My mother falls into this category and lives in a very high infection area. Won't wear a mask, won't social distance, and won't get the "Satan vaccine". She's convinced it will kill her despite the rest of the family having got the vaccine with no ill effects. It's definitely strained the relationship. I told them they could visit me and their grandkids as soon as they got vaccinated. Apparently "sticking it to the libs" is more important than visiting family. I'm not as concerned for myself at this point, but am for my child as there are no ICU beds for kids anymore who are too young to be vaccinated.
About 3 months after 0+ are eligible for a vaccine that works I will stop giving a crap about others. I will still wear a mask for myself just as an added layer of protection, but I'll cease caring about saving those who do not want to be saved.
This strikes at the core issue, it’s become a mark of tribal identity for some people. You can’t rationally talk someone out of a position like that, because it’s not fundamentally a position they’ve rationalized their way into.
- Citation needed, I'm not so sure you can make this off-hand remark and we should all accept it as an axiom and continue from here. Many people will be reasonable given reasonable arguments, especially if you make the time to answer questions and concerns they have. I've noticed people don't do research on their own, almost never aside from a very small share of my friends and family, so individual conversations seem essential to me when they aren't clear on something.
- For the sake of argument perhaps, even if that were true, what do you propose then? Let them be, force them, make irrational arguments (i.e. lie), something else?
The anti-vax crowd is currently taking horse deworming paste rather than get vaccinated. Saying that they won’t listen rational arguments about vaccine safety isn’t a huge leap. At this point it’s basically self evident.
One can always find extreme examples in the media (or online, if only enough people read this one of them will know someone). What percentage of the people not yet vaccinated is actually that kind of crazy?
Why does nobody ever reply with numbers while making claims that it's so obvious. Maybe I'm not American enough here in Europe but to me this isn't self-evident and unless my family suddenly turns anti vax (bit late for that now) it won't be so I'm going to need numbers to understand how big this is. How even would I know how many poison control calls there are in the first place? I know roughly you have like 30% (give or take 10%.) unvaccinated and some 320 million people there, so you'd need some 5 million calls to poison control before you're at a majority if only 10% actually gets poisoned from what they take and call poison control. Typing this out, there's like a dozen unknowns here (like how many people overdose, how many call this specific agency, etc.) so it seems like an extremely poor proxy anyway, but if you're still game, please enlighten me with the real number of calls to poison control. 5M is the number to beat.
Edit: as one data point, the only person I know that doesn't want the vaccine is worried about fertility. They had covid 5 months ago and are currently having long covid, so they're not entirely unprotected even if imo it's still solidly anti-vax to refuse a recommended booster dose. So they're not trusting the official stuff, and most definitely they'll not be taking random garbage that's supposed to kill animals. That's insanity, so I can't believe the majority of those left unvaxxinated in your country is that sort out crazy. It makes no sense, the furthest thing from self-evident.
Honestly, I think the issue here is that you’re not American, so you don’t understand the current situation here. Vaccines have been free and readily available for a long time, and those who are holding out have an unusually high percentage of cray in them. Last I checked, polling indicated that about half of the people unvaccinated indicated that would never accept the vaccine, as compared to being in more of a “wait and see” mode.
Meanwhile some states are starting to hit their highest death rates ever, and Covid is killing anti-vax politicians and celebrities at a constant rate. If rational arguments persuaded these people, they would have already been vaccinated.
Nice number, nice amp link. But ok I'll waste some more of my time checking your source for you. (edit: the comment was only a link at first.)
> So far, they’ve treated 27 patients in the month of August.
> The Alabama Poison Information Center at Children’s of Alabama has fielded 24 ivermectin exposure cases so far this year, of which 15 were related to COVID-19 prevention and treatment. It says there have been five other calls seeking information about ivermectin.
Lol, yeah clearly a majority of the millions unvaccinated.
> At least 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers, Mississippi Department of Health officials said.
Again, these are people literally taking horse dewormer. We can debate the precise number, but you cannot reason with someone who decides that they trust tractor supply more than they trust their doctor and any relevant medical authority.
I was told I wasn't supposed to use rational thinking?
>"Research both sides and make up your own mind." It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, it can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly.
Being dishonest isn't a hallmark of rational thinking either. The Covid-19 vaccines are observably dangerous to some persons[1], however rare that danger may be. The rational thing to do is to weigh the risk versus the benefit. If you really want hesitant persons to get vaccinated, you're going to get a lot farther by being honest about the risks of the vaccines, the risks of Covid-19, and showing why, for their circumstances, getting the vaccine is the correct risk management strategy. And frankly, for young persons with acquired natural immunity, the risk of myocarditis and other adverse effects isn't worth it for a disease they are already immune to.
And I'm going to annoy people by saying that. I'm baffled why the existence of natural immunity, which is completely settled science, has somehow become controversial. If the mechanism for natural immunity didn't work, then the mechanism for vaccinated immunity also wouldn't be able to work. Believing that the vaccines can work but the immune system response to the live virus doesn't is some serious irrationality.
Edit: And the response is a wonderful demonstration of Aristotle's ancient observation that those in the grips of fear cannot be persuaded by facts or reason.
Generally when people refer to something as "dangerous", they don't mean "To a very very small subset of people, and in very very specific and rare circumstances".
They probably have reasons to believe that the subset is not so small, and would like to obtain credible studies determining the specificity of those circumstances ( = under which conditions adverse events are more likely to appear. Similarly to the circulating "Females under 60 / Males under 30", but with more detail).
The risk of myocarditis and other adverse effects from getting COVID itself is multiple orders of magnitude higher than anything related to the vaccine. This should be a no-brainer if there ever was one. You do not want to be wihout vaccine immunity, even if you have been infected in the past.
> You do not want to be wihout vaccine immunity, even if you have been infected in the past.
Why? I don't understand how that claim can be true unless somehow being exposed to the spike protein from the virus will fail to produce immunity while at the same time being exposed to the spike protein from having the mRNA make your cells synthesize it will. I'm genuinely curious so if there is some new science you can point me to I'd be grateful.
Edit: The Covid-19 vaccine is by far the most dangerous prescribed vaccine, accounting for 80.53% of reported vaccine deaths[1], so if natural acquired immunity is a real thing then how is it irrational for those who are already immune to decline to take it?
Linking to a page to report adverse effects is not an adequate citation that they happen with any reasonable consistency to be opposed to getting a vaccine.
In the very first paragraph, the doctor gives a reason why people aren't getting vaccinated, and it's because they've heard of bad outcomes and are simply avoiding something they know to be a potential immediate risk. That is not irrational thinking.
"I often ask them why, after the devastation we’ve seen this year, they’ve chosen not to get vaccinated. Sometimes their answers are weird or conspiratorial. But most people say that they’re concerned about something real: adverse effects. They’ve heard about blood clots in women, or about myocarditis in young men, and the prospect of developing one of these frightening conditions has kept them away from the vaccination clinic."
It can be considered irrational thinking given the scientifically documented rarity of adverse reactions to the vaccines thus far.
It is lottery-ticket thinking but with a negative outcome imagined in place of a positive one.
Just like with lottery tickets, you have to be in to win. But it is overwhelmingly unlikely that you will win, and it is overwhelmingly unlikely you will have an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
It's weird to see someone argue that this is "not irrational thinking" on numerically literate HN.
Perhaps a better label would be innumerate thinking rather than irrational thinking? Our public educational system generally does a terrible job of teaching students statistics.
«The incidence of serious adverse events was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups (0.6% and 0.5%, respectively). // This trial and its preliminary report have several limitations. With approximately 19,000 participants per group in the subset of participants with a median follow-up time of 2 months after the second dose, the study has more than 83% probability of detecting at least one adverse event, if the true incidence is 0.01%, but it is not large enough to detect less common adverse events reliably»
For the rest, I hoped to find active monitoring for severe adverse events, but I found only passive monitoring.
> A 17-year-old ... was rushed to The Grange University Hospital earlier this month after testing positive for the virus - just three days after receiving her first jab.
> The schoolgirl, who is a member of the Welsh Youth Parliament, was soon diagnosed with a Covid-related blood clot in her lung following numerous blood tests, X-rays and CT scans.
Those who believe the vaccines are safe aren't necessarily swayed by rational thinking. Do you know that the vaccines won't eventually be linked to autoimmune or cerebrovascular disease? No, just like the rest of us you have no clue.
