While I almost entirely disagree with you, I agree with the general idea that most people aren't "hesitant". Personally I'm vaccine "hell no!" (because I don't have a personal medical need for the COVID vaccine, potential side effects aside, and I reject the societal benefit argument given the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike).
So while I come at it from the total opposite reason, you're right that with the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months, most people who are not vaccinated are fairly strongly opposed to getting it (not necessarily all for the same reason). There are definitely a bunch of "I wanna wait and see" type people, but given all the coercion/propaganda they are few and far between.
That's like saying I'm "vaccine hell no!" because I don't have a personal need for a polio vaccine lol. Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.
> and I reject the societal benefit argument given the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike
That's so weird, all the data seems to indicate that in areas with high vaccination rates nobody gets sick and dies.
It feels like you've manufactured a windmill for yourself.
> Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.
You don't know me or my medical history, so you can't make that statement honestly. I am in a population where I am at borderline negligible risk from SARS-2 infection. The mere 24+ hours of post-second-shot acute inflammatory cascade, which is almost guaranteed, already eclipses the expected value of COVID symptoms I would experience if infected. (Perhaps you aren't aware of how stratified the risk is based off age and comorbidities?)
You doubly so cannot make such a statement when you don't know whether I've already had COVID previously. Someone who has had SARS-2 naturally and recovered is almost completely insulated from COVID risk. And this, by the way, is much moreso than compared to an unexposed-yet-vaccinated individual. And the effect size is massive, we're not talking about natural immunity being "20% better", we're talking like 800% better. Source: https://pastebin.com/8yR3y5NA
> That's so weird, all the data seems to indicate that in areas with high vaccination rates nobody gets sick and dies.
How closely have you been looking at the Israeli data? It is simply false that nobody gets sick and dies. The vaccines very significantly reduce the personal risk of hospitalization or death, but as I've already told you, my risk from SARS-2 is almost nonexistent, so that confers exactly zero benefit for me. The reason you and others are so concerned about vaccination is - I hope - the purported societal benefit of vaccination, and I've already hinted at the very predictable phenomenom that vaccinating against only the spike protein is just going to lead to antigenic drift and immune escape and will just end up spinning our wheels at best, and at worst it will actually lead to increased pathogenicity in the unvaccinated (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...)
Your risk from the vaccine is lower than your risk from Covid lol - because you know the Covid disease creates fully functional viruses whereas the vaccine only incorporates a small subset that cannot reproduce. Why you would want the fully functional version is beyond me.
> Your risk from the vaccine is lower than your risk from Covid
You don't have the necessary information about my demographic and medical history to be able to make this claim. The following statement of yours is a non-sequitur because it in no way proves the claim of yours that I am at greater risk from SARS-2 infection than I am of a COVID vaccine:
> because you know the Covid disease creates fully functional viruses whereas the vaccine only incorporates a small subset that cannot reproduce. Why you would want the fully functional version is beyond me.
> You don't have the necessary information about my demographic and medical history to be able to make this claim.
I was referring to the aggregate, it is strictly correct unless you have a specific medical issue and I'm confident your doctor will inform you.
> The following statement of yours is a non-sequitur because it in no way proves the claim of yours that I am at greater risk from SARS-2 infection than I am of a COVID vaccine:
Sure it does. You will get COVID. You'll either be vaccinated at the time or you won't be.
> Sure it does. You will get COVID. You'll either be vaccinated at the time or you won't be.
That may be true, but it's another non-sequitur. You need to show that the acute and long-term risks of me receiving the moderna or the pfizer or the j&j, is lower than the risks to my health from getting COVID-19 while unvaccinated. And first you need to know whether I've already had COVID, because that's highly relevant to that calculation.
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I think you're missing the general principle here, so let me see if this hypothetical helps you. Imagine a hypothetical virus that spreads just like SARS-2 but has a 0% IFR, no symptoms, and no complications whatsoever, whether short or medium or long term.
