccines on a curve based on how much safety and efficacy data there is, then let people choose whatever in consultation with their doctors.

Please note that for a vaccine against a disease like corona, a 0.1% rate of side effects serious enough to lead to lawsuits is not a 'good safety profile', especially when given to people outside well-defined risk groups. The Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca vaccines, which probably have a 'borderline safety profile' have a rate of side-effects between 0.001% and 0.0001%.

In slovenia (~2mio pop, ~1mio had covid), the current statistics for girls under 25 show zero deaths due to covid and 1 death due to the vaccine (j&J). She got vaccinated because she had to, and all the measures are designed (accidentally or intentionally) to mostly affect the young, because old people (the ones who die a lot if not vaccinated) don't do most of the restricted stuff anyways (eg. closed nightclubs don't affect them)

Fine, but now we have two extra phenomena with the COVID vaccine:

1) Discussion about vaccine side effects, efficacy rates, etc. is being actively censored (e.g. Twitter's ridiculous post censorship policy)

2) Governments pushing for a mandatory vaccine

If one doesn't think this creates a very dangerous precedent one does not understand history nor human nature at all.

Obviously the situation is bad.

The antivaxx bomb exploded and a significant chunk of the population has been hit by it. Now governments are trying to counteract that. (Twitter too.) Both usually have crude methods only.

This is not an antivaxx problem, this is a government/NGO ineptitude & trustworthiness problem. There's been a million fumbles and lies around the whole pandemic, making the quasistalinist approach to pandemic governance likely the number one catalyst of antivaxx stances.

Yep, so many many lies, so many "science changing is a good thing" stuff (eg "masks are useless, wash your hands", and mask wearers being conspiracy theorists, to "mandatory masks" and antimaskers being the conspirac nutjobs), "just 14 more days", etc.... but they still want you to "trust them" now, with "this new thing".

The science was always uncertain, the policy flip-flop was understandable, the absolutely fubar'ed PR is the nightmare fuel.

Masks work. That was not the question. How much they help is the question of science. The cost-benefit decision is the question of policy. How to communicate the changing policy should have been the PR question.

The US and international agencies that set policies are not as science-driven as they should be. ( https://www.slowboring.com/p/our-public-health-agencies-shou... )

Framing this as "lies" is counter-productive. Policy converging with science is mostly a good thing, but first that needs high quality science (= high quality data, asking the right questions, etc). The current US communication zeitgeist using "science" as a shorthand for "policy based on cost-benefit evaluation of such and such scientific reports by this and this community of experts and stakeholders" is a big problem, but it's a symptom of other bigger US social phenomena.

Science can say "by our current knowledge, the 'truth' is X" .... and then change their mind and say "Y".. The problem are the government mandates and policies based on ever changing science.

Atleast in slovenia we had 4 vaccines (Astrazeneca, jannsen, moderna and pfeizer), and all four were marked as safe and effective for everyone. Then astrazaneca caused issues in neigbouring countries and then J&J killed a wife of our diplomat first (and a lot of blame was thrown around), and then a 20yo girl died, and we banned J&J, then the scandinavian countries stopped usage of moderna for younger people, and we've gone from four "safe and effective" vaccines to just pfeizer. If you're a vaccine skeptic, or even if not, but just a bit afraid to get vaccinated, and three out of the four vaccines that were "just yesterday" safe and effective, are now "not safe and effective" anymore, you don't think "the fourth one surely is safe and effective!", but stay unvaccinated and wait it out. I got vaccinated with J&J, because it was the most 'simple' choice back then, but soon after i needed a booster from pfeizer, because J&J isn't good enough... so all of the risks, basically none of the benefits.

Add to this stories like this one (about the refugees), where countries are mandating locals to take the vaccine, but not refugees, and people get more and more skeptical.

> "Masks work. That was not the question."

no, 'masks work' is an extremely poor and politically-loaded statement (and as such, not a 'fact'). that phrase is meant to be thought-terminating, projecting false certainty, and curtly implies they work everywhere, all the time. instead, it should be something like 'masks are able to filter viable virus particles under the right conditions'.

that kind of distortionary perspective has been used to mandate wearing masks in public spaces, where they almost always do exactly no good at all (no additional benefit beyond normal human behavior and interaction), and neglects to mandate that we wear them around friends and family (social situations) where masks might potentially filter some live (viable) virus from warm exhalation and/or from close and prolonged inhalation by the uninfected.

as such, that usage/mandate is not for public health at all. it's political, for the individual, the reporter and the politician, to signal in-grouping and to apply counterproductive social pressure passive-aggressively (again, not to reduce spread, but to signal brainless obeisance).

The advice and main rules were really clear from the start. Do 1) this, 2) this and 3) this. And were repeated millions of times from thousands of people in the whole planet.

But some people didn't liked science and choose instead to go to bath masses, religious massive holidays and parties just to make a political point. Some people even put deliberately the live of other in risk, teared off their masks and spit in their faces.

