[adevx]

Thanks for calling me an idiot. I make a well researched decision to not get vaccinated based on my lifestyle, risk profile, the unknown long term effects of the vaccines, the known declining efficacy of the vaccines and the way we are blindly pushing this on everyone. Calling people idiots isn't going to help the discussion.

[hktlfnfnd]

Sars-cov-2 infection also has unknown long term effects. Why do you think they are less risky than the vaccine ones? Or you assume you'll very unlikely to get infected.

[nerdponx]

This. I'm sure there are specific situations that I haven't conceived of, but in general I find it hard to believe that you can look at the data and conclude that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease itself. Unless you are in some kind of a very high risk category for mRNA vaccines, the risk of serious side effects or death seems to be at least one order of magnitude less for the vaccine than for the virus itself.

I'm a bit uncomfortable with the overall authoritarian approach to public health in the West (see also: fluoride in water; harmless, but unnecessary and immoral). So I can sympathize with people who are uncomfortable with a vaccine mandates, particularly nowadays that the issue is politicized and is no longer "just" about public health.

But all that said, I suspect a lot of people who claim to have evaluated the risks are really just rationalizing an emotional decision.

[quenix]

I'm not in a country but does this, but why do you find fluoride in water immoral?

[mewpmewp2]

If you consider infection rate in your area and your own behaviour vs behaviour of an average person in your area, you can do some basic math to understand what the chances of getting covid are for you. For example I've deduced it to be around 1% per year, right now.

My behaviour is also better for society in terms of reducing the R. Even if I were to get Covid, since I go out so rarely it's unlikely I would ever go outside during a symptomatic phase.

What I'm doing for example:

1. WFH.

2. Order everything in.

3. Go see family only when infection rate is reasonably low.

4. Do sports outside.

5. Go to gym only at times when there's very little traffic and cases per day seems reasonable to me.

And trust me I do believe Covid19 is really bad, but I don't like vaccines either based on information I've gathered.

Keeping my R lower than 1 or even 0.5, I can also live guilt free. Many vaccinated people have R larger than 1.

[hktlfnfnd]

I assume you also wear a N95 all the time outside of house, otherwise that's a big hole in your defenses.

[mewpmewp2]

I wear medical mask if I happen to be around people, in indoor settings or are you saying it's likely one could get infected outdoors otherwise?

There probably is some sort of hole which I'm not considering and it's mainly unknowns why I even believe it to be 1%. If there were no holes I'd believe it to be near 0%.

There's people who go to office, are around other people 40+ hours a week, then come to home to large families, have children that went to school. Offices, schools, things like these probably have the most spread.

Even with a vaccine that has 90% efficacy for preventing infection they would be exposed to the virus more than 10x that I am, and so would have higher chance of getting infected.

I know some studies calculated efficacy from hours spent in a high risk situation.

[AshamedCaptain]

> Calling people idiots isn't going to help the discussion.

Ironically, when we are at the point that the alternative is for subtle manipulation of the information that is being given around (which is my complain), I'd personally prefer the former, and I guess many people would, too. I'm not sure if it is really going to "help" anything but, given the doubt, I think brutal honesty is the more humane option.

In any case, I only put that disclaimer to avoid attracting the usual trolls (plus downvotes from the other side), but I see it attracted the usual trolls anyway. I hope a mod deletes it.

[mewpmewp2]

Claiming someone is an "idiot" is not brutal honesty.

Are you claiming that you think they have low IQ, or what exactly are you being brutally honest about?

What is even definition of an idiot for you?

This word only exists as a tool to either manipulate or shame or simply live out your emotional rage, it's not about brutal honesty. It's not about being truthful or even trying to understand the truth.

Generally, if someone calls someone else an "idiot", I can give benefit of the doubt few times if this happens, okay it's an emotional outburst, but otherwise I would lose trust in their general resolve.

[AshamedCaptain]

To put it simply, I think most people would prefer being directly called an idiot versus "we question so much your ability to make decisions that we are going to try to censor the information that we provide you without telling you anything".

It's actually wiser, strategically, to do this silent manipulation (and most definitely it's not strategically wise to call one an idiot), but, as the receiver, I'd prefer the honest approach myself.

[mewpmewp2]

Both is happening. And both are dispelling me emotionally from the mainstream. While this is going on though, I still believe I can see through my emotions, that I also feel towards people who pressure unvaccinated and think the issue is binary and understand data I'm seeing with reasonable accuracy.

