So I've heard this is will be the first mRNA vaccine on the market, ever. How worried should I be, given the political pressure to get a COVID19 vaccine to market as quickly as possible?
I wouldn't sorry too much. We understand a lot of old worries and so we know they don't apply. They have a lot of data from previous forms of this type of things suggesting it is safe. We know the that injected "things" break down very quickly in the body, which again makes us believe there won't be any long term problems. Of course in the end who knows. There could be something, and we may not know for 10 years.
On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now. We have enough data to confidently state that the long term adverse effects are overall less bad than Covid.
Sadly we cannot confidently state anything about the long term effects. Maybe mRNA has some horrible long term side effect that shows after a year. It’s unlikely but we can’t say anything about long-term yet.
What we can say is that we need this pandemic squashed and it’s a risk we as a global population are ready to take.
> We understand a lot of old worries and so we know they don't apply.
What are "old worries"? This is a new type of vaccine.
> They have a lot of data from previous forms of this type of things suggesting it is safe.
How does this make sense, given this is the first mRNA vaccine? The expression "previous forms of this type of things" is as blurry as it can get.
> We know the that injected "things" break down very quickly in the body, which again makes us believe there won't be any long term problems.
Heavy metals are "things", and when you inject them in the body, they don't break down, but stay there and slowly kill you.
> Of course in the end who knows. There could be something, and we may not know for 10 years.
This is not the attitude I'd take on something that potentially hundreds of millions of people will be subjected to. I'm aware that you can't ever prove something to be safe. I want to know if the specific risk brought about by mRNA vaccines are well understood or not, and why.
> On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now.
It doesn't.
> We have enough data to confidently state that the long term adverse effects are overall less bad than Covid.
Splendid, I'm not going to ask for sources then, because I like the tone of your voice so much.
Old worries are whatever went wrong in previous medicine. (not just vaccines)
> given this is the first mRNA vaccine?
This is not the first mRNA vaccine, they have been using it against cancer for many years. They have had time to look for long term bad effects. If there are any they must be rare because none of been detected yet.
>Heavy metals ...
we also know when they are a problem and when not. This don't contain the bad forms. I don't even need to bother looking this up to state that confidently. The people working on this are not that stupid.
> On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now.
> It doesn't
several hundred thousand dead already. And Covid is only around 9-10 months old. I didn't even get into long term effects of Covid. I personally have lost family to Covid, and have others who are having a hard time because of long term effects.
>I'm not going to ask for sources
The press release is the main one: no adverse effects noted.
I am going to wait for the science to be published before getting this (or any vaccine). However there is every reason to believe it will be good based on what we do know.
The worry is that an adverse effect would be discovered, but then every world leader would get on the phone one after the other, and call the lab to say "hey let's not let people know about this." Or more realistically, the same would happen but with lots of implicit gesturing and the design of subtle incentives, instead of direct phone calls.
"Better than covid" is also not a great bar to meet. The real bar is, "better than N months of covid, where N is the time until a better vaccine with fewer adverse effects is discovered."
So, these are both abstract speculations. It would be nice if you could put some knowledge to them. Do you think it would be possible for an adverse effect to go unreported, while being common enough to equal those N months of covid?
Disclaimer: It's late, and I need to confirm this statement from a immunology researcher in my network. If you are a R&D professional with the right expertise, please feel free to jump in.
There are two risks at hand here: (a) using the novel mRNA vaccine technology, and (b) using it with the SARS-CoV2 virus. While I can not say anything about the former, the aforementioned researcher in my network mentioned that as with Human papillomavirus (HPV) and other cancerogenic viruses, the SARS-CoV2 family might have tumor generating effects. Using it with a vaccine could be risky - getting infected could be risky, too.
> How worried should I be (...)
This is why we have multi stage clinical trials. Fast tracking a trial does not necessarily mean that it less testing will be done. On the contrary, the amount of resources behind these vaccine candidates are enormeous. Of course, long term effects are hard to catch. But the same applies for the long term effects of an SARS-CoV2 infection. Time and experiments will tell. Let's hope for the best.
On the other hand, we know that Covid is killing a large number of people right now. We have enough data to confidently state that the long term adverse effects are overall less bad than Covid.