Manufacturing matters, and six years ago, I said that one side effect from the pandemic is that mRNA technology, which had been lab-scale stuff, suddenly had dump-trucks full of money appearing to help them scale their manufacturing.<p>They apparently settled on the the sequences for the original covid vacs in a weekend. Going from that design to billions of doses is one of the hardest things to do, but once done, will persist. And it is ready to be deployed for the next hundred applications that we find for this.<p>Flu vaccines is an obvious application, since the prior egg-based manufacturing required about six months lead time and millions of eggs, but nobody wanted to invest in anything better.
> They apparently settled on the the sequences for the original covid vacs in a weekend. Going from that design to billions of doses is one of the hardest things to do, but once done, will persist.<p>No no. They had <i>a candidate</i> for the vaccine. Scaling manufacturing is hard, sure, but the actual barrier was <i>proving the candidate worked.</i> We conducted (by far) the most time-efficient clinical trials in history to prove the vaccines were safe and effective.<p>Until that happened, we could not have known the candidate drug was actually correct.
> but nobody wanted to invest in anything better.<p>Not sure if you mean nobody wanted to develop mRNA flu vaccines, but at least Moderna and Pfizer are:<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/nx-s1-5863570/flu-vaccine-mrna-moderna-fda" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2026/06/18/nx-s1-5863570/flu-vaccine-mrn...</a>
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Serious question in good faith: what was the deal with the “calamari” (clots?) the anti-vax crowd kept talking about being found in the veins/arteries of folks who took the Covid vaccine?
> Now an international team, led by Flinders University, have found that in a small number of people, the immune system can accidentally confuse a normal adenovirus protein with a human blood protein termed platelet factor 4 (or PF4).<p>Seems to have been a legitimate, very rare, side effect<p><a href="https://www.flinders.edu.au/research/articles/covid-vaccine-blood-clots" rel="nofollow">https://www.flinders.edu.au/research/articles/covid-vaccine-...</a>
IIRC the vaccines were provably linked to the death of young people who had blood clots they shouldn't have had.<p>The common argument made is that the vaccine saved more lives than they took, but this is pretty fucked up IMO. It's the trolley problem IRL - if you force someone to get a vaccine and they die as a result, you are responsible for their death. Also, the manufacturers can never be held responsible, because they have legal immunity for the COVID vaccines.
Yes, I think you are correct in reducing the argument to its basic factors. Yep, its fucked up.<p>However if we’re going to talk about moral responsibility for vaccine mandates, we also have to consider moral responsibility for non-vaccination leading to spread of a dangerous virus during a pandemic.<p>If you are going to hold one group responsible for vaccine-related deaths of mandated vaccines, you must also hold the group who refused the vaccine responsible for any deaths of other people who were infected as a result of their vaccine refusal.<p>Vaccine deaths were real, and very rare. COVID deaths from preventable spread were also real, and much more common. Public policy had to weigh both, not pretend either side of the risk didn’t exist.
> Also, the manufacturers can never be held responsible, because they have legal immunity for the COVID vaccines.<p>There is remedy against vaccine harm: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compensation_Program" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...</a><p>This was passed in response to claims against DPT vaccine and manufacturers stopping production of the said vaccine. Lawmakers feared loss of herd immunity and passed the law. Now vaccine skeptics say this is not enough and claim inability to sue the company directly as an issue - but what they really want is enforce their minority view on the majority by suing companies and ensuring no one has access to vaccines - tyranny of the minority.
Society <i>is</i> the trolley problem. The balancing act between individual and collective rights is the lever being thrown every time we pass a law or make a regulation.<p>I can absolutely empathize though. It really is fucked up to experience it in the extreme. Usually the trade-offs are much more minor or have a big time delay or are more abstract.
I wonder if this is some kind of prisoners dilemma for society and individual choice.
Lots of societies who started with some killing “for the common good” ended in atrocities.<p>The statistics on men under 25 are still horrific and suggest this was in fact the latter category: atrocity masquerading behind that euphemism.
Do you apply that same standard to other things, like cars? Do you feel allowing people to drive is also society "killing for the common good"? What about gun ownership?<p>After more than eight billion doses of the vaccine, about twenty deaths were causally linked to the vaccine. Five times as many people die every day from traffic in the US alone, many of them children.<p>What about gun ownership?<p>And by that measure, isn't <i>not</i> vaccinating people an even bigger atrocity? Aren't you also arguing to kill people "for the common good" by not mandating vaccination?
For the record, this comment is not arguing against vaccines or their veracity, there seems to have been confusion about that. I am specifically arguing against <i>vaccine mandates.</i>
If someone refuses a vaccine and then passes on a virus to someone else, who dies, isn't that morally equivalent to "forcing" a vaccine on someone, who then dies? Your argument seems to be "people who choose to put others at risk, should be prevented from doing so." This seems like a much stronger argument in favor of requiring unvaccinated people to stay home rather than putting others at risk?<p>Every death is a tragedy. Harm to one person is not fungible with benefit to another. You can't subtract one from five to get four net lives saved, but you can say that five is more than one. If someone pulls the lever then they have murdered one person and saved five. If someone wants to pull it and I stop them, haven't I murdered five people and saved one?
