[Turing_Machine]

Unlike older vaccines (such as polio vaccine) which generally used weakened or killed whole virus particles (and which occasionally produced infectious cases, due to the virus not being as weak or dead as intended), this vaccine contains no whole virus particles and thus cannot result in an infectious case.

It contains RNA that cause the patient's cells to emit proteins normally produced by the viral infection (which can then be recognized by the immune system), but contains none of the genetic material required to produce standalone infectious virus particles.

This is a new thing; these will the first vaccines using this technology to be approved.

The chairman likely isn't worried about the vaccine itself producing infections, but rather does not know whether a vaccinated patient might also develop an active infection before the vaccine takes effect.

[whimsicalism]

Not that I agree with GPs concern, but this comment doesn't address it whatsoever.

[Turing_Machine]

It absolutely does address it.

The Pfizer chairman is saying he doesn't know whether you can get a spreadable COVID-19 infection after the vaccine has been administered, but before it takes full effect.

That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19.

[whimsicalism]

> That's an entirely different thing from the vaccination CAUSING an infectious case of COVID-19.

If you read carefully, you'd see that's not the concern.

[FruityCoconut]

There is absolutely 0% chance I'll be letting that anywhere near my family. And I was a biomedical scientist formerly.

Over my dead body (one way or another).

[mandelbrotwurst]

Why?

[FruityCoconut]

The risks far outweigh the rewards. We're deliberately injecting ourselves with foreign genetic material that hijacks our cells' machinery to produce viral proteins by design. For my consent, I don't have anywhere near enough faith yet in the people hastily developing such technology, their employers striving to be first to market, or the bureaucrats desperate to give their electorates the impression that they have everything under control.

Maybe if I lived in a large, diverse city, I would be forced to consider it (I would far more likely move my family somewhere safer). But where I am fortunate to live, it makes absolutely no sense.