| 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! :) |
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.