I know this is a dangerous topic, especially on the internet with strangers, so feel free to just not respond - that would be understandable. But I am curious to hear your thought process.
The mechanism by which mRNA vaccines work is different than standard vaccines. What are the unintended consequences? You have no idea. What is the risk if of COVID, especially the weakened Omicron strain?
The CDC Director states that 75% of COVID deaths occurred in people with 4 comorbidities [0]. For someone under 50 that is fit and isn't overweight, COVID is statistically nothing to worry about. And this person already got sick so has natural immunity.
What is the sense in assuming the prudent course of action is injecting a new pharmacological substance in your body instead of just allowing your own immune system to protect you naturally? Most drugs go through multiple rounds, over many years, of FDA testing and often side effects are discovered. What is gained by taking it? Almost nothing. What is risked? You don't know. I think the smart money will be on the side of the cohort that avoided this mind-virus of being gaslit into taking some pharma drug instead of just facing the minimal threat head on.
[0] https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/14805951564830720...
In any case, common sense says the natural coronavirus would be handled by your body in predictable ways versus the new mRNA engineered substance. Are you telling me since you got the vaccines, you actually think you're going to avoid getting COVID? If this is not what you think, then what the hell are you talking about?
The reason is in part because there is less variability from dose to dose of an mRNA vaccine than there is among extant variants of viable SARS-COV-2 coronavirus. That makes it easier to predict what will happen.
And it is in part because mRNA vaccines are built up from the existing biochemistry of the body. That is, mRNA vaccines are not a new thing we created, they are a distillation of a natural system that we discovered and studied.
Your immune system provides very little natural protection until after you have been infected at least once, which subjects you to all the risks of actually having COVID. The point of vaccination is to get your immune system to that point without having to go through actually having COVID first.
> Most drugs go through multiple rounds, over many years, of FDA testing and often side effects are discovered.
Vaccines aren't most drugs. For the mRNA vaccines all ingredients are known to be long term safe except the actual mRNA itself, but the mRNA makes no permanent change nor does it last very long, so any bad effects from the mRNA itself must show up short term. (This has also been the case for all previous vaccines--if something bad was going to happen it didn't take long to show up).
The spike protein that the mRNA instructs some of your cells to make also does not persist. Your immune system does react to it which will cause long term changes--but those changes are the whole point of vaccination, and they are the same changes that would be made if you were not vaccinated and caught COVID.
In an alternate reality where SARS-CoV-2 was not going to become endemic and it might be possible to purposefully avoid getting COVID long enough for us to eliminate the virus you could maybe make a case for that instead of getting vaccinated.
We are not in that branch of reality. Unless you happen to have a short remaining lifespan, you will get COVID at some point. The health downsides of doing so unvaccinated are now a superset of the health downsides of getting vaccinated first.
> What is gained by taking it? Almost nothing.
An order of magnitude reduction in the risk of hospitalization, and an even larger reduction in the risk of death, from COVID.
A) Hasn't been around long, we know it can have some horrible long-term effects. B) Hasn't been around long, have found almost zero long-term effects, yet.
A has at least 100x chance of dying than B, and at least 1000x chance of hospitalization.
And you think it is sensical to choose A? I don't get it.
The vaccines will not prevent you from getting covid. So what's with all the convoluted thinking where you pretend you won't get it?
The risks of death from covid are a rounding error if you're young and healthy. People mistakenly act as if this disease is affecting everyone in severe ways equally. It is drastically skewed to older and unhealthy.
You have no idea what the long term effects of the vaccine are stop pretending like you do, it's ridiculous.
"When new vaccines are released, the unknown side effects, if any, show up within two months of vaccination. This history goes back to at least the 1960s with the oral polio vaccine and examples continue through today." [0]
"First, when these [delayed side effect] events occurred, the onset was within eight weeks of receipt of the vaccine. Second, in all of these cases, except narcolepsy following H1N1 vaccine, the side effect of the vaccine was something that could be caused by the infection, meaning that getting infected with the virus also carried a risk of experiencing these outcomes. " [1]
"Forget adverse effects over five or ten years: the way your immune system works does not allow for such long-term safety concerns." [2]
[0] https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...
