Anyone that's worried about autoimmune phenomena after vaccination should look at autoimmune phenomena post Covid infection
Your point is true. However, people may find the phrasing slightly aggressive.
The people posting symptom reports here mostly seem to be level-headed and understanding of the public health benefit they took a risk to bring about.
There needs to be an accepting forum for people to report negative outcomes. Such statements provide necessary information on the risks associated with the vaccine, and how to mitigate these risks. They are pro-vaccine.
I definitely agree with this, and the risks should be known. Especially in the context of a spreading virus.
Disclaimer: I’m fully vaccinated.
The problem with pro-vaccine propaganda is that it tells you to blindly listen to the science. The problem with that is “the science” is controlled by commercial interests and profit margins. It’s like telling everyone democracy is the One True Way and we end up in last-stage capitalism.
Is it? A good proportion of academia is funded by states, non-profits, and tuition from undergraduate students, and researchers generally operate with a great degree of autonomy. Of course there is corrupt research out there, but I see little evidence that it's pervasive.
Governments and corporations alike allocate capital towards research that they think benefits the populace or shareholders. This is measured with a dollar value, like most things in life (thank you last stage capitalism).
While the influence on certain topics might be lesser, it is definitely stronger for other topics. The vaccines are a good example of the latter, since it’s a highly profitable venture with a TAM of the entire global population. You can see this in broad daylight where Pfizer wanted to make their data public only after 75 years (1). Surely good science doesn’t need secrecy?
If this doesn’t invoke skepticism into how most research is influenced similarly, I’m not sure what to say.
(1) https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/paramount-importanc...
Indeed it doesn't, and it seems that was upheld by the courts which made sure that there wasn't such secrecy. To me this is evidence that while they are powerful forces with ulterior motives, there are also powerful forces fighting for the common good. And that a good proportion of the time they are successful.
Going to court to release such important data, should be a last resort. The elites and rulers should be happy to enforce this upfront. This only shows that there’s something to hide, and as we’ve seen before - they could easily fake/hide/destroy the evidence by the time they end up releasing it. Do note that it hasn’t been released yet.
The vaccine is safe and effective, if unfortunately not sterilizingly effective. We could not have sat on our hands for 2 years waiting to see what happened to the 40,000 people in the initial trials.
If there is another chapter to the vaccine story it will come out, because ‘the science’ is not controlled by commercial interests and profit margins, ‘the science’ is something done by thousands of doctors and researchers scattered all over the planet, with access to huge troves of data that are not necessarily all entertained with corporate interests like in the US, and these people care about 2 things : the truth, and the people they care for every day.
I don’t want to get into a grinding debate about the commercial interests behind the vaccines - I am ready to accept that they quite often work in ways that would fail the smell test. But that is not science, science is the process of developing a better resolution of the truth and whilst it may be subverted by corporations it can not be stopped
0- https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-orpha...
The “science” in this case are vaccines produced by pharmaceutical corporations that have the ability to dictate that developing countries pledge their sovereign assets to cover their exorbitant pricing. (1) All vaccine companies are fighting over patents and ownership. And there’s innumerable other scandals. (2)
You appear to trust authorities way more than I do, so we probably won’t ever see eye to eye on this.
(1) https://www.fdanews.com/articles/202403-pfizer-stops-demandi...
(2) https://www.transparency.org/en/press/covid-19-vaccines-lack...
Both the mRNA and the Adenovirus-based vaccines are novel and their long-term effects have not been studied. There is simply no scientific evidence that these vaccines are safe.
The benefits of administering these vaccines to vulnerable groups may outweigh the risks. But doing so for groups with little risks from Covid or even children where much less data is available is very questionable.
I used to be one of the authors of that science. I spent 7 years of my life working on it.
For this my take-home pay was close to the poverty line. I was qualified for a ~500K/year job at FANG.
That's a heavy sacrifice, not commercial interest and profit margins.
A great example is the Boeing MAX scandal, where management ignored the engineers and pushed ahead. To be clear, I’m accusing Pfizer et all of corruption. And given their history, I don’t think I’m too off the mark. Underpaid scientists like you should be angry at the corporations and administrations that stole your money.
Pfizer, can be corrupt, and price gouge, and be the perpetrator of various other evils. That does not change the fact that the vaccine they are mass producing based on research done by BioNTech, is ammong the most effective and safest of the 20+ vaccines. And that all of the available vaccines are vastly safer than the disease.
Thanks for telling me what I meant. But I did not mean that, and the square quotes were intentional. It’s a way of speaking that’s quite widely accepted, and referring to a phenomenon rather than individuals. Surely this is not new to you? Like when someone criticises an authority’s decision, the blame is on the decision makers, not the line workers.
Not much to respond to the rest of your comment - I wasn’t telling people to not get the vaccine, and I’m fully vaccinated myself. I’m emphasising the value of skepticism and questioning authority. Cheers!
