[bryant]

> For what it's (not) worth, it prompted me to sign up today. :)

More for my understanding than anything else, and with every guarantee that I won't present any follow-up questions or statements, but why was this the tipping point and not the actual disease risk mitigation resulting from the vaccine?

[interviewer0000]

Bleh, i'm 25, healthy, and more than all, lazy. But if it means I can take my mask off and be honest. I'm down.

[eganist]

Thanks, and thanks for getting it. :)

[QuarterReptile]

Not me, but a coworker of mine is the only guy in my office who hasn't been vaccinated (rest of us got second dose at end of January) because of adverse reactions to past (milder) vaccinations. He correctly assesses that he's in a very low risk environment, but at some point he'll probably risk the vaccine to not have pariah status.

But for the last 3 months, there was nothing to make the tradeoff worthwhile to him.

[hnra]

Glad that he didn’t value not being a disease vector which could spread the virus to someone who may be at risk. Vaccines work when most of society get vaccinated, it only requires a small minority of egos to make a forgotten disease rear its ugly head again.

[postalrat]

It was the first clear sign that the CDC is confident in the vaccine.

[josephcsible]

My guess: GP is young and healthy, so the chance of significant harm from COVID is nearly zero, and the vaccines for COVID have significantly worse side effects than pretty much any other vaccines given today. Thus, until today, it was a high-risk low-reward proposition.

[interviewer0000]

More or less spot on, but add a whole boat load of laziness to the equation.

[lamontcg]

The risk and severity of bad effects from COVID exceed the risks and severity of the bad effects from the vaccine across all age categories.

It is a low-risk, higher-reward proposition for everyone.

And even if all the virus does is fry your sense of smell you're better off with a few days of influenza-like symptoms from the vaccines.

[stopping]

Anecdotally, dozens of people in my social circle (aged 30-50) reported that the worst vaccine side effects were (1) a sore arm and (2) 24-48 hours of sleepy brain fog (even after the second dose). Among first and second degree connections on Facebook, I know of exactly two people who experienced the full gamut of flu-like symptoms, such as fever, chills, and whole-body aches for a day or two. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd estimate an upper bound of 10% for "moderately unpleasant" side effects among young-ish, moderately healthy individuals.

[kelnos]

Anecdotally, dozens of people in my social circle (aged 25-45 or so reported severe side effects, including at least three or four of sore arm, fever, chills, headaches, exhaustion, body aches, nausea, and brain fog. My girlfriend and I had five of them, for an entire day.

I'm not sure if your group's experience or mine is more typical. That's why comprehensive data is required to sort things out, and limited-number anecdotes are useless.

[weezin]

People with more robust immune systems (young people often) experience higher side effects from vaccination.

[lamontcg]

Basically none of which rises to the point of hospitalization and is gone in a few days.

The risk of hospitalization among even 18-29 year olds is not negligible. Neither is the risk of permanent side effects like diabetes. Those autoimmune conditions can and do strike even perfectly healthy individuals.

It is weird how the vaccine is probably 1000x safer than getting the virus, but young people in particular are happy with the idea that "that won't happen to me, I'm healthy and young" when it comes to the virus, while they're deeply concerned about vaccine side effects that really aren't concerning at all.

(And BTW "robust immune system" doesn't help you if your own immune system turns on you due to the virus).

[josephcsible]

You can't just weigh "The risk and severity of bad effects from COVID" with "the risks and severity of the bad effects from the vaccine". You also need to factor in that the probability of an unvaccinated person getting COVID isn't 100%.

[lamontcg]

The likelihood of the virus becoming endemic is very high which pushes the probability much closer to 100% for everyone.

[scythe]

About 10-30% of Americans got COVID-19 so far, depending on how you tally the numbers. Of those, approximately 8% can be expected to experience long-term effects that disrupt their daily lives: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/91270

>About 8% of all participants said at least one activity of daily living suffered long-term consequences, most commonly household chores.

That puts the net risk for non-vaccinated people at no less than 0.8%.

By contrast, the incidence of blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine, which caused its ouster, was about 0.001%. That's a factor of 800 in favor of vaccination with the worst of the vaccines.

[tryonenow]

And how do you measure the mid to long term risk of a novel mRNA technology which is effectively in trial now, under emergency approval, when vaccines typically take years of safety evaluations? Particularly considering that there are preprints out with a mechanism identified for reverse transcription of the spike producing mRNA, which could result in chronic inflammatory disease in some proportion of recipients, given that other preprints claim that the spike protein itself is a general inflammatory agent and may be responsible for clotting/vascular symptoms.

Note that reverse transcription of COVID RNA also is a convenient explanation for post symptomatic positive tests as well as long COVID symptoms.

I think it's irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with this novel technology, especially when people still have the option of continuing to socially isolate to some degree.

[lamontcg]

Vaccines either cause side effects in ~3 months or they don't. They could conceivably trigger long-term autoimmune conditions but they don't hide for years.

And we have a long track record of understanding this because viruses and vaccine cause the same kinds of autoimmune conditions. I had viral pericarditis once from a common cold that struck a month or two after I got over it. We've got hundreds of years of experience with it.

The issue with vaccines taking a long time to get approval is development time and efficacy data. Both of those were able to be done quickly due to the massive pandemic and due to the 10 years of preparatory work done on SARS-CoV-1 and mRNA vaccines.

And your interpretation of the reverse transcription article is just bullshit misinformation.

And you're still not escaping from being exposed to SARS-CoV-1 mRNA, it'll become endemic. You're getting it from the virus or the vaccine, there's not really going to be any skipping out.

(And if the LINE-1 results are correct this is how we pick up genetic material from all kinds of RNA viruses, our genome is littered with historical pandemics).

[scythe]

>Particularly considering that there are preprints out with a mechanism identified for reverse transcription of the spike producing mRNA, which could result in chronic inflammatory disease in some proportion of recipients

This doesn't make sense because the mRNA-based spike protein, unlike the natural spike protein, is specifically tuned to annoy the immune system. Any cells incorporating the vaccine mRNA into their DNA will be summarily executed for the very same reason that the vaccine works as a vaccine in the first place: it's an antigen.

>I think it's irresponsible to downplay the risks associated with this novel technology

What's irresponsible is couch-quarterbacking the epidemiological community and the medical authorities of ~every developed country in the world, based on preprints, in the face of a pandemic that has claimed ~10M lives globally.

[josephcsible]

Those numbers don't factor in age or preexisting conditions at all.

[scythe]

The safety factor is 800. Preexisting conditions and age aren't going to change the conclusion.

[nielsbot]

Newer variants are hitting young people harder. COVID is getting more dangerous to that group. Plus, as other posters have said, the vaccine is extremely safe.