I have been repeating the oft hear line: "you can't change someone's mind with rationality if rationality didn't inform their belief."
But many actually think they are being rational! My anecdote of the day:
I had a friend tell me that some official brit study claims that "vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated. How can anyone believe MSNBC's bullshit when they ignore real science??"
That lame site says his line verbatim, but when you look at the actual abstract of the study that is linked: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3897733
It says: "Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people. Physical distancing measures remain critical to reduce SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant transmission."
That is a totally different conclusion!
This friend is totally convinced that the government and media is trying to trick him into getting this vaccine. This is someone who actually has a BS in Science and built a MM$ business in a highly scientific field. He's read Demon Haunted World. I've always considered him to be one of my more intelligent and knowledgeable friends. And now I just do my best to avoid topics like this with him.
I am really coming to the opinion that the internet is yet another technology that our species has the intelligence to build, but lacks the wisdom to use without causing more harm than good.
>It is this weighing of risks and benefits, in all their many facets, that informs the chorus of health-care professionals imploring their families, neighbors, co-workers, and friends, along with everyone else, to please get vaccinated against covid-19. They urge vaccination because they see its ratio of risks to benefits as incredibly, unbelievably good.
For someone who has already had Covid and recovered, there is no benefit. Only risk.[1] But they are not allowed to make this calculation for themselves and instead are treated to constant social pressure campaigns like this piece.
Perhaps, as is a common argument from the vaccine-hesitant, we should wait for more scientific data before concluding that previous infection provides more protection than the vaccine? :)
After all, this whole thing has happened quite quickly.
The commenter stated that the vaccine had no benefit to previously infected. That is not true. From the article you reference:
"The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated."
Yes agreed, but the benefits appear to be insignificant relative to the benefits of giving that vaccine dose to an immunologically naive or otherwise vulnerable individual.
Maybe those who disagree with you think that you should make a more subtle argument. For those who are convalescent, the risk / benefit ratio of the vaccine is very different than for someone who is immunologically naive. And, to my knowledge, the vaccines have not been carefully validated in a convalescent population, on the same level as the clinical trials on which their efficacy estimates are founded. The idea of getting an illness and then immediately double vaccinating oneself against it should give any rational person pause. This is at very least marginally beneficial, and at worst downright risky. A single dose might make sense, but there should be no rush to apply one.
The chance of an otherwise healthy COVID-19 convalescent person ending up hospitalized from reinfection appears to be almost immeasurably low. But the risk of a severe reaction to the vaccine is low but not immeasurable. And it could be worse for someone whose immune system is primed against the vaccine, but that's also not clear.
Yes the lack of significant benefit from vaccinating individuals who have already acquired immunity has direct implications for public health policy. It’s not an efficient use of limited vaccine doses, especially when many vulnerable or immunologically naive people around the world have not received even one dose. These factors need to be considered because they could help reduce the total mortality from this pandemic [1].
Not true. Vaccinated and previously infected people are much less likely to be reinfected than unvaccinated previously infected. Here is a recent study:
Reinfection was twice as likely among unvaccinated previously infected. The more recent data includes the effects of the delta variant. So, the risk of Covid is much higher and the risk of adverse effects are approximately zero for getting the vaccine.
Note that I am not commenting on vaccine prioritization and allocation, just the assertion of the post that vaccination has no benefit to previously infected people.
>risk of Covid is much higher and the risk of adverse effects are approximately zero for getting the vaccine.
Where is your data for this?
What is the risk of a naturally immune person catching Covid, and being either a)symptomatic, b)hospitalized, or c)killed?
How does this risk compare to the risk of a serious adverse event or long-term consequence such as autoimmune disease from the vaccine in a healthy young man?
You asserted that there was no benefit to getting the vaccine for previously infected. I pointed you to a reference that shows that that is not true. The original article to which we are all responding pointed out the minuscule levels of risk associated with getting the vaccine.
With respect to autoimmune disease, I think we are seeing that long covid is becoming a significant health concern among even healthy young people with only a mild response to Covid infection. Here is an example article:
Relevant quote: "Long Covid—a term referring to symptoms that linger for weeks or months beyond infection—affects between 10% and 30% of people who catch the virus, including those with mild or asymptomatic infections, according to experts. In some cases, symptoms persist for more than a year."
At any rate, I imagine none of this will persuade you, so I simply wish you good luck and hope you remain healthy. My strongest hope is that things can improve enough that we can all go back to arguing about linux user interface schemes.
I would like to point out that long-term effects are a possible outcome in many types of flu, not just covid ex. [1][2]. Given the combination of relatively short timeframe for covid studies, the unknown complications of living in lockdowns, and the general "don't care" attitude toward these effects in previous flus, the whole "Long Covid" story at least seems rather overblown.
As someone who is close to a person who suffers from an infection triggered autoimmune condition that has led to severe and long term neurological effects, I would agree that conditions similar to long covid have been occurring for quite a while. However, just because they have been ignored does not mean they aren't real and that the issue is "overblown." While I take no joy from the suffering of others, having more attention being paid to this very real and at times devastating condition is one of the few upsides of the virus.
> How does this risk compare to the risk of a serious adverse event or long-term consequence such as autoimmune disease from the vaccine in a healthy young man?
Where is your data that serious adverse effects are even possible beyond an absurdly tiny statistic?
And how does that compare to the risk of a break-through re-infection and the well documented long-term health issues people have developed with Covid?
Don't talk like the data is on your side when it isn't. You are being childish. Full stop.
See [1]. I'm sure you'll redefine "serious" however you want to try and retain your point. Which is, of course, childish as you say. Your comment here is disappointing. I'd expect you to actually do some research on your own before posting like this and making inflammatory statements.
The paper you cite describes them as mild. "...COVID-19 infection are almost twice as likely to experience one or more MILD whole body..."
So if I am taking the paper you cite as gospel, I would say they are mild as described. I think perhaps you are the one who needs to do a closer reading.
We've given literally billions of vaccine doses at this point. The post-vaccination tracking has been able to pick up side-effects affecting 1/100k patients. Those side-effects have also been made public by the relevant authorities immediately when concerns were raised. This tracking has not produced any kind of evidence for auto-immune disease for the mRNA vaccines.
And no, it cannot be that the side-effects you're worried about haven't happened yet. If they happened, they'd happen within weeks of the vaccination.
Look, the position that you don't think the risk-reward ratio is good enough for somebody who has recovered is pretty reasonable. But for some reason you're not satisfied with that, and are instead making factually incorrect statements both about the benefits and the risks. That makes it pretty hard to believe you're actually making that argument in good faith.
> And no, it cannot be that the side-effects you're worried about haven't happened yet. If they happened, they'd happen within weeks of the vaccination.
That CDC report is very careful to word its abstract to hide that the findings are from a very small group of people (a whopping 50 fully vaccinated) without even mentioning overall immunity levels across the general population. I'm not arguing that vaccine + natural antibodies aren't more effective - they are - but you're going to have to do a lot better than that to justify wanting to vaccinate everyone who's already been infected despite the known risks [1].
GP was referencing this study [0] when claiming "Reinfection was twice as likely among unvaccinated previously infected".
That CDC study has a relatively small sample size (N=738) and uses data from a single state during a 2-month period. The confidence interval on the "2.34" odds ratio is large (95% CI = 1.58–3.47). Most importantly, a tremendous amount of literature contradicts those findings.
Nearly every large scale and long term serological study has demonstrated that immunity acquired through previous infection is at least equally effective as vaccination in preventing reinfection. I have yet to see any CDC publication that acknowledges or cites these reputable findings. Why is that?