As expected, they paid a big bill for their own 100% genuine stupidity. Those that don't died look now desperately for a decorous way out to save face and will blame other for it: "You explained it only 5 million times, so I though that it was a joke. Is your fault to not repeat it 5.000.001 times..."

This theory of "pandemic of the unvaccinated" can safely be dumped into the trashcan following that e.g. here in Finland we have a double vaccination rate of over 80% and yet the daily numbers are easily the highest of all time.

It also follows that the advice and main rules given to avoid the pandemic aren't actually effective, and somewhat ironically, it would bode well to use scientific principles to re-evaluate the evidence and adjust their posture.

It really is amazing that after two years of no clear correlation between mandates and results, many still believe that all those edicts and restrictions were based on science. The fact is that to continue to believe in all the imposed rules is more of an act of faith, similar to the religious kind.

Complete with modern indulgences.

Vaccines never assured that would stop the transmission. Specially after being designed for different virus variants.

They claimed that the effects would be much less severe, and would save lives. And in millions of cases [1] they delivered exactly what was promised. Finland had 1000 people killed. Sweden with 70% vaccinated had 15.000 deaths, so all points that vaccines really work.

[1] There are a few debatable cases, and I don't have any problem to discuss it, but the fact is that any treatment carry a small risk of being harmful for a particular genetic. People accept to take this risks all the time because the possible benefits worth it. Nobody says "we must stop treating cancer because chemotherapy has killed one in a 100 million people before".

Rules can't be effective if everybody do all that must do, but a bunch of morons playing cowbells came and spit you in the face (or into your hamburger) just for fun. Don't blame the people that made the rules for that. Is not their failure

They most certainly did run that message for awhile, see eg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-21/pfizer-bi...

I will absolutely blame the people who use ineffective or dishonest methods to constrict my life without my consent, that is the price they pay to be in positions of power.

Your own linked article contests your argument.

And? That is entirely the point. Pharma marketing & government sold this as a preventative cure which of which people with the know were skeptical about from the beginning.

But the article argues caution, not at all what you're arguing.

What am I arguing in your opinion then?

It's been two years, learn some new moves. Stop blaming other people for problems you are creating.

> Vaccines never assured that would stop the transmission. Specially after being designed for different virus variants.

People's experiences of vaccines like MMR lead them to assume otherwise.

CDC did not formally change the definition of vaccine until Sept 2021.

I like this approach to explain some of antivax as well. Essentially big pharma has just finished up a massive campaign that was the opioid pandemic. Essentially there’s going to be a large correlation between people with jobs that get them injured and targeted for opioid use, and those people being right. Opioid addiction that comes from that targeting isn’t just a single victim thing, someone addicted to something as hard as opioids is going to affect entire families and likely extended families. It’s going to essentially feel like a massive economic and spiritual attack to the family, by pharmaceutical companies (after all the news that came out of that social pandemic). So it makes sense that the seeds for not trusting the medical system are there and in insanely rich fertilizer to grow by even groups previously seen as insane like antivax groups (seriously both sides of the isle used to mock those groups). The worst part is that the people taking a drink of that koolaid, are able to literally take their life experience and draw a completely sane line from A to B that Big Pharma shouldn’t be trusted.

Good point. If you are realtively young in certain parts of the country you are going to hear a lot more stories about pharma killing people (opioids) than saving them.

Opioids killed most of my childhood friend group. Left many others passed out every day in their parents basement now into their 30s with no propects.

All the pretentious late night comedian jokes and Twitter clapbacks in the world won't be able to turn that around, you need some empathy to reach people where they are.

There's a PDF collection of alleged vax injuries/deaths that's been growing since March 2021, now over 200 pages. If autopsies were performed on any of the listed cases, the claims could be challenged. Since these are based on news reports, the list is at least publicly available and could be analyzed by federal or state agencies. There's also a much larger tier of anecdotal injuries within friend and family networks, which never reached the media. Without data/evidence collection, narrative gaps will remain.

https://circleofmamas.com/health-news/compilation-of-covid-v...

I’m sure some time from now a different government won’t try to “counteract” some other threat with even more draconian measures. And it definitely can’t be the other side targeted next time. There’s nothing dangerous in giving unchecked power to the government to counteract “threats”.

I'm not saying what's happening is good. I'm stating it as a matter of fact. As you (cynically, but likely correctly) note that such authorizations tend to lead to very serious abuses of power. But it's also important to see that there are many countries on the planet that do exist with those draconian measures, without those getting abused. (Again, I'm not saying getting complacent about this is desirable. Quite the opposite.)

It's pretty much evident that real free speech can only exist in a society where basic needs are unconditionally guaranteed, and so on. ("I disagree, but I'd defend your right to say it." is great, as long as there is literally exactly zero probability that it might backfire on you. Because the moment there's a non-zero probability there's a non-zero chilling effect.)

