| HN Mirror

As a Canadian who emigrated to the US, the attitude you so proudly display--ostracizing people who aren't convinced of a novel vaccine with zero long-term safety information--makes me so happy I live here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7956899/

It's not novel, this technology has been trialed and used for a decade, 3 years in vaccines.

We do already have long-term data. You would see side effects for a vaccine within six months, and we have been administering it for much longer than that.

The vaccines are safe.

This is incredibly misleading.

I used to be a close follower of the pharma industry, and you're making it seem like FDA trials happen on molecules and formulations somewhat related to the proposed formulation and then are, like, transitively approved on that hand-wavey basis. This is totally wrong.

For reasons that should be obvious to any engineer that's worked on any kind of even moderately complex system, the molecule that is tested and trialed is the molecule that goes to production.

You don't test "the technology" and then some unrelated other vaccine and then say, there we go, this one's safe.

You test the actual formulation that will go to production. This can't have happened for this yet. The trials are still underway. Unknown risk.

I dunno if you're misinformed or a troll, but that's dangerous stuff to be putting out there.

Vaccines are amazing life-saving tech, and they're safe because of our cultural technologies (FDA trials for e.g.) that make them safe. You can't take all the safety gear out and still get the same safety rating. Doesn't make sense, lol.

The flu shot that's available each year doesn't undergo long term trials - it actually usually goes through about nine months to a year of trials due to predictions on what the flu outbreak will look like - but even then the substance is a reconfiguration of technology with new details being integrated.

In some areas of medicine we can afford to move slowly and we absolutely should - but when it comes to the flu we don't have that luxury.

jaywalk 1814 days ago

And outside of some specific professions, the yearly flu shot is entirely optional. We don't have people running around screaming that you're a murderer or that you should be excluded from society if you choose not to get it. It's a personal medical decision, and that's the end of it.

Even if true, this novel molecule is not floating around in a body for an entire year waiting to have some side effect. They've been shooting it into people for a year and a half now. If there was something to worry about, it would have been seen.

But there are many parts of this vaccine that is shared with previous ones and the mechanics have been tested thoroughly. The science is the same. There's just no credible reason for those with normal immune systems to delay.

"This can't have happened for this yet. The trials are still underway. Unknown risk."

That's just simply untrue. The trials completed. Read the link.

Not sure why everyone keeps saying the trials completed, or which link you mean, because we can go right to the primary source (clinicaltrials.gov) and see that all the vaccines are still in Phase 3 of FDA trials. Here are the links.

Please stop spreading misinformation during a deadly pandemic.

Moderna's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427 Estimated Study Completion Date: October 27, 2022

Pfizer's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728 Estimated Study Completion Date: May 2, 2023

JnJ's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722 Estimated Study Completion Date: January 2, 2023

You're spreading doubt about vaccines during a pandemic. Please stop.

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Scree...

> Even if true, this novel molecule is not floating around in a body for an entire year waiting to have some side effect. They've been shooting it into people for a year and a half now. If there was something to worry about, it would have been seen.

There are lots of things we do see and we should worry about. The problem is that we can't tell right away if it's just noise, if it's a potentially rare side-effect. Then you have the problems like Myocarditis, which are clearly caused by the vaccine, which we hand-wave away with speculative "the benefits still outweigh the risk" scenarios:

Right, anything not yet discovered is going to be a pretty rare side effect. We're still learning about what covid does to the body, tell me about the side effects of getting sick.

baq 1814 days ago

> "the benefits still outweigh the risk"

this is not handwaving, this is the foundation stone of modern medicine.

timr 1814 days ago

> You would see side effects for a vaccine within six months, and we have been administering it for much longer than that.

We have now had two separate rare-but-serious side effects of different Covid vaccines: the CVT issue with J&J, and the myocarditis issue with the mRNA vaccines in children. It's disingenuous to suggest that the vaccines are "safe" merely because they've been widely administered; even the question of what "safe" means is a far more nuanced question than you're presenting. For children, in particular, two-dose vaccination with the mRNA vaccines is probably a poor risk/benefit profile. We didn't know that until we started dosing enough kids to see the rare side effects.

The phase 3 trials were not powered to detect rare side effects, which is part of the reason that they're still classified as emergency use, and not fully approved.