In Belgium, the polio vaccine is mandatory, and rightly so.<p>I'm willing to bet that in the next 20 years, some kid in the western world will suffer the consequences of polio, because of the anti-vax lunatics.
If the pandemic had been deadlier and even more infectious like measles or smallpox were, would you still be against mandates? Surely there is a scenario like airborne Ebola or 28 days Later Rage virus that would justify mandates.
Not "the vaccines" only adenovirus vector based ones and the vaccines were dropped from use pretty quickly once the safety signal was detected.
> <i>Also, the manufacturers can never be held responsible, because they have legal immunity for the COVID vaccines.</i><p>Since there was basically a soft mandate for it, especially on top of some of the usual official red tape being cut, the manufacturers really wouldn't be the appropriate party to hold responsibility. That'd be the government.
This was very uncommon. It was also unrelated to mRNA vaccines, it was the AstroZeneca vaccine vaxzevria, and it was based on an adenovirus.
I know that it was uncommon but that's not the point. Imagine if you had lost a son or daughter due to this. You thought you were doing the right thing for your child, you did what you were told to do. They died, and now you can't even sue the manufacturer. The UK compensated some families £120k under the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, but would that be enough for you to accept the loss of a loved one?
A tiny fraction of infants react to infant vaccinations.<p>But the harm those children experience is a <i>infintesimal</i> fraction of the harm all children would feel if there were no infant vaccinations.<p>It's a trade off but it's one that must be made. The parents whose child died did the best thing they could do. Until we can screen for the infants that will react, vaccinations are the best choice.
It's a false trade off because without vaccines, the kids that would have died from vaccines <i>are still in danger</i>!
> the kids that would have died from vaccines are still in danger<p>Except that <i>we knew by May 2020</i> (possibly even earlier) that the data showed that the young and otherwise healthy were at extraordinarily low risk from Covid.<p>I still recall a conversation with child#2 after one of his school friends was at home quarantining after testing positive for Covid.<p>I asked my son if he knew if his friend was feeling better...<p>"Daddy, he's not poorly, he's just got Covid".
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They did the best for society, not for their child. Yes, vaccines are the best choice, there is no doubt about that. But the society in question must take much better care of those who sacrifice so much for the whole.
No, they did the best for their child. They had no way of knowing their child would react before they gave the vaccine. The harms and risks of illness prevented by vaccination are far greater than the harms and the risks of adverse reaction.<p>Herd immunity arguments can make that calculation more fuzzy but the herd can't tolerate many people opting out and still give group cover. So after a certain amount of people, choosing not to vaccinate is seriously risking illness. Society is built to handle those types of collective action problems. The moral case is still clear IMO.
> it's a trade off but it's one that must be made.<p>It is a trade off that is fair to the individual and to the society IF the society live up to its end of the bargain and had come up with a method of producing the vaccines without the profit maxxing incentive.
Seatbelts and airbags sometimes kill people, too. Sometimes people die in unlucky ways.
I don't have to imagine, I lost relatives to people who didn't get vaccinated. A lot of people did. Probably literally billions.
My cousin died in 2021 at the age of 28 after AstraZeneca vaccine. Quite unfortunate, they starter increasing the age group of people receiving that vaccine literally days after he got it. His parents obviously are obviously still struggling with it and will never really accept it.
> Imagine if you had lost a son or daughter due to this<p>And imagine if you lost a son or daughter due to not doing this.<p>You are making a choice either way. If the opposite choice was made there are different consequences. Its not like you can opt out of consequences by not choosing.
Comparing it to the trolley problem is incorrect. COVID had real potential to kill <i>you</i>, even as a young person. At that point its a matter of risk assessment for yourself. Take a 2% chance of dying, a slightly higher chance of reduced quality of life (long COVID), or take a lottery-winning chance of dying to this blood clot. It is appropriate to do the math correctly to decide if this makes sense, but to claim that scientists and advocates did not do this personal risk assessment math and merely went off the benefits of herd immunity is a lie and anti-vaccine propaganda.
A nice lottery simulator which had me stop playing the lottery<p><a href="https://perthirtysix.com/tool/lottery-simulator" rel="nofollow">https://perthirtysix.com/tool/lottery-simulator</a>
>Comparing it to the trolley problem is incorrect. COVID had real potential to kill you, even as a young person.<p>I don't think this is correct. If you remove the people with comorbidities, the risk for healthy young people was minuscule, there's way other issues you should concern yourself with at that point, rather than dying from COVID.<p>Vaccinating young people with something that had the potential of side effects was just dumb, either way you look at it. I'm honestly baffled it was accepted. It seems to be the product of mass hysteria, sustained by greed for profits.
