Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdimitar | Hacker News Reader

I don't take sides in this crazy divisive topic but please don't ignore that no small amount of people died almost immediately after getting the vaccine as well.

Some smaller countries (or districts) also reported higher deaths of the vaccines themselves compared to Covid -- which isn't solid data to go by but it's still quite an interesting data point.

Your argument should go both ways for it to be objective.

---

EDIT: And of course I immediately regret posting in a Covid thread. Even just trying to say there are shades of gray and I get immediately labelled and flagged.

Enjoy your echo chamber, guys. What an extremist age we are living in. :(

This was my last ever time I will be posting in any such thread (not only on HN). You won. Do sleep soundly knowing that there won't be any critical thinking process involved. Hope that "scientific" approach makes you happy.

View on HN

> I don't take sides in this crazy divisive topic but please don't ignore that no small amount of people died almost immediately after getting the vaccine as well.

That’s crazy talk. European countries have virtually vaccinated their whole adult population with a number of deaths linked to the vaccine so low it’s negligible.

> That’s crazy talk. European countries have virtually vaccinated their whole adult population with a number of deaths linked to the vaccine so low it’s negligible.

Yes, it's quite low. But so is the number of covid fatalities for young people, which is why many healthy young adults aren't enthusiastic about being forced to vaccinate themselves and their kids.

It would not surprise me to learn, once final, honest numbers are tallied up, that the vaccination caused as many negative outcomes as covid itself in the under 30 crowd.

That being said, neither number is probably significant.

They reported lower deaths from COVID vs. vaccines because they didn't have rampant COVID but also had high vaccination rates, it really was that simple, and it is damaging (and strictly incorrect) to discuss this 'data point' without the appropriate context. Because of this, the vaccine looks like an 'unnecessary risk' until you start getting major outbreaks.

And calling this a 'divisive topic' lends too much credence to anti-vax dogma

This is a very strong claim to make without supporting evidence that the vaccines directly caused or contributed to the cause of these deaths.

Same as claiming that Covid caused a lot of deaths when doctors in my country have been caught writing off car crash victims as Covid deaths, en masse, several times in a row over the course of months? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I try to keep an open mind and observe objectively. Both "camps" have their pretty wild claims and at this point in time it's more of a religious war than anything else.

That's what an average guy like me is seeing. But feel free to keep citing the need for supporting evidence in an age where there are strong financial incentives to take one of the sides in this debate.

> Same as claiming that Covid caused a lot of deaths when doctors in my country have been caught writing off car crash victims as Covid deaths

> But feel free to keep citing the need for supporting evidence in an age where there are strong financial incentives to take one of the sides in this debate

I can't speak to anything about your country or your experiences, but you've used an absolutely non-falsifiable (+ ludicrously non-scalable) anecdote as your "counter-argument" or whatever, while simultaneously denigrating the validity of any real supporting evidence that anyone might show. You call this a "debate" - what room have you left? Can I provide stats on the highly-monitored vaccine distribution in the US regarding death? Yes, sure (.0022%).

But to what end? When you also claim:

> No small amount of people died immediately after getting the vaccine."

What is "not a small amount", I guess? Percentage-wise, 0.0022% sure seems small. Hell, maybe it's 50x worse than that in reality, which would still be just around 1/10th of a single percent! But, again, how can we have a conversation when you yourself refuse to provide any evidence for your beliefs, and pre-dismiss all other evidence due to financial incentives? None, as far as I can tell.

Sadly both sides dismiss evidence on all sorts of grounds and I already regret posting here because yes, REALLY, I take no side no matter what various posters started claiming. I am just not happy with how one-sided the reporting on this whole thing has been. And it still is. There is nuance and it's immediately screamed out of existence.

Anecdotal evidences also shouldn't be swept under the rug either. It's not good science in the objective sense because "statistical significance" is a rather random construct (and several months ago there was even a good article about it posted here on HN with a pretty interesting discussion with mathematicians and statisticians).

I am out though. Seems even if somebody tries to argue in a less extremist way they are immediately labeled as loonies because they don't belong to the currently strongly believed state of things. Enjoy your echo chamber where posters saying "hey but this doesn't seem as clear and cut as you make it out to be" are labeled as conspiracy theorists or monsters.

What a sad, sad age has this become. :|

We'll see in another 5 or 10 years though. I am keeping my mind open. Do you?

> REALLY, I take no side no matter what various posters started claiming.

You claimed "not small" amounts of deaths as a direct result of vaccine administration, then balked at being asked to provide any evidence to support this claim while seeming to pre-dismiss contrary evidence. That does not make it seem like you are keeping an open mind or acting in good faith.

> There is nuance and it's immediately screamed out of existence.

There is nuance, but not on the population-level efficacy and safety of the vaccines relative to the risk of COVID infection.

> Seems even if somebody tries to argue in a less extremist way they are immediately labeled as loonies

You're arguing in a more extremist way (i.e., making counter-factual and unsubstantiated claims, reacting with offense when asked to support them; strongly doubting verifiable evidence but amplifying the value of anecdotes). I don't think you're a loonie, or a monster. But you are wrong.

Never would I have thought I'd see the day when a relatively cut-and-dry question of epidemiology and public health would get so thoroughly contaminated by paranoia, hucksterism, and opportunistic politics that it would routinely be treated with shameless false what-aboutism on HN, of all places. We all live in Russia now.

Same here, although your comment can be taken both ways, you realize that right?

The virus and its symptoms are cut and dried alright. The experimental vaccines, not so much. But think what you will. I am giving up.

> The experimental vaccines, not so much.

If hundreds of millions of administered doses under highly-observed and reported on outcomes from the world's most-respected (not perfect) public health agencies won't convince you, what will? It's been a year, and I believe there's only one vaccine ever to have emergent side effects after that time, and even then the median time to symptoms was <50 days (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11910-018-0851-5). Yet we have seen COVID definitely has side effects, and they have a much higher likelihood of persisting.

And if your response is "we won't know until it's been 5, 10, etc. number of years" then OK, fine, but the same then must hold for COVID itself. If I'm betting on the long-term effects to my health, does it not follow to choose the highly-researched vaccine with quantified minimal side effects vs. the highly-researched infection with worse side effects?

Now it's my turn to give up.

Not the original poster but genuinely curious here and I do agree with your long term covid statement. We do not know. But I strongly disagree with you calling the health agencies "most-respected (not-perfect)".

Didn't these same health agencies approve opioids saying they weren't dangerous or addictive? Then spend a decade trying to cover it up with the pharma companies? Then they got hired by the same company's whose drugs they approved? Today fentanyl overdoses are the number one cause of deaths for my age group (18-45 https://www.google.com/search?q=fentanyl+overdoses+number+on...) in the US. That is a direct result of these pharma companies and health agencies. All it took was a little bit of money and our lives became meaningless.

How can I trust any agency that was willing to kill me for a couple bucks?

If you are unsure what I am talking about (https://www.google.com/search?q=opioid%20epidemic%20document...). IMO HBO's Crime of the century does a good job of laying out just how ridiculous the whole thing is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com