I am an advocate for vaccination, but it's not right to ignore these issues.

Pyramus 1814 days ago

I don't think anyone is ignoring these issues - on the contrary, even in these very rare cases of side effects vaccination efforts were halted immediately.

Safe is always relative. If you don't think the vaccines are safe enough, then please also be consistent and don't engage in equally unsafe activities, e.g. don't drive a car, exercise regularly, eat healthily, don't encourage your girlfriend/wife/daughter/friend to take the contraceptive pill or, even worse, get pregnant, also do not take a large number of other drugs etc.

Again, from what we know today, it is safer to vaccinate your kids then driving them around in a car. Even when the risk/benefit profile is even/negative, absolute risk is super low.

timr 1814 days ago

> Again, from what we know today, it is safer to vaccinate your kids then driving them around in a car.

...and if it were choice between vaccinating kids and driving them places, then this example would be relevant.

We don't approve drugs simply because they're less risky for a target population than some other selection of risky things.

> Even when the risk/benefit profile is even/negative, absolute risk is super low.

Yes. So is the benefit.

Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe.

These vaccines are very, very unlikely to give anyone a hard time. Nothing's without risk, but even for the unlucky that doesn't even sound that bad.

As soon as my son is eligible, he's getting it, too.

timr 1814 days ago

> Not ignoring but these are very rare side effects. It's something for doctors to know about in order to help treat the unlucky. But I think we have different meanings of the word safe.

The chances that a child will experience anything other than extremely minor illness from Covid is also very rare. The current numbers are teetering on the edge of implying that children are at more risk from the vaccine than from the virus.

My definition of the word "safe" includes the rational weighing of risks vs. benefit for a target population. Is it worth it to put kids at risk from myocarditis that exceeds their risk from Covid, just to reduce population-level Covid stats and reduce the marginal risk to the elderly? I don't know, but it's not a question to simply ignore.

[1]: https://downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP%20and%20CHA%20-%20Chil...

raphlinus 1814 days ago

Child deaths from Covid-19 in the US as of 6/24 [1]: 336

Child deaths attributed to vaccines [2]: 0. We can break this down further: 3 deaths from blood clots attributed to adenovirus vector vaccine, none in children. 616 reports of myocarditis[3], 393 confirmed, none fatal.

[2]: https://covid-101.org/science/how-many-people-have-died-from...

[3]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

> The vaccines are safe.

This is true by medicinal standards, but it's also a sleight-of-hand. The AstraZeneca vaccine had a rare side-effect that was right on track to kill more young women in Europe than the virus itself. That's why it was banned. By that standard, I could argue the viral infection is also safe - for young women at least.

1. https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/covid-19-vaccine-astrazene...

Just to clarify - that is false. It is generally advisable to get Moderna/Pfizer if they're available and you're a young woman but the chance of mortal thrombosis is around 5 per one million. The EU recommends getting AZ over not receiving a vaccine if that is the only option available to you[1] - though at this point there should be a sufficient supply of alternatives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford%E2%80%93AstraZeneca_COV...

> Just to clarify - that is false.

It isn't false, though the blanket "it was banned" statement lacks context:

> It is generally advisable to get Moderna/Pfizer if they're available and you're a young woman but the chance of mortal thrombosis is around 5 per one million.

No, the risk for anyone to develop a lethal thrombosis is roughly 5 per million. The chances are much higher for younger women, to the point where it exceeds the risk to die of COVID.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0/figures/2

Pyramus 1814 days ago

Again, that is false.

It's not even close, for women age 20-29 the risk of fatal thrombosis is 1:250k, while Covid is somewhere around 1:25k [1]. That's a whole order of magnitude.

The risk/benefit ratio of AZ vaccine is only poor when the risk of exposure is very low [2].

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

That was caught and the shots stopped. Millions of people have had the other vaccines with no similar bad news. If there was any kind of wide-spread problem, it would have been loudly seen by now and those vaccines would have also been pulled. There has not been.

The vaccines (being administered now) are safe.

> If there was any kind of wide-spread problem, it would have been loudly seen by now and those vaccines would have also been pulled. There has not been.

Yes, if it was a wide-spread problem. The side-effect that killed AstraZeneca wasn't widespread, it was extremely rare, and it was caught because it was such an unlikely combination of symptoms. Yet, this extremely rare side-effect was enough to make the vaccine more dangerous than the virus - to young women at least.