> the risk for healthy young people was minuscule<p>Arguably so was the risk from the vaccine.<p>About 17400 people under 20 died of covid. According to this paper <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8875435/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8875435/</a> all the people who died from side effects of the covid vaccine were over 22 (its possible that is not exhaustive, but i can't seem to find any examples of confirmed deaths related to the vaccine for children. If there are any i think its likely the number is in the single digits).<p>So even if the risk of death from covid in kids is small, its still probably at least 1000 times higher than the risk from the vaccine, and possibly much higher.<p>> something that had the potential of side effects<p>Literally everything has potential side effects. Clean drinking water? Has side effects (e.g. less vitamin b12 from poop). All choices have consequences.
2% chance of death? A quick google shows it to be around 0.16%, and the deaths seem to be allocated to people who are older or just have other comorbities. I think the scientists in retrospect just didnt want hospitals to get full honestly, since they dont have the capacity for it as it is — atleast here in Canada.
Nothingburger like pretty much everything that antivaxers talk about
Dismissing people like this is part of what fuels the antivax movement. Vaccines are generally effective, but they're not perfect and have side effects, and failing to acknowledge that when someone is asking in in good faith polarizes people and makes it look like someone's trying to hide something.
Dismissing people who dismiss the antivax movement like this is part of what fuels the anti-anti-vax movement.
Those people are going to be polarised regardless. If you don't give them a reason to be polarised they'll invent one because they want to be polarised.
Good faith isn't enough. I just reread some tweets, and there were multiple people who in completely good faith (from their point of view) were protecting their community by claiming everybody who took a vaccine would be dead by June 2026.
It <i>was</i> a nothingburger. It wasn't even a side effect of the mRNA vaccines.<p>You don't have to care about the people who aren't interested in science. Sure, you have to protect immunocompromised people <i>from</i> those people, and we can do that.
It is okay to dismiss negligible things. People sustain a lot of injuries and die in their bathrooms but it would be insane to both-sides somebody’s campaign against taking shits<p><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6022a1.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6022a1.htm</a>
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I'm not sure this information will sway very many people. I have relatives who are all getting tested for t-cell counts related to mRNA because they are convinced they are the cause of any and all health problems they are facing. It seems like the medical professionals who are administering the tests are at least somewhat responsible for their misapplication.
Information won’t sway someone who’s views aren’t based on information.
It's not about swaying individuals. Let people believe their stupid stuff.<p>It's about swaying investors and regulators. And yeah, we need to make sure we excise our regulators of crazy people, but that's cyclic. And next cycle, we'll get vaccines for a lot more.
Point taken, but it isn't just a matter of individuals, it is a popular movement that has captured a significant part of role of regulators. The research is still valuable, but its lack of influence is not a problem that is safe to dismiss.
It matters over time. The old kooks die off and are replaced with people who are relatively sane until they find new things to be old kooks about.
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I think you'll find there's a rational distrust in big pharma
I don't think I'll find that, after investigating the claims I have heard.
Two things can be true: Big Pharma can be evil, and their products are much better vetted for safety and efficacy than random peptides sourced form mystery factories.
The Venn diagram of people who distrust big pharma and the people who uncritically trust the far larger “wellness” industry is a circle.
and do you really think a significant percentage of forced vaccination detractors are taking mystery peptides? have there been studies, or are you vibing this guess off snarky reddit comments?
Nobody's used state power to mandate peptides and social media censorship to reports of adverse effects.<p>As many of us said at the time, the mandates weren't worth the destruction of public trust, especially because the vaccine wasn't even sterilizing.<p>The next time there's a crisis, resist the urge to use the government to achieve outcomes by brute force. It doesn't work and has generational adverse consequences.
“I won’t put chemicals from big pharma in my body!”<p><i>Proceeds to raw dog a bunch of “research chemicals” cause some roided up bro talked about it on a podcast…</i><p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7gbFMWZWlo" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U7gbFMWZWlo</a><p>They’re not vaccines though.
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Well cited doesn't mean very much outside of the context of peer reviewed work.<p>This book pushes Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine as "miracle cures", thanks to that idea my relatives also have a stockpile of both.
I have a simple rule. If a person spews complete bullshit I no longer trust them.
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Having read it, he does cite something for almost every claim. Although almost every source also contradicts his conclusions on some basic, logical, statistical, mathematical, or humane level, if you bother to fact check them. So it’s quite hard to quantify what it means to say it has good citations.
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RFK's reliance on terrain theory, disproved continually since some five hundred years ago, does much to assist in citations - it is common to cite bad science as evidence where we need to improve public comprehension.
