I feel like if anybody wanted to apply critical thinking they were immediately called an anti vaxer. I think people should always question everything. And since the science and research is valid I think most people come to the conclusion that it’s fine.
I've read that up to 76% of the medical professional in some EU countries are refusing the vaccine, so I wonder why they do that if the science is so valid.
Antivaxx craze and fake news network effects can only explain so much.
This kind of quoting of a "scary sounding" statistic is why people get called anti-vaxx. You heard something, and are repeating it with the intent to cause people to worry, without providing any actual facts.
I looked it up. 76% of "nursing home staff" in France are refusing the vaccine. I don't generally take my vaccination advice from people working in care homes, and the Reuters article implies that it is generally because these employees are skeptical of the government, not on any scientific basis: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-france-va...
Not sure where this number is from. One of the main challenges of vaccine takeup in France and Germany (including health staff) is more about having a preference for the higher efficacy vaccines over the AstraZenica.
In the case of health staff, that might actually be a good idea.
From what I've read, all of the vaccines approved for emergency use so far in the US and EU stop 100% or close to it of severe cases and hospitalizations. Vaccinated people who get COVID get a case that is no worse than a mild to moderate seasonal flu.
The high efficacy vaccines reduces your chances of getting COVID at all quite a bit more than the ones with lesser efficacy.
For someone like me, who works at home and only goes out every so often for groceries, if I get COVID there is a very good chance I'll notice symptoms before I would next go out, and so can quarantine myself and not spread it.
My main concern, then, is ensuring that if I do catch it I get at most a mild case. Any of the vaccines will do that for me, so for me it makes the most sense to take the first one offered to me.
For health staff, they won't be working at home. If they get COVID they might have plenty of chances to spread it in the couple of days or so it takes to start showing symptoms. And the people they will be spreading it to, besides other health workers, will include people who are already weakened from whatever they have come to the doctor or hospital to have treated.
So for health staff we need more than just turning their cases mild. We want to stop them from getting it in the first place. Hence, they should be getting the high efficacy vaccines.
> I've read that up to 76% of the medical professional in some EU countries are refusing the vaccine, so I wonder why they do that is the science is so valid.
Cite or you get a downvote. Name the country and the vaccine type.
Would I take any of Moderna, J&J, etc. developed under scrutiny and forced to open their data to the public? Sure.
Would I take one of the Russian or Chinese vaccines that have had questionable data releases? Probably not.
This FT article mentions the 76%, but the reference article is paywalled. It talks about specifically nursing home employees, so your skepticism is well warranted. This article from Reuters was the best un-paywalled one I could find, but lacks the % claim: https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-france-va...
Relax I just wrote from memory - I remembed the number, not the source, but someone gave an actual source. Happy?
> Would I take one of the Russian or Chinese vaccines that have had questionable data releases? Probably not.
I will happily take any vaccine that has been tested over 10M peoplefor over 1 year - even better if it's a tried and true old technology (not mRNA) like at least Astra Zeneca.
Until then, I will wait and let the other find out the potential dangers for me.
I am young and healthy, almost no risk, so waiting won't change my plans or behaviours.
And I don't presume to tell anyone what they should do (even if I really prefer if everybody got vaccinated, for herd immunity) - just what I am doing for myself.
You'd rather take your chances with the virus? Or do you plan on hibernating for another 12 months? I hope you don't imagine that any of the rest of us are going to share your caution.
To those that are downvoting: To give you some numbers after over 25m doses of vaccine delivered in the US. The current stats of severe allergic reaction to vaccines (which is the most severe adverse advent reported) stands at 4.7 cases of 1 million (!) doses administered. Even though these are severe reactions, they are still temporary/transient.
It might be hard to comprehend, but vaccines are very safe.
> One reason for the scepticism is that those recommending the vaccine are the same people - the French state - whom care home workers blame for their low pay and tough working conditions, said Malika Belarbi, a care worker and trade union official.
So, basically, this has nothing to do with whether the vaccines are or are not medically okay but everything to do with the fact that the workers don't trust the people who have crapped on them.
And, when you say care workers, normally those people are NOT medical professionals (most, in fact, are probably immigrant labor).
The fact that you would assign authority and credibility based upon celebrity rather than factuality is, in fact, the fundamental problem of social media.
No, I responded to the way you talk, as if one downvote or one upvote is a deciding factor when it clearly isn't. Yet you seem to put nonzero weight to it when 99% of votes usually stay anonymous.