In a year, when all the facts are collected and processed, we'll see how much trouble the Pfizer vaccine really caused in terms of Myocarditis. Then we'll scramble to make up numbers on how many infections must've been prevented by the vaccine to make it all worthwhile.

In most cases it goes away on it's own or people don't even know they got it.. That doesn't seem all that scary.

peter422 1814 days ago

How sure are you about the long term effects of COVID?

Oh, not very sure at all. However, I may have already have it, so that cat's out of the bag (and invalidates any reason to get the vaccine anyways). Or I may never get it. Taking the vaccine, which includes three brand new medical technologies and has not completed phase3 trial, guarantees me taking that risk.

I am extremely healthy, have a great diet, and as a farmer, I get plenty of time soaking up vitamin D, a potent inhibitor of covid. The vaccine doesn't make any sense for me to take.

Normal disclaimer, I am a huge, huge believer in vaccines, and am probably more vaccinated (due to travel and other circumstances) than nearly everyone reading this comment. I believe bar none vaccines are the medical technology that has saved the most lives in our history as a species. Big fan of vaccines.

But, vaccines are made safe via clinical trials and long-term studies. These vaccines are wholly new in type, were rushed to market, have liability waivers for those pushing them, and to make things even worse, the manufacturers aren't collecting followup data about adverse events in any kind of systematic way (as they would during a normal phase4). So it seems to me the playbook that gave us generations of safe vaccines that saved billions of lives has been thrown out the window.

No thanks!

lame-robot-hoax 1814 days ago

You have no clue what you are talking about and have spouted multiple falsehoods in your comment, especially in regards to phase 3 trials not being completed (they are) and that they are not conducting follow ups for an extended period of time (again, they are).

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-vaccines-idU...

They have filed for full authorization for a reason. These vaccines have enough data backing their safety for full approval.

I don't know where you're getting your information from, but what I stated is very easy to validate and I'm completely correct. Here are the links to the actual FDA trials for the different major co vid vaccines on clinicaltrials.gov as well as their associated estimated completion dates. All are currently in Phase 3 trials. (Aside, it's not clear how they will complete reporting for these trials as the companies blew up the placebo arms of the study. I guess that's another role I can play in this pandemic, being the control arm of the experimental trials currently underway.)

Please do not spread misinformation, especially misinformation about healthcare during a deadly and dangerous pandemic. Lives are at stake.

Moderna's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04470427 Estimated Study Completion Date: October 27, 2022

Pfizer's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728 Estimated Study Completion Date: May 2, 2023

JnJ's FDA trial: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04505722 Estimated Study Completion Date: January 2, 2023

lame-robot-hoax 1814 days ago

You obviously didn’t read my link as it addresses exactly what you’re saying in your comment.

Study completion date does not mean phase 3 trial completion date.

“ However, these dates do not mean clinical trials will continue for this long, and instead reference continued safety monitoring after the vaccine has been approved and rolled out, which is standard practice within the industry”

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Get a clue. Lives are at stake. Vaccination will save them. The majority of people dying now are dying because they made the choice not to get vaccinated.

peter422 1814 days ago

Nothing is perfectly safe. All the vaccines you have taken have side effects. So does the food you eat and the Sun exposure you get.

The current data we have shows the vaccines are very safe to a high degree of certainty. If you had created a bar beforehand, they’d have met it. But you can always keep moving the goalposts.

croes 1814 days ago

Did I miss the long term safety information of the corona virus?

wait_a_minute 1814 days ago

Hear hear. That will never be the norm in the United States of America, no matter what some cliques and bubbles online seem to think.

YawningAngel 1814 days ago

This has nothing to do with what I said. You are reacting to anti-vaccine views other people have that are not expressed in my comment. I said that _if_ Covid-19 infection confers equal levels of protection to vaccination then it is irresponsible to try and coerce people who have been infected to get vaccinations they don't need. I have said nothing about anything else. If you have issues with what those people have said you should take it up with them

andybak 1814 days ago

To be fair, your comment was rather nebulous. If you're going to comment on a topic that tends to polarize people, then it's wise to be slightly more explicit in one's statements.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 1814 days ago

> are ostracized

That sounds like hell.

stronglikedan 1814 days ago

> hell

My Canadian friends seem to think that's what their country has turned into, and on just about every front, not just vaccines.