- A previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with an 84% lower risk of infection, with median protective effect observed 7 months following primary infection. This time period is the minimum probable effect because seroconversions were not included. This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals. [1] (N=25,661)
- In conclusion, documented SARS-CoV-2 reinfections were exceedingly rare, with an incidence of 0.3 infections for every 1000 persons-week, and none were severe. Seroconversion after symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to be associated with a 10-fold reduction in risk of successive viral infection contamination, lasting at least 8 months. [2] (N=1,494)
- The study results suggest that reinfections are rare events and patients who have recovered from COVID-19 have a lower risk of reinfection. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 appears to confer a protective effect for at least a year, which is similar to the protection reported in recent vaccine studies. [3] (N=15,075)
- Reinfection is rare in the young and international population of Qatar. Natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months. [4] (N=192,967)
- The degree of protection (10-fold) associated with seropositivity appears to be comparable to that observed in the initial reports of the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in large clinical trials. [5] (N=3,257,478)
[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
[5] Association of SARS-CoV-2 Seropositive Antibody Test With Risk of Future Infection type0↗
There's always a risk-benefit calculation, depending on the person and their medical status it might not be worth it (for that person) to get vaccinated if they already had the disease. Of course for the society as a whole there might be big benefits even if some of these people stand to loose their health or even their life as with the Astra vaccine and the atypical blood clots.
No, the Israel study is vaccinated vs previously infected. The study I pointed to was vaccinated and previously infected vs only previously infected. I was responding to an assertion that vaccination offers no benefit to the previously infected. The article you reference confirms the point I made. Here is the quote from the article:
"Giving a single shot of the vaccine to those who had been previously infected also appeared to boost their protection."
Antibody tests are instant and widely available. These tests are (I believe) what the natural immunity studies use to establish history of prior infection.
Detractors will say that there is no established level of antibodies that means "immunity."
Ironically, it is declining antibodies though (and no set threshold) that is being used to justify "booster" jabs around the world!
Far from that clear cut, other results show booster shots on top of previous infection perform better than just natural immunity - and we will see how the longevity of both works out with future data, and can adjust accordingly. (and e.g. the current policy here in Germany: immunity counts for X (I think 6) months, afterwards a single booster shot counts as fully vaccinated.)
> For someone who has already had Covid and recovered, there is no benefit. Only risk
I guess you missed this big-ass bolded part at the bottom:
*Important Notice
medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
You fucking liar. You fucking merchant of death. You fucking deceiver. If your position were logical, rational, and intellectually honest, you would not have to mis-represent non-peer-reviewed, inconclusive single studies as inarguable truths.
But your position is bullshit, so your arguments must be to.
You can't persuade skeptics by not addressing (simply omitting) some most important concerns, namely:
- Role of age, fitness and comorbidities in risk/benefit analysis
- Lack of trust in institutions (suppression of alternative views; capture/corruption)
Another question is who New Yorker can reach, I won't be surprised that ~95% of their audience are already vaccinated. And remaining 5% holdouts are well-informed and would need way better arguments.
"Skeptics" is a very generous portrayal of the anti-vax crowd.
They are not skeptics. Their opposition is not based on missing information, it is based on conforming to an ideology. Which is diametrically opposed to skepticism.
People of all classes, religions, races, and political affiliations are among those who don't want to be injected. Men and women, young and old. Knowing this would require you to talk to people out in the real world in such a way that they think they can trust you, since most are terrified to speak up. It is hard to do this unless you are sincerely one of them. What you see on TV or YouTube isn't representative of the actual population.
I work with two. Let's just say they aren't anyone's "go-to" when a problem needs solved, full of right-wing conspiracy bullshit and pointless commentary. One drinks from a "LIBERAL TEARS" mug at work. Can you fucking imagine?
Do you think it's possible that people could be generally pro-vaccine and be sceptical of the covid-19 vaccine?
You're trying to lump people who have legitimate concerns about the covid-19 vaccine in particular with the vaccines cause autism/magnetic vaccines crowd, and it's very dishonest. This is not some monolithic movement, and I disavow the people who are anti-vax in principle.
I'm rooting for the covid vaccines, and I hope they're everything we've been promised and more, but I will be waiting.
You pretend to have a "reasonable" hesitation for the vaccine, despite overwhelming evidence of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, especially in contrast to the effects of Covid-19 itself.
So I ask, what will it take for you to change your mind? What is the evidence you are waiting for that does not already exist?
If it was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that it would be more detrimental for me to be infected than to be vaccinated (taking into account my personal risk factors) and it conferred better long term immunity than a natural infection, I would change my mind.
Given that as of September Israel will only consider people fully vaccinated if they've had a booster injection, I don't believe this criteria has yet been met.
It's not even like an annual flu shot at this point, as people who were considered fully vaccinated just a couple of months ago now need further boosters.
At this stage it looks like the taxpayer will be footing the bill for twice-annual booster shots for everyone. This is just not sustainable
> At this stage it looks like the taxpayer will be footing the bill for twice-annual booster shots for everyone. This is just not sustainable
Isn't it? Not speaking to its wisdom, but it seems entirely sustainable from a financial perspective - some napkin math suggests that the all-in costs of that frequency of vaccination would be <1% of the federal budget of a typical developed country.
> You're trying to lump people who have legitimate concerns about the covid-19 vaccine in particular
There are no such "legitimate concerns" (or legitimate arguments for that matter). You trying to lump people that are delusional, uneducated, fear-mongering deniers in with rational people that evaluate reality on its own merits is the "very dishonest" part.
> Are the vaccinated experiencing adverse reactions?
Occasionally people will experience mild adverse reactions. This is actually covered in the article above.
However, adverse vaccine reactions are happening at a much lower rate than actual DEATH of healthy individuals from Covid19 itself. Let along "long covid" symptoms.
> Have vaccines in the past been proven to be dangerous? Looking at you anthrax vaccine.
Gulf war syndrome has not been established to be caused by the anthrax vaccine. So no.
> None of these are zero.
They don't have to be zero, but 0.0003 is a much smaller number than the adverse reactions to catching Covid itself.
> If you can pass the throng test and argue why their might be hesitancy, it would make you more understanding.
I don't know what "the throng test" is but I don't think WE are the ones that do not understand. It is you who does not understand.
The fact you site a conspiracy theory about gulf war syndrome makes me believe you are not being honest.
Perhaps this explains a lot of the more fanatical aspects of those pushing vaccines-for-all. There are absolutely people dying of the vaccine, and who were at very low risk of dying of COVID. For example, this TV presenter:
"A BBC presenter died from a blood clot on the brain due to complications of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, a coroner has concluded. Lisa Shaw died in May, just over three weeks after she had her first dose of the jab, an inquest in Newcastle heard on Thursday."
Although that article admits the connection, usually media reports about people who died shortly after taking their vaccine simply don't mention it at all. Like this teenager:
The parents worked with Berensen on the story and confirmed on Twitter that it is fully real. But if you search the name Simone Scott on Google you will be given lots of news articles that didn't talk to the parents, and which claim she died of a "mysterious illness" or even "a virus" (unnamed). In other words, vaccine-linked deaths are going unreported or outright misreported, with rare exceptions like famous TV personalities.
Look at the graph of reports of death by onset in days. Most deaths occur on the day of the vaccination or within just a few days later, strongly suggesting causality, especially as only the most motivated people will learn how to report to VAERS - it's optional, people are not being informed about it ahead of time, and there are many reports of the health system refusing to help file reports.
Today there was a report that COVID vaccines are ~100x as deadly as flu vaccines. It's behind a paywall so I haven't read it, but it sounds plausible when you look at the numbers. Deaths are obviously not the only problem that can arise. Many people are reporting injuries of various kinds, sometimes quite serious ones. Browse the reports on the site to see for yourself.
At any rate, there has never been any question that some people will be killed or maimed by the vaccine in such a large rollout. Even Bill Gates admitted that right at the start. These things are always cost/benefit calculations. The question is what exactly is the cost. In the current environment of absolute hostility to anything that could slow down the rollout, it's very unclear anyone really knows.
That is just wrong and any good doctor can explain that to you, you seem to be badly informed here.
There are risk calculations that favor vaccination with all currently available knowledge. But there are secondary issues like vaccine surveillance and compelling medical treatments that might nudge people in different directions. These are legitimate since the behavior of the most militant vaccine proponents are fairly predictable.
«[...] This all sounds quite risky. Does it mean that we should avoid prescription medicines entirely? Let’s look at the most common adverse-reaction offenders. Anti-seizure drugs, insulin, and blood-thinning medications—often used to prevent stroke—are at the top of the list; antibiotics account for more adverse effects than almost any other kind of drug, leading to approximately a hundred and fifty thousand E.R. visits annually; even acetaminophen turns out to be risky, causing fifty-six thousand E.R. visits, twenty-six hundred hospitalizations, nearly half of all liver failures, and over four hundred and fifty deaths each year. Nevertheless, I think that most of my vaccine-hesitant patients would agree that preventing strokes and seizures, treating diabetes, alleviating pain, and curing infections are extremely important, and that the benefits we derive from using these medications weigh favorably against their risks.»