Imagine a vaccine that is 100% effective at preventing this hypothetical 0% IFR virus from infecting me. Imagine that in 99.9999% of people, the vaccine causes no harm, but in that .0001% of people, it causes harm.
Which is more dangerous to me, getting infected with the hypothetical virus, or getting vaccinated?
> Which is more dangerous to me, getting infected with the hypothetical virus, or getting vaccinated?
You not getting vaccinated and then getting infected with COVID is more dangerous to you and those around you than you getting vaccinated and then infected. Those are the only two options. Everyone on earth will contract COVID. There's no need to engage a hypothetical when we have the numbers in front of us.
Surely you believe then that folks who refuse to get vaccinated on principle like yourself and then contract COVID should be triaged strictly below anyone else who needs medical care? I'm not saying that you shouldn't receive care, but you should receive it after everyone else has been sorted out. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes IMO.
Is the polio and mRNA vaccine series really comparable? I was under the impression if you wanted to you could probably enumerate some huge differences.
Perhaps we should start by admitting there is no long term data on the Covid vaccines as a whole truth and we honestly start from there?
How about a steelman argument? Just don’t put it on YouTube, it would be censored.
6 billion doses administered and counting. 30 years of research on mRNA vaccines, 50 years of research on viral vector vaccines, and 20 years of research on coronaviridae. It’s about the best understood thing on the planet.
Perhaps it’s time to stop pretending there’s no long term data here.
> I agree. Please shut me up and post the links to long term human mRNA vaccine safety.
Please shut me up and give me any reason to believe that there would be long term effects.
You're asking me to prove a negative, to prove there's no god. It's the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is why you would think there is one in the first place.
The first vaccine was given almost a year ago, how long do we need to wait to placate your nebulous fear? Two? Ten? Twenty more? What basis do you have for selecting this timeframe?
The long-term data we do have is the 30 years of mRNA vaccine research.
> Across the entire spectrum you're at less risk from the vaccine than you are from the disease.
The current survival rate from the virus is at around 99.2%. The vaccine may or may not have long term health effects. How is taking the virus head on less risky?
Anyway, the other point is that that number is the overall IFR. If, like me, you know you're in a category that has almost no risk from COVID, then it's even more of a no-brainer. That's why it's completely absurd that the GP tried to tell me that I'm at less risk from the vaccine from the disease, when they don't know my age, # of comorbidities, metabolic health, past SARS-2 infection status, past non-SARS-circulating-hCoV infection status, etc. They simply don't know what they're talking about.
Because we know for sure that Covid infection causes significant long term damage in at least 10% of cases.
So if you want brain damage, scarred lungs, or some other organ malfunction, Covid infection is the way to go.
And the longer term risks are still unknown.
Which is why it's insane to play evidence-free yes-but-what-if FUD games about vaccine safety when the risks of infection are already known to be high for the survivors.
> Because we know for sure that Covid infection causes significant long term damage in at least 10% of cases.
Where are you getting your information? Your mayoclinic link doesn't make this 10% claim, nor did you provide any citation for it. I'm genuinely shocked by how divorced from the clinical reality your claims are.
SARS-1, which is SARS-2's less infectious but much more deadly older brother, didn't even cause long-term damage in 10% of cases. And you're trying to claim it for SARS-2, which is a virus where many who are infected will never even know they had it (if they don't get tested)?
Your claims are unfounded and, quite frankly, simply false. There's nowhere near 10% occurrence of "brain damage", scarred lungs, or "some other organ malfunction". (The vagueness of your terminology betrays you, btw)
Since you almost certainly haven't read any literature, let me provide you some reading material. I'll stick to just the lung issues subclaim. Some of these are on the older side but they're still relevant:
["Follow-up Chest CT findings from discharged patients with severe COVID-19: an 83-day observational study"](https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1) - First Submitted May 4 2020, Published online May 12 2020
> Radiological abnormalities in patients of severe COVID-19 could be completely absorbed with no residual lung injury in more than two months’ follow-up.