[1] https://www.chop.edu/news/long-term-side-effects-covid-19-va...
[2] https://bostonreview.net/articles/the-long-term-safety-argum...
I didn't, in fact the opposite. You have no idea what the long term effects of covid are stop pretending like you do, it's ridiculous.
You're playing russian roulette and have the choice between two guns. One has 1000 chambers, the other has 1000000 chambers, and you are choosing the first one and acting like you are relying on statistics.
There doesn't seem to be a solid reason to take the vaccine, for me specifically. Could easily make me sick for a day(s), with a very small chance of even worse side effects.
Some of it I'm sure is a personality trait, I just generally need a good reason to do things.
If vaccines passports or other such measures get introduced (UK) I'll get it reluctantly, because that's a bastardized reason & a benefit.
It comes down to three things:
1) the studies I've reviewed, which overwhelmingly support the strength of natural immunity
2) the adverse reactions that I've seen personally (I personally know more people that have had more severe reactions from the vaccine than I know who have had severe outcome from covid - purely anecdotal, but hard for me to ignore), and from VAERS (truly frightening), and
3) the very strange authoritarian approach the government and media have taken with this. I don't know of any vaccine or drug trial that would have survived the number of adverse effect that have been reported without being pulled. We keep seeing strange things like the CEO of Reuters being on the board of Pfizer as [1] mentions. But it's immediately flagged on HN. You can't even discuss it. Medical opinions from highly qualified doctors and health experts being silenced, accounts being canceled and removed from FB, Google, etc... frankly, it has me creeped out. I've never seen anything like it.
The "othering" of people who make informed choice about vaccination and decide against it is extraordinary. It's a global phenomenon. You can see it in some of the responses to my comment here on HN, even. Take a look at the downvotes for my comment - just for saying that my natural immunity seems to be robust. There don't seem to be many people willing to engage in an open and honest dialog about this, other opinions are silenced by any means available.
Maybe it's because I'm older and cranky, maybe it's because of a deep distrust of centralized authority, but the more someone pushes me to do something, anything really, the more I tend to resist.
When I couple that with the risk/reward evaluation and the advice of my doctor, all things things come together to make me decide not to do it.
A severe outcome from COVID is hospitalization. You seriously know multiple people who were hospitalized as a result of a vaccine? (X) Doubt.
The "othering" is because people who opted out of getting a vaccine have endangered the rest of us. It appears you've continued to participate in society, as evidenced by your reinfection. People generally shouldn't be surprised that they face social sanction when they act in an antisocial way! If you drive recklessly, you go to jail. If you don't get certain vaccines, you don't get to enroll in school. You can't smoke indoors, or even close to doors, in most parts of many countries.
The fact that your "informed choice" is driven more by gut feelings, selection bias, and an innate opposition to any and all authority further underscores the point.
Unvaccinated people are a danger to vaccinated people???
Isn't the main purpose of the vaccine protection against a severe case of COVID? I don't understand why someone who is vaccinated would feel endangered by anyone, regardless of their vaccination status.
Haha seriously…this has become such culture war bullshit at this point.
Many people that share your opinion feel so strongly that they "know the truth" and "are right" that they feel justified in "othering" - even though most have no qualifications for the subject.
I'm not sure what causes this, or what the solution is. It's certainly not how science works, or how a liberal society should operate. If those are values that are still important to us, I feel like there needs to be some sort of solution to this.
Maybe the problem lies in the medium. I wonder if you would be so hostile if we were discussing this over beers somewhere? Perhaps. I hope not.
Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives
> Society is generally hostile to behavior it views as being in the latter level of seriousness and talking about it over beers doesn’t generally make people more open to the idea that you are risking their lives
That's what's so strange about this, isn't it? I haven't seen any evidence anywhere that deciding against getting the vaccine puts anyone else's health at risk. I've certainly heard some politicians say this, but I haven't seen it backed by any reputable studies. The phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated" has been bandied about quite a bit, without any supporting evidence that I'm aware of.
From what I've seen, omicron is spread by fully vaccinated folks without much inhibition. Apparently, being vaccinated reduces the severity of an already (relatively) mild variant. So why all the hyperbole? Why the draconian mandates? Why ignore the demographics of vulnerable populations and insist on mandates for everyone? Even children?
Risking lives? Unless you have severe comorbidities or are very elderly, there's asymptotically approaching zero risk of a severe outcome from any Covid infection, especially not with omicron.
You've struck to the heart of the matter. Somehow, many people have been convinced, against all reason and science, that deciding against getting vaccinated is somehow antisocial. Why? What are the motivations involved? Who is doing this? There's a reasonable argument that skipping that vaccine isn't smart, but antisocial? That's a very different and aggressive narrative.
It all comes across as very scary to those of us who don't necessarily agree with the prevailing interventions of the past couple years. They don't appear, on the surface, to be evidence based.
Lockdowns certainly were not, and now that we have retrospective data, we know that they were ineffective and in most cases quite harmful.
Universal masking wasn't effective, but some states and companies are still requiring it. Why?
Shutting down schools was a societal nightmare, with no demonstrated benefit. Yet we see some places doing it again. Why?
At each step of the way with these interventions, those who argued against them were also considered to be "antisocial" and were silenced, ridiculed, and othered.
Now we have mandated vaccination, ignoring immunity status and demographics. Even for children, who have a much higher risk from the flu than they do Covid. Doesn't it seem strange? School districts don't mandate the flu vaccine, but several have proposed mandatory Covid vaccines? Doesn't it make you wonder why?
What could possibly justify Austria's extreme measures, police brutality and draconian mandates? In Australia, a grandmother was just put in jail for not wearing a mask. I've seen videos of similar things happening in the U.S. How can we even pretend to be a civil society and tolerate this?
Why have we allowed ourselves to believe that "othering" anyone is ok? These are the first steps down an extraordinarily dangerous path, history shows us.
It's been so sad and disheartening to me to watch our society progress from "free hugs" towards a dystopian nightmare. Were we always so fragile? Were our liberal beliefs always just a beautiful lie waiting to be exposed at the first test?
How would you square this with unvaccinated people filling up hospitals preventing those with unpreventable health issues from getting care?
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/covid-hospitaliz...
My response is that, like everything, there's a ton of nuance.
It requires a very careful reading of that article, paying attention to not just what they say, but what they explicitly fail to say.
First, I couldn't find any reference in that article to people being denied care, did I miss it?
But regardless, it's a really great example of what causes a lot of my deep suspicion. For example, the article details the low hospitalization rate amongst all vaccinated people, with lots of zeros after the decimal point, presenting it as evidence for the effectiveness of the vaccine - however, it doesn't mention anywhere the rate of hospitalization for the unvaccinated. Most likely because the numbers would look very similar to the reader.
Another example, the article says that most of the vaccinated covid patients are elderly, or those with severe comorbidities. It doesn't mention, however, that that is also true for the unvaccinated.
Another omission - the article doesn't discuss the difference between patients with covid, and patients admitted because of covid. That's an important variable, but until recently it's been a bit suppressed.
Another thing the article fails to mention is confounding factors like age when considering vaccination rate and infection rate. It's a confounding factor because (according to what I've read) the most completely vaccinated are young, healthy people. Many cranky older people like myself are not. That's a pretty important confounding factor when you're looking at hospitalizations and comparing populations.