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You've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. If you keep this up, we will ban you. We already asked you to stop this: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46534572">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46534572</a>.<p>There are, unfortunately, many examples of your doing this:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756136">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47756136</a> (April 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745846">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745846</a> (April 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053228">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47053228</a> (Feb 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46755775">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46755775</a> (Jan 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605417">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605417</a> (Jan 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46522898">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46522898</a> (Jan 2026)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988414">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988414</a> (Nov 2025)<p>This is not a comment about any of your views on vaccines or anything else. But you can't post like this regardless of what your view is on any topic.<p>Please review <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a> and stick to the rules when posting here.
I don't approve of the downvoting and flagging, if there's anywhere on the internet that conspiracy ideas can be constructively pushed back on it should be here.<p>That being said you're not making very detailed defences of RFK's book and ideas. Can you be more specific on some ideas or claims from his book that you believe in and how they're supported?
“Science-schmiance”
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Shorter lead times in the face of viral mutations will be helpful.<p>Tailored vaccines for things like cancer are a game changer.<p>I live in hope of a semi-universal flu+related vaccine.<p>I live in fear of the measles induced "immune amnesia" effect.
I really feel that many of the issues with mRNA vaccines and health studies in general are generalizations like “safe and effective”. Everything has statistical risks and benefits, and we should just share those front and center with people. Eg test results for X mean you have a Y% chance of having X, given your history and symptoms and other results. Here are low cost low risk marginal things you can do to improve statistical significance.<p>Similar for vaccines, just give us the numbers clearly and upfront.<p>This bypasses regulators from having to make claims beyond “we reviewed the data and agree with these numbers and feel that this should not be banned.” I do think it would also help to separate something “not banned” and being “required to be covered by insurance” or “required for professions like the military”. I think trying to simplify things makes things worse, because this abstraction is not real.
> Similar for vaccines, just give us the numbers clearly and upfront.<p>You are aware that literally anyone can go and literally find exactly these numbers, correct?<p>The trial results are published!
Sounds like a oppurtunity for health educatation.
99%+ of people dont know they can look in the USPI for this data.
However, it isnt the best and most up to date, which the regulator and FDA would have and are unlikely to share.
Yep, those regulated marketing terms could use an update.<p>Regulators don’t make cures. There’s room to improve on that side of the system.<p>Especially as emerging approaches seem to be trending more systems-thinking-oriented, eg “this will strengthen your immune system to fight lots of diseases.”
There are credible doctors and scientists who have a different view:
<a href="https://maloneinstitute.org/reference-project" rel="nofollow">https://maloneinstitute.org/reference-project</a>
how exactly were the vaccines effective, if every single person i know who got them got covid?
They were never meant to prevent people from getting COVID.
They were meant to prevent people from dying due to COVID.
The fact they were able to tell you they had COVID means it was a resounding success (not dead).
> They were never meant to prevent people from getting COVID.<p>"COVID-19 vaccination will help keep you from getting COVID-19" - <a href="https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/97780/" rel="nofollow">https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/97780/</a><p>You see, this kind of lying and gaslighting is exactly what feeds the distrust in the government and scientific establishment in general public. No number of studies is going to reverse that any time soon.
A million Americans chose death from very effective (preventable) disease instead. That's how.
Did they die?
Is the rabies vaccine not effective in your view?
The potential for the technology in cancer treatment is what I find most exciting.
Yes, I've been very excited about that for more than 10 years. It may not pan out, it's far more speculative than infectious disease prevention, but when combined with checkpoint inhibitors, and I fear they may not do the bold thing and do fully personalized therapeutic vaccines, but it does provide a great deal of hope.
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If these mRNA vaccines had not been pushed or mandated, more people would probably think they are safe: there will be no need for any of these reviews.<p>But because they were pushed by the government, many people do not trust them. Sure, they were pushed and mandated for good reasons, but the problem is that a lot of people have already lost trust in the government.<p>That trust was not lost because of one big decision. It was lost through many small, unrelated government decisions that may not seem noticeable or measurable on their own, but over time, they build up.<p>I do not know how this trust can be rebuilt but definitely not by publishing more reviews.
I think it’s the opposite. The _distrust itself_ was pushed by those looking to stir up outrage, generate engagement, and turn it into votes.<p>Case in point: look at all the people who’ve now built their entire political identities atop this unfalsifiable distrust. They’d even distrust “stand further apart” if the wrong person said it.<p>> I do not know how this trust can be rebuilt but definitely not by publishing more reviews.<p>This is the crux. Outrage spreads way faster than the boring truth.
> They’d even distrust “stand further apart” if the wrong person said it.<p>They shouldn’t believe it no matter who says it. The entire concept of “social distancing” was completely made up and had no science behind it. It belongs in the same bucket of nonsense as “mask up between bites.”
> unfalsifiable distrust<p>Well, I think it’s pretty clear for starters that politicians lie (and yes this holds for both left and right; although indeed some presidents more than others), and that this isn’t helping trust.