A binary dilemma is expressed in the paragraph, while the actual topic is ternary. «Most of [his] vaccine-hesitant patients» would take insulin as a better option than just bearing diabetes, but not necessarily would take farmaceutical prophylaxis over a relatively high isolation (if they can afford it in practice - The New Yorker was not exactly born for a public of dwellers in low density areas).
It's also not comparable because drugs are given to people who are ill, so the cost/benefit analysis is much clearer. Vaccines are being given to people who are not ill, may well not become ill any time soon even if they don't take the vaccine, and if they did become ill for many (i.e. the non eldery/co-morbid) it would not be especially serious. All of which makes the cost/benefit calculation drastically different to antibiotics.
It's partly the weakness of pro-vaccine articles like this one that fuels the phenomenon. People read it and say, is that the best counter-argument there is? Then perhaps my hesitation is correct indeed.
The statement «if they did become ill for many ... it would not be especially serious» brings to the question about what causes damage after infection, and what causes (severe) adverse events after the vaccines: if the causes are different, the poster's idea that seem to imply that "a specific individual may get worse consequences from the vaccines than from the natural infection" may appear less shaky, while if the causes partially coincide (something about the spike protein) it would make more sense to believe that the same individual risks much more damage with natural infection than with vaccination - consistently with the apparent numbers (damages post-vaccine seem to be order(s) of magnitude less than damages post natural infection. Of course, the practical comparison passes through the individual chances of vaccination vs chances of infection - but that is another matter).
If the source of damages is similar with infection or vaccination, and if the vulnerability depended on one's specific body, if you may suffer a hit after the latter, imagine the blow you could get after the former.
About instead the article and its "reassurances to hesitants": its honest report of the risks of very common medicines will be an eye opener to those who thought of medicines as "innocuous candies not worth considerate approach".
Right, the problem is one I flag in another comment - there doesn't seem to be any actual systematic way to compare the impact of vaccines vs viral infections. You can't even get data into comparable units, let alone then study the reliability of those measurements or transformations.
If you read the underlying papers it seems to be just assumed that one is much less than the other because that's how vaccines normally work, and it'd be insane if it were not the case. But this is new technology, and these vaccines aren't acting like vaccines are meant to e.g. they don't seem to stop you catching it and getting sick, their effectiveness seems to last months rather than decades, and their side effects are much worse.
I have become quite suspicious about this over time because I keep encountering people who say the vaccine made them sick, and the symptoms align very closely with COVID symptoms. Recovery appears to be a little faster but perhaps not by much - the only person in my immediate social circle who actually definitely got COVID was only in bed for a day, and then it took several days to shake off the remnants of the cough. The vaccines don't give people a cough but "It laid me low for a day or two, felt so sick I had to stay in bed all day" is a very common side effect. This is what you'd expect if the vaccine was doing the same stuff as the virus itself but without filling the lungs with crap. And that's in turn what you'd expect given the way the mRNA vaccines actually work: they cause cells to act infected and the immune system then detects them as such. Whether vaccines cause more or less damage than a viral infection very much depends on the relative areas under the curves and the relative value of different kinds of cells that are exposed and destroyed, but, again, no way to actually get data into that form.
But then you weight it by incidence. Governments seem to have a bloody minded fanatical determination to make vaccine incidence 100% by any means possible. On the other hand, where I live, after a year and a half of this stuff, only ~10% of the population has tested positive. When the person I live with got sick, I was forced to self-isolate with them, and I never got sick even though delta is supposedly super infectious. The incidence of the virus is far less than the incidence of vaccines, so even if their impact is within a similar order of magnitude (i.e. much less but still comparable), it seems quite plausible that the vaccines end up making more people sick than the virus (for some value of "the virus" given that it mutates and "the vaccine" given the apparent need for repetitive boosters).
> You can't persuade skeptics by not addressing (simply omitting) some most important concerns…
You're making a couple assumptions here which don't hold true in practice. (1) That "skeptic" concerns are uniform. Those may be your important concerns, but they're not for others. (2) That you'll be able persuade "skeptics" by logically addressing their concerns. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> For some people, it’s not so much the known risks that have them worried as the unknown. They ask, What if the mRNA vaccines alter our DNA, threatening our health far in the future? Will they affect our bodies in other, as yet undiscovered, ways? After all, some say, this is brand-new technology, and the F.D.A. has only fully approved the Pfizer vaccine.
> As it turns out, though, mRNA technology isn’t especially new. Scientists have been developing it since the nineteen-nineties.
A lot of the anti-vaxxer claims about mRNA vaccines are incredulous, but this common approach to dismissing concerns about them is a bit disingenuous and not very convincing.
Yes, mRNA technology has been in development for decades. So what? We went from having 0 mRNA vaccines in use to injecting hundreds of millions of people around the world with them all at once.
The sales pitch: if enough people get vaccinated, we'll stop the spread of the virus and life can return to normal.
The reality: people fully vaccinated less than a year ago are becoming infected, with the data showing clearly in the case of Delta that vaccinated people have similar viral loads to unvaccinated people and can spread the virus to others too. Now we're being told that we'll have to have booster shots, perhaps as soon as every 5-6 months, something that we don't do for any other disease.
I'm fully vaccinated with Pfizer and not particularly concerned about the risk of undiscovered long-term side effects, but to pretend that what we're doing really isn't novel is far from convincing and I think arguments along these lines are having the opposite of the intended effect.
More than likely Covid-19 will have the same long term side effects of any other Coronavirus or the Flu. None of the long term side effects seem particularly surprising, other than they are publicized more.
More than likely Covid-19 viral vector vaccine's (Johnson and Johnson) or Live-attenuated vaccines will have the same long term side effects of any other vaccine in these categories.
There is no realistic theoretical mechanism for a delayed attack on the female reproductive system, and billions of mRNA doses have been administered over the last year with no measurable drop in female fertility.
Sorry, you have no idea what you're talking about.
There are actually papers on the initial effects on the female reproductive system. What they don't know yet is what the long-term effects are, especially eggs.
> Yes, mRNA technology has been in development for decades. So what? We went from having 0 mRNA vaccines in use to injecting hundreds of millions of people around the world with them all at once.
IMO their argument works against them: Three decades of nothing, then two at once from different companies? What's the catch?
There's one really simple, mechanical principle at work here. If you get an mRNA shot your body will generate a snippet of spike protein which your immune system will learn to attack and destroy. If you get a live sars2-cov virus, your body will also generate that protein, but orders of magnitude more of it and without automatically ceasing generation once the original mRNA breaks down... because the virus generates more mRNA. Your immune system will also learn to attack it but by the time it does the virus may be dozens of generations of exponential growth in which means there is simply so much to attack by that point that you will never generate enough antibodies before it overwhelms you.
The only argument for not getting the vaccine would be if you thought you had a better than average chance of never encountering the live virus. If given a choice between a vax and the live virus, no sane person would choose the live virus.
So everything else here is BS. People don't want to get the vaccine because they're scared. I understand that. But the probability of them encountering the virus is so high that taking the vaccine is clearly orders of magnitude less risky than not doing so, since in both cases you almost certainly will end up with the spike protein in your system and the only decision you really have is whether that will be self-administered and self-limiting, or wild and replicating uncontrolledly.
> The only argument for not getting the vaccine would be if you thought you had a better than average chance of never encountering the live virus.
Of course nobody reasonable is saying "Go out and try to get the virus! It's better than the vaccine!" But your comment overlooks a significant and growing population: the people who have already been infected.
Last year, a WHO official estimated that as much as 10% of the world population might have already been infected. A year later, given the spread of Delta, it would not be surprising if that estimate was substantially higher.
What do you advise the previously infected to do? It is scientifically dishonest to dismiss the strong and growing evidence we now have that natural immunity is robust and likely in some respects superior to that provided by the vaccines.
> ...the only decision you really have is whether that will be self-administered and self-limiting, or wild and replicating uncontrolledly.