I will say if you get the Moderna, that second shot is seriously painful. We had a pretty universal pain in the arm followed by chills followed by hot flashes then a day of feeling like you are walking through water. It was two days of crud. If you have a choice get Pfizer instead. The people taking that don't seem to suffer.
I've to counter your anecdata with mine. It's the same with Pfizer.
Second shot can create adverse reactions. I know people who got flue-like symptoms (headache, muscular pain, increased temperature) for a day.
Amongst doctors it is very common. Prior exposure to covid-19 is suspected to be a contributing factor.
Still, it's better than the alternative: not being immunised and a possible patient/transmission vector.
I've heard mixed reviews from both vaccines. I suspect it's the underlying disease. You either get it or you barely feel it right?
Anecdotal as fuck, but it seems to me it's the same with the vaccines, and if that's the case, if you had a bad reaction to the vaccine, you probably would've had a bad reaction if you had contracted the disease.
You mean you suspect it’s like the underlying disease?
Maybe you’ll have a serious and uncomfortable immune response, but since the vaccine can’t proliferate, it will be a relatively brief one at even seventy-two hours.
I also know people who reacted exactly backwards. The first shot was terrible and the second shot barely noticeable.
However, as someone who got Covid, I wish I could have had the opportunity to skip 2 weeks of misery and months of recovery in return for 2-3 days of a reaction.
I'm all for anecdotes, but the side effect rate for moderna is known. And I know several people who have gotten it and no one has complained of side effects.
Our hospital here in Trondheim, Norway did mass vaccinate about one-third of their employees in one day (Astra-Zeneca, I believe). In the next couple of days, the number on sick leave was nearly high enough to be a serious problem. They have now learned to stagger their vaccinations a bit more. Nothing dramatic in that, but the side effects are quite real for enough people.
In yet another failure of messaging from public health authorities, individuals such as yourself are surprised by the intense but entirely normal immune response to an antigen your body was just trained to fight.
There is a reasonable question about the necessity of that second dose, however.
My wife received her first shot on December 23 (before Dr Fauci got his btw). From there, I've noticed: no extra wifi, no 5G, no extra appendages, and no cthlonic growth (oh r'lyeh now!).
In all seriousness, she said the shots hurt more than the flu shots do - and the second one she felt like the early sign of getting sick but never did (immune response, but goes oh its nothing! cool!). Past that, she's been working with covid positive people in home health settings
The MOMENT that I qualify for a covid vaccine, I'm taking it. I don't care which vaccine it is. When it's available, I'll gladly take. And for me, that's one step closer to coming back to normal lives, vacationing, and having fun in different parts of the world... And the biggest thing - putting the pandemic behind us.
You should take any vaccine because - unless you are young - the risk from vaccination is dwarfed by the risk of being infected by the virus. And make no mistake, you will eventually be exposed.
There is a key word that you are missing. In the trials. Not the full release.
The citation is in the article itself. Please look at the table which shows the number of people in each vaccine trial, and the number who were hospitalized/died.
To save you the trouble, the numbers are "0" of those outcomes out of the 15k, 18.6k, 13k, 5.8k and 22k people in the trials (or around 0 out of 74,200 people total).
Since the beginning of the trials, all trials, there has not been a single death or hospitalization among people vaccinated. Not one. Zero. Not for Moderna, not for Pfizer/BioNTech, not for Oxford/AstraZeneca, not for Sputnik, not for J&J, not for Novavax.
There were 9 deaths in France already among the people vaccinated. Saying it's zero is a pure lie. Whether it was caused by the vaccine, its consequences, or something else is unclear.
I am pretty sure they were not all in one elderly home. In a brief look at the BMJ paper I did not see that claim, and besides I think such a dramatic incident would have made a much bigger splash in the news.
> 46 residents of the Nuestra Señora del Rosario home in Spain died after receiving the shot.
Ouch. I would suspect some procedural error there, but who knows?
Back to Norway. I searched a bit more for articles about the 23. No evidence they were concentrated like that. All of them were over 80, most over 90, all of them were extremely frail to begin with. In those circumstances, it is to be expected that many would die under any circumstance, and for sure, the side effects of the vaccine may have pushed some over the edge. As of 23 February, the number has risen to 102. Health authorities keep a close eye on these numbers, of course, but still see no reason for alarm.
> I think it is safe to say anyone who claims no one has died after receiving the shot is not being honest.
Not honest, or not thinking it through. In the discussion elsewhere in this thread, there seems to be some confusion due to the fact that someone is talking only about those enrolled in the trials, while others are talking about all vaccinated people.
