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>This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. Th

>This isn't a meaningful claim for 2 key reasons. There has never been a vaccine that had serious side effects that did show up shortly after vaccination[2]. The history of mRNA treatments began as an experiment in gene therapy, but has largely ben abandoned because the effects never lasted long enough. As of 2020 this is an ongoing area of research[3]. No one has figure out how to stabilize mRNA so that it has long lasting effects. This isn't really what I'm worried about. Right now people are talking long COVID, subtle long term brain damage and it seems like mechanisms are still unknown. So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage. I'd be much more comfortable with the vaccine if the long COVID studies included groups : - no vaccination/hospitalised - no vaccination/asymptomatic - vaccination/not infected - vaccination/infected I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out.

titzer 5y ago
> I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out. Respectfully, I think what you're really waiting for is this thing to blow over so you don't have to take any personal risk. That's likely to be a fail, as you're just a waiting Petri dish for the live virus to infect. All kinds of things have risk and the craven merchants of doubt are busy spreading FUD about the vaccine. It's really our only way out of this shit show, because waiting around is just prolonging it. Or would you like to have a long drawn out conversation about the long term health effects of: * preservatives * artificial sweeteners * high fructose corn syrup * pesticides * HPV infection * influenza/rhinovirus infection * sunburns * a night of heavy drinking Because we can absolutely have a long, drawn out, twisting conversation about all those things.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects. I don't really mind social distancing measures untill people in the risk groups get vaccinated - all of my high risk contacts have been. So I don't get what we need to get out of, my government is already saying they will eliminate COVID measures after summer, UK style. I'll get vaccinated at some point if I have to do it for travel or what not - right now I'm not convinced - the social arguments don't make much sense to me (variants will come up anyway, you can get infected and spread the virus even if vaccinated you're just reducing risk)
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    If you're so concerned, don't get the vaccine. But I'm begging you to please stop spreading baseless FUD about long term side effects. There is 0 evidence or any theory at all that could account for that.
  - titzer 5y ago
    > On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects. Well if you're feeling conflicted between these things, you're just being willfully ignorant at this point. The vaccine protects against severe COVID, hands down. Long COVID is highly correlated with severe COVID. The data is absolutely rock solid on both of those. And for these nebulous "unknown long term effects" of the anti-vaxers keep scare-mongering with, the data on that is also pretty damn good. There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year. mRNA vaccines have been in use for decades to combat influenza, and there is similarly absolutely no data to support long-term effects from their use. Even a cursory education about how mRNA vaccines actually work, how they create an immune response and don't alter your DNA should be enough to convince most Science-minded, reasonable people. The immune response induced is on the order of any other; there's nothing special about the COVID vaccine immune response! And it doesn't give you an actual viral infection. A vaccine is literally all the benefit with none of the downside. Unlike dummies who think that somehow actually getting COVID is better for immunity. No data supports that conclusion, either. The vaccine is effective and safe. People who tell you otherwise are just manufacturing doubt and spreading FUD. They are fucking this up for the rest of us. We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern. > right now I'm not convinced Well, I'm not inclined to believe that you can be convinced, because you didn't reason yourself into the position you're in now. No one will be reasoning you out of it. We're mostly just combating your further spreading of FUD like your apparent willingness to be a link in the chain in further spreading of the goddamn virus. It's really incredible the selfishness here.
    - reader_mode 5y ago
      You're just being presumptive, overreaching in conclusions and overconfident in your narrative. I've seen two studies linked recently about long COVID. Neither included vaccination as a test variable. Since these two studies were recent and newsworthy enough to link on HN I'm assuming your "There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year." boils down to there is no data because we didn't look for it. There would be no data of asymptomatic long term effects of COVID if we didn't search for that either. I have 0 problems with people at risk of serious COVID getting vaccinated, in fact I convinced my grandparents to do it. I don't really see what it buys me as a healthy 30 something year-old with no preexisting conditions, other than likely being a day out after the shot. >We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern. How does that compute ? I thought nobody actually believed zero COVID is possible ?
ch4s3 5y ago
> So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage This is pure conjecture base on literally nothing. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just baseless. The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. The mRNA vaccines cause you own cells machinery to build virus proteins at which point it works just like any viral subunit vaccine, which have existed since 1970 and include flu vaccines, hep A and B, and few other you may have had already. Billions of people have received those types of vaccines and they don't have long term negative effects, except rarely when someone has an acute reaction right after vaccination. It is true that some people have allergic reactions (a strong an destructive immune response), but they happen within about 4 hours and symptoms usually clear up in a few days. If the COVID vaccines had some mysterious far off long term effects, it would be the first vaccine ever to do that, and there's no reason to suspect that might be the case. You may find this nature article interesting https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7, it's about general vaccine immunology. I'm not telling you that you need to get vaccinated, but the particular concern you're raising isn't something you should be worried about.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  >The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well - it's like saying "we have this black box service we sort of have an idea of what it does and if we send it X/Y/Z we know what happens, it should work the same with W too - I've been in that scenario often enough to know that's an assumption that I'd rather see the data for. I already saw that people in my peer group reported short term side effects like headache after getting vaccination, have taken days off from work, family members complained about dizziness the day after. It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies, should be insignificant even compares to money that will be spent on vaccination campaigns - so why skip out on valuable data.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    > You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well I'm not assuming, the whole field of immunology seems to be on board here. We know pretty well how the immune system work and how immunity develops from exposure to foreign material, it isn't black magic. There's no black box here the immune system has been well studied, and we know the inputs as well. Vaccines are probably the safest medical intervention we have, the reactions you're describing are typical immune responses that are well studied, well understood, and temporary. No vaccine has every caused some long range reaction in the we you're describing. > It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies One could, but there's absolutely no reason to bother, because immunology is a well established field and we know what happens after people receive subunit vaccines. The only moderately novel part here is the mRNA which has been tested for 30 years in vitro, in animals, and in people. There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine. Again, you don't have to take the vaccine, but the thing you are worried about isn't supported by any evidence or research it is amateur conjecture at best.

