I think you seriously overestimate the overall harms of vaccines. I'm a life scientist, and I'd take the side effect profile & risks of the worst vaccine in the last 50 years over that of an Extra Strength Tylenol any day.
The down votes on this thread are insane. Science is not perfect especially medical advice.
Even though I think vaccines are safe and hugely beneficial I find the ideas that the safety of vaccines are "beyond debatable" to be the most rediculous of the arguments on both sides.
We should debate and question everything. There have been other medicines that had been considered safe and then were found to have long term side effects. And of course countless others that were considered safe and never produced side effects.
Just because it's considered safe now doesn't mean we fully understand every aspect of the human body and chemistry and diseases well enough to say that vaccines will never be harmful.
The absolutist language actually makes people more skeptical. If we stick to un-arguable truths like: " In X studies, only 0.01% of people had side effects and each of them had pre existing conditions" sounds way better than "It's undebatably safe and you're an idiot/danger to society if you think otherwise".
People will make good choices if you respect them and stick to the facts.
Like serious side effects? If you want to vaccinate virtually the whole world and your vaccines turns out to have serious side effects in 1% of people because you rushed its development and didn't go through the regular extended long term tests it wouldn't be that good
The biggest risk to my mind here is that if something bad (long term effects) happen to people taking this vaccine it might become an argument that anti-vaccine folks will market all over the globe. We can get actual vaccination slow down.
I’m not going to downvote because it's your opinion but I don't see why you would be concerned about a vaccine at all u less you've a proven history of adverse effects which is so extraordinarily rare it's barely worth mentioning!
I think though that the kind of opinion you have and share really diminishes the incredible amount of hard work, research and effort that goes into them.
But they're not safe. Like any kind of medication, there's a risk of hidden effects or bad reaction that could and do happen. Rather than trying to lie, I think it's better to be honest about the possible side effects, and communicate about the nasty diseases we don't have to deal with thanks to those vaccines. Most anti-vaccines are stuck on the possible danger of vaccine, and aren't balancing it with all the benefits that come because we forgot how bad those diseases were.
How many lives will be lost due to a lack of vaccines to administer vs. side-effects? I think it's safe to say the side-effects are a few per million, and that makes it inconsequential.
Again, absolutely none of that demonstrates vaccines being harmful, only that certain institutions have taken a particular position out of an abundance of caution. Elsewhere in the world literally billions of people in all age groups have received vaccines of all types. If significant numbers were dying or suffering severe long term side effects from said vaccines, we'd know.
If you're testing a drug for a serious cancer, then there is a lot of tolerance for side effects - the alternative is death, so even if it causes things like nerve damage, it's an acceptable risk.
With vaccines, you're going to treat a huge percentage of the population and they'll be healthy when you give it to them. As such, the risk-benefit analysis is much different since there is a chance for serious harm.
The vaccine is empirically way more dangerous than every other vaccine commonly given. I did the vaccines but I don't understand why we can't be honest about it.
I never said it wasn't safer. However, the vaxxer movement, like the pro-drug movement, likes to believe that there are no bad side effects at all, which is dangerous and a form of propaganda.
It almost makes me wonder if the drug companies are behind many of these laws.
Saying “vaccines are safe” is like saying “drugs are safe”. Without qualification it’s a lie. Drugs tested to be safe are safe. Vaccines tested to be safe are safe.
The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
Fortunately, most of the US is practically begging for a vaccine and will take it as soon as available, so at least we’ll have great data. (Provided negative reactions aren’t suppressed as censored the way legitimate scientific papers have been)
this is not anti-science, it's, as GP said, a calculated decision.
It's not _impossible_ the vaccine does more damage than good, but it is _unlikely_, because we have some initial data and experience with previous similar things.
This does not mean the vaccine is surely effective and without side effects, but it is not unreasonable to start deploying it because a ton of people are currently suffering because of the epidemic, and it can only get worse.
You seem to be putting a lot of words in OPs mouth. I didn't see OP making any sort of suggestion about whether to avoid the vaccine or not. It looked like they were simply explaining some possible outcomes of the vaccine that are unknown.
OP also didn't say 10 years is enough time to know the long-term effects of these vaccines, just that it's traditionally been the minimum amount of time needed for some other drugs.
The 'calculated risk' you talk of is such a bad way to evaluate the risk of a vaccine making things worse that I shudder to think of the consequences should such an attitude be adopted. Please, just stop, and read about the consequences of getting a vaccine wrong.
I still don’t quite understand your argument. Is it that the vaccine’s side effects will be more harmful that its benefits when applied broadly to a population?
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