Yes, the risks of a natural infection in an unvaccinated person causing severe illness are undoubtedly higher, but let's not slander the human immune system. Young, apparently healthy people do get sick and die, and some report debilitating symptoms that linger, but if you look at the overall numbers honestly, you have to acknowledge that the vast, vast majority of people who are not old and who don't have metabolic disease don't get seriously ill and die from COVID, they recover just fine. And a double-digit percentage of people never even display symptoms.
This thing isn't Ebola and vaccination marketing that presents it as such is, not surprisingly, proving to be less than persuasive to lots of people.
It's not really that simple. First of all, "the orders of magnitude" claim is not supported by anything I've seen, care to provide your source? Then there is an issue of what cells are affected. We know that the virus binds only to a certain receptor, which exists only on some cells. What about the vaccine's "lipid particles", do they bind to receptors at all? I also could not find any reliable information on these particle mechanism of action, which I imagine is natural as this is the trade secret of the vaccine manufacturers so we don't know if these affect the same cells the virus does. I for one rather sacrifice a few billion of epithelial cells to the virus than 1/1000th of this number in the brain neurons to the vaccine because neurons are probably not going to regenerate while the epithelium constantly regenerates.
From an engineering standpoint, it's just obvious that something generating a few million partial spike protein snippets originating in your deltoid muscle - even if some get into your blood or lymphatic system - is still a lot less dangerous than uncontrolled replication of billions of spike + whole viruses running wild around your body. Sure, either one could end up damaging your brain if it got through the blood/brain barrier. There's some evidence that vax-induced spike proteins have been found 30 days later in the bloodstream. Nonetheless, compared with the onslaught of that same protein you'd get from a live virus, it's the better of two bad options.
I do not understand this standpoint. I am an engineer myself and when I compare two numbers I calculate both numbers and not just wave my hands. I don't know how to calculate either number in this case. Where did you get the "few million"? How come the vaccine causes myocarditis and thrombosis, both outside the deltoid muscle, where you said it's contained? How could the virus end damaging my brain, are you really sure there are ACE2 receptors in the brain neurons?
Given the responses to this article and the general level of education among the HN crowd, I hope everyone is ready for another year of this crap.
If we can’t convince this crowd to get fully vaccinated, we stand no chance of stopping this pandemic until it’s finished it’s natural and brutal course.
> Given the responses to this article and the general level of education among the HN crowd,
Yeah.
I expect that the "level of education" is part of the problem here. So many "i yam very smart, I thinks different" people who don't know how far out of their lane of competence they are now. Sadly the contrarian impulse leads them into traps that others have set.
I feel that articles like this one are much closer to propaganda than to any explanation of science.
1. In comparing risks of adverse effects of drugs with those of covid vaccines the author is missing a big point. Namely, medications are given to help patients (i.e. already sick people) or prophylactically to people in serious risk of developing an illness. Covid vaccines have been given and continue to be given to perfectly healthy people who are in minimal risk. Now, other vaccines we do administer to healthy people, so a more proper comparison would be between other vaccines - but, while I don't have any data to quote, I believe you'll find significant higher risks of adverse effects from the covid vaccines than from previous vaccines.
2. > And the principles behind it [mRNA technology] are startlingly simple and elegant.
Now this is quite problematic the way I see it. First off, I have a medical degree and I find the technology incredibly complex. Secondly, the author uses "simplicity" as a crutch to support her argument further down that since mRNA translation happens outside the nucleus (where the DNA is) there is in no way any interaction between DNA and mRNA.
I'm not saying that the mRNA vaccines alter our DNA; I wouldn't know. I do know there are a couple of ways - at least - that mRNA can go back to DNA (retrotransposons for example). But, I also believe that when developing the technology, issues like this have been given serious thought by smarter and more knowledgeable people than me. That, however, doesn't take away the fact that the author is omitting quite a lot in order to present a nicer, simpler picture of reality. Well, that's quite close to lying in my book.
These two issues at least stood out for me. I'm not "anti-vaccine", I'm just "anti-bullshitting". And no, even if you have the best intentions in mind, it's still very much bullshit.
> Now this is quite problematic the way I see it. First off, I have a medical degree and I find the technology incredibly complex. Secondly, the author uses "simplicity" as a crutch to support her argument further down that since mRNA translation happens outside the nucleus (where the DNA is) there is in no way any interaction between DNA and mRNA.
If someone is concerned about this they are either ignorant of how mRNA viruses such as SARS-COV-2 (and every "cold" and flu virus) reproduce or have to explain away how having a fixed amount of vaccine mRNA translation is bad, but having an unlimited amount of SARS-COV-2 translation (including those same spike proteins) is fine. This is a process that has happened literally billions, if not trillions, of times in every single HN readers body with other viruses not some exotic thing.
I have a genuine question here, that I've tried to find the answer to before and struggled to get good data on. I'd really like to understand the actual size of dosages that you get from both the vaccines and different kinds of viral infections, in comparable units. For example a table mapping viral load in PCR cycle thresholds to microgram dosages of the different brands of vaccines.
The assertion that the vaccines give you way less mRNA / cell death than the actual virus sounds like it should obviously be true, but I can't find any papers that measure it, and I keep encountering people for whom the vaccine appeared to actually give them COVID for a day or two. I've also known people who had COVID naturally and whose symptoms and duration was pretty much the same as those people reporting bad side effects from the vaccines, which I'd guess is somewhere between 25%-50% of people taking it, judging from my social circle, but it's hard to know exactly.
The best info I could get is that dosages were obtained by simply starting really low and then steadily increasing it until antibody titers were high "enough" and side effects were still considered tolerable. However the dosages of some brands are much higher than others. At that point information became proprietary and I couldn't go further. Still, given the wide range of severities of infections it's not totally clear why this process was expected to yield a drastically lower dose than all possible viral infections.
118 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadNo, it isn't.
I get a popup blocking the article, reading
"Already a subscriber? Sign in
You’ve run out. You’ve read your last complimentary article. Become a New Yorker subscriber, plus get a free tote. Cancel anytime."
https://archive.is/PnedQ
https://outline.com/https://www.newyorker.com/science/medica...
* Well DUIs kill people, but we’ve recognized that in that case someone’s “freedom” is legal when it kills other people
- For the sake of argument perhaps, even if that were true, what do you propose then? Let them be, force them, make irrational arguments (i.e. lie), something else?
Edit: as one data point, the only person I know that doesn't want the vaccine is worried about fertility. They had covid 5 months ago and are currently having long covid, so they're not entirely unprotected even if imo it's still solidly anti-vax to refuse a recommended booster dose. So they're not trusting the official stuff, and most definitely they'll not be taking random garbage that's supposed to kill animals. That's insanity, so I can't believe the majority of those left unvaxxinated in your country is that sort out crazy. It makes no sense, the furthest thing from self-evident.
Honestly, I think the issue here is that you’re not American, so you don’t understand the current situation here. Vaccines have been free and readily available for a long time, and those who are holding out have an unusually high percentage of cray in them. Last I checked, polling indicated that about half of the people unvaccinated indicated that would never accept the vaccine, as compared to being in more of a “wait and see” mode.
Meanwhile some states are starting to hit their highest death rates ever, and Covid is killing anti-vax politicians and celebrities at a constant rate. If rational arguments persuaded these people, they would have already been vaccinated.
> So far, they’ve treated 27 patients in the month of August.
> The Alabama Poison Information Center at Children’s of Alabama has fielded 24 ivermectin exposure cases so far this year, of which 15 were related to COVID-19 prevention and treatment. It says there have been five other calls seeking information about ivermectin.
Lol, yeah clearly a majority of the millions unvaccinated.
> At least 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center have been related to ingestion of livestock or animal formulations of ivermectin purchased at livestock supply centers, Mississippi Department of Health officials said.
Again, these are people literally taking horse dewormer. We can debate the precise number, but you cannot reason with someone who decides that they trust tractor supply more than they trust their doctor and any relevant medical authority.
Keep reading, it said iirc somewhere "for comparison, last year there were 6 calls".
>"Research both sides and make up your own mind." It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, it can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2020/07/30/you-...
And I'm going to annoy people by saying that. I'm baffled why the existence of natural immunity, which is completely settled science, has somehow become controversial. If the mechanism for natural immunity didn't work, then the mechanism for vaccinated immunity also wouldn't be able to work. Believing that the vaccines can work but the immune system response to the live virus doesn't is some serious irrationality.