^ note this is severe COVID-19, so that's from a population selected for severity of symptoms and they're still recovered by 2 months.
> Preliminary evidence suggests that these lung function abnormalities will improve over time
Conclusive evidence suggests that people who get vaccinated don't get lung function abnormalities. Why are you so dead set on refusing to get a vaccine haha? It takes a few minutes, it's free, and it's really not that big a deal. There's really no good reason not to get one.
People are opposed to being vaccinated because of a coordinated media campaign put out by elements in the mainstream media - not least from outlets like Fox whose employees are 90% vaccinated, while daily tests are mandated for the rest.
Being strongly opposed to something does not make opposition legitimate or warranted. It's perfectly possible to believe something which is absolutely harmful and objectively wrong on a mass scale. Such beliefs are not protected by law or by any reasonable definition of ethical morality.
So having said that - why do you think Fox and co. require tests and vaccinations for their own people while broadcasting anti-vaxxer denialism to their viewers?
Don't watch the news, I read it, never on fox. Don't want the vaccine because I was already infected. I lost my sense of smell for two weeks and slept a lot. Big deal. I don't want side effects of feeling shitty for a week after the vaccine and I don't think there has been enough time to study the side effects. The amount of propaganda and lack of an actual conversation on this fuels my cause. Additionally I don't trust the federal government to do anything other than spend money.
Oh dear. I really don't care what Fox News does. It is very sad to me that this passes as an argument for you. I don't care to speculate on the motivations of a giant corporation. It's also not even true that Fox is "anti vax" - you can find videos of Sean Hannity and the like imploring their audience to get vaccinated. Fox, like all media, makes an enormous portion of its ad revenue from pharmaceutical companies. So you're not even right on your characterization of Fox's stance. Fox is largely pro-vaccine. Trump is pro-vaccine. All the mainstream republicans are pro-vaccine. And none of this is at all relevant, so why are we wasting time talking about it?
I already said (in the comment you directly replied to) why I personally am not getting vaccinated against COVID. I don't understand where your rambling diatribe about Fox News comes from. I gather that you might be a binary thinker that thinks that everyone fits into a red or blue, left or right, democrat or republican, etc box?
> People are opposed to being vaccinated because of a coordinated media campaign put out by elements in the mainstream media
This is an unfounded assertion. And also simply not true BTW, at least for all of the unvaccinated people (myself included) that I know in my personal life.
To be clear, Hannity's position, at least as he states repeatedly on his radio show, is "Talk to your doctor and do what you both agree is appropriate for your personal health situation." He is generally pro-vaccine, but not in the "your needs are outweighed by the needs of society" way that appears to be popular now.
> the population dynamics of what happens when you vaccinate against just the spike
Haven't heard of this before, care to elaborate?
> the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months
See idk if propaganda is the right word here. Imagine a world were covid was 20x as deadily, and the vaccine had absolutely zero side effects. How else do you get the message put to get it? Just say nothing? If hospitals are at risk of getting overrun, and unlike lockdowns, vaccines actually make differences in case numbers, the government has an obligation to do something (protect the general welfare clearly is a mandate to prevent overrunning healthcare facilities).
By making everyone's immune system respond in the same way, you're making it more likely that if the virus escapes (mutates in a way that evades the immune system, by modifying its spike protein), then it will escape completely (for everyone vaccinated by mRNA vaccines).
The hope is that by doing that, the virus would also lose the local optimum of the current spike protein, and become much less infectious.
The alternative is, with "natural" immunity, you generate a much more diverse immune response across the population.