I don't know if the silent manipulation is benefitting the world, maybe it is getting more people to vaccinate, but I can guarantee that this only makes me personally dig deeper and distrust most things coming from the same sources that silently manipulate the information. Also given a "good to be true" view of mainstream or anything I disbelieve it. If something is too good to be true, like how current vaccines are portrayed, it deserves further inspection.

All in all when you are classifying someone "an idiot", is there any other correlation that this person would likely have in their characteristics?

E.g. let's say is definition of "an idiot" to you someone who "didn't take the vaccine".

Or is "an idiot" someone who generally has poorer mental capabilities? What do you think it correlates to?

Below average memory?

Below average comprehension? Of what?

Below average scientific understanding?

Below average abstract reasoning?

Below average working memory?

Do you think being an idiot means at least few of those? How do you think they reached their conclusion? Can you even understand how they reached their conclusion or are you just speculating in your head how they reached it and therefore they must have poor comprehension or memory?

I mean you can't see in their head.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Calling people idiots isn't going to help the discussion

At this point, the only thing more idiotic than refusing to get vaccinated is trying to convince the voluntarily unvaccinated to vaccinate. The discussion is over. Positions are entrenched. The best we can do is isolate the population and move on.

[mewpmewp2]

That's untrue. I would vaccinate if someone answered many questions I have or showed me certain data or issues with the data that I have observed.

[quenix]

What data have you "observed"? I should also note that I take issue with the word "observed" here. A phenomenon as large as world-scale inoculation calls for large-scale statistical analysis rather than your anecdotal "observation".

What are the many questions that you have?

[mewpmewp2]

Indeed, and I feel "large-scale statistical analysis" is one of the things we are lacking.

More research into VAERS data and also Europe's adverse events reporting tool. There's so many more reports there compared to other vaccines, it seems quite scary to me. It's not scientific evidence, but to me it still seems alarming enough, and it's hard for me to think what other thing except the vaccine itself could've caused that many reports.

What are the exact odds of getting e.g. heart related issues like Myocarditis?

Considering my demographics (28y male), fit, healthy what are the chances for me to get long lasting issues either affecting mental or physical performance?

I don't believe for instance that Myocarditis is 1 out of 100,000. There's anecdotal stories of couples getting these adverse effects together. See "danielshep60". I don't believe he's lying either, considering he's shown all paperwork, medications etc, he also said, after he and his partner both got diagnosed, he called around his social circle to see if anyone else was experiencing chest pains, which his cousin did and he urged him to go check it out, and also got diagnosed with Myocarditis. There may be a lot of undiagnosed Myocarditis going on as well.

Then besides heart issues, what is being more frequently reported by vaccine long haulers, is 1) fatigue and 2) brain fog.

So now I'm worried about both mental performance, as my work requires mental performance, and physical performance since I do sports.

There's no good way to link fatigue and brain fog back to vaccines, so how could I know what is the frequency of those?

Then of course I did research into how runners have been faring after vaccination. I searched reddit.com/r/running, for posts. There's 50/50 whether vaccine had any effect at all, or some people couldn't run for the following 1 to 7 days which is fine, but I'd say around 1:15 - 1:30 ratio of commenters said even after many months they were still unable to run even a mile, although previously they were able to run 5-10km+.

Then I'm concerned about how the trials were made. For example with Pfizer, just recently coming out the report about data integrity in BMJ, and also trial participants in some cases being excluded when they had adverse effects, AND the way they seemingly were letting people report side effects in an app where they did it after a week and there were only pre-determined side effects available to select from and no free-form text. If you wanted to report something else you had to contact them, and in some cases it seems these contacts were ignored and not reported in the final study.

There's many more concern for me from vaccines, but I'll just stop now, because the biggest argument against those is that "covid is probably worse, so just take the risk with vaccine, or alternative is worse".

So my current strategy is to stay at home, and I believe by doing this I have 1% or less chance to contract covid within the following year. Maybe during that time things, data clears up, or there's better solutions available to either covid or to any damage vaccines may cause.

By that I'm avoiding potential unknowns about both covid19, and the vaccine. Also I'm keeping my R very low, even if I was to get covid19, I would not be likely to spread it since I spend my time at home with no people around, except for some edge cases. If everyone behaved like me I believe the virus would die out.

