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Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

We could just approve Corbevax in the US. It's a more traditional vaccine and includes more of the virus than spike proteins. It's also unpatented and cheap.

The cynic in me says there is huge interest in having an annual Covid vaccine like the flu one. They'll just change spike proteins every year in a never ending game of cat and mouse. With mRNA that game is easy and profitable.

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I hope not, because I don't think we will be given a choice on whether we want to take it or not, and the last booster I had in December wrecked me. Within 20 minutes I was yawning non stop, one yawn after till the point I was gasping for air. eventually my whole body was in pain for about 3 days, my resting heart rate was over 100 (60-65 is normal for me) and my oxygen levels was down to 90. 6 weeks later I caught omicron anyways.

Long story short, I don't want to go through that every 6 months.

Yeah that tracks -- a local news station read through a database (I'm assuming this is VAERS) and found 5 reports of excessive yawning from Moderna recipients as of Apr 2021: https://www.wral.com/coronavirus/staring-yawning-falling-off...

Sorry to hear about the experience :(

If you have reason to believe your body can't tolerate the mRNA vaccines, some alternatives to discuss with a GP might include

* Evushield -- pre exposure prophylaxis if you're at risk and the mainline vaccines don't work

* Paxlovid -- get outcomes comparable to conventionally vaccinated people if you take shortly after infection, beware "rebound" / second course, metallic taste and a lot of poop

* Monoclonal antibodies after confirmed infection -- probably bebtelovimab right? Hard to keep a handle on this with variants.

* Indoor air quality -- try to shop at businesses that have 3+ air changes per hour of MERV13+ filtered or outdoor air (there are healthy building stickers like LEED but they haven't really taken off)

* Rely on others' immunity -- I'm still unsure whether vaccinated people are less contagious? If so even if you're medically unable to participate in vaccination, other people are protecting you in aggregate

* Just accept the possibility of a painful death in the future -- it could happen for any of us right? Who knows? We live with lots of risks.

Wow. Five cases of excessive yawning correlated with vaccine administration. Out of millions of doses administered.

We should totally pause on the rollout of the vaccine, while we do a proper risk assessment on that.

Because on the one hand, we have the risk that unchecked spread of the disease will lead to more dangerous mutations and we could be faced with a complete collapse of healthcare capacity as it is overwhelmed by severe cases.

And on the other, a handful of people might yawn a lot.

In fact that risk balance is too tricky to be left up to the experts. Individuals should do their own personal risk assessment, based on how annoying they find it to yawn, versus how much hospital capacity they assume is available in their region.

No wonder we’re still in this damn pandemic.

Unchecked spread of viruses leads to less dangerous mutations because the more dangerous ones burn through victims too quickly for it to spread very far.

That’s not a great strategy from the perspective of the victims that get burned through.

That’s analogous to saying that “vaccination isn’t a great strategy from the perspective of those with adverse reactions.” In another thread, you did not accept that line of reasoning. Why is it valid in this case?

I thought nobody was forced to take the vaccine?

We are forced to in Australia. I was barred from taking exams this semester since I didn’t have the vaccine. Others lose their jobs. There is no freedom of choice there. It’s a gun wrapped in a blanket.

This is what fascism looks like. The totalitarians are winning. It is sad that freedom means nothing anymore to these people...

That was 2021, nowadays no one here gives a crap whether you're vaxed or boosted or even wearing a mask or not.

Covid deaths are higher now in the US than this time a year ago and nobody gives a shit. Half the country demonized the other half of the country for reaching the same state of indifference 6-8 months earlier than they did.

> Half the country demonized the other half of the country

And also demonized Australia - "fascist"! "authoritarian"! - for being 6 months behind in COVID and still giving a shit when the USA already didn't. For us in Australia, early 2020 was 6 months of the USA looking like a disaster movie while almost noone had it here.

But did Australia's draconian lockdowns actually even accomplish anything other than delaying the inevitable? Hasn't COVID been going strong there since Christmas, despite everything they put their citizens through?

What is life but delaying the inevitability of death? ;) It's not an unreasonable question, and with 20/20 hindsight some of the more draconian restrictions possibly wouldn't be justifiable. But we did take it very very seriously and saved ourselves the nightmarish scenes seen in many other countries that put extreme levels of strain on healthcare systems and robbed huge numbers of people's lives prematurely. Of the deaths now, the vast majority are among those 80+, and those who have chosen not to get vaccinated. Hospitalisations are still high, and negatively impacting the health care system's ability to provide quality care, but epidemiologists seem confident it will peak soon even without heavy handed restrictions/ mandates. There's no doubt we could have dealt with it better but I'm still grateful our governments generally listened to the health advice given to them.

Pretty much, ripping through my city now. There isn't a lot of sentiment for liberty/freedoms here, so the authoritarians had a field day. We'll probably do it all again next time too.

Immigration does, unfortunately.

It's crazy how Australians have sold out their rights in an attempt at "unity", or whatever the political theme is these days. In the US, with the 2A, no one could force anybody to take dangerous chemicals.

Have you guys looked into COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme? https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-...

Basically, you’re entitled for compensation if you’re in Australia and was forced to get a COVID-19 vaccine and had moderate to severe vaccine-related adverse events.

Er, no, we're not. Certain businesses and government organisations require you to be vaccinated to undertake certain roles. Just as they impose any number of other requirements in order for you to receive the benefits of gainful employment. Nobody has been so much as threatened with arrest or had any physical force applied in order to ensure they get vaccinated.