There are, of course, various workarounds for these problems caused by a too oppressive/powerful majority, but the way to implement them start with letting go of the simple, but wrong idea that there free speech is simple and it can be simply free. (And similarly it'd be good to kill other useless idols like the "national security" one, that is routinely used to suppress speech. And then the "think of the children" one, which is again used to oppress, and so on.)

You say this like it's all due to misinformation. There are many VAERS and other self-reports in other countries, many studies and countless doctors also coming out against this. Overall I think vaccines have higher pros/cons (I'm vaccinated) but it's by no means cut and dry.

In slovenia (~2mio pop, ~1mio had covid), the current stats for girls under 25 is zero deaths due to covid and 1 death due to a vaccine (jannsen), and she only got vaccinated, because the alternative was a lot worse (paid tests every 48 hours, waiting in line, not being able to use a bus to go to the test site without the test, etc).

Yes, old unvaccinated people get fucked by covid, but 95% of the current measues in place only affect the young, because most old people don't go do bars after 10pm, don't go to clubs, don't even go to work anymore, etc.

Cherry-picking one out of a huge number of tiny groups (girls under 25 from Slovenia) is the hallmark of bad science. This is completely unsuitable for a good risk/benefit analysis.

In the whole <35yo group (men and women), we currently have 5 deaths all together... that's less than the number of drownings here, a lot less than traffic deaths, less than suicides, less than work accidents, less than overdoses etc.

And the mandates? If you're a 75yo pensioner, basically nothing has changed for you... curfew (back then) didn't affect you, because you're asleep, closed bars after 10pm the same, you don't go to shopping centers and restaurants, and normal grocery stores and pharmacies don't require testing or vaccinations... so you're basically living your life as normal.

And the <35yo crowd? Imagine a 6yo kid, first grade, can't read or write was put behind a pc running zoom for 5-6h per day. Students couldnt go out, meet, get drunk, have sex.... Want to go to school? mandatory testing. Want to use a bus to go to school? The in-school testing is not good enough for a bus, you need a different test for that, to get the right certificate. Shoppping centers, clothes stores, everything needs testing, vaccine or (sometimes even) intentionally getting sick with covid. Gyms the same. Nightclubs closed totally. Chritmas markets without food and drinks (even though you can get food and drinks in restaurants and bars on the same street).

So we're basically keeping parts of the country/economy partially closed (or even fully), to force young people to get vaccinated (because they're mostly the only ones affected by the mandates), and grandma doesn't care, because it doesn't affect her. The vaccination propaganda has quietly shifted from "protects you from infection and spread" to "protects you from hospitalization", but the mandates still affect mostly the ones where the chances of hospitalization are minimal.

Just requiring vaccinations to withdraw your pension (even if we left everything open and let everyone else be free) would save more lives than all the mandates targeting the young and ignoring the old.

> The antivaxx bomb exploded

That is a quite improper expression to describe a situation which also covers the inquiry "What is going on here, I am seeing absurdities, lunacy [esp. with regards to said «counteraction»] and I am witnessing facts that simply do not match narratives".

Can you give a few examples of said absurdities?

People giving too much weight to the actions of Twitter (as a company) seems to be a serious problem. Twitter (as the company and its users as a whole) does not control whether the vaccine is good/bad.

The formula used to be simple. I want to travel to this or that foreign country I need this or that vaccine. Kids at age this and that get this and that vaccine.

Simple Bayesianism puts a limit on the chance that there's a large but extremely competent group conspiring to hide unfathomably huge problems with vaccines. The chance was never 0, which was fueling the slow burn of the antivaxx movement.

But now with this pandemic those voices suddenly reached a much larger audience, and those who have certain biases are much more susceptible to this, and hence the bomb explosion. (In particular people whose mind sufficiently discounts the very real risk of getting sick compared to the astronomically slim risk of getting an 5G chip in their arm.)

Here's a good overview: https://twitter.com/KonstantinKisin/status/14221815441611284...

It's a useful link, but not as a good overview, because that's a very bad faux stream of consciousness cherry picking with a straight narrative to ideology town. (Of course, there's nothing really wrong with it, it's simply one more echo in the chamber.)

So it's sort of useful because we see how vaccine denial/skepticism/hesitancy (and vaccine optimism/acceptance/overpraise) become a matter of identity between the culture war camps.

Yes it’s a dangerous precedent. So we need to quantify the relative dangers. Hundreds of thousands, and potentially many millions of dead Americans one one hand right now, against a precedent that might be abused in future in theory. It depends how much confidence we have in democracy in America.

The US had a debate and had elections even during the pandemic. Decisions about these issues are being made at state and federal level, informed by broad and local public opinion. That’s the system working.

>Hundreds of thousands, and potentially many millions of dead Americans one one hand right now

whose average age is greater than the life expectancy.

But sure, let's discard our free society to prolong their lives by a bit. If history tells us anything, it's that free society is a stable attractor, so I'm sure we'll get it back in no time, right guys?

The analysis on years of life lost, including reduced life expectancy in those with long covid, has actually been done.