I have gone over many studies about both Covid19, and vaccines. I believe if you are frequently in contact with people and/or in risk group you probably should take the vaccine to reduce chance of hospitalisation and deaths, but I don't think it's calculated decision for me, personally. I definitely don't want to get Covid19 and I believe it can cause a lot of long term damage + unknown damage, but so can the vaccine, albeit very likely to a lesser extent.

Also vaccine effect will wade in 6 months and it doesn't seem like it would protect breakthrough infections that could also cause long term damage, so then you may have done already vaccinations multiple times and also still get the infection which would again increase chances of total long term damage.

[quenix]

Well, it is nice that you actually put out your thoughts in a structured manner. Many would not have taken the time.

1. VAERS data & co.

This is the biggest vaccination campaign in history. 7.25 billion doses have been administered to date. It also happens to be underway under a sociopolitical and technological climate which promotes superfast information sharing where misinformation can spread extremely fast. It is undeniable that much of this misinformation has concerned the vaccine.

Combining the fact that a shit ton of people have been getting vaccinated and the current climate, is it really surprising that we see a spike in an unvetted, online side effect submission system? I mean, this would not be worrying even if this was just a large vaccination campaign. It is an enormous vaccination campaign, the biggest in history, undertaken in a climate which promotes misinformation and probably interacts with societal group psychology in complex ways (for example, are people perhaps more likely to fall prey to the placebo effect and report/over-exaggerate their S.E.s in VAERS?)

2. Myocarditis

A valid concern, but all data points to it being extremely rare as well as mild (0.0006% incidence rate?).

As well as that, recent theory suggests it may be linked to administration method (erroneous administration into vein instead of muscle) instead of the vaccine itself.

I know you said you "don't believe" the statistics, but... that's just not really how statistics works? You cite purely anecdotal evidence from your friend group to disprove large-scale international analysis. This is laughable. Incidence in your friend group means absolutely nothing in the context of an international rollout. If we're playing the anecdote game, I know hundreds of people who've gotten the vaccine, none of which have gotten myocarditis. This must mean it never occurs. Also, I really don't care about "danielshep60". Citing a random Internet user is even more ridiculous than citing your friend group or family. I don't think I even need to get into it, but even if what they are saying is true, it means nothing in the grand scale of things.

3. Fatigue & brain fog

I should start by noting that fatigue & brain fog are widely documented to be common symptoms of the long COVID syndrome, which affects old and young. Long COVID is also alarmingly common.

I'd have to see proper evidence showing a statistically relevant correlation between vaccination & long-term brain fog/fatigue.

I'm sorry to report that a subreddit does not consist of any kind of valuable correlative indicator when talking about the medical domain. There is just such a swarm of flaws in such analysis that it must be discarded entirely (biased sampling, placebo, and fabrication being the top three).

Unfortunately, many of your arguments fall back to a common faulty root: ignoring large-scale analysis and falling back to anecdotal evidence (a la Nicki Minaj "friend of cousin got swollen testicles because of the vaccine!").

As for the BMJ trial, this is an ongoing investigation and I can't really comment without more data. We will see! :)

[easymodex]

When i got vaccinated with Moderna vaccine i had weird heart flutters every 10 minutes or so (one day after 2nd dose - from noon until evening). It wasn't painful or anything but it was very weird, sometimes it felt like heart skipping a beat and sometimes like doing a double or triple beat. I did get checked out but by the time i got to the doctor the whole thing was almost over, they hooked me up to those heart monitors for 15 minutes but had no "flutters" during that time. Doc said im young and my heart is fine and that was that. Next day i had some more in the morning but everything was fine afterwards and i had no problems since. I don't know if it falls under Myocarditis or not but i'm sure noone reported it anywhere.

Either way, i'm still gonna go for the booster shot soon since i'm scared of Covid more than the vaccine, but just wanted to point out it's not so black and white, the side effects are likely under reported since the incentive is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Doing large scale analysis on faulty data is just as accurate as anecdotal evidence.

[mewpmewp2]

Thanks for your response.

> 1. VAERS data & co.

Every year, there's also very many other vaccines administered, e.g. Influenza, so the numbers aren't that off. I'm not sure about how many others besides Influenza.

See: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/vaccine-supply-historical.ht... https://openvaers.com/covid-data

2019 there was around 170M Influenza vaccine doses with 605 deaths. 2021 there's 430M Covid vaccine doses or 223M people with at least 1 dose and there's 18400 deaths.