The article is pretty heavy on hyperbole, but doesn't mention that hospitals (especially the ICU's) are designed to operate at or near capacity. Hospitals are sized based on the community they serve and must remain mostly utilized in order to remain profitable.
One fun thing to do that demonstrates this is to go back and search for articles for years prior to Covid, where there would be hysterical articles about the flu "overwhelming hospitals" and "ICUs at 99%" etc... it's an old trick that the media plays, historically it was to garner ratings/clicks. Is that still the reason? Could be.
That article is deeply misleading, at best, in my opinion. It goes to great lengths to paint a very distressing picture, without providing objective analysis. It's a great example of what I've been talking about.
I could mislead in the opposite direction. I could say something along the lines of "Great news everyone! Covid is over. In Tarrant County, for the first week of January, there were only a total of 11 deaths out of 22,000 cases, and all of those had underlying conditions. In january, your total risk of dying from covid was .000005, and if you are healthy it's zero! So hug everyone, don't worry!". According to the Tarrant County, TX Covid 19 dashboard and tracker, everything I just wrote it 100% true, but it's highly misleading.
It's completely understandable how someone could be mislead by an article like the one you referenced. I typically try to avoid the media reporting like that because the quality is so poor, to quote Thomas Jefferson "Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."
I typically go to reputable medical journals and critically evaluate the studies (to the best of my ability). It gives me a very different picture than articles like that paint.
https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/coronavir...
For people aged 18-37, risk of getting hospitalized is 10x if unvaccinated: https://www.doh.wa.gov/Portals/1/Documents/1600/coronavirus/...
The case rate is not as much higher for young people, only 2x, but the hospitalization rate is 10x higher. This is the youngest age group as well, and the data is worse as the age increases.
Putting the two together, the picture is clear: there are people in the ER (or ICU) that don't really need to be there, and because of how easy it was to avoid they are directly responsible for the suffering they cause in those who have to wait. I'm not sure how a layer of nuance beyond these facts can change that.
The situation is that anti vaxxers are assumed not to be automatically wrong, but to be noise. There is zero useful information to be had from engaging with them.
If they go against the scientific consensus it means nothing, if they don’t have an opinion on the scientific consensus, it means nothing, and if they agree with the scientific consensus it means nothing.
There’s this implicit assumption that everyone in a conversation deserves to have their opinion heard or examined, but these guys have burned every shred of credibility they have
I'm sorry, I had to sort of chortle at this one.
According to that doc, the chance of hospitalization is 0.00037 instead of 0.000036 in the age group you mentioned for the unvaccinated.
Sure sounds a lot more scary to say "10 times the chance!" though.
The largest hospital in the area, Barnes Jewish Hospital with over 1,100 beds had only roughly 10% of them filled with covid patients as of the last week in December. Most of the hospitals were no where close to capacity.
Mercy hospital, the second largest after Barnes had an average of 102 of 959 beds filled with Covid patients, again somewhere around 10%.
Also, these are patients with Covid, not necessarily patients admitted because of covid.
If we take the article's statistic of 2/3 of the admissions being unvaccinated, then for Mercy, for example, 67 of their patients are unvaccinated Covid patients, possibly incidental to their admission reason.
We're seeing 50-70% of "Covid admissions" in some places are actually "incidental", they were admitted for other reasons [2]. So the real number of unvaccinated sick covid patients at Mercy is probably somewhere between 30-50.
St Louis has a population of almost 310,000.
Doesn't really seem worth breaking out the pitchforks over, does it?
[1]https://data.thespectrum.com/covid-19-hospital-capacity/miss...
[2]https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/patient-safety-outcome...
Full disclosure: I am one of these people.
As it is, I view not getting the vaccine as anti social because the rate the unvaccinated are getting hospitalized at is tipping over our healthcare system. I might not feel this way if the unvaccinated were consistent and laid in the bed they made but it seems like a rare occurrence. What I am seeing is the unvaccinated being up all these claims about adverse affects and the rushed nature of the vaccine development combined with “possible” long term side effects. The same people then end up rushing to the hospital and taking all sorts of medical treatments that were also rushed or filling themselves with the random chemical of the week to stop covid(ivermectin and the hydrochloro something one).