>Conclusion: More than 28 million excess years of life were lost in 2020 in 31 countries, with a higher rate in men than women.

Yes the chances of young people dying is individually very low, and gets tiny for the very young, but for example in Brazil it’s estimated that about 500 babies died due to complications from coronavirus exposure, and many thousands of toddlers. Those small percentages, multiplied by big enough numbers, still add up.

28 million years of life lost in 31 countries whose population appears to add up to over 1 billion people.

So what are we talking about here, maybe like 2 weeks each? Which is optimistic -- because personally I believe most of the restrictions have a very small effect. Roughly that many people were going to die anyway, whether we did Sweden's approach or Austria's approach or anywhere in between.

Well - good god, I'm really looking forward to those extra 2 weeks of my life. They will be amazing. It will definitely make up for spending my entire youth, and possibly my entire life, in a hellish surveillance state where you aren't allowed to go to school or see your family and you have to show your papers to enter a restaurant. SO WORTH IT, right?

Right, that’s the loss of life _with_ lockdowns, mass vaccinations, etc. we’ve successfully managed to limit the damage to much, much, much lower levels than it would have been otherwise. It’s been a huge success, compared to an unrestricted or minimally constrained propagation of the virus.

Sweden.

I wish we had open-source flowcharts for common debate talking points. Each could be linked to several dozen HN sub-threads where similar points were made by both sides, ending in a handful of common termination nodes. Once a flowchart exists and has been proven reusable, it could be condensed into a comic, meme or other visual mnemonic. If would also be easier to place new studies into the context of previous debates.

With repetitive graphs out of the way, discussion could focus on more nuanced points.

That's a huge assumption. Given how well Sweden has done with limited lockdowns [0] one could also jump to conclusions that lockdowns have prolonged and exacerbated a situation that would otherwise have fizzled out with herd immunity.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Even Florida it seems these days

The Swedish government regards the claim that they have not implemented lockdowns similar to many other countries as a myth:

>Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde said that the "so-called Swedish strategy" was one of many myths about Sweden, and described it as "absolutely false".

>...Remarks similar to Linde's have also been made by Lena Hallengren, Minister for Health and Social Affairs, who disagreed with the belief that Sweden had a radically different approach to the virus compared to other countries, saying she believed that there were only differences in two major regards: not shutting down schools, and not having regulations forcing people to remain in their homes.[161]

>Linde has also spoken out against reports of Swedes not practising social distancing, calling it another "myth" in the reporting about Sweden, and she said Sweden's combination of recommendations and legally binding measures had so far proven effective.

>informed by broad and local public opinion

Does it happen with censorship?

What do I care about the US system as an European? I certainly haven't had a single chance to vote about any issue regarding COVID, these have all been top-down decisions.

> and potentially many millions of dead Americans one one hand right now,

Millions? Where does that number come from?

>It depends how much confidence we have in democracy in America.

After Hunter Bidens laptop story got removed from everywhere, there can be no doubt that the only correct answer to to that question is negative infinity.

This is absolutely not true, and has not been true before Covid.

The question is which country must back this up? US? Germany? All countries in the World?

To some context: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/10/p...

Each contract has it's own terms, one of the cause for delays within the EU was due to some of those legal terms. USA and UK waved a lot of responsibilities.

If it's shared liability, for example, in the EU it would be both EU and Pfizer that would back this up.

At least in Germany, the state wasn't back in it up. It may have changed now. But when the first Astrazeneca problems popped up, the answer was "you did it knowing the risks, when you signed up for it".

Reference:

https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/haftungimpfsch...

> USA and UK waved a lot of responsibilities.

Brit here. I’m not intending to be argumentative, you’re right, but I’d prefer to put it a bit differently. The British government chose to take on responsibility for ordering and using the vaccines. We did our testing, contracted the drug companies to do a job to standards we set, and paid them for it. If a mistake was made, it’s on us. I have no problem with that.

Now, if the drug companies lied, or failed to live up to their contracts, that’s a different story. But if they did the job we asked in good faith, we’ll, that’s fine.

Contrast with the OxyContin debacle in the US. Those people lied, concealed evidence, conspired and goodness knows what else. They deserve the full force of the law. I am in no way advocating blanket liability waivers for drug companies.

I don't doubt the intentions, to be honest this is a chip on the shoulder that I have from that period.

Back then I tried to wrap my head around the whole delays of vaccines, when some propaganda were saying that the EU was being "cheap" and bargaining for cents, costing time, with the famous Boris quote, paraphrasing, "we have a better deal".

Only to find out that one of the major setbacks that caused the delay was in fact liability terms.

The EU wanted to share liability so that pharma was not completely off the hook, and had some skin in the game - and I'm fine with this decision, even it costed some weeks of delay.

I'm also fine with USA and UK decisions, it's just the framing and propaganda that was despicable... it wasn't a better deal, just different terms and demands.

I think this whole coronavirus period made me sick of politics.

Yet J&J was willing to waive immunity?

