[ElHacker]

This is great news! I'll definitely be in line to get it whenever my turn comes.

A thing that keeps worrying me is the amount of people I've seen/chatted with (empirical evidence) that don't trust these vaccines. The most common comments they make are: "I don't want to be guinea pig", "How do I know the government won't control me", and more conspiracy theories. All of these fears seem to come from misinformation on the internet, friends and family get a ton of memes/fake news through WhatsApp highlighting the unproven negative effects of the vaccine. Is there any effective way to control the propagation of misinformation on these platforms? How would one even get started to tackle that problem?

[Animats]

No problem. All that's needed to get people wanting it is to tell them they can't have it. Just announce that it will be distributed last to places that don't require masks, and watch the screams.

[crystalmeph]

I think the approach here is one of messaging.

Some people think emotionally, not logically. Figuring that out took me way longer in life than it should have.

Logical thinkers will be able to do the risk/benefit analysis with “good enough” fidelity so long as data is available, so you don’t really have to worry about convincing them.

For the emotional thinkers, whom I am assuming have a large intersection with the people that believe misinformation (that assumption may need to be checked, but I ... just don’t have that data), perhaps we would have had better luck by pushing a message like “we are all soldiers in a war now, and soldiers take risks to protect each other.” Complete with an advertising campaign featuring a frontline combat veteran recounting how she walked out under enemy fire to rescue her comrades, and subtly or not-so-subtly shaming people who are unwilling to take tiny risks to protect their fellow soldier-citizens.

[macksd]

It isn't entirely the typical anti-vax nonsense or outlandish conspiracy theories, though. mRNA vaccines are entirely new and I don't believe we've had even traditional vaccines start getting used outside of trials so quickly before. This is new ground, and not without its own potential risks.

[henrikschroder]

It's important to understand that antivaxxers are wrong not because they make a risk analysis of vaccines, but because they make that analysis based on flawed data. They severely undervalue the risks of the various diseases, and severely overvalue the risks of the vaccines, and land in the wrong conclusion that every single vaccine therefore is bad for you.

But they're not wrong in making that risk analysis in the first place.

I do not belong to a risk group for covid-19. I don't live with anyone in a risk group, I don't hang out with people in a risk group or even meet with them. So I don't mind being at the back of the line for this vaccine, the risk of the disease is negligible to me, while the risk of the vaccine is unknown. I don't mind waiting and seeing what happens after millions of people have gotten the vaccine before I get it myself. That minimizes the risk to me.

But my dad belongs to a risk group, so for him the same risk analysis gets a different result, because his risk of dying is a hundred times greater than my risk of dying. So he will try to get vaccinated as soon as he can, as he should.

[dehrmann]

> They severely undervalue the risks of the various diseases, and severely overvalue the risks of the vaccines, and land in the wrong conclusion that every single vaccine therefore is bad for you.

What's the data look like for long-term effects of an mRNA vaccine?

[lbeltrame]

What are the long-term effects of vaccines everyone is talking about? This is not a loaded question, I'm asking in good faith.

And I ask because even the rarest documented effects occur within 3-4 months of administration, which is hardly long-term.

There may be a case for a specific Lyme disease vaccine, but thanks to the anti-vaxxers, the whole thing was withdrawn (against FDA recommendation) before the actual reason could be found.

[macksd]

I think the bigger concern in this case is that we don't know. And the overwhelmingly strong historical case for vaccines that exist doesn't really apply that well here since it's a pretty new approach of essentially doing gene therapy to get your own body to produce the protein that triggers the immune response. And as far as I know (and admittedly, my slightly more-than-average time spent researching this still rounds down to nothing) that technique has only been used in humans on a fairly rare disease so far. I'm definitely optimistic from the data so far. I'm more likely to get it since I know I'm done having children anyway. If I was high risk I would probably get it. But I'm not high risk. I'm also optimistic I could survive a COVID-19 infection. I'm not rushing out the door to get my hands on either to be honest.

[dehrmann]

Exactly. This is a new type of vaccine that was rushed through testing being deployed widely for a disease that kills less than 1% of people who get it.

[warent]

I think the best we can do is lead by example in the short term, and in the long term investigate the failure of education systems that bring this about

[lame-robot-hoax]

This is what I think too. I try to do my best to talk to these people and alleviate their fears. But as well, I predict that as their family and friends and millions of people in general in front of them receive the vaccine, and end up fine, that it will change their mind. The vaccine will go from being spooky to no big deal.

[bt1a]

Disinformation and the rise of computer generated audio, video, and images is going to make this problem even more challenging. I think we may need to come up with ways to sign audio, video, and images that guarantee that the media is captured naturally (or that the media hasn't been tampered with since it was spread by a certain entity).

