[pfisch]

If something would've gone wrong with rushing the vaccine like that it would've given the anti-vax people a massive boost and the vaccine refusal rates would've skyrocketed.

The refusal rates were already too high with anti-vax people making up lies/distorting data. If they actually had real data things would've been much worse.

[r00fus]

> If something would've gone wrong

Anti-vaxxers simply don't care about truth vs. falsehoods. They don't care about the actual 3-phase clinical trial with tens of thousands of participants.

[AnimalMuppet]

How about telling the public the truth? Say something like, "This particular vaccine has not been tested up to normal FDA standards. It may not be as safe as other vaccines. But we are convinced that it will do more good than harm, given the danger of Covid for the unvaccinated."

You could let the public make an actual decision based on actual information, rather than telling them little, projecting false certainty, and then trying to force them to do what you think is the best course. I mean, look, not everyone can be treated like adults. But I think the majority of people can. Tell them the truth, and let them decide.

[pfisch]

You're not thinking it through. Lets say that vaccine ends up killing thousands of people.

That event will then be used in a way that is wildly out of context as fodder by all the anti-vaxxers out there to scare people into not getting vaccinated later when the vaccine is safer.

For the next 50 years anti-vaxxers and scammers will be using that event to scare people about vaccines.

It is not worth the risk because of the potential outcomes.

[_heimdall]

It sure sounds like you're coming at this with your mind already set that (a) there is some meaningful number of people that are entirely anti-vaccines and (b) that they are absolutely wrong.

If a vaccine is rolled out and kills thousands, the example you gave, why shouldn't some people take notice of that and be concerned? Is there no level of risk that would also make you consider not taking a new and untested, or under tested, vaccine?

[pfisch]

That is why we should never allow a procedure that will roll out a vaccine that will kill thousands. Which we didn't do with Covid because the backlash that would create against ALL vaccines would be terrible and result in massive loss of life long term.

[_heimdall]

How do we define an acceptable refusal rate? The vaccines were largely untested and given under emergency use authorization. Shouldn't it be reasonable for people to choose for themselves whether to take part in the vaccine campaign or not, especially when we can't provide solid data to support safety or efficacy?

At the end of the day, in my opinion, there is no magic number for vaccine acceptance that is a metric to define beforehand. Refusal rates are a backward looking metric only and simply reflect the willingness to participate and trust in the general public.

[pfisch]

How many doses would we need to give out to not call them "largely untested"?

Far more covid vaccines were given out to more people then almost all prescription medications have been. They were FDA approved officially in 2021, and at the end of the day all of the covid vaccines given an EUA were much safer than even mundane things like driving a car.

High vaccine uptake rates save lives. Pretending otherwise requires you to misrepresent the data.

[mharig]

Are you member of the Pharma Mafia, or just pested with religious idiocy?

[pfisch]

It's not religious to recognize that medical advances, especially in pharmaceuticals, have done more to extend lifespans and save lives in the last 100+ years than anything else.

The pharma industry has been consistently producing what would easily be called life saving miracles in any other context. Anyone unable to see that is the biased one.

[mharig]

Ignoring the VAERS data is not religious?

[pfisch]

That isn't real data. Anyone can write anything on VAERS. There is no verification. People write crazy stuff like the vaccine turned them into the hulk.

But lets be real, you almost certainly already know that. So you very likely fall into the category of people who intentionally misrepresent the data so you can pretend that vaccines are a bad thing.

[someuser2345]

Something did go wrong; of the 3 vaccines the FDA approved, 1 of them had to be recalled due to causing fatal blood clots.

[pfisch]

Which effected almost no one, yet here you are talking about it. Imagine if an early covid vaccine had killed thousands. That would have had a massive chilling effect on vaccine uptake.

[someuser2345]

> Which effected almost no one, yet here you are talking about it. So you think the FDA was wrong to recall it? And yes, I'm talking about it because plenty of people were skeptical of the vaccines because they thought they were undertested. And given the recall, they were absolutely right.

> Imagine if an early covid vaccine had killed thousands. That would have had a massive chilling effect on vaccine uptake. You're making it sound like the chilling effect would be a bad thing, when it would actually be the correct response. There are plenty of examples in the history of medicine of the cure being worse than the disease.

[pfisch]

Over 18 million doses of the J&J vaccine were given out. 6 women died. I don't think you could ever have testing to catch such a low rejection rate, and that rate is less dangerous than actual covid was, so those people weren't "right". Also that rate is less dangerous than driving a car, so this whole thing is silly.

We had safer vaccines available though so switching to them is even better, which we did.

> You're making it sound like the chilling effect would be a bad thing, when it would actually be the correct response.

That chilling effect would still exist when the vaccine was safe, making it the incorrect response. Conversations like this make it very clear why we need to be very careful about vaccine safety and we should never release a vaccine that will kill thousands EVEN if that vaccine would save lives overall.