Edit: And the response is a wonderful demonstration of Aristotle's ancient observation that those in the grips of fear cannot be persuaded by facts or reason.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/va...
Generally when people refer to something as "dangerous", they don't mean "To a very very small subset of people, and in very very specific and rare circumstances".
Why? I don't understand how that claim can be true unless somehow being exposed to the spike protein from the virus will fail to produce immunity while at the same time being exposed to the spike protein from having the mRNA make your cells synthesize it will. I'm genuinely curious so if there is some new science you can point me to I'd be grateful.
Edit: The Covid-19 vaccine is by far the most dangerous prescribed vaccine, accounting for 80.53% of reported vaccine deaths[1], so if natural acquired immunity is a real thing then how is it irrational for those who are already immune to decline to take it?
And what's with the hostility to curiosity?
[1] https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D8;jsessionid=...
In case that link dies when the session expires, here's the top 10:
"I often ask them why, after the devastation we’ve seen this year, they’ve chosen not to get vaccinated. Sometimes their answers are weird or conspiratorial. But most people say that they’re concerned about something real: adverse effects. They’ve heard about blood clots in women, or about myocarditis in young men, and the prospect of developing one of these frightening conditions has kept them away from the vaccination clinic."
It is lottery-ticket thinking but with a negative outcome imagined in place of a positive one.
Just like with lottery tickets, you have to be in to win. But it is overwhelmingly unlikely that you will win, and it is overwhelmingly unlikely you will have an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
It's weird to see someone argue that this is "not irrational thinking" on numerically literate HN.
I have little. The best I have is
Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine ... for the C4591001 Clinical Trial Group
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577
«The incidence of serious adverse events was similar in the vaccine and placebo groups (0.6% and 0.5%, respectively). // This trial and its preliminary report have several limitations. With approximately 19,000 participants per group in the subset of participants with a median follow-up time of 2 months after the second dose, the study has more than 83% probability of detecting at least one adverse event, if the true incidence is 0.01%, but it is not large enough to detect less common adverse events reliably»
For the rest, I hoped to find active monitoring for severe adverse events, but I found only passive monitoring.
> A 17-year-old ... was rushed to The Grange University Hospital earlier this month after testing positive for the virus - just three days after receiving her first jab.
> The schoolgirl, who is a member of the Welsh Youth Parliament, was soon diagnosed with a Covid-related blood clot in her lung following numerous blood tests, X-rays and CT scans.
Curious how the causal attribution works here.
[1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9938121/Schoolgirl-...
But many actually think they are being rational! My anecdote of the day:
I had a friend tell me that some official brit study claims that "vaccinated individuals carry 251 times the load of COVID-19 viruses in their nostrils compared to the unvaccinated. How can anyone believe MSNBC's bullshit when they ignore real science??"
WTF? (I say to myself.) So, I actually get online and try to search for some recent viral load study. I find this link on some ridiculous site: https://adarapress.com/2021/08/26/study-fully-vaccinated-hea...
That lame site says his line verbatim, but when you look at the actual abstract of the study that is linked: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3897733 It says: "Breakthrough Delta variant infections are associated with high viral loads, prolonged PCR positivity, and low levels of vaccine-induced neutralizing antibodies, explaining the transmission between the vaccinated people. Physical distancing measures remain critical to reduce SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant transmission." That is a totally different conclusion!
This friend is totally convinced that the government and media is trying to trick him into getting this vaccine. This is someone who actually has a BS in Science and built a MM$ business in a highly scientific field. He's read Demon Haunted World. I've always considered him to be one of my more intelligent and knowledgeable friends. And now I just do my best to avoid topics like this with him.
I am really coming to the opinion that the internet is yet another technology that our species has the intelligence to build, but lacks the wisdom to use without causing more harm than good.
For someone who has already had Covid and recovered, there is no benefit. Only risk.[1] But they are not allowed to make this calculation for themselves and instead are treated to constant social pressure campaigns like this piece.
[1]https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210608/No-point-vaccinat...
After all, this whole thing has happened quite quickly.
"The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated."
The chance of an otherwise healthy COVID-19 convalescent person ending up hospitalized from reinfection appears to be almost immeasurably low. But the risk of a severe reaction to the vaccine is low but not immeasurable. And it could be worse for someone whose immune system is primed against the vaccine, but that's also not clear.
[1] Model-informed COVID-19 vaccine prioritization strategies by age and serostatus https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/371/6532/916.full...
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
Reinfection was twice as likely among unvaccinated previously infected. The more recent data includes the effects of the delta variant. So, the risk of Covid is much higher and the risk of adverse effects are approximately zero for getting the vaccine.
Note that I am not commenting on vaccine prioritization and allocation, just the assertion of the post that vaccination has no benefit to previously infected people.
Where is your data for this?
What is the risk of a naturally immune person catching Covid, and being either a)symptomatic, b)hospitalized, or c)killed?
How does this risk compare to the risk of a serious adverse event or long-term consequence such as autoimmune disease from the vaccine in a healthy young man?
With respect to autoimmune disease, I think we are seeing that long covid is becoming a significant health concern among even healthy young people with only a mild response to Covid infection. Here is an example article:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vaccines-do-their-work-focus...
Relevant quote: "Long Covid—a term referring to symptoms that linger for weeks or months beyond infection—affects between 10% and 30% of people who catch the virus, including those with mild or asymptomatic infections, according to experts. In some cases, symptoms persist for more than a year."
At any rate, I imagine none of this will persuade you, so I simply wish you good luck and hope you remain healthy. My strongest hope is that things can improve enough that we can all go back to arguing about linux user interface schemes.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17497-6
[2] https://www.labmate-online.com/news/chromatography/1/breakin...
Where is your data that serious adverse effects are even possible beyond an absurdly tiny statistic?
And how does that compare to the risk of a break-through re-infection and the well documented long-term health issues people have developed with Covid?
Don't talk like the data is on your side when it isn't. You are being childish. Full stop.
[1] https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/vaccine-after-effects-more-co...
So if I am taking the paper you cite as gospel, I would say they are mild as described. I think perhaps you are the one who needs to do a closer reading.
And no, it cannot be that the side-effects you're worried about haven't happened yet. If they happened, they'd happen within weeks of the vaccination.
Look, the position that you don't think the risk-reward ratio is good enough for somebody who has recovered is pretty reasonable. But for some reason you're not satisfied with that, and are instead making factually incorrect statements both about the benefits and the risks. That makes it pretty hard to believe you're actually making that argument in good faith.
What evidence is there of this?
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.29.21250653v...
That CDC study has a relatively small sample size (N=738) and uses data from a single state during a 2-month period. The confidence interval on the "2.34" odds ratio is large (95% CI = 1.58–3.47). Most importantly, a tremendous amount of literature contradicts those findings.
Nearly every large scale and long term serological study has demonstrated that immunity acquired through previous infection is at least equally effective as vaccination in preventing reinfection. I have yet to see any CDC publication that acknowledges or cites these reputable findings. Why is that?
- A previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with an 84% lower risk of infection, with median protective effect observed 7 months following primary infection. This time period is the minimum probable effect because seroconversions were not included. This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals. [1] (N=25,661)
- In conclusion, documented SARS-CoV-2 reinfections were exceedingly rare, with an incidence of 0.3 infections for every 1000 persons-week, and none were severe. Seroconversion after symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection seems to be associated with a 10-fold reduction in risk of successive viral infection contamination, lasting at least 8 months. [2] (N=1,494)
- The study results suggest that reinfections are rare events and patients who have recovered from COVID-19 have a lower risk of reinfection. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 appears to confer a protective effect for at least a year, which is similar to the protection reported in recent vaccine studies. [3] (N=15,075)
- Reinfection is rare in the young and international population of Qatar. Natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months. [4] (N=192,967)
- The degree of protection (10-fold) associated with seropositivity appears to be comparable to that observed in the initial reports of the efficacy of mRNA vaccines in large clinical trials. [5] (N=3,257,478)
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
[2] Risk of Reinfection After Seroconversion to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A Population-based Propensity-score Matched Cohort Study https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
[3] Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection 1 Year After Primary Infection in a Population in Lombardy, Italy https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
[4] SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702...