Yea, I unfortunately have a lot of friends and family still there, and almost all of them are not gonna take the vaccine and find the social environment very taxing.

But, they are still OK, because they know we're never given any challenge to great for our spirits to overcome.

> I'm up in Canada where vaccine hesitancy has been almost unheard of[1] and those who refuse to get vaccinated, excepting those that can't for medical reasons, are ostracized for their overtly selfish actions.

In other words, those who value individual freedom might want to avoid Canada for its over-boarding groupthink and overtly collectivist mentality.

I actually strongly disagree with this point. America has a very precise definition of individual freedom that I disagree with - it's a big part of why I emigrated. In the US you're absolutely free to die as you wish - in Canada you're free to live a healthy life and do with that life what you may.

Socialism and socialized healthcare frequently gets painted as being anti-freedom but I think that the lack of socialized healthcare infringes more effectively on individual freedoms than the presence of it. In the case of vaccinations - encouraging widespread vaccination (and there is currently and probably will never be a mandate) allows more of the population to act freely. Canada is only behind on vaccinations (and, in total doses administered we're now actually tied) due to the fact that we don't have domestic production facilities which resulted on our dose orders being delayed until America dealt with their domestic population. I don't think that's unfair and I've been pretty critical of the LPC that failed to build out domestic production facilities early into the pandemic but - eh, we work with what we've got.

I think you are projecting what you view as two options in America - either communism or individual freedoms - onto the rest of the world. That is a myopic approach to take when considering all the cultures and governments in the world.

> In the US you're absolutely free to die as you wish - in Canada you're free to live a healthy life and do with that life what you may.

...while ostracized for defending your self-interest?

I'm not saying one is strictly better than the other. It's a tradeoff. As they say in New York: "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere". The corollary of that might be: "If you can't make it here, move to Canada".

Lack of socialized healthcare? The USA has at least 3 times as many people on government healthcare than the entire population of Canada (Medicare, Medicaid, the VA). The USA has the second- third-largest government-run healthcare system in the world.

As a person who lived 20 years in Canada and 14 in the USA, I'll take the USA every day of the week--and for the past year I've paid for my own health insurance directly.

Canada's healthcare system is run by bureaucrats who prioritize many items ahead of citizen health.

Here's one example: A family member is a police officer. While I was visiting home, in Ontario, he was hit with some insane shoulder-related pain. This is one tough guy and he was reduced to tears--some kind of nerve damage or something.

The hospital in Canada told him he needed an MRI. And that it would take between 4 and 6 months til there was an available slot. They gave him a prescription for strong opiates to manage the pain during his wait.

I drove him over the border to Buffalo, shelled out $500, and he had his MRI in less than half an hour. The drive was longer than the wait in the radiology clinic.

There are tradeoffs in every situation. I think Canada's healthcare system is better in one exact way: Nobody's bankrupted of their financial wealth due to healthcare. But many many many Canucks are bankrupted of their actual health, their time, their human wealth, due to healthcare.

EL_Loco 1814 days ago

>shelled out $500, and he had his MRI in less than half an hour.

What happens if you're poor and don't have anyone to turn to for the $500? Will it take the same time to get a free MRI as it does in Canada? Can you get it fro free at all in the US? (Real question, I don't know how it works and am curious)

It's unfortunately impossible to answer this question as it relies on a number of factors. If you are now in the military you're going to have an easy time through tricare - if you were previously in the military you should be able to get an MRI for free from the VA, but you may have an easier time utilizing medicaid or, if you're old enough to qualify, medicare. Additionally, if you're considering getting coverage through medicaid there are generally a wide number of requirements for eligibility that can range from trivial (I was automatically enrolled in green mountain care when I was an out of work student in VT) to extremely onerous work seeking requirements in some southern states. Medicare, if you're old enough to be eligible, is usually pretty guaranteed but you'll need to be near retirement age to access it.

The TL;DR is that you may be able to get it for free, but there's a very large proportion of the population that fails to qualify for medicaid and also won't have the financial stability to float $500 out of pocket and, if they happened to get one, wouldn't be able to afford any follow up treatment.

But I totally agree that the US system is an absolute breeze if you've got money to spare.