Also, plenty of people who are (voluntarily or involuntarily) spreading FUD are not directly telling others to do or not do something. They are just asking questions. And keep asking the same questions even after they have received answers repeatedly. It is still spreading FUD.
Skepticism and questioning authority is good, spreading FUD is not.
Regardless, I can tell in your reply that you think of me as a kook, conspiracy theorist. Gday!
But I do consider persisting in the belief that "they" are hiding some unknown dangerous side effects from us to be absurd. Because there has been so much scrutiny over these vaccines. Each side effect was heavily analysed in multiple countries. Already more than half of the worlds population has been vaccinated. The vaccines are vastly safer than the disease.
Democracy does not equal/result in/require/corelate with/mean the same as/etc. capitalism. Before Marx, the very vast majority of non-democratic regimes have been capitalist.
There is no such thing as "the science" to people engaged in doing science. "The science" is only a concept for people who stay away from scientific pursuit. There is a thing called scientific consensus that means the collection of knowledge scientists widely agree best describes reality at a given moment in time.
The scientific consensus is not controlled by commercial interests for many reasons. Among those reasons here are just two: plenty of science is publicly funded and the scientific consensus is global therefore being beyond the capabilities of any single entity to direct. Individual scientists may be biased, but that bias is not coherent in the population of scientists.
In the case of Covid vaccines, even if "the science" was controlled by commercial interests, that would still not result in a conspiracy. There are 20+ vaccines and each manufacturers commercial interest would be to discredit competitors and sell more of their own.
The scientific consensus is pro-vaccine because vaccines have been prooven repeatedly in the past 100+ years to result in higher quality and longer duration of life. There is no consensus on which vaccine is better (for various definitions of better). But there is consensus that covid vaccines are the best tools humanity has for the foreseeable future to fight against the pandemic. And there is consensus that they are orders of magnitude safer than the disease.
Also, there is no blind single mindedness. The very reason you know about all of the side effects that have surfaced so far is because science was done. If "the science" was controlled, the featured article would not exist. We have known about the existence of side effects of vaccines since the start. Side effects were predicted and expected since before the vaccines existed, because all medication has side effects. They have been measured, and continue to be measured. This study is just one step on our quest to ever more precisely measure those side effects. So, yes, the impact of the side effects has been sufficiently determined to conclude that at the very least vaccination against covid is orders of magnitude safer than the risk of covid itself.
The the confusion you display by corelating such different notions in your comment, shows you have bought a narrative peddled by some grifters, hook, line and sinker. The same as all the people deceived to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
Be sincere with yourself and admit that, at this point in time, the only studies you will consider unbiased are those that will confirm your own bias, namely that you consider the side effects of covid vaccines to be too risky.
And no, the floor of fatality is not 0.5%, you’re off by an order of magnitude (too high) at least.
And source for risk of diabetes.
You’re throwing a lot of “facts” around that don’t seem to be true.
So as a healthy 30 year you’re saying my risk of death is 0.5%?
And note the CDC said they’ll be providing data on who “died with covid” versus who “died from covid”.
So, I can't say your risk, since you didn't mention if you are vaccinated. Being vaccinated is statistically the best way to reduce the risk of death or other severe long-term health issues (other than getting younger) relative to your baseline risk, largely independent of age (the trials for very young children are still on-going). My sources for this are talking to doctors and reading the official reports.
The diabetes link is 3. After posting it in another post I was directed to some useful criticism.
My numbers are IFR rates in a pre-vaccinated world not controlling for age. I think you’ll have to refine your counter claim on mortality, certainly it is lower in children and young adults, but CFR from early in the pandemic (and I accept poor correlation between incidence and reported cases) was scarily high for young adults before we knew how to treat it.
1. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi...
2. https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021...
3. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7102e2.htm?s_cid=mm...
The main risk factor in whether you develop an auto-immune disorder (other than the specifics of your own body and immune system which you can't do much about) seems to be the severity of the infection. You can still get these issues with a mild infection, but it's much less likely. And a vaccine pretty much is just a very mild infection with an engineered variant that can't reproduce, which then also reduces the severity if you later catch it. So intuitively it would seem like a pretty good bet. And as others have pointed out the statistics support that this is also true in practice.
Hard to ignore, what with this being shoved down my throat 24/7 for 1.5 years.
For me, the post-viral symptoms have been a lot worse than the virus itself.
Hard to tell directly, as it also has to do with how the virus spreads during an infection in a given person. But it is certainly a good area of research.
So I guess my point is, what percentage of the population is like my case and will eventually get an autoimmune issue from a viral infection? Omicron looks like it’s be eventually going to infect everyone, so avoiding the vaccine for a one in a million autoimmune reaction might be delaying the inevitable when you get infected by Omicron for real.
I don't think I got any worse after COVID-19 vaccination so I don't regret having it done if it helps the overall public health situation.