One word, transparency. Being open about the research and outcomes. This is a situation good science communicators can help with.<p>Engage the skeptics in open debate and address their concerns, not censorship and embarking on cancellation campaigns.<p>However uncomfortable it seems, the median person in society isn't going to do a thorough literature review to make up their mind, they'll do it based on personal instincts.
I’m pretty sure it was lost via billions spent on a sustained propaganda campaign no country was willing to stand up to.
Take the vax or lose your job. Two weeks to flatten the curve. You are killing grandma. "Lab leak" was a dirty word. The science has settled. A bloody live death count on the news.<p>It seemed that every conceivable way to pressure, force, guilt trip and coerce people into taking the CV was utilized during covid. Enough that no doubt many people are highly suspicious of any authority henceforth and no amount of research will sway them from that. The trust simply isn't there. Yet.<p>Time is the only cure.
No I don't think they are safe because I still suffer from the damage it did to my heart
> I do not know how this trust can be rebuilt but definitely not by publishing more reviews.<p>Dear Previous Paragraph,<p>Couldn't many small published reviews which don't show a noticeable or measurable positive effect on their own build up over time to rebuild trust?<p>Sincerely,
Your Reader
Hopefully at some point the do their own research people will kill themselves off, hopefully before they kill their own kids and family members.
> If these mRNA vaccines had not been pushed or mandated, more people would probably think they are safe: there will be no need for any of these reviews.<p>Hogwash. Wakefield predated anything Covid. And measles vaccines aren't mRNA and people would rather let their children die.<p>Had Trump and Co called the vaccine part of the second coming, people would be lining up at their churches to get them.<p>You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
> people would rather let their children die.<p>I see that your are yourself in a position you didn't reason you into.
Trump did tell people to get them? It was his opposition saying they wouldn’t trust a vaccine pushed out by Trump. You’ve basically rewritten history.
I dont think people's motivations are to kill their children, but the opposite.
I think this is the starting point for developing cognitive empathy and an accurate model.<p>Again, trust is a huge factor here.
> But because they were pushed by the government, many people do not trust them. Sure, they were pushed and mandated for good reasons, but the problem is that a lot of people have already lost trust in the government.<p>In the case of COVID, the effectiveness of vaccines was quite exaggerated at first[0]. That absolutely didn't help government rebuild the trust.<p>> I do not know how this trust can be rebuilt but definitely not by publishing more reviews.<p>At this point, quite sure more reviews will only trigger people's confirmation bias and make those who already don't trust vaccines trust them even less.<p>[0]: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-government-and-politics-coronavirus-pandemic-46a270ce0f681caa7e4143e2ae9a0211" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-governm...</a>
Vaccines were very effective against the first variant, and got less effective with later ones. People forget about the timeline. Article mentions the delta variant at which time vaccines were still very effective IIRC. There were some breakthrough cases as the article mentions but that's to be expected with anything short of 100% efficacy.
> In the case of COVID, the effectiveness of vaccines was quite exaggerated at first[0]. [0]: <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-government-and-politics-coronavirus-pandemic-46a270ce0f681caa7e4143e2ae9a0211" rel="nofollow">https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-governm...</a><p>One's model of "statement made by the POTUS" should be more like 'statement made by mildly likeable (to some segment of the population) boomer dad who probably doesn't know what he is talking about.' It'd be a different thing if a public health official said something like this (and I don't know if they did, but I certainly wasn't left with the impression that it was impossible for me to get vaccinated and still get covid).
The Covid vaccines were and continue to be VERY effective at preventing you from winding up on ECMO.<p>Yes, you may still get Covid, but you don't die from drowning in your own body fluids anymore.<p>Of course, this only attends if you got the damn vaccine. <i>All</i> of the Covid deaths around me in the last couple years (7 deaths) were anti-vaxxers. But, hey, we know that reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Really glad they confirmed this, about 5 years after I was forced to take one at threat of job loss despite 1) already having had natural Covid and 2) working a fully remote job.<p>But better late than never I suppose.
They confirmed this when the vaccines were authorized. And as part of every drug, there's continual, ongoing, review of the data to ensure that safety is maintained, and that nothing has changed about the drug and its manufacturing. This is the "phase 4" of a drug, continual ongoing monitoring.
> They confirmed this when the vaccines were authorized<p>No. They didn’t. They said it.<p>You were the Phase3 trial. You can probably debate the ethicality, the decisions made, but do not pretend they had 5 year data before deploying to the entire world.<p>Facts matter.
It's quite odd for a person to assert falehoods while also saying "facts matter."<p>Dec 11 2020- publication of phase 2/3 trial results, meaning not only was the study fully completed, but it made it through peer review too: <a href="https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577" rel="nofollow">https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577</a><p>Dec 11 - 2020: first authorization <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/health/pfizer-vaccine-authorized.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/health/pfizer-vaccine-aut...</a>
You're aware that most drugs are approved without 5-year data, correct? Why did you draw the line there? Why not wait for 10-year data? What about 20- or 50- or 100-year data?<p>Do we need 75-year data for Viagra too?<p>30-year data for aspirin?<p>What's the logic tree here?