titzer 5y ago

> I'm not a risk group and have no problems with social distancing so I'm waiting for stuff like this to come out. Respectfully, I think what you're really waiting for is this thing to blow over so you don't have to take any personal risk. That's likely to be a fail, as you're just a waiting Petri dish for the live virus to infect. All kinds of things have risk and the craven merchants of doubt are busy spreading FUD about the vaccine. It's really our only way out of this shit show, because waiting around is just prolonging it. Or would you like to have a long drawn out conversation about the long term health effects of: * preservatives * artificial sweeteners * high fructose corn syrup * pesticides * HPV infection * influenza/rhinovirus infection * sunburns * a night of heavy drinking Because we can absolutely have a long, drawn out, twisting conversation about all those things.

reader_mode 5y ago
On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects. I don't really mind social distancing measures untill people in the risk groups get vaccinated - all of my high risk contacts have been. So I don't get what we need to get out of, my government is already saying they will eliminate COVID measures after summer, UK style. I'll get vaccinated at some point if I have to do it for travel or what not - right now I'm not convinced - the social arguments don't make much sense to me (variants will come up anyway, you can get infected and spread the virus even if vaccinated you're just reducing risk)
- ch4s3 5y ago
  If you're so concerned, don't get the vaccine. But I'm begging you to please stop spreading baseless FUD about long term side effects. There is 0 evidence or any theory at all that could account for that.
- titzer 5y ago
  > On one hand I'm being presented with avoiding long COVID sideffects as a reason to get vaccinated - on the other I get no proof that vaccination doesn't do similar harm and that it's actually protective of those effects. Well if you're feeling conflicted between these things, you're just being willfully ignorant at this point. The vaccine protects against severe COVID, hands down. Long COVID is highly correlated with severe COVID. The data is absolutely rock solid on both of those. And for these nebulous "unknown long term effects" of the anti-vaxers keep scare-mongering with, the data on that is also pretty damn good. There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year. mRNA vaccines have been in use for decades to combat influenza, and there is similarly absolutely no data to support long-term effects from their use. Even a cursory education about how mRNA vaccines actually work, how they create an immune response and don't alter your DNA should be enough to convince most Science-minded, reasonable people. The immune response induced is on the order of any other; there's nothing special about the COVID vaccine immune response! And it doesn't give you an actual viral infection. A vaccine is literally all the benefit with none of the downside. Unlike dummies who think that somehow actually getting COVID is better for immunity. No data supports that conclusion, either. The vaccine is effective and safe. People who tell you otherwise are just manufacturing doubt and spreading FUD. They are fucking this up for the rest of us. We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern. > right now I'm not convinced Well, I'm not inclined to believe that you can be convinced, because you didn't reason yourself into the position you're in now. No one will be reasoning you out of it. We're mostly just combating your further spreading of FUD like your apparent willingness to be a link in the chain in further spreading of the goddamn virus. It's really incredible the selfishness here.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    You're just being presumptive, overreaching in conclusions and overconfident in your narrative. I've seen two studies linked recently about long COVID. Neither included vaccination as a test variable. Since these two studies were recent and newsworthy enough to link on HN I'm assuming your "There is no data supporting widespread negative effects from the vaccine after a year." boils down to there is no data because we didn't look for it. There would be no data of asymptomatic long term effects of COVID if we didn't search for that either. I have 0 problems with people at risk of serious COVID getting vaccinated, in fact I convinced my grandparents to do it. I don't really see what it buys me as a healthy 30 something year-old with no preexisting conditions, other than likely being a day out after the shot. >We could have reached herd immunity with the vaccine by now, and variants would no longer be of concern. How does that compute ? I thought nobody actually believed zero COVID is possible ?