Sounds like you made a choice, a poor one. We are also "forced" to wear seatbelts in cars and not drink-drive. For some reason I don't hear those things described as "no freedom of choice" or the ludicrous "gun wrapped in a blanket". Drink-driving is the closer analogy of the two, as the harm extends to other people, as in vaccine refusal. Can you imagine hearing the drink-driving laws described as "a gun wrapped in a blanket"?! It would be ludicrous because the death is on the other side of the equation - deaths are being prevented. How is vaccine refusal different?

This specific vaccine doesn't stop the spread especially of the current dominant variants (still seeing plenty of spread among vaccinated people in ~90% vaccinated populations), so the comparison to drunk driving (putting other people at risk) is poor.

This is specific to the current covid vaccines. It's a valid point for highly effective vaccines like the polio vaccine which should be mandatory.

Because the deaths prevented are debatable, that is why. Should we be forced to get every vaccine? Even vaccines that are not effective? Who decides that?

What if the institutions mandating vaccines have a conflict of interest?

Very few people are actually so selfish or ignorant that they would not get an effective vaccine.

Its absurd to require vaccination but not accept actual infection as such. Surviving an actual infection offers better immunity than the vaccine. The failure to ack this is evidence IMHO of an agenda.

If everyone, including you and your children, started taking the aids antivirals daily, we could probably eradicate aids, or atleast save millions of lives. Are you willing to take them daily to make sure you or your children don't spread aids someday?

That depends on your employer and whether you consider losing your job 'forcing' you

I think the rhetoric was “taking away your livelihood isn’t forcing you, you always have the choice to comply and rejoin society.”

Clearly coerced. What is that choice?

You have always option to starve to death. Isn't that freedom?

If you're unlucky enough to end up among the whole 3% of us that really can't find a job, you aren't going to starve. At any rate it's hardly reasonable to expect you should be able to refuse to comply with your terms of employment and not suffer any negative consequences.

(NB: posting this purely for the benefit of anyone else reading Ekaros's posts and thinking they have any sort point at all).

Depends on your definition of "forced". I was never threatened with legal punishment if I didn't take it, but at Biden's request, my employer told me I'd be fired if I didn't, and a bunch of places I like going made me show them my vaccine card to be allowed in.

You do if you want to travel to Canada from the US (and from what I hear, work or live at all in Canada).

> It's also unpatented and cheap

All of these vaccines are cheap.

> All of these vaccines are cheap.

Not if you have to take them several times a year until the end of your life

Really, because:

Let me do the math...

$0+$0 = $0

Seems pretty cheap to me.

Maybe if you mean for gov who pays, but even then, in terms of health care budget, its still quite cheap, to the point that optimizing on price seems like the wrong thing to do right now.

Did that include increased taxation? Including bribes, inefficient bureaucracy and manufactures, their sales organizations and the point-of-care healthcare increasing their profits?

I mean,im in canada, and the non vaccinated take a lot of tax dollars when they end up in hospitals, so in terms of interventions it definitely makes sense from an ecconomic perspective.

Even then they would be fairly cheap.

But it’s all a giant conspiracy dude!

The vaccines which nobody is taking and cost under $20 are worth pharma companies engaging in secret underhanded methods to hurt other vaccines (even though all their FDA filings and research are mostly public).

If you want to make claims regulated by the FDA, you have to hire all these FDA consultants, many of whom are former FDA employees. They don’t seem to do much IME. So there’s a serious revolving door problem worth investigating in the case of these vaccines, though I’m not sure that’s secret, underhanded, or necessarily hurting other vaccines.

> cost under $20

Per-dose cost is meaningless. Now do “multi billion dollar government paid for contracts”.

Yes they have huge contracts but they also have to produce the vaccine! And the vaccine could be waaay more expensive given its value to the people who took it.

Merck stock (no vaccine) had the exact same return as Pfizer over the past 5 years.

Now Moderna is up 800%, so maybe look their way if you are concerned about a conspiracy.

Look at the balance sheet not the stock market reaction.

The vaccines are arguably being marketed to people for whom its more expensive than its worth: the young and healthy.

> even though all their FDA filings and research are mostly public)

Can you point me again to Pfizer's public data about the mRNA trials? Because I'm pretty sure it was never shared.

https://www.fda.gov/media/144337/download

You think the FDA is going to make a decision about a vaccine without a preregistered, public, clinical trial?

Go ahead and request the data and see if you can actually get it. The FDA is so corrupt that who would actually trust them after the opoids crisis?

Pfizer did not accept US government funding, and as such did not have to share the same data that other companies did.

You're posting an excessive amount of fear mongering in this thread.

Ever heard of the Freedom of Information Act? The Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency has sued the FDA so that they would release documents related to the review of the vaccines.

https://phmpt.org/

> You're posting an excessive amount of fear mongering in this thread.

Funny that quite a few actual doctors subscribe to my fear mongering as they signed this request. Ever wondered if your point is valid?

$20 times a billion people times multiple doses is a lot of money.

And I think it's more than a billion people...

Incorrect; according to Wikipedia, Corbevax just includes the receptor binding domain of the spike protein. It doesn't include other parts of the virus - were you confused by the adjuvants?

Anyway, you might be interested in Novavax if you're looking for a nice, classic covid vaccine. It's not any more effective than the mRNA vaccines, but it's FDA-approved.

Novavax UK results on par with mRNA vaccine while trials conducted with variants alpha/beta already circulating. due to unbinding or cross over we cannot really measure long term protection. but several studies show 2373 is better but nobody knows it

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