Usually VAERS would be expected to be very under reported. I agree there's a lot of misinformation that's been going on, but the people who vaccinated mostly thought it was very safe so there's lower likelihood of placebo etc. Another thing is that it's not very easy to create reports in VAERS and it takes time, doctors may not always have time or believe that some death or adverse effect was linked to the vaccine in the first place.

Overall this data alone is definitely not enough to conclude for sure that covid vaccines are not safe, but at least to me it definitely throws some red flags, in combination with all the other things, there seems to be a pattern.

Your points may be valid, but I can't determine that and unless this data is properly addressed and debated over, I don't think it's safe enough. So I would urge heavier debate and analysis of this data. I think vaccine has to be proven safe rather than me having to prove that it's dangerous.

There should be enough resources to debate and analyse this properly. Same thing --- there should be more resources allocated to debating people who claim vaccines are not safe. Seemingly no debate doesn't inspire any confidence in me. There should be full time groups of people dedicated for this, not just writing articles, but doing live debates. Debate has to be proper back and forth. Not "fact checkers" which often concentrate on one single part that can be most easily argued against and leave some other parts which usually interest me the most out.

Right now there's one side that is bashing the other side, full of strawmans and ad hominem attacks. There's no proper debate going on. Why?

If these vaccines are very safe and effective and would save the world from the pandemic, I imagine it would deserve at least 10M+ to be invested into live debates. I see a lot of investing in censoring, but no debates.

2. Myocarditis

If incidence rate was 0.0006%, meaning 1 out of 1,666,666, it would be extremely rare that a couple on this earth would have both people getting this.

Even if incidence is 1 out of 100,000 like I have seen claimed by official sources multiple times, from 1 billion couples, chance of there being at least 1 couple where both individuals had this would be 10%.

I have seen multiple anecdotal reports of couples both having issues. Danielshep60 being one who has gone on video with all the evidence and stories. It's difficult to understand frequency from anecdotal reports where people alone claim they have had it, but if you consider couples it makes it possible to at least calculate how statistically rare that would have to be. So either

a) Danielshep60 must be lying. And I don't think he is based on what I've seen, I'm usually good at spotting discrepancies and lies.

b) Chance of myocarditis is far bigger than 1/100,000.

c) Something extremely, very, unlikely has happened, and all the other anecdotes are definitely lies.

I assume you would guess it's a), but I can't conclude that myself based on also other video stories I have seen, and everything seems to match.

> As well as that, recent theory suggests it may be linked to administration method (erroneous administration into vein instead of muscle) instead of the vaccine itself.

Yes, this is possible, but it also means I wouldn't get the vaccine before it's officially acknowledged that they should do aspiration and this indeed reduces chance of myocarditis occurring. In very many anecdotal reports where people have gotten myocarditis, they have felt metallic taste just 15 seconds after the vaccine, so it does seem that in their cases it probably has entered bloodstream, unless there's some better explanation.

> I know you said you "don't believe" the statistics, but... that's just not really how statistics works?

I believe "statistics", I love poker, I love numbers, I love making decisions based on probabilities, I just don't believe that numbers coming from trials are correct. For example, maybe people weren't properly checked for myocarditis, and this matches some reports from trial participants. I think statistics are great, I just don't trust that everything was done properly, and it seems BMJ confirms it at least for 1 subcontractor. Now this is not final evidence that trial data may not be correct, but it's enough for me to postpone the vaccine.

> I know hundreds of people who've gotten the vaccine, none of which have gotten myocarditis. You may very well know and this wouldn't disprove that myocarditis's frequency could be for example 1 out of 300. You would still more likely have 100 friends who never got myocarditis, but these odds are for example very worrying.

If what Danielshep60 says is true, it can be statistically proven that what numbers are coming from e.g. Pfizer's studies or some other studies are wrong, as such a combination of a couple + a relative of theirs having the diagnosis would be extremely unlikely.

Also another survey, for people who had post vaccine injury, the claim for 10% of them was that they also had a relative who had persistent adverse effects after the vaccine. If they had 10 relatives on average, it could mean incident rate to be around 1%.

> 3. Fatigue & brain fog > I should start by noting that fatigue & brain fog are widely documented to be common symptoms of the long COVID syndrome, which affects old and young. Long COVID is also alarmingly common.

Yes, totally agreed! I believe different studies say that getting long covid could be 5% to 65% chance depending on the definition and requirements for long covid. I definitely wouldn't want to get covid.