[5] Association of SARS-CoV-2 Seropositive Antibody Test With Risk of Future Infection type0 ↗ There's always a risk-benefit calculation, depending on the person and their medical status it might not be worth it (for that person) to get vaccinated if they already had the disease. Of course for the society as a whole there might be big benefits even if some of these people stand to loose their health or even their life as with the Astra vaccine and the atypical blood clots. boyleingpoint ↗ There's a study out of Israel that say the exact opposite dev_tty01 ↗ No, the Israel study is vaccinated vs previously infected. The study I pointed to was vaccinated and previously infected vs only previously infected. I was responding to an assertion that vaccination offers no benefit to the previously infected. The article you reference confirms the point I made. Here is the quote from the article: boyleingpoint ↗ I thought you were talking about only previous infection versus vaccinated, my mistake
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-...
This isn't something that can just be hand-waved way
"Giving a single shot of the vaccine to those who had been previously infected also appeared to boost their protection."
Detractors will say that there is no established level of antibodies that means "immunity."
Ironically, it is declining antibodies though (and no set threshold) that is being used to justify "booster" jabs around the world!
I guess you missed this big-ass bolded part at the bottom:
*Important Notice medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
You fucking liar. You fucking merchant of death. You fucking deceiver. If your position were logical, rational, and intellectually honest, you would not have to mis-represent non-peer-reviewed, inconclusive single studies as inarguable truths.
But your position is bullshit, so your arguments must be to.
Go fuck yourself you fucking cultist.
- Role of age, fitness and comorbidities in risk/benefit analysis - Lack of trust in institutions (suppression of alternative views; capture/corruption)
Another question is who New Yorker can reach, I won't be surprised that ~95% of their audience are already vaccinated. And remaining 5% holdouts are well-informed and would need way better arguments.
They are not skeptics. Their opposition is not based on missing information, it is based on conforming to an ideology. Which is diametrically opposed to skepticism.
You're trying to lump people who have legitimate concerns about the covid-19 vaccine in particular with the vaccines cause autism/magnetic vaccines crowd, and it's very dishonest. This is not some monolithic movement, and I disavow the people who are anti-vax in principle.
I'm rooting for the covid vaccines, and I hope they're everything we've been promised and more, but I will be waiting.
So I ask, what will it take for you to change your mind? What is the evidence you are waiting for that does not already exist?
Given that as of September Israel will only consider people fully vaccinated if they've had a booster injection, I don't believe this criteria has yet been met.
It's not even like an annual flu shot at this point, as people who were considered fully vaccinated just a couple of months ago now need further boosters.
At this stage it looks like the taxpayer will be footing the bill for twice-annual booster shots for everyone. This is just not sustainable
Isn't it? Not speaking to its wisdom, but it seems entirely sustainable from a financial perspective - some napkin math suggests that the all-in costs of that frequency of vaccination would be <1% of the federal budget of a typical developed country.
There are no such "legitimate concerns" (or legitimate arguments for that matter). You trying to lump people that are delusional, uneducated, fear-mongering deniers in with rational people that evaluate reality on its own merits is the "very dishonest" part.
Are the vaccinated experiencing adverse reactions?
Have vaccines in the past been proven to be dangerous? Looking at you anthrax vaccine.
None of these are zero.
If you can pass the throng test and argue why their might be hesitancy, it would make you more understanding.
No.
> Are the vaccinated experiencing adverse reactions?
Occasionally people will experience mild adverse reactions. This is actually covered in the article above.
However, adverse vaccine reactions are happening at a much lower rate than actual DEATH of healthy individuals from Covid19 itself. Let along "long covid" symptoms.
> Have vaccines in the past been proven to be dangerous? Looking at you anthrax vaccine.
Gulf war syndrome has not been established to be caused by the anthrax vaccine. So no.
> None of these are zero.
They don't have to be zero, but 0.0003 is a much smaller number than the adverse reactions to catching Covid itself.
> If you can pass the throng test and argue why their might be hesitancy, it would make you more understanding.
I don't know what "the throng test" is but I don't think WE are the ones that do not understand. It is you who does not understand.
The fact you site a conspiracy theory about gulf war syndrome makes me believe you are not being honest.
Perhaps this explains a lot of the more fanatical aspects of those pushing vaccines-for-all. There are absolutely people dying of the vaccine, and who were at very low risk of dying of COVID. For example, this TV presenter:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/26/bbc-presenter-di...
"A BBC presenter died from a blood clot on the brain due to complications of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, a coroner has concluded. Lisa Shaw died in May, just over three weeks after she had her first dose of the jab, an inquest in Newcastle heard on Thursday."
Although that article admits the connection, usually media reports about people who died shortly after taking their vaccine simply don't mention it at all. Like this teenager:
https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/simone-scott-oct-7-2001-...
The parents worked with Berensen on the story and confirmed on Twitter that it is fully real. But if you search the name Simone Scott on Google you will be given lots of news articles that didn't talk to the parents, and which claim she died of a "mysterious illness" or even "a virus" (unnamed). In other words, vaccine-linked deaths are going unreported or outright misreported, with rare exceptions like famous TV personalities.
Or this hip hop artist who died at 42 of a heart attack, 28 days after being vaccinated (heart attacks being a known side effect). None of the news articles about his death mention the proximity to the vaccine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/16/a-linchpin-tri... and https://www.bitchute.com/video/GIe8s0JTv7rG/ has tweets showing his date of vaccination.
The VAERS database tracks reports of deaths that occur shortly after being vaccinated.
https://www.openvaers.com/covid-data/mortality
Look at the graph of reports of death by onset in days. Most deaths occur on the day of the vaccination or within just a few days later, strongly suggesting causality, especially as only the most motivated people will learn how to report to VAERS - it's optional, people are not being informed about it ahead of time, and there are many reports of the health system refusing to help file reports.
Today there was a report that COVID vaccines are ~100x as deadly as flu vaccines. It's behind a paywall so I haven't read it, but it sounds plausible when you look at the numbers. Deaths are obviously not the only problem that can arise. Many people are reporting injuries of various kinds, sometimes quite serious ones. Browse the reports on the site to see for yourself.
At any rate, there has never been any question that some people will be killed or maimed by the vaccine in such a large rollout. Even Bill Gates admitted that right at the start. These things are always cost/benefit calculations. The question is what exactly is the cost. In the current environment of absolute hostility to anything that could slow down the rollout, it's very unclear anyone really knows.
That is just wrong and any good doctor can explain that to you, you seem to be badly informed here.
There are risk calculations that favor vaccination with all currently available knowledge. But there are secondary issues like vaccine surveillance and compelling medical treatments that might nudge people in different directions. These are legitimate since the behavior of the most militant vaccine proponents are fairly predictable.
«[...] This all sounds quite risky. Does it mean that we should avoid prescription medicines entirely? Let’s look at the most common adverse-reaction offenders. Anti-seizure drugs, insulin, and blood-thinning medications—often used to prevent stroke—are at the top of the list; antibiotics account for more adverse effects than almost any other kind of drug, leading to approximately a hundred and fifty thousand E.R. visits annually; even acetaminophen turns out to be risky, causing fifty-six thousand E.R. visits, twenty-six hundred hospitalizations, nearly half of all liver failures, and over four hundred and fifty deaths each year. Nevertheless, I think that most of my vaccine-hesitant patients would agree that preventing strokes and seizures, treating diabetes, alleviating pain, and curing infections are extremely important, and that the benefits we derive from using these medications weigh favorably against their risks.»
A binary dilemma is expressed in the paragraph, while the actual topic is ternary. «Most of [his] vaccine-hesitant patients» would take insulin as a better option than just bearing diabetes, but not necessarily would take farmaceutical prophylaxis over a relatively high isolation (if they can afford it in practice - The New Yorker was not exactly born for a public of dwellers in low density areas).
It's partly the weakness of pro-vaccine articles like this one that fuels the phenomenon. People read it and say, is that the best counter-argument there is? Then perhaps my hesitation is correct indeed.
If the source of damages is similar with infection or vaccination, and if the vulnerability depended on one's specific body, if you may suffer a hit after the latter, imagine the blow you could get after the former.
About instead the article and its "reassurances to hesitants": its honest report of the risks of very common medicines will be an eye opener to those who thought of medicines as "innocuous candies not worth considerate approach".