I think that you could have made that case if we had a vaccine in April 2020, but by now US has 30-50% of its population with natural immunity. Additionally, the spike protein is the least likely mutation to enable escaping, as it both has to modify to be different enough from the original, plus somehow still be able to attach onto our cells with similar level of infectiousness. Thats why they choose to vaccinate against the spike protein vs any other part of the virus. None of the variants at the moment seem to be a concern for escaping the spike protein, with a billion vaccinations and a billion infections. We are literally running out of chances for that to happen.
There also remains enough spread now that vaccinated people are getting mini boosts of natural immunity. Israel has some great data on the combination of various number of doses and natural immunity, and the combo is very strong.
That being said, I don't know your medical history. I am a strong supporter of accepting natural immunity in lieu of a vaccine. But even so, that fear of escape isn't made worse by a naturally immune person getting vaccinated, as they already have the non-spike protein defenses.
The best study on this actually found no significant difference when giving a single shot to those who were naturally immune. Which makes sense because the chance of reinfection is so incredibly tiny that even if the shot completely eliminated the chance of getting COVID, the absolute size of the effect is still going to be quite small.
> Additionally, the spike protein is the least likely mutation to enable escaping, as it both has to modify to be different enough from the original, plus somehow still be able to attach onto our cells with similar level of infectiousness.
But you don't have to choose just one part. You could have an inactivated whole virus vaccine. That avoids the whole issue.
FWIW we are already seeing point mutations on the spike developing. That's probably why Delta is so damn good at spreading, right? The Israel data suggests a VE of ~39% against Delta. I personally don't believe Pfizer's original 95% VE number, but if you do, that's a startling drop.
What would actually happen if a year or two from now, it turned out that, however unlikely it may appear now, there really were serious long-term vaccine side-effects?
There's absolutely no way it would involve the pro-vax people saying, "We're sorry, you were right." More likely, the same political sides would dig in further, there would be a bunch of attempts to cover up and revise history, and the message would be "The evidence has changed, but people who never got the vaccines didn't believe in science and were still selfish and wrong."
That wouldn't be true if this were really about health.
This is the exact reason vaccine mandates are necessarily and even desirable as a policy. You're not alone, but the proportion of the population willing to live with discomfort in life is vanishingly small, and hopefully small enough that herd immunity can be reasonably established.
We see similar behavior/attitudes among off-grid folks who refuse to use credit cards or other common adaptations.
I make no judgment of you for your thoughts, just pointing out why a policy maker is justified in increasing the personal cost to ensure the responsibility of freedom isn't shirked, since an unvaccinated population invites variants and harms (imposes social cost) on people unable to be vaccinated (kids, medical issues). So long as Anti-vaccine advocates are willing to pay for the costs of their actions, have at it.
Yea, if only someone would post the links to the 10 year safety and efficacy of these vaccines it would really shut these skeptics up. Ok, well, maybe just the 5 year data. No? Well, I think even 3 would help.
If we’re going to disingenuously compare smallpox and measles vaccines, perhaps we could start with their efficacy. Are there any claims from even the mfgs that Covid shots are in the same range?
> If we’re going to disingenuously compare smallpox and measles vaccines, perhaps we could start with their efficacy. Are there any claims from even the mfgs that Covid shots are in the same range?
Ain't nothing disingenuous from me. The COVID vaccines are some of the most effective vaccines ever invented.
Turns out, if you were the only vaccinated person in a house against smallpox, the efficacy was only 60-something percent. But vaccination also prevents you spreading to others, not just getting infected—so when everybody in a house was vaccinated, the efficacy rose to around 95%.
That's an oddly specific ask. The vaccines are absolutely fantastic in the short term, and there's credible evidence indicating the vaccine protection is long term, by analogy with how other vaccines work.
So while I come at it from the total opposite reason, you're right that with the massive amount of propaganda and outright coercion that everyone (at least in the US) has been exposed to over the last several months, most people who are not vaccinated are fairly strongly opposed to getting it (not necessarily all for the same reason). There are definitely a bunch of "I wanna wait and see" type people, but given all the coercion/propaganda they are few and far between.