I also think we need to build back the public's trust in institutions. Once they deserve that trust. When anyone with any motive can spread content online that reaches thousands or millions without much of an editorial process, well... it's proven to be disrupting.

These are very challenging problems.. I'm counting on Tristan Harris to bring us something.

[blakjak44]

> A thing that keeps worrying me is the amount of people I've seen/chatted with (empirical evidence) that don't trust these vaccines. The most common comments they make are: "I don't want to be guinea pig", "How do I know the government won't control me", and more conspiracy theories. All of these fears seem to come from misinformation on the internet, friends and family get a ton of memes/fake news through WhatsApp highlighting the unproven negative effects of the vaccine. Is there any effective way to control the propagation of misinformation on these platforms? How would one even get started to tackle that problem?

Whether or not you agree with their opinions or the sources they derived them from, what you're advocating is dangerous. Who should have that authority to determine what is and is not misinformation?

[crowf]

Well it sure doesn't help people gain trust in the institution when the large cooperations like Facebook Google and Twitter censor wrong speak with the blessing of many political leaders. eg. YouTube will censor videos about election fraud (in the 2020 presidential election not the 2018 Georgia senator election) or anything against the WHO (even though they corrected themselves a few times).

[djsumdog]

The WHO has even been telling countries that the lockdowns don't work and I feel like everyone has stopped listening.

[djsumdog]

Misinformation? This is literally a very untested vaccine. There are literally no longitudinal studies. You should be weary of this vaccine. I am not an unintelligent person. I have a bachelors and masters and I am very weary of something that has been spread through its trials this quickly.

The people who you hear say "I don't want to be guinea pig" ... they're not wrong. This vaccine could be perfectly safe .. or we could see a lot of edge cases when you start injection a million people at a time with it. On top of all of that, you can be sure hospital will be sure to force front line workers to take it first.

Please, let's be honest about this. Why are we suddenly trusting drug companies after disasters like viox. I'm not against vaccines in general. I've had all my MMRs, took my Typhoid, Meningitis, Hep B for certain overseas trips. But those took time to go through trials and were vetted for safety in a way this simply hasn't had the time to.

People are going to be weary and that's not wrong. That's not "anti-science." This is legitimately going to be an experiment which, if they get wrong, can potentially harm a lot of people. You only need to look back to the 70s and the Swine Flu vaccine disaster.

[quesera]

> You should be weary of this vaccine. I am not an unintelligent person. I have a bachelors and masters and I am very weary of something ...

The Department of English Pedantry advises:

Thou art not weary of aforementioned indignances, but thou mightest be wary of them.

[pldr1234]

There's some value to their fear. I share some of it too.

These are some of the fastest-to-market vaccines ever produced. Some were also developed with technology never used before at this scale.

There's some nuance to the fear though - for example, once frontline, health workers and people like Dr Fauci are vaccinated, and it becomes clear that these are at least as safe as flu vaccines, I'll also likely take one, if only for the sole reason that I sorely miss travel.

[djsumdog]

> it becomes clear

It's won't though, not for at least 1~5 years. All the long term studies are being skipped. So long as this vaccine is a choice, I'm okay with it. But if it becomes required for certain jobs, or to be able to enter a store or venue ... I dunno. The speed that this has been rushed through just does not feel right.

I would rather wait 5 years. I prefer that risk for myself over the risk of a rushed to market vaccine. The trouble is, everyone will yell that you not getting the shot can hurt everyone else.

This gets into the dangerous game of personal agency, liberty and autonomy vs what the State is telling you is mandatory for the safety of all. There won't be enough doses for this to matter for a while, but when it does, we'll see some big ethical concerns and court cases.

[lbeltrame]

> All the long term studies are being skipped.

There are no long term studies. The reason vaccines take so much in "regular" circumstances are:

- Actually finding money to run the trials

- Run Phase 1, 2, 3 trials one after another

- (longest) Waiting for the events (infections) to accrue: if it's not in a pandemic, and with relatively low incidence, this takes years to happen

- Regulatory approval (if not in emergency, that's two years)

- Production scale-up (at least one year)

The fact that vaccines takes years to develop for safety is a myth. It is mostly a matter of time, and the fact that we were used to them taking years. Let's not forget smallpox and rabies vaccinations took far less to be invented, and people devising them didn't even know what viruses were. And also because most of the easy targets are now done. What's left are the harder ones (HIV). SARS-CoV-2 might have been hard, or one of the easy pickings. Luckily, it fell into the "easy" camp.

In this specific case, production was started during the trials, events, due to the fact that the virus is spreading like wildfire in the USA, took a matter of weeks to accrue (from 35 in October to 94 two weeks later, according to the Pfizer data), and the fact that an obscene amount of money was spent meant that most trials were started as soon as possible.

But, even looking at the protocols, you might notice that it ticks all the good boxes for proper clinical research.