So these companies get swaths of subsidies. They get price agreements with the liberty to bump it with double digit percentages. They get waivers for any and all responsibilities and orders en masse. Yet helping the hopeless and poor is too much to ask in fear of lawsuits. What a shameful situation.

Why do they waive responsibility though

It is not possible to sue vaccine manufacturers if you are injured/killed. You (or your family if you are killed) have to go to a special court and very likely lose your case. In the unlikely event you win, the government pays you, not the manufacturers.

How do I get the same thing going for my software? That is, to get it mandated or legislated that people have to buy it (preferably multiple times: subscription). And no matter what happens, I can't be held liable or pay damages. Sounds like a very solid business model.

Become an AV vendor. A good one.

Entire sections of business are (for all intents and purposes) legally required to run up-to-date AV products on all their Windows endpoints.

You mean a good one in regard to the business, right? Because that seems to have very little to do with producing a good AV product.

Is your software potentially saving lives but also have the risk of potentially damaging some people?

If so, you probably could get the government to cover you.

They don't waive more than what was defined in the PREP Act[0], they're exempt because it's an emergency and all evidence points at the treatment being better than the disease, and its production, distribution and administration is under government request.

This was enacted in 2005, shortly after the original SARS, partially because pharma companies were reluctant to mass produce any novel vaccine/drug under government request only for it to possibly bite their asses.

Another motivation for this was 2001, and the increasing potential threat of bioterrorism; companies lose any incentives to be responsive in the wake of such an attack.

This is just actuarial science: a relatively rare but serious side effect (i.e. not found in trials), when put on a massive scale, becomes a big enough threat for the economic viability of the company.

[0] https://www.phe.gov/Preparedness/legal/prepact/Pages/default...

> they're exempt because it's an emergency and all evidence points at the treatment being better than the disease

I know you don't write the law, so these questions are more in the vein of statements with questionmarks:

* Why only consider evidence of cost vs. benefit in an emergency?

* Why are vaccines suddenly safe in an emergency and not at other times?

This pandemic proved that we can produce a "safe and effective" vaccine in 12 months. That is apparently a record. It shouldn't be - this signals that 75% of the wait time for new cures and vaccines is red tape.

> This pandemic proved that we can produce a "safe and effective" vaccine in 12 months. That is apparently a record. It shouldn't be - this signals that 75% of the wait time for new cures and vaccines is red tape.

It can be kinda hard to test vaccines quickly and ethically typically as subjecting people to a disease on purpose isn't really allowed and you have to wait for them to catch it naturally and compare. Fortunately (or unfortunately) during a pandemic it's pretty easy to test vaccines as one can quickly compare one's that got the vaccine and one's that didn't effectiveness.

Consider that part of the expedition comes from “skipping the line”. Only 1 thing can skip the line at a time.

If everything skips the line then nothing changes.

What line? Can the regulators not consider two drugs in parallel? They should consider hiring a 2nd clerk to stamp the paperwork.

Drug & vaccine testing should be highly parallelisable.

'all evidence points at the treatment being better than the disease'.

I had it and have Dr. letter that says so. I now have sterilizing immunity. The jab does not provide sterilizing immunity, so it is not better for me nor my family. I am not jabbed, and will not get jabbed. While I am just one, I invalidate your use of the word 'all'.

> I had it and have Dr. letter that says so. I now have sterilizing immunity.

No, you don't, nobody has, 'sterilizing immunity' doesn't exist as you seem to think it does [0]. I seriously doubt a doctor would write 'sterilizing immunity' in such a letter, so I assume that's your reasoning.

> so it is not better for me nor my family.

It actually is [1]. Even if you had it, you're still better off having the jab.

> I am not jabbed, and will not get jabbed.

You just sound like someone that can't be convinced of things. Talk to your doctor.

> While I am just one, I invalidate your use of the word 'all'.

Yeah, like seatbelt doesn't save 100%. Luckily one data point doesn't count as evidence when we're talking about statistics.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

I have talked to my Dr.

'you're still better off having the jab.'

You are not my Dr.

Supposedly vaccine reporting of harm is about 1%, though it would seem to be difficult to verify if it is 1% or 3%. 52 dead infants have been reported. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/baby-of-fully-vaccinated-m...

It is not better, and not for 'all'.

> I have talked to my Dr.

Then imagined things in your head. No doctor will write what you suggest.

> You are not my Dr.

Nobody said I am.

> vaccine reporting of harm is about 1%

What on earth is that piece of random rumourmongering based on?

I felt horrible for ~24 hours after my second Pfizer shot. If that counts as hard then sure, 1% is believable. If it is actually harmful side effects than that is total nonsense. 1% is a huge, huge number of people.

It's based on antivax nonsense. Now he edited and linked to a site (which is banned everywhere in social media precisely for spreading COVID-19 misinformation) that takes raw data from VAERS at face value without any adjustment for prevalence or comorbidities.

They could as well link vaccine shots to trampoline accidents if only VAERS collected such data.