> I'm sorry to report that a subreddit does not consist of any kind of valuable correlative indicator when talking about the medical domain. There is just such a swarm of flaws in such analysis that it must be discarded entirely (biased sampling, placebo, and fabrication being the top three).

Yeah, it's impossible to determine the exact frequency, but considering everything, I see it being possible that getting covid vaccine could ruin running 1 out of 1,000 cases or more. Once again, I don't have evidence for it, but this is based on my intuition.

Yeah, will see what happens with BMJ trial.

It's definitely possible I will take this vaccine in the future, but I need more data & analysis.

Trust me, I'm not happy about spending so much time on deciding this, and I kind of wish I maybe should've just taken it in summer, so I didn't have to spend so much time and energy trying to research this. Unfortunately my research has only opened more question marks, but I'm not feeling good about taking it any longer.

[AshamedCaptain]

> The best we can do is isolate the population and move on.

Or force them to vaccinate -- it would not be the first time this has been done.

IMHO that looks like a much more sensible option than having "vaccination passes" which basically mandate vaccination anyway but also happen to become (yet another) type of government ID.

I'm not going to be the one to complain that societal paternalism is a bad thing.

[mdp2021]

It is absolutely questionable that you show to believe to have a capacity for judgement adequate to know the "truth" and be able to impose it to others (also) on that basis.

[AshamedCaptain]

It's called democracy. We assume everyone +18 has this "capacity" and as such impose the will of the majority on others. Has been going on for some decades already...

[mdp2021]

> assume everyone +18 has this "capacity"

And you did well to put 'capacity' in the bunny quotes of figurative speech, because it is a strongly false assumption.

Those "you" you refer to with that «we» should better revise their assumptions. And again you should be very wary of what you put in your head.

[AshamedCaptain]

Yet this is literally one of the fairest political systems available to human civilization right now.

[NackerHughes]

> The best we can do is isolate the population and move on.

I, too, am a proponent of segregationism.

[supertrope]

Freedom of choice doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.

[craftinator]

> the known declining efficacy of the vaccines

I just want to point out that the main cause of breakthrough cases is having too many people be unvaccinated. They are breeding grounds for mutations, and the reason the word 'variant' is now in vogue.

[mewpmewp2]

I completely agree with this sentiment.

Not to throw ad hominem back at the above poster, which I'm of course doing, but I have hard time trusting ability to understand information and do correct deductions from said information by anyone calling others "an idiot". Now I'm not saying that they are "idiot" themselves, which I don't think they are, but it's revealing in my view how the ways they reach any conclusions in life may be flawed.

Here's few thoughts:

1. Single decision like this in such a short timeframe of these vaccines being available does not make or imply anyone to be an idiot. You have no clue about their circumstances someone may be in or what they've seen.

2. Medication/vaccines have trade-offs, even if these are 10,000,000:1 ratio.

3. I believe current studies show vaccines have a lot more potential downsides than mainstream media is letting on. Which makes it hard to trust anything mainstream media is saying right now.

4. While anecdotal reports are not scientific evidence, they are definitely cause for alarm at present time. Looking at VAERS and similar European adverse reporting sites, I don't think there can be a good explanation why the reports are so high compared to other vaccines, except the fact that these vaccines are actually causing so many issues.

5. Above poster doesn't know your age, gender, existing conditions, allergy risks, behaviour - maybe you live alone and never go outside, etc.

6. Despite whatever anyone likes to repeated, that mRNA tech has been studied for decades, which I don't even necessarily think is the issue here, the spike protein might be the issue here for instance, we don't know what the long term issues are, e.g. recent study showing that it may impair DNA repairs. There's so many hints everywhere, and we haven't had time to investigate all of this.

7. Despite what people like to claim, it is possible to avoid Covid19 by staying inside, and make chances of getting it reasonably low, 1% per year possibly, if you can work from home and order everything in. Only see family when infections in you area are really low. In this case you are also doing more for your society than an average vaccinated person, since your R is definitely below 1. If everyone behaved like you without vaccines, the virus would die out.

8. More and more data coming out about adverse effects and wading efficacy.

9. Issues with Pfizer trials, and trial participants with adverse effects being excluded, gaslighted etc.

10. If you do get vaccine damage, there's no compensation and you might just get gaslighted like has happened to thousands of people. In fact to my knowledge at least 6 people committed suicide because they had vaccine injuries and nobody believed them.