I didn't read it as a stretch because first generation vaccines used in the campaigns all have shared targeting, and medical treatment is being discounted.
> Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions
This was from [1]
> Backing up a provocative claim with a snowblind of irrelevant references is a shameful misinformation tactic and you should stop doing it immediately. Doing it in a public health context is particularly dangerous and frankly disgusting.
Please, be kind.
The references were applicable but not written for the everyday consumer.
I don't think this is unreasonable. (I lack the domain knowledge to call it reasonable or not. Though there are few vaccines that are safe for adults and unsafe for children.)
But it's a stretch to brand that as "the science we have so far."
> has been demonstrated through various data to be a spectacular failure in terms of safety and efficacy.
Wat.
There are 6 major vaccines which are approved for use in most countries. Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sputnik. Most are extremely safe (obviously risks are non-zero, but those risks are orders of magnitudes better than the effects of the disease). Some are extremely effective (at reducing severe disease and/or reducing the spread of disease), at least for the first several months. Some are even very effective against a variant that didn’t present until after development and testing were done. Only 2 are mRNA based, which I presume is what you mean by “experimental”. These vaccines have been administered in billions of doses and side effects have been monitored for over a year. Your statements completely overstate the facts as observed.
This tells you nothing about the predictability of the practice of the science. It also cannot be used to gild by association anything that wishes to be marketed as a "vaccine".
> The media have so far concealed the adverse events of vaccine administration, such as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), owing to biased propaganda.
This statement seems completely unnecessary when discussing the vaccine effects based on scientific evidence. Only ends up casting a doubt on the motivations of the author.
> the vaccine is useless in stopping transmission.
This is factually incorrect, scaremongering, dangerous. "imperfect" not the same as useless. This is simplistic, binary, "all or nothing" thinking that should have no place in this discussion.
As stated before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28699570
> "When people are vaccinated, they're not going to get infected"
> "There is no variant that escapes the protection of our vaccines"
I googled these two then stopped, because you know what results I see? Conspiracy theorists quoting each other. I don't actually see a single reference to any source material to verify the original statements.
> "Emergency uses of the vaccine have not been approved or licensed by US FDA but have been authorized to prevent COVID-19 in ages 5+." - Pfizer Inc.
This I can believe (it's close enough to the docs I can find even though it's not actually a quotation from any of them), but I have no idea why you think this quote is supposed to support your point.
You really think that this article is trying to exaggerate the dangers of the covid vaccine? Even when the headline starts with “In rare cases”
An excerpt from the article:
Probing possible side effects presents a dilemma to researchers: They risk fomenting rejection of vaccines that are generally safe, effective, and crucial to saving lives. “You have to be very careful” before tying COVID-19 vaccines to complications, Nath cautions. “You can make the wrong conclusion. … The implications are huge.”
Even when the article explicitly qualifies it claims and actively encourages the reader to not exaggerate the claims?
I don’t think OP is “feigning confusion” but rather that people have a knee jerk reaction to anything to do with the risks of the covid vaccine.
By “genetic drug” I’m assuming you mean either the mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/Moderna or the viral vector vaccines developed by AstraZeneca/Johnson & Johnson.
Your “natural immunity” also doesn’t protect other people around you from contracting the disease and suffering from a very severe illness, whereas there is growing evidence that the vaccines available also cut transmission risk: https://khub.net/documents/135939561/390853656/Impact+of+vac...
> I've done enough research to know what I'm talking about
The standard practice is for those making the assertion to provide their references or data. Since you've done the research, can you please link any published and peer reviewed research establishing that the health risks from the vaccine are within two orders of magnitude of the health risks from the virus? Including morbidity, mortality, etc.
> The smartest people I know have reached the same conclusion.
Can you please reference them as well so I can read their published content?
Looking at some of the provided links in the article damages the credibility of the article. Some of them are clear misrepresentations of the links.