I'm all for open data, but antivaxxers without the minimal understanding of statistics extrapolating VAERS data makes me wonder if it's a good idea.

If VAERS numbers were reduced for co-morbidities, then US Covid deaths would be reduced by ~90% when co-morbidities were excluded, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-94-percent-covi...

There is also the issue of VAERS being under-reported, which can be estimated by using other sources of health surveillance, like the HMO-driven Vaccine Safety Datalink.

I have seen little evidence that having previously had COVID gives you sterilizing immunity. Some evidence it gives you better immunity than the vaccine but now more evidence coming out that points to the vaccine being better.

Here are 100+ studies to that effect, https://brownstone.org/articles/79-research-studies-affirm-n...

I'm not sure what I'm looking at.

> Such would be evidence of immunity that is equal to that of vaccination and the immunity should be provided the same societal status as any vaccine-induced immunity.

They advocate for infection having the same status as vaccination, which is reasonable, and the policies, at least in the west and in the countries I'm familiar with, they take previous infection into account.

> Again, the Marek’s disease in chickens and the vaccination situation explains what we are potentially facing with these leaky vaccines

Then they mention Marek's disease in a gross (yet common) misunderstanding of the causes of such scenario. Luckily, humans aren't stacked up onto each other in direct contact 24/7.

> This follow-up chart is the most updated and comprehensive library list of 139 of the highest-quality, complete, most robust scientific studies and evidence reports/position statements on natural immunity as compared to the COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity and allow you to draw your own conclusion.

OK, let's go through a few:

1. Results are unbelievable (0 reinfections among +1000 people who expose themselves daily) but the methodology seems solid otherwise. No complaints.

2. In vitro, small sample.

3. Conveniently skips "When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated,"

4. Doesn't even talk about COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity.

5. Shows that vaccine antibody titers wane faster than natural immunity. Interesting given that previous studies from the list focus on how T/B-cell response is much better measure than antibody levels. Kinda moving goalposts, but OK.

6. Shows 1/10 reinfection rate among infected vs infection rate among general population (since the study is from February 2021, I'd say that's roughly 90% unvaccinated). Doesn't compare against vaccines, which was the original point of the list? Funnily it directly disproves the unbelievable numbers of study 1, and this looks equally solid.

7. Says previously infected may not need a second dose (conveniently skips that they may need one).

8. Doesn't compare with anything.

9. Titers at 5 months after infection, hardly interesting.

10. Immunoglobulin levels, 2020, hardly interesting, doesn't compare with anything..

From this point the list seems to decrease in relevance to the point, just showing that infection gives some immunity, which is hardly what anyone is arguing. Some just talk about measles (55), others about possible cross immunity (85, 109), but overall it feels more like a vague Google search than a curated list of anything.

If he doesn't have sterelising immunity, how can he have recovered from COVID? He'd still have the coronavirus.

For a body to fight off cornavirus the immune system has to have reached a state of sterelising immunity, otherwise the coronavirus would just keep jumping back and forward between family members. And that immunity will probably decay at about the same speed as any vaccine.

> If he doesn't have sterelising immunity, how can he have recovered from COVID? He'd still have the coronavirus.

Like any other situation where someone has non-sterilising immunity, his body may have been able to eliminate the disease without fully preventing the virus from reproducing.

I'm certainly confused now. What is this mechanism that can successfully destroy ... hundreds? thousands? millions? of virus particles but is unable to stop them reproducing? Are you arguing that they reproduce after they've been destroyed? Or maybe that the COVID virus is a permanent infection?

For a body to rid itself of a viral disease it needs to achieve sterelising immunity. That is what it means to recover after a virus, unless the virus is permanent like ... I dunno, herpes? ... and the body is suppressing it. Even then that might technically be sterelising immunity.

The coronavirus doesn't reinfect people immediately after they recover from COVID. It is all but impossible that they don't have sterelising immunity at that point. Otherwise they would keep getting COVID over and over again. I can see how that isn't always true, but if coronavirus persisted after recovery I assume that would be big news.

There's no sterilising immunity. That's a gross oversimplification of the incredibly complex thing that the immune system is.

Immune response isn't linear. Likewise, viral reproduction isn't linear. They're not even constant within the same tissue.

So whatever happens will depend on the virus, on the viral load, where it appears, and previous type and kind of immunity, and the speed of that immune response.

Fun fact: the overwhelming majority of HIV exposures don't result in infection, but one would be stupid to claim that most people have "sterilising immunity" to HIV. It simply can't target most cells and dies off in the mucous membranes.

Let's look at the latest UK data, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

> To the end of week 43 in 2021 (to 31 October 2021) 72,264 possible reinfections have been identified, of which 441 have been confirmed by identification of genetically distinct specimens.

That is from a total of 7.9 million positive cases, i.e. reinfection rate is ~0.01% to 1%. That means at least 99% of Covid-recovered people in the UK were not reinfected. Some textbooks from recent decades may call that "sterilizing immunity". Note that some words have been redefined by government agencies since 2020, including the term "vaccine" (definition updated by the CDC as recently as Sept. 2021). At this point, usage of some evolving and contested terms should be accompanied by a version number, date and changeset hash.