What good does this make the vaccines? Aren't the vaccines only really desirable for the elderly? The risk factors for the disease are mainly age and underlying comorbidities, but if the same people aren't receiving it well? On top of the MRNA having no claims yet that it prevents transmission.
No, there aren't. We're vaccinating at a massive scale in the US, concentrating on the elderly, and the events you're talking about simply aren't happening.
In the US, we're administering the mRNA vaccines exclusively (J&J is just now rolling out) and we're prioritizing nursing homes. We've administered 78 million doses. Why aren't we seeing similar events here? Supposedly, the most trustworthy stat we have is deaths. Deaths in assisted living homes are plummeting.
Out of curiosity, do you also believe the official number of Chinese cases, which is around 89,000?
Or to answer your question directly, I believe the media isn't reporting them. Just like they don't want to report Cuomo, along with governors in multiple states, knowingly stuffed nursing homes with covid cases. It all comes out eventually, but right now is the "fog of war" so to speak. We won't hear about the deaths caused by the shot until later.
The media isn't reporting them? You can get the stats directly from the states, all of which are vaccinating nursing homes aggressively. Are the leaders of these states all conspiring?
The only reasonable and fair interpretation of TFA's statement is there have been no deaths from covid in the vaccinated population. It's obviously not proof against death, and it might even have a tiny inherent risk itself.
Do you have contradictory information about covid hospitalizations/deaths in the vaccinated population?
"Preliminary results from a study in Scotland found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine reduced hospital admissions by up to 85% four weeks after the first dose, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot cut admissions by up to 94%."
85% and 94% are not 100%. QED.
Also, read carefully the quote. It is talking about the (few thousand) people enrolled in the non-placebo arm of the trials, not everyone receiving the vaccine. The claim made in the GP was vastly broader and unsupported.
That's not referencing hospitalizations among those that have received the vaccine. That's talking about a total reduction in hospital admissions among the general population, many of which had yet to receive a vaccination.
In the context of the article, the implication of that sentence was "there has not been a single death or hospitalization [from covid]". I thought that would also be clear from the context of this thread, but maybe not.
We're talking about tens of millions (soon billions) of doses. I'm sure there will be some bad reactions, but there's definitely going to be a lot of simple coincidences too. I'm sure I don't need to repost the XKCD on correlation/causation here.
>Since the beginning of the trials, all trials, there has not been a single death or hospitalization among people vaccinated.
The statement clearly says, since the date when trials began, there have been no deaths among all people who received the shot. This is obviously an untrue statement and misinformation.
I think the best way to measure risk is having lots of information and data to base our decisions on. Unfortunately, this seems to be hard to find regarding vaccines in general, and worse for covid based vaccines.
> I also do not trust chinese vaccine and their manufacturing process.
Maybe you could have phrased that in a way that's not so racist?
EDIT: I sometimes try to explain that I expect such things to be posted with almost 100% certainty, and that it's not nice to read such things that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26322291 so I must insist: you may not trust a company or manufacturing process, but not trusting anything at all from a given country is racism
Racism?! Seems as likely me that you're publicly berating a student of English for the fun of it. Heck, if GP is implying that they could get the Chinese vaccine, wouldn't that imply they are themselves Chinese?
Chinese vaccine with trip to UAE is righ now the only vaccine available to me. I need jab for travel, but it will take another 12 months to get it through public health system (EU).
China is a country, not only an ethnicity. Maybe you could have chosen to read "I don't trust a vaccine made in China" without reading racism into it that was never there?
"Children's Health Defense is an American 501c3 nonprofit advocacy organization,[1] known for its anti-vaccine activism. According to Seth Mnookin, much of the material put forth by the organization involves misinformation on vaccines and anti-vaccine propaganda.[2] It was founded and is chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.[3] Established under the name World Mercury Project in 2016, it has been campaigning against various public health programs, such as vaccination and fluoridation of drinking water."
You know, if even the Catholic bishops aren't accusing it of this side effect fraught as they are with concern for child and fetal welfare I think GP needs to consider their position.
Catholic Bishops are concerned about the Johnston and Johnston vaccine because it was made with aborted fetal cells. So there is an ethic concern with Catholics on the Johnston and Johnston vaccine. Not the other vaccines though.
made with cells derived from cells extracted from an aborted fetus and then passaged (grow to several 100 cell divisions on a plate, suspend in solution, discard 99% of cells, repeat hundreds of times, eventually magic happens). To call the vaccine "made from aborted fetal cells" is their argument, but it elides an astounding amount of distance between the cells used for virus production and actual aborted fetal cells.