A couple of examples are:
> an active state/media campaign against early treatment of a disease
This contains a link to an article with a headline of "FDA asks people to stop taking animal dewormer to treat COVID-19". It is fine if the author disagrees with the FDA decision on the effectiveness of the treatment but this is not what they say about the link.
> It is the fact that these vaccines, whatever their efficacy in other areas, do not prevent transmission of the virus.
This links to an article about a study which found that vaccinated people who catch the virus are equally likely to infect other people as unvaccinated people who catch the virus. Reading further in the article it states "a fully vaccinated contact has a 25% chance of catching the virus from an infected household member while an unvaccinated contact has a 38% chance of becoming infected". So the overall effect of the vaccine clearly does reduce transmission by reducing the chance of being infected, and without being infected you cannot pass on the virus.
This makes it feel like the author is more interested in pushing an agenda than representing things in an accurate way.
>During years when the flu vaccine is not well matched to circulating influenza viruses, it is possible that no benefit from flu vaccination may be observed.
I'm crazy for not allowing myself to be injected with several strains of influenza virus when the most-optimistic estimates of efficacy are around ~40%.
Calling it a flu "vaccine" seems like a misnomer to me, given the rapidly-mutating nature of the virus.
> trying to argue about safety data for a different vaccine
I turned on showdead and promptly reënabled it. Referencing Covid and mRNA vaccines in response to a non-Covid non-MRNA vaccine seems like using "Hacker News for political or ideological battle" and pursuing "generic tangents" [1].
Ok let me be clear here. I am not intending to project doom, what I am trying to project is that there is real data which shows boosters are beneficial.
Of course the vaccines even without boosters are clearly extremely effective. Even as breakthrough cases increase because of waning immunity, the prognosis for someone fully vaccinated is very different compared to someone who is unvaccinated.
The main thing I disagree with you with, and would use your argument against you, is that there clearly is real data showing waning effectiveness and the benefit of boosters. The main argument for not recommending them is that the vaccines would be better off for people that have not been vaccinated in the first place. Well no shit, but if that population is refusing to take them then the point is moot.
This borders on intellectual dishonesty on your part. They’re saying the vaccines, with their effectiveness around the original quoted numbers were ineffective against a new variant.
I was responding to the parent comment that such headlines are just competing vaccine compaines attempting to destroy the reputation of their competitors. Assuming that is the reason behind this headline (which, is not a given), I'm just pointing out that would not be surprising.
> Where specifically in the article do you believe that the publications are wrongly interpreted?
"Growing evidence also suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus’s rapid evolution."
"Experts nevertheless claim that boosters improve protection against XBB. That’s disinformation, to use their favored term." (Hilariously, her assertion that this is disinformation is directly contradicted by the previous sentence she herself wrote: "A bivalent booster only slightly increased antibodies against XBB.")
"But experts refuse to concede that boosters have yielded diminishing benefits and may even have made individuals and the population as a whole more vulnerable to new variants like XBB." A competent journalist would have asked the experts why.
"The Biden administration’s monomaniacal focus on vaccines over new treatments has left the highest-risk Americans more vulnerable to new variants. Why doesn’t that seem to worry the experts?" Once again, she clearly states that she knows that the experts have interpreted the data differently. I don't know how you could have asked me an easier question.
> Not to mention the fact that the vaccines can't be reducing the number of mutations since they aren't preventing infections.
The data show that not only are they vaccines reducing the number of infections, but they are reducing the lengths of infections that do occur, reducing the number of copies made and thereby reducing the number of mutations.
These vaccines are leaky & non-sterilizing; these are not remotely comparable to the vaccines we have had throughout most of our normal lives that grant something like 99.99999% protection with minimal side effects. I'm saying that as someone as who has had a number of vaccines during my life - I am not an antivaxx.
> Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions
This was from [1]
> Backing up a provocative claim with a snowblind of irrelevant references is a shameful misinformation tactic and you should stop doing it immediately. Doing it in a public health context is particularly dangerous and frankly disgusting.
Please, be kind.
The references were applicable but not written for the everyday consumer.
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