It’s a negative externality that’s gotten too big to bear and I view the behavior as the same level of anti socialness as major polluters
Do you have data to prove that the healthcare system is "tipping over"? Not articles from media outlets, but hard data.
ICU and inpatient bed utilization has been remarkably consistent throughout the entire pandemic (roughly 70-80%).
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/hospitalization-7-day-trend
I’ve looked at hard data for discussions around these issues for nearly 2 years. Every time the anti vaxx crowd has been wildly incorrect, but claim that where they moved the goalposts to is a reasonable position that I will need to do hours and hours of research to even question.
I ran out of energy to deal with the firehouse of bullshit they spew constantly and at this point the anti vaxxers need to convince _me_ if they want anything they’ve said to be even considered.
If that upsets them because I’m not considering their “freedom” to limit my freedom and safety then were at an impasse, and it looks like my side has most of the power so good luck
Liberty is the result of those who hold power willfully divesting themselves of it, and using what remains to protect the inalienable rights of the individual.
This idea that power itself is a justification for action - it is anathema to any form of liberty. It carries the stink of tyranny and oppression - those that believe it share in dark and disturbing company.
Edit: removed some questions that while not intended to be negative, could have been interpreted as directed personally to the parent poster.
Do you think your a good person? I literally cannot empathize with someone who believes they should not get a vaccine because of freedom issues and thinks they are a good person. I do not submit to your position that I need to defend my way of life. I, and many other americans, are done with acting like the sane option in life needs to be defended against an insane group.
And yes, I understand how both sides think this way about each other. This is probably why we are going towards violence/revolution because thats the normal course of action whenever 2 groups in a country can no longer find a common ground. I am still not willing to cede the idea that your point of view is the standard and mine needs to be defended
> Do you believe in a liberal, civil society?
Do you believe in a liberal, civil society where people are allowed to fire rounds in the air or near your head because it didn't immediately directly kill you? Is it ok for you to take some action that is spreading a disease that's in the top 3 causes of death in our society because you don't feel like it?
>I wonder because I see a lot of people who do, but then say things like this, and I wonder how they justify it internally.
I justify it because the current path you and your ilk is suggesting leads us to a complete breakdown of society and economic regression. Your side is incapable of operating in a system where your actions can generate negative externalities that can break down society, and unfortunately reality is a system where that is true.
>The idea that power itself is the final justification for any action, is anathema to any sort of concept of liberty. It carries the stink of tyranny and oppression - those that believe it are in some dark and disturbing company.
Power isn't the justification. Power is your problem to deal with because we have no sympathy for your side when you are advocating what sounds like social suicide.
If you want a tl;dr, the vaccinated group is warming up to the idea that the unvaccinated group is no longer part of the same society. This is a line in the sand and where you stand is the group you are part of. The "othering" you mentioned in other comments is the act of people implicitly realizing that this reordering of tribes is occuring
A better analogy would probably be “eating a peanut butter sandwich in the lunchroom”
Because everyone has been clearly and explicitly asked to get vaccinated to protect the vulnerable members of society.
Experts often get things wrong, but they tend to become less wrong over time. See the shifting consensus about aerosol spread.
Experts think vaccines are a good idea. The data continues to reinforce that position.
If you were a family member, an old friend, or otherwise closely connected to me, I'd talk to you on the phone. I love my family, and I would not sit down and consume anything with you. You literally could not pay me enough. Not because I abhor a liberal discussion--quite the opposite. You've shown yourself to be irrational and unwilling to adapt your position, and as a result you've managed to catch Covid a second time. Your wife got it too? I'm not going to waste my time and breath on you.