> The researchers emphasize that, like all vaccines, mRNA vaccines can have side effects. They found that serious adverse events—such as myocarditis, which occurs more frequently in younger males—are rare and consistently outweighed by the vaccines’ protection<p>reminder to the myocarditis-maxxies, the actual virus causes that too and the 2020-2021 variants caused it worse<p>if we were all going to drop dead (I think 2 years ago now, I’m waaaaiting!) for whatever the vaccine did, it would apply to a broader population due to covid exposure
> reminder to the myocarditis-maxxies, the actual virus causes that too and the 2020-2021 variants caused it worse<p>Do you know if the vaccine prevented the virus-induced myocarditis? Cause the vaccine didn't do much to stop people from getting covid, multiple times even.<p>So many people frame this as either/or, you either had the risk of covid induced myocarditis or you had the (supposed) lesser risk of myocarditis from the vaccine. But if you got the vaccine (x times) and then covid (y times), isn't your risk roughly x + y?
The comparison of cardiovascular safety with vs without the vaccine is not even close:<p><a href="https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/covid-19-vaccinations-and-heart" rel="nofollow">https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/covid-19-vaccinati...</a><p>(Personally, I wish researchers would not forgot quite so often that there is a non-mRNA COVID vaccine available in the US. Where's all the analysis of the effects of the Novavax vaccine?)
I want to empathize with you, plenty of medical professionals used really reductive and inaccurate language that should be rightfully criticized. stopping people from getting covid being one of those things<p>none of those were goals of the vaccine, so its a fruitless exercise to build on top of<p>they communicated poorly at all levels the one time society needed them to communicate effectively, and lost the public trust<p>The goal was to reduce the spread overall, lessen the symptoms for individuals, have your own body fight it faster instead of becoming a factory for it, de-risking cytokine storms
“Rare”? :)<p>We don’t know the actual numbers as pericarditis and myocarditis can occur asymptomatically, and people truly need to be under very active medical surveillance to detect it
> if we were all going to drop dead (I think 2 years ago now, I’m waaaaiting!)<p>Channeling Monty Python:<p>... I got better
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The link in the article does not show the study, just a list of references, a summary and the researchers who published it. How many of the researchers who published this study have conflicts of interest? Where is the full study for review?
We synthesise evidence on vaccine components, manufacturing quality controls, and regulatory standards that underpin safety, alongside data from randomised trials, post-authorisation surveillance, and active pharmacovigilance systems.<p>"synthesize???"<p>With almost 200 references and the use of "synthesize???" it sound like AI generated slop.<p>The article is behind a paywall in any case so why so many positive comments about it?
The science doesn't matter to this administration unfortunately: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74dzdddvmjo" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74dzdddvmjo</a>
This administration literally fast-tracked the original covid vaccines for approval.<p>Say what you will about the Covid vaccine or Kennedy’s specific motivations (which I disagree with), but choosing to cut government funding for development of <i>wildly profitable pharmaceutical products</i> is a reasonable choice.
My understanding is that vaccine research and production is almost never profitable and depends on government support. Either grants, guaranteed purchases, or both.
Nope. Not this administration at all.<p>Trump 1 was a very different administration.<p>And Trump himself has publicly backed off what was probably his one major achievement after receiving pushback from his supporters.
The biggest single success from Trump’s first term is the thing his base hates to the point that they booed him over it.
It's literally not the same administration. Also yeah he wants private companies to stop "wild" profits while he grifts the nation with crypto, hosting UFC on white house? You have to be stupid or willfully ignorant to think the current administration gives a single f about unchecked profits or the people's general wellbeing.
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Not many people know that Trump had a hand in starting the pandemic.<p>Here's what we know: In 2014, Obama administration halted the so called "gain of function" research because of risk of laboratory accidents. In 2017, the Trump administration restarted this dangerous research. See links below.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-funding-for-risky-biological-study.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/white-house-to-cut-fun...</a><p>Excerpt: [Obama administration] White House announced Friday that it would temporarily halt all new funding for experiments that seek to study certain infectious agents by making them more dangerous. The White House said the moratorium decision had been made “following recent biosafety incidents at federal research facilities.”<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih...</a><p>Excerpt: [Trump administration] on Tuesday ended a moratorium imposed three years ago on funding research that alters germs to make them more lethal. Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic.<p>So, Trump restarted the dangerous research that Obama had shut down. You may be thinking, what does that have to do with Covid? Covid started in Wuhan, China, right?<p>It turns out that the Trump administration, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provided funding to the EcoHealth Alliance, an American non-profit organization focused on studying emerging diseases. The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses. The rest is history.<p>And then Trump also disbanded the pandemic preparedness team in 2018 just in time for the pandemic. See link below.<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-t...</a>
Well, I have to say that this is the most innovative leap of partisan politics I’ve seen so far this year!<p>Most left-wing critics are still struggling with admitting that Anthony Fauci really did provide funding to EcoHealth, despite ample documentation.
