[JuliusPullo]

The Covid vaccine does not work by directly stimulating the immune system, like all other vaccines do. Instead, it inserts synthetic molecules into some cells, turning them into little machines that constantly produce a toxin that is released into the blood stream. The immune system is supposed to learn to fight this toxin. This has NEVER before been done in any other vaccine. We could speculate for hours about what could go wrong, but for the moment lets just say that myocarditis and blood clots are definitely NOT mild side effects.

[edmundsauto]

Myocarditis and blood clots are also (more frequently) side effects from getting C19.

Just because it's never been done before does not mean we have no idea what it will or won't do. Biology is uncertain, but it's important to examine the vaccine risks AGAINST COVID RISKS.

Nothing is no-risk, including the vaccine. However, the accurate comparison is getting covid without the vax, versus with the vax. Looking at the vaccine risks in isolation is somewhere between misleading and dishonest.

[effie]

The vaccine can 1) hurt me with probability p1, and 2) help me with probability p2, in case I get COVID later in a few-month-window after the vaccine when it is efficient.

I can choose to not get the vaccine, but I can't choose to not get COVID. COVID may hurt me either way.

Depending on the values p1, p2, it's better to get the vaccine or not get it. The problem is, most people have no idea about values of p1, p2 and that they are highly dependent on personal details.

[edmundsauto]

Transmission to others is still an issue in the un-vaccinated.

Your logic doesn't make sense. You absolutely can choose to not get the serious covid version that hospitalizes you: by getting the vaccine! By socially distancing, and not hanging out with people who don't take very basic precautions. Even your second sentence: "COVID may hurt me either way" doesn't reflect reality - it's MUCH MUCH MUCH more likely to hurt you if you are unvaccinated.

And while personal details may vary, we can estimate covid risks pretty well with the population base rate, sliced by a few basic dimensions (age, BMI, smoker status). We also have a pretty good idea of vaccine risks - almost none.

We may not know vaccine side effects long term, but we also don't know the effects of long term covid. We do know that short term, the disease is way worse than the vaccine, and the more people that have it, the more chance it gets worse.

Look, I'm all for people making their own choice when it comes to the vaccine. Similarly, I think it's fair that society have a say about when unvaccinated people are allowed to participate in society.

[longhairedhippy]

I call bullshit here. If you're that worried, get the J&J vaccine, it's just like all the others. Multiple orders of magnitude more people have died or come down with long haul COVID versus had these side effects so the argument that you're doing the safe thing does not hold water.

[realreality]

J&J is not like other most other vaccines. It uses an adenovirus vector to do the same thing that the mRNA vaccines do.

If you're worried about that, get Sinovac or Covaxin, which are the only traditional, inactivated virus vaccines available (that I'm aware of).

Oh, but for the purposes of mandates, those vaccines aren't accepted.

[longhairedhippy]

Adenovirus vaccines have been in use since the 70s.

[effie]

> Multiple orders of magnitude more people have died or come down with long haul COVID

Yes but a very small part of those are relevant to my personal assessment of risk of bad COVID. The risk depends strongly on age, health status, lifestyle and so on. Absolute numbers of deaths are not that important to personal risk assessment.

[longhairedhippy]

I would be completely shocked if your "personal risk assessment" is accurate. There is no clear indications on which folks will get long COVID, "age, health status, lifestyle, and so on" are generalizations not absolutes. Your chance of dying of COVID, regardless of your health status, is much greater than the chance of experiencing serious side effects in what is probably one of the most widely distributed vaccines in history.

"Feelings" have no place in science. These are numbers not subjective anecdotes, which appear to be what you're basing your decision on. Say what you like, the data doesn't lie, only people do.

[hackinthebochs]

Risk assessment given missing data is very much personal and subjective. It's ridiculous that some try to use "the science" as a justification for their personal values or risk assessments.

[silver-arrow]

Do no harm. You have no idea of the real risk from the vaccine because they really aren’t looking. Not 1 child should have been made to suffer myocarditis or died from the vaccine vs their risk of covid. Not one. But many have.

[longhairedhippy]

"Think of the children!" one of my favorite ways to see people trying to get out of an argument. Who could possibly argue for wanting to hurt children!

I would love some citations here, as this seems to be the exact type of misinformation this act is trying to combat. The thought that hundreds of thousands of medical professionals across the world are willingly ignoring potentially fatal consequences for children out of some nefarious political agenda is ludicrous. If this was really happening, it would be trivial to show it, anecdotes are not hard data.

In the same vein, not 1 immunocompromised child should die from COVID when there is an easy and safe way to combat it. Not one. But many have.

[chana_masala]

I don't think it's from a nefarious political agenda, but more so ignorance, stubbornness and scientism/cargo cult science (trust the science is not scientific).

[longhairedhippy]

As many folks as we have dog piling onto "vax bad" train, there is no shortage of people with incentive to dig in here. The fact the vaccine has been fully vetted in the same manner as any other vaccine seems to be lost on most folks. Additionally, this seems to be an extension of general vaccine hesitancy which has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever but continues be a problem in the US.

When you have nuts sticking spoons to their face, claiming to have been magnetized, and those folks are speaking with equal authority and to as broad of an audience as respected scientists, there's a problem.

[chana_masala]

> The fact the vaccine has been fully vetted in the same manner as any other vaccine seems to be lost on most folks.

In terms of time, these vaccines very much have not been fully vetted in the same manner as any other vaccine.

> this seems to be an extension of general vaccine hesitancy

In part, yes. However there seems to be roughly an equal amount of people who have never had any objection to vaccines in the past that now do.

> hesitancy which has absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever

You mean Scientific(TM) basis? Because there are numerous reason to be HESITANT in terms of science (the process of uncovering what is and is not true). E.g. vaccine reactions are not a myth - we should study them more; vaccine mechanism is still sometimes opaque - we should know more about that and how someone's genetic play a part; adjuvants that have side effects are also not a myth - what about finding safer adjuvants?

> nuts ... speaking with equal authority and to as broad of an audience as respected scientists, there's a problem

To be clear, you're saying they should be censored?

Censorship is a Russian Doll problem. It's turtles all the way down. Who makes the censors unbiased? Science should continue to be about questioning what is believed and believed to be true.

There are skeptics on both sides of the bell curve of intelligence. A nut, as you say, and an intelligent scientist may both come to the same conclusion - it doesn't make the nut's reasoning correct, but it also doesn't make the scientist's conclusion wrong either, just because the nut believes it too.

[pigeonhole123]

J&J also works by producing spike proteins

[longhairedhippy]

Adenovirus vaccines have been in use since the 70s.

[gmnash]

This is not accurate.

“mRNA vaccines tell our cells to make a piece of the “spike protein” that is found on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Since only part of the protein is made, it does not harm the vaccine recipient, but it is antigenic and thus stimulates the immune system to make antibodies.”

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hcp/mrna.html

[jimbob45]

https://healthcare.utah.edu/healthfeed/postings/2021/07/bloo...

>VITT is not associated with the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines.

We're talking 400 cases of VITT from two specific vaccines (AZ and J&J) out of 6.2 billion doses given. Furthermore, COVID itself is associated with getting blood clots. In fact, you have a much higher chance of getting blood clots by staying unvaccinated than getting the vaccine. Even further, blood clots are entirely treatable if caught early.

Of course, as others have said, blood clots aren't a legitimate concern for anyone. This is yet another shifting of the goalposts.