Regardless of terminology, the UK numbers show a 1% chance of reinfection upon exposure. If someone takes precautions to reduce their exposure to infected people (e.g. people with symptoms / positive test, or a crowded indoor space with poor ventilation), then the risk of reinfection will be a small number X 1%.

I think you're not looking at the numbers the way I do.

1. The closest to reality is probably the 70k figure, since the requirements for probable and confirmed are held to unusually high standards (sequencing of one or both samples).

2. The numbers have to be adjusted by date to make sense of them. That's a cumulative analysis of data since the beginning of the pandemic, meaning first infections are overrepresented because you have to have a first to have a second, and because most first infections require uninfected people and there are way more of those.

3. Page 20 shows reinfection rate was climbing along with first infections before widespread vaccination, and also that reinfection rate is receding as first infections climb lately. Statistically it's expected to grow as the previously infected population grows. This, if anything, displays that vaccination in previously infected individuals is effective at preventing reinfection.

Based on the latest report, what is your estimate for the % of UK people who have been reinfected?

PREP Act is an American thing. Pharma requires liability waivers globally and changing laws to eliminate legal liability is a requirement of the contracts they sign with governments.

Sometimes even that isn't enough. In some cases they demand collateral. They also demand immunity from criminal prosecution, even in cases where it's proven that people were injured through "negligence, fraud or malice":

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/company-news/...

"Government officials from Argentina and another Latin American country, which has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer and so cannot be named, told the Bureau that Pfizer demanded additional indemnity against civil lawsuits citizens might file in relation to Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Pfizer reportedly asked governments in Argentina and Brazil to put up sovereign assets, including military bases and federal bank reserves, as collateral for potential future legal costs.

According to government officials in Argentina and the unnamed country, Pfizer asked for liability protection not only against civil claims from citizens who suffer serious adverse events after being vaccinated, but also for cases brought due to Pfizer’s own negligence, fraud or malice. Documents from Brazil’s Ministry of Health suggest that Pfizer made similar demands of the Brazilian government."

Pfizer allocated doses for those countries (and more) at non-profit prices. Argentina pays $12 per dose[0]. The EU, who haggled a lot, and bought a lot more, is paying $15, and the US pays almost $20.

If Pfizer agreed to be held liable at any level, they'd be literally be agreeing to losing money.

These countries are free to pay the regular price other countries are, with the usual emergency levels of indemnity. I'm sure Pfizer won't mind.

What Argentina and Braz^H^H^H^H the other country want is to have the cake and eat it too: "you manufacture it, you bring it, you earn nothing, yet you're held accountable if things go wrong". Personally I wouldn't go in, not sure about you. This is actuarial 101.

[0] https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentina-has-paid...

Liability seeks to align interests with power: they who might be tempted to sell something they know to have some serious flaw should also have to pay for any damages.

But the risks of these vaccines are somewhat different than usual. It’s less likely that there are some known risks the manufacturers are hiding, because they are getting so much attention. Instead, it’s about ‘unknown unknowns’ and the wish to balance them with the usefulness of vaccination. In other words: the customers, both patients and governments, are fully-informed, to the degree possible, and making an informed decision.

> Many COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers have required that countries indemnify them for any adverse events suffered by individuals as a result of the vaccines, the United Nations says. Where governments are not in control, that is not possible. The concerns affect people, such as those displaced by the Myanmar, Afghanistan and Ethiopian crises, who are beyond the reach of national governments' vaccination schemes.

Stateless humans have more legal protection than stateful humans?

That's a good question with a lot of observations that could be made...

I'd say that out of concern for the (economic) consequences of harmful side effects, the choice not to get the jab is de-facto forcefully made for the stateless by the manufacturers + state. I wouldn't call this protection. As a stateless, your legal freedom (which I think ought to be inalienable) to get a particular medical product you might want is not protected because protection of the corporate manufacturer's bottom line has priority.

The manufacturers are carefully avoiding the one thing they _don't_ want which would be indemnifying individual sufferers of side effects from their bottom line. They do this by either having the people effectively indemnify themselves by paying them from their own people's money through the government, or by refusing to give it to anyone not indemnified this way. Basically, the manufacturers want riskless profit for rolling this product out, one way or another. The manufacturers will do what it takes to exercise a privilege they think ought to be inalienable, that being to help themselves our collective wealth so long as we use their product, whatever it is.

But think about how we got here.

In US you can get 100 mil in liability damages per injured person in lawsuits, which doesn't make any sense when you consider that with that sum you could save thousands of lives (poor people, ...)

So you could easily be made to pay 10 bil for causing vaccine damage to a 1000 people, while disregarding the hundred of millions the vaccine saved.

Do you think that would be fair?