Consider this: what would it take for you to reconsider your position? Because billions of doses of several different vaccines have been delivered to an exceptionally weary world, and a tiny fraction of those recipients have seen negative side effects.
Vaccinations are more effective at preventing disease than recovering from the native variant: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
Would you have a meal with a vaccinated family member? Why is that safer than a non-vaccinated?
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-spread (COVID-19 cases by vaccination status)
even if I think I've mastered the material, I still study before the final exam. because...why wouldn't you?
Its too bad that my comment kicked off just the sort of nonproductive back-and-forth I was hoping to avoid with my phrasing (in the other threads, not in your comment). Sheesh.
I appreciate the genuine question, and I don't mind explaining my reasoning. It's a complex subject, highly nuanced and riddled with early and inaccurate data and conflicting studies.
There's also a huge political component to it, which inevitably drags personal identity and emotion into the conversation. Back-and-forth and hostility are going to require a lot of disciple to avoid, which we thankfully mostly see on HN.
It's been strange to watch my karma fluctuate wildly from my comments in this thread. I would love it if there was some sort of indicator on HN about magnitude on votes. Right now, my comments are roughly net-neutral, but my karma has swung about 10 points either way in this discussion.
I would suggest that as concerning as your fork-three factors are, they should have no input at all into your personal health decisions!
Chickenpox (a form of herpes) lies dormant in the system for decades causes Shingles. Vaccinations are recommended at 50+ for people who have had the former to prevent the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox
A vaccine would have lowered the odds of that, and it will still lower the odds of it happening again in the future. On the other hand, the risks and downsides of getting vaccinated are negligible.
This is like asking why it's worth driving sober when you already have seatbelts (masks) and airbags (natural immunity).
>the risks and downsides of getting vaccinated are negligible
You can't know what the long-term effects of this new type of vaccine are. Especially given people have to take it over and over again for to have any effectiveness, so negative effects could possibly accumulate. But it won't prevent catching COVID anyways. Like 5 of my friends and family recently got COVID over Christmas that were all vaccinated. The stats on case numbers bear this out: vaccinated are catching the Omicron strain. The vaccines can't stop this. Natural immunity works many times better than these vaccines and providing protection against infection anyways. This is how it will go, no matter how many boosters you take.
This is a disease that mostly harms the old and the obese. Just workout, lift weights, get vitamin D and lose body fat. This is what should have been promoted for most people, not worrying about getting 4 rounds of an experimental vaccine that doesn't protect you from actually getting the disease.
>No one suggested that the vaccine would prevent infection 100% reliably
Sure they did, but whatever. It's over man. People need to wake up from this brain rot and move on with their lives. They've destroyed young kids childhood development[2] and they can't let it go. You got young healthy people that have no business worrying about this virus still panicking and avoiding real social lives.
>better understanding of the long-term effects of covid
Because it's a coronavirus that you can't generally avoid getting as it becomes endemic (and weaker). The threat is normal like most other coronaviruses. What is new and novel is the experimental treatment that has to be retaken over and over to actually do anything but will fail anyways. And there already are side effects. Long term, you can't know what this will do but common sense says avoid this, and accept the minimal "risk" you can't avoid but which runs its course quickly and easily (covid).
[0] https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/14805951564830720...
[1] https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/what-sh...
[2] https://www.macleans.ca/society/the-cruel-ridiculous-reality...
If you have a gripe with the recency of mRNA technology, you could just as easily advocate for more traditional alternatives. If you're scared of needles and don't like being pressured to get an injection, you could just say that. As-is you're discrediting yourself entirely.
Sure they did [suggest that the vaccine would prevent infection 100% reliably]
The comment you're replying to (mine) certainly did not. I'm not sure who you're referring to.
They've destroyed young kids childhood development[2] and they can't let it go. You got young healthy people that have no business worrying about this virus still panicking and avoiding real social lives.
Sure. None of that is my preference and it isn't relevant to my comment.