If you read the underlying papers it seems to be just assumed that one is much less than the other because that's how vaccines normally work, and it'd be insane if it were not the case. But this is new technology, and these vaccines aren't acting like vaccines are meant to e.g. they don't seem to stop you catching it and getting sick, their effectiveness seems to last months rather than decades, and their side effects are much worse.
I have become quite suspicious about this over time because I keep encountering people who say the vaccine made them sick, and the symptoms align very closely with COVID symptoms. Recovery appears to be a little faster but perhaps not by much - the only person in my immediate social circle who actually definitely got COVID was only in bed for a day, and then it took several days to shake off the remnants of the cough. The vaccines don't give people a cough but "It laid me low for a day or two, felt so sick I had to stay in bed all day" is a very common side effect. This is what you'd expect if the vaccine was doing the same stuff as the virus itself but without filling the lungs with crap. And that's in turn what you'd expect given the way the mRNA vaccines actually work: they cause cells to act infected and the immune system then detects them as such. Whether vaccines cause more or less damage than a viral infection very much depends on the relative areas under the curves and the relative value of different kinds of cells that are exposed and destroyed, but, again, no way to actually get data into that form.
But then you weight it by incidence. Governments seem to have a bloody minded fanatical determination to make vaccine incidence 100% by any means possible. On the other hand, where I live, after a year and a half of this stuff, only ~10% of the population has tested positive. When the person I live with got sick, I was forced to self-isolate with them, and I never got sick even though delta is supposedly super infectious. The incidence of the virus is far less than the incidence of vaccines, so even if their impact is within a similar order of magnitude (i.e. much less but still comparable), it seems quite plausible that the vaccines end up making more people sick than the virus (for some value of "the virus" given that it mutates and "the vaccine" given the apparent need for repetitive boosters).
"holdout" and "well-informed" are mutually incompatible in this scenario.
You're making a couple assumptions here which don't hold true in practice. (1) That "skeptic" concerns are uniform. Those may be your important concerns, but they're not for others. (2) That you'll be able persuade "skeptics" by logically addressing their concerns. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> As it turns out, though, mRNA technology isn’t especially new. Scientists have been developing it since the nineteen-nineties.
A lot of the anti-vaxxer claims about mRNA vaccines are incredulous, but this common approach to dismissing concerns about them is a bit disingenuous and not very convincing.
Yes, mRNA technology has been in development for decades. So what? We went from having 0 mRNA vaccines in use to injecting hundreds of millions of people around the world with them all at once.
The sales pitch: if enough people get vaccinated, we'll stop the spread of the virus and life can return to normal.
The reality: people fully vaccinated less than a year ago are becoming infected, with the data showing clearly in the case of Delta that vaccinated people have similar viral loads to unvaccinated people and can spread the virus to others too. Now we're being told that we'll have to have booster shots, perhaps as soon as every 5-6 months, something that we don't do for any other disease.
I'm fully vaccinated with Pfizer and not particularly concerned about the risk of undiscovered long-term side effects, but to pretend that what we're doing really isn't novel is far from convincing and I think arguments along these lines are having the opposite of the intended effect.
We don't know the long-term effects of corona or corona vaccines on the female reproductive system, especially eggs.
Considering that if eggs are attacked, that's the end of us, so we should learn more and fast.
More than likely Covid-19 viral vector vaccine's (Johnson and Johnson) or Live-attenuated vaccines will have the same long term side effects of any other vaccine in these categories.
There are actually papers on the initial effects on the female reproductive system. What they don't know yet is what the long-term effects are, especially eggs.
And vaccines have not been available for a year.
It's sad how anti-science HN readers are.
IMO their argument works against them: Three decades of nothing, then two at once from different companies? What's the catch?
The only argument for not getting the vaccine would be if you thought you had a better than average chance of never encountering the live virus. If given a choice between a vax and the live virus, no sane person would choose the live virus.
So everything else here is BS. People don't want to get the vaccine because they're scared. I understand that. But the probability of them encountering the virus is so high that taking the vaccine is clearly orders of magnitude less risky than not doing so, since in both cases you almost certainly will end up with the spike protein in your system and the only decision you really have is whether that will be self-administered and self-limiting, or wild and replicating uncontrolledly.
Of course nobody reasonable is saying "Go out and try to get the virus! It's better than the vaccine!" But your comment overlooks a significant and growing population: the people who have already been infected.
Last year, a WHO official estimated that as much as 10% of the world population might have already been infected. A year later, given the spread of Delta, it would not be surprising if that estimate was substantially higher.
What do you advise the previously infected to do? It is scientifically dishonest to dismiss the strong and growing evidence we now have that natural immunity is robust and likely in some respects superior to that provided by the vaccines.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/having-sars-cov-2-on...
https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/30919-natural-infection-ver...
> ...the only decision you really have is whether that will be self-administered and self-limiting, or wild and replicating uncontrolledly.
Yes, the risks of a natural infection in an unvaccinated person causing severe illness are undoubtedly higher, but let's not slander the human immune system. Young, apparently healthy people do get sick and die, and some report debilitating symptoms that linger, but if you look at the overall numbers honestly, you have to acknowledge that the vast, vast majority of people who are not old and who don't have metabolic disease don't get seriously ill and die from COVID, they recover just fine. And a double-digit percentage of people never even display symptoms.
This thing isn't Ebola and vaccination marketing that presents it as such is, not surprisingly, proving to be less than persuasive to lots of people.
What, if anything, is the limiting principle to the controlling urge?
If we can’t convince this crowd to get fully vaccinated, we stand no chance of stopping this pandemic until it’s finished it’s natural and brutal course.
Yeah.
I expect that the "level of education" is part of the problem here. So many "i yam very smart, I thinks different" people who don't know how far out of their lane of competence they are now. Sadly the contrarian impulse leads them into traps that others have set.
1. In comparing risks of adverse effects of drugs with those of covid vaccines the author is missing a big point. Namely, medications are given to help patients (i.e. already sick people) or prophylactically to people in serious risk of developing an illness. Covid vaccines have been given and continue to be given to perfectly healthy people who are in minimal risk. Now, other vaccines we do administer to healthy people, so a more proper comparison would be between other vaccines - but, while I don't have any data to quote, I believe you'll find significant higher risks of adverse effects from the covid vaccines than from previous vaccines.
2. > And the principles behind it [mRNA technology] are startlingly simple and elegant.
Now this is quite problematic the way I see it. First off, I have a medical degree and I find the technology incredibly complex. Secondly, the author uses "simplicity" as a crutch to support her argument further down that since mRNA translation happens outside the nucleus (where the DNA is) there is in no way any interaction between DNA and mRNA.
I'm not saying that the mRNA vaccines alter our DNA; I wouldn't know. I do know there are a couple of ways - at least - that mRNA can go back to DNA (retrotransposons for example). But, I also believe that when developing the technology, issues like this have been given serious thought by smarter and more knowledgeable people than me. That, however, doesn't take away the fact that the author is omitting quite a lot in order to present a nicer, simpler picture of reality. Well, that's quite close to lying in my book.
These two issues at least stood out for me. I'm not "anti-vaccine", I'm just "anti-bullshitting". And no, even if you have the best intentions in mind, it's still very much bullshit.
edit: minor layout edits
If someone is concerned about this they are either ignorant of how mRNA viruses such as SARS-COV-2 (and every "cold" and flu virus) reproduce or have to explain away how having a fixed amount of vaccine mRNA translation is bad, but having an unlimited amount of SARS-COV-2 translation (including those same spike proteins) is fine. This is a process that has happened literally billions, if not trillions, of times in every single HN readers body with other viruses not some exotic thing.
The assertion that the vaccines give you way less mRNA / cell death than the actual virus sounds like it should obviously be true, but I can't find any papers that measure it, and I keep encountering people for whom the vaccine appeared to actually give them COVID for a day or two. I've also known people who had COVID naturally and whose symptoms and duration was pretty much the same as those people reporting bad side effects from the vaccines, which I'd guess is somewhere between 25%-50% of people taking it, judging from my social circle, but it's hard to know exactly.
The best info I could get is that dosages were obtained by simply starting really low and then steadily increasing it until antibody titers were high "enough" and side effects were still considered tolerable. However the dosages of some brands are much higher than others. At that point information became proprietary and I couldn't go further. Still, given the wide range of severities of infections it's not totally clear why this process was expected to yield a drastically lower dose than all possible viral infections.