Not sure what is partisan about this. Some facts were presented. Not opinions, facts. If you dispute any of the above is factual please back up your assertion with citations.
I haven't seen anyone at all dispute that NIH funded EcoHealth lol
> The EcoHealth Alliance, in turn, provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for researching bat coronaviruses. The rest is history.<p>The WIV is 20km from the Huanan market where the pandemic started. There is no direct evidence linking the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 to laboratory work conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.[0] The evidence for zoonotic origin with multiple spillover events at the Huanan market is overwhelming.<p>This is just one review.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-virology-093022-013037" rel="nofollow">https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...</a>
No that was a conspiracy theory fueled by Russian disinformation, the scientists and experts testified that there was no gain of function work being done and debunked it.
Wow, they literally put an antivaccer in charge of the health department.
This is a thread about the world, not American hubris about its relevance in it<p>Thanks for the new toll in Hormuz though
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If we want to solve that we need to stop enabling career politicians whose only life experience is debating
Right now, we'd be better off if we even had politicians who could manage an actual <i>debate</i>. Seems like we can't get anything other than mudslinging and strongarming right now.
We would be a hell of a lot better off with career politicians than the current batch of grifters and ex-Fox News chuckleheads.
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They had done safety and effectiveness testing before deployment back then. These are retrospective studies using a real large dosing and placebo population.<p>The closest to “untested drug matter” that existed was the antibody cocktail that might have kept Trump alive.
They did all the normal steps in the US. It was faster because they had the full attention of the FDA (so zero admin delays), and they did some parts in parallel, risking wasting money if things did not work out.<p>The mRNA approach already had years of work prior to COVID, and was already reviewed for safety.
> years of work prior to COVID<p>It's worth highlghting the importance of years of basic science-research and testing, all little pieces which were mostly there when we finally needed them, work that was always under-threat from people saying "what use is this, why would we ever need that?" (For which the pandemic is an implicit answe the pandemic answered: "Stuff like this!")<p>Among many of those collective small contributions that create a practical and effective outcome, one example of work thankfully done in advance:<p>> But the thing is, our vaccine is only generating the spikes itself, and we’re not mounting them on any kind of virus body. It turns out that, unmodified, freestanding Spike proteins collapse into a different structure. If injected as a vaccine, this would indeed cause our bodies to develop immunity.. but only against the collapsed spike protein. And the real SARS-CoV-2 shows up with the spiky Spike. The vaccine would not work very well in that case.<p>> In 2017 it was described how putting a double Proline substitution in just the right place would make the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS S proteins take up their ‘pre-fusion’ configuration, even without being part of the whole virus. This works because Proline is a very rigid amino acid. It acts as a kind of splint, stabilising the protein in the state we need to show to the immune system. The people that discovered this should be walking around high-fiving themselves incessantly. Unbearable amounts of smugness should be emanating from them. And it would all be well deserved.<p>[0] <a href="https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source-code-of-the-biontech-pfizer-vaccine/" rel="nofollow">https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...</a>
The world was lucky the omicron mutation chose virulence over lethality - it could outcompete the older, more “effective” strains. This coupled with vaccines, isolation and antivirals (and treatment changes) kept the count down.<p>A different roll of the mutation dice might have made a sars that spread easily. That would have thinned out the middle aged folks.
You do what you have to do when people are dying in droves due to a pandemic and morgues are running out of room.
people indeed were dying in droves. based on the study in sweden the vast majority of those deaths (>90%) were in the age bracket of 70 plus. aged care is already a massive issue thanks to money making being more important than having families and being human - our aging population could have been addressed here. obviously the immunocompromised and the elderly did benefit alongside pharma execs. still this seems like a 'protect the kids' type of excuse. why should I be happy that swathes of the youth had to sacrifice their bodies just so that their grandparents could live a few more years of luxury ? I'm saying this because I know multiple people that were affected negatively by coronavirus vaccines and they were all young.
That’s fake news. I had covid and I was fine.<p>/s
They did zero trials before those billions of doses! None! Straight from the lab into your veins!<p>/S
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In the end, do facts even matter in politically charged discussions?<p>This sounds a bit like providing evidence for global warming, gun control or evolution. The "skeptics" just want to remain ignorant. No amount of evidence will change them.<p>The silver lining about vaccine skeptics, though, is the Herman Cain award[1]. What this means is that conservatives die more than liberals from preventable diseases [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain_Award" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain_Award</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02474-9" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-026-02474-9</a>
You mean the stuff the whole world got injected with in 2020? Good to know!<p>Seriously though, I am very pro-vax, but the fact that studies like these come out now is just confirmation that people had the right to doubt the safety of mRNA back then. Many people shamed others for being anti vax but everyone has the right to be careful.