I'd have to ask, do liability damages have to be 100 mil per person? Why can't they be significantly less, IE more commensurate to a reasonable (surely never 100% accurate) assessment of the rough economic value of damages actually inflicted?

If we cannot save millions of lives with meds without the following drawbacks:

    -Inadequate recourse for many of those suffering harmful side effects.

    -The effective re-distribution of the people's wealth to the harmed individual to spackle over the damage should harmful effects occur.

    -Infringing on the rights of human beings to prevent them from taking medical procedures they want to preserve corporate bottom lines.

Then beyond it being fair for a vaccine company to go under, I believe it would be just for the entire legal and civic system to collapse to be rebuilt by a structure that respects both human liberty and dignity. I believe it's a cycle that will happen again and again, every time, until we get it right and can finally keep millions of people safe enough to living meaningful enough lives without trampling their rights and without encouraging them to become too weak to preserve them. And further, I don't think we're ever actually going to get it right as a species, so things like this are going to happen, once in a long lifetime.

Without a vaccine mandate I can see your argument, however if you force people to take a drug you have decided to take ownership of the situation. In that case you are responsible for the outcome. If you don't want to be responsible for a choice, don't make it.

Careful there, that's fash-adjacent talk </s>

Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

>Stateless humans have more legal protection than stateful humans?

"If there is hope, it may lie with the proles..."

Stateless people are (generally) difficult for governments to impose on but have little governmental support. I'd say it tends to be a negative on net, though I guess that depends on your views on government in general.

Perhaps they need the right lawyers or agents.

What could a lawyer or agent do? Being stateless means you don't have the rights or the obligations of citizenship, more or less by definition.

Then there's no need for Pharma company lawyers to be concerned about liability. Yet they are?

> where those applying for doses, mainly NGOs, can't bear legal risks, deliveries from that stockpile can only be made if vaccine-makers accept liability.

If you injure another person you're liable for corresponding damages, that's not a function of citizenship.

Nations are willing to assume liability for vaccine side effects suffered by their citizens (which is something that requires resources beyond what an individual could put up - consider the possibility of e.g. becoming paralysed and requiring life-long round-the-clock care). The problem that stateless people have (in this context) is that they don't have a nation-like organisation that will do that for them.

> Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) of the United States confirmed it would waive a requirement for indemnity for deliveries from the buffer: "We are proud to be part of this effort to protect the world's most vulnerable people," said Paul Stoffels, Vice Chairman of the Executive Committee and Chief Scientific Officer. He did not elaborate.

The maker of the most dangerous-side-effect-laden vaccine available being willing to waive liability really takes the wind out of the sails of other drug companies claiming the liability burden is too great.

It's because the side effects are known, and the patient is warned about them - so they can't sue for that.

This is not true. Side effects are not binary (you get them of you don’t).

A manufacturer could say “you run the risk of temporary paralysis of no longer than 1 year” (based on observations to date), then patient has paralysis lasting 2 years so they sue because “manufacturer understated risk and severity of paralysis”.

Oct 2021, https://www.citizen.org/article/pfizers-power/

> Public Citizen has identified several unredacted Pfizer contracts that ... offer a rare glimpse into the power one pharmaceutical corporation has gained to silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk and maximize profits in the worst public health crisis in a century. We describe six examples from around the world below.

Governments are also indemnifying the people who do not want to get the vaccines and are spreading covid through their behavior (no masks, not distancing, no isolating). It would be interesting to see what would happen if families of people that die from covid-19 in coming months/years bring a negligent homicide lawsuits against some of the prominent advocates of the above mentioned behavior.

People generally don't expose themselves around others while obviously sick. In the case that the transmissions happen it's likely not a case you can pursue in court.

Given that vaccines don't affect transmission at all, but do suppress symptoms, any such lawsuits would run in the other direction - people who can't take the vaccines due to allergies etc suing people who did, on the grounds that they knew or should have known that they'd become invisible spreaders and dangerous to those who couldn't take vaccines.

But in reality no sensible court would allow such arguments in either direction. Trying to assign moral culpability to an invisible body state you can't sense is idiotic and dystopian.

> Given that vaccines don't affect transmission at all

That is false. Stop spreading dangerous nonsense.

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211124-vaccines-redu...

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2294250-how-much-less-l...

You cite, I cite, we all cite ...

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...

... but who's right?

If vaccines really affected transmission a lot, we'd see it in drastically reduced case numbers. What we actually see is that post-vaccination case numbers reach record highs. That should be a pretty basic reality check on any claims that transmission is heavily affected. Either that, or you have to believe transmissibility has no impact on case numbers.

What you tend to see is that studies that are older or use older data conclude more effectiveness. The New Scientist article you cite presents evidence from a study that used data only pre-Delta. But the point people are making when they say it doesn't affect transmission is about the current state of play. Not the situation back in March two major mutations ago.

Citations are irrelevant, it's the preponderance of evidence.

You can deploy as many non-sequiturs and specious arguments in service of the view you cling to, but the evidence remains the same.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com