ch4s3 5y ago

> So who's to say that immune system reaction triggered by vaccination isn't causing same kind of hard to detect damage This is pure conjecture base on literally nothing. I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's just baseless. The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. The mRNA vaccines cause you own cells machinery to build virus proteins at which point it works just like any viral subunit vaccine, which have existed since 1970 and include flu vaccines, hep A and B, and few other you may have had already. Billions of people have received those types of vaccines and they don't have long term negative effects, except rarely when someone has an acute reaction right after vaccination. It is true that some people have allergic reactions (a strong an destructive immune response), but they happen within about 4 hours and symptoms usually clear up in a few days. If the COVID vaccines had some mysterious far off long term effects, it would be the first vaccine ever to do that, and there's no reason to suspect that might be the case. You may find this nature article interesting https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-020-00479-7, it's about general vaccine immunology. I'm not telling you that you need to get vaccinated, but the particular concern you're raising isn't something you should be worried about.

reader_mode 5y ago
>The immune response from the vaccine works like any other type of vaccine immune response. You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well - it's like saying "we have this black box service we sort of have an idea of what it does and if we send it X/Y/Z we know what happens, it should work the same with W too - I've been in that scenario often enough to know that's an assumption that I'd rather see the data for. I already saw that people in my peer group reported short term side effects like headache after getting vaccination, have taken days off from work, family members complained about dizziness the day after. It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies, should be insignificant even compares to money that will be spent on vaccination campaigns - so why skip out on valuable data.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  > You are assuming because the mechanism is the same that the effects will be as well I'm not assuming, the whole field of immunology seems to be on board here. We know pretty well how the immune system work and how immunity develops from exposure to foreign material, it isn't black magic. There's no black box here the immune system has been well studied, and we know the inputs as well. Vaccines are probably the safest medical intervention we have, the reactions you're describing are typical immune responses that are well studied, well understood, and temporary. No vaccine has every caused some long range reaction in the we you're describing. > It's relatively easy to do these studies along with long COVID studies One could, but there's absolutely no reason to bother, because immunology is a well established field and we know what happens after people receive subunit vaccines. The only moderately novel part here is the mRNA which has been tested for 30 years in vitro, in animals, and in people. There is no mechanism for the vaccine to have some long term effect that wouldn't be apparent within a short time period give the MASSIVE number of people who have received the vaccine. Again, you don't have to take the vaccine, but the thing you are worried about isn't supported by any evidence or research it is amateur conjecture at best.