Why would repeating a study now and getting the same result as when it was first measured in 2020 be a reason to doubt the safety?<p>I’m also pro-vax, so I don’t think it is correct to equate ignoring the preponderance of current evidence (in 2021 or 2026) for vaccine protection as being careful. That just seems the logical fallacy sold by “vax hesitant” and social media influencers to make people feel smart to ignore statistics and “make their own choice based on intuition”
By late 2020, when they got approved, the vaccines were not scientifically proven safe for mainstream use. No other mRNA vaccine had been through all the trial stages, and certainly not those COVID ones.<p>Could the vaccines have side effects that became visible after 6 months? Yes and we couldn’t have known that they didn’t.<p>Could the vaccines have side effects on people with rare conditions? Sure, and we couldn’t have known that either.<p>My point is that in 2020, the decision to approve the vaccines and pretty much force everyone to get it was a risk tradeoff. It was way more risky to let the disease continue spreading and mutate than it was to release the vaccines. mrna vaccines had been in trials and there was no reason to believe they could have been harmful. But the reality is that we just didn’t know. Biology is complex enough that you can’t just assume everything will be fine without proper testing. And what we deem proper testing is a process that these drugs hadn’t gone through.<p>I happily got vaxed in early 2021, and did it again 4 times , so I was willing to trust the tradeoff.<p>But ignoring that it was a tradeoff and hiding behind a sign that says “science” is just taking people for dummies.
What does being "pro-vax" mean?<p>That you believe in any claims of vaccine efficacy made by the manufacturers or the FDA and are more then willing to have them injected into your body?
If you don't believe every developed countries’ medical bodies on vaccines, where do you get your info on this? (As to the ‘pro-vax’ question, I'd define it as someone who is open to listening the medical bodies of every developed country on the planet.)
So what is the logic here?<p>If the only entity that you can get information from is an entity that is known to lie, you can trust this entity?<p>It is not that we know for a fact that X is not safe. It is that we have no reason to believe that the powers that can ensure that, does not have an incentive to do it, and a large financial incentive to NOT do it and instead grease a lot of palms and get it mandated.<p>This is particularly relevant when the cost to grease the palms is minuscule compared to the profit that can be made by the approval.<p>And it is particularly relavant when the common man cannot any relavant information about it from any other source.<p>We are sitting ducks here. But people apparently does not notice.
I think your own logic supports the opposite from your conclusions?<p>I'm saying that every developed country's medical bodies support that these vaccines are safe.<p>Are you claiming that every developed country's medical bodies do not have an incentive to make the right decisions around vaccines? That they will be too cautious because they are afraid of approving something that turns out to be unsafe, or the opposite that they have no fear of approving something unsafe?<p>Are there any examples you'd point to of where developed countries' medical bodies approved something unsafe because they were bribed, as you imply is the norm today?<p>But most importantly, if you think every developed country's medical bodies should not be used as the source of info about safety vs benefits, what should be?
Or what <i>should</i> be the system even if it doesn't exist today?<p>> is an entity that is known to lie<p>What are you referring to?<p>> the common man cannot any relavant information about it from any other source.<p>The common man is <i>inundated</i> with info about vaccines from other sources, although much of it is misinformation, etc.
>Are you claiming that every developed country's medical bodies do not have an incentive to make the right decisions around vaccines?<p>It is a question of how aligned the individual's incentives and the incentives of the medical body in question. And often it is extremely misaligned. So that is what is I mean when I said there is "no incentive".<p>So what do I mean by that?<p>When such an organization recommend X, it just mean that if everyone follows that recommendation, the population wide metric, <i>that can be immediately measured</i> or <i>that is often measured</i> will show good beneficial result.<p>So here if people follow the recommendation two things can happen<p>1. The number of covid deaths will drop. This is something that will show up immediately, because everyone was focused on daily death toll.<p>2. A substantial number of people will have adverse effects. This is something that <i>can be managed</i> (in terms of public opinion)<p>So the incentive of the organization end up being favorable to the recommendation despite the very good chance of point 2 happening. With financial incentives, this is just more pronounced...<p>> What are you referring to?<p>Any group of human beings.
It probably means that you take the statistical evidence produced by massive double-blinded placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials as actual evidence
mRNA vaccines and testing of them have been around far longer then 2020
People have rights but they also have the responsibility to be scientifically literate enough to know that analyzing data about the vaccine was prudent regardless of anything and does not suggest their prostration to antivax demagogues was smart.
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Two most populous countries, China and India, seem to have mainly relied on inactivated vaccines.
Good thing we got [rest of world] to do the hard science work, and America can just benefit from it instead!