The killing of an unborn child via abortion is definitively considered a sin, but receiving a vaccine developed from those cells is an act sufficiently detached from that sin that most bishops are okay with it, so the rulings are going at the moment.
Just posting a link without commentary makes it hard to know what point you're trying to make. The CDC related vaccine safety tracker shows no difference in baseline miscarriage rates so I don't think that link is very accurate.
Just want to point out there is decent evidence that the COVID19 vaccine(s) (particularly the mRNA vaccines) have a much higher risk(s) than standard vaccines.
Note: the fatality rate is likely significantly lower, due to many cases going untested. If you're under 50, influenza is a significantly higher fatality rate.
Just wanted to point out the evidence related to the vaccines, aka flu vaccine is definitely a good idea (especially if older). COVID19 vaccines, would not recommend unless you are in your 70's.
There is an evidence that or immune system has either limited memory or bandwidth or both. See immune imprinting. So while taking once a ten year vaccine for not rapidly mutating pathogen makes it more robust, the case of regular intake for highly volatile virus is not so obvious.
There were already warning cases with flu and some other diseases.
I'm young and healthy, with less than 0.4% risks of dying, so I think I'll pass for the time being, and leave my dose to those who want it.
I'm super happy to give it to them, as I want as many people vaccinated to protect me (herd immunity) without being vaccinated myself to avoid the rare risk of side effects that will be known better in a year or two from now.
Yeah, I'm selfish. And no, I don't care about people possibly dying. They should get vaccinated! They should take any vaccine!
Actually, I wish I could resell the dose the government wants to give me to someone from a country that doesn't have enough vaccine, like on ebay.
Unfortunately, in my experience, it doesn't work: I tried to do that before during the H1N1 scare with the help of friends and the parcels didn't reach the buyers.
> I'm young and healthy, with less than 0.4% risks of dying, so I think I'll pass for the time being, and leave my dose to those who want it.
Your argument is based on a superficial interpretation of these 0.4% of "risks". Let's assume you mean Covid, and not paper cuts or meteorite impacts. 0.4% is no promise that you won't die if you get it. Also, death rate is not the only factor that should be taken into account. Covid can seriously mess up your health even if you are young and healthy and survive.
A point that should also convice those that think selfishly: the faster herd immunity is achieved, the sooner this whole story ends. This should reduce the need for further lockdowns and also reduce the risk of some mutation of Covid-19 coming back. The seasonal influenca has been pretty much disrupted by the lockdowns and the sharp reduction in international travelling. Surely nobody misses them. Let's make the most out of it and ensure there is not going to be seasonal Covid in the future.
I'm not anti vaxxer: I will be happy to take any vaccine after at least 1 year has elapsed for 10M people having received that vaccine - and I will prefer non mRNA if possible, as it is an old technology therefore very well known, and if possible the vaccine that has been injected on the most people, because it will be the one that is best known.
I know that >10M people have been for 1 month, and I know that at least 10'000 people have received the vaccine about 1 year ago ago in phase 2 tests, but this is 2 separate things, while what I'm asking for is the cumulative thing.
As for why, I decide what is injected in my body and I set my own safety benchmarks.
Yes, back in 2009, I was a student and I thought "easy money!" :)
It was in very high demand, and I could get some, so I figured, let the great material continuum provide to those who need it and have the money to pay for our efforts!
Unfortunately the customs hassled the customers for paperwork (the health market is so overregulated!) who then hassled me.
I was just in for a quick buck, and the vaccines were legit with all the barcodes and stuff, new in a manufacturer box, still sealed, so I didn't understand why!
Still, I did a few rounds giving the required documentation each time, until I realized the customs agents were just finding excuses to block the parcels, and more likely to keep the content for themselves or their family instead of my clients who had paid for it, or maybe for reselling themselves, as one dose was reselling for over 400 in some markets! So I gave up and issued refunds, even if it was not my fault that the parcel didn't reach the customers.
I should have lied about the content! Little did I know back then, I was young and naive and I thought the laws in the West meant something.
Still, it taught me some good lessons: don't deal with physical goods whenever possible! Don't deal with stuff that's full of regulations!
In a way, it helped define me, as the next schoolyear I got into crypto.
Uhm well yes, medical products are nearly universally regulated. And often don't make it past customs - it's pretty suspect to try to ship a regulated product without proper documentation.
