I'm just interested in how common this is after vaccination, and perhaps when may this end, so I again spent a few hours yesterday to try to find some significant (N > 5000, preferably more) independent prospective studies of "mild" side effects like these of this vaccine.

So much vaccination going on, so why not just give every 5th person vaccinated in some large center a link and a code to enter observed side effects after 1 day, 3 days, week, and a month, and then maybe 3 months after into some website. Maybe ask for a phone number and call them to ask, if they don't fill the form in time. Even such a stupid study design would satisfy me.

No such thing on google scholar.

There are barely any studies that track side effects over time. It's almost all just binary X,Y,Z side effects after vaccine - yes/no. All studies I could find are < 1000 people or in that range.

The small amount of studies that actually tracked side effects over time, just track for 7 days and end with 4% people still having side effects after a week. One Czech study I found tracked side effects for a month! With 2% having still issues after a month. Well, good! No, not really, N<1000 again, and a biased survey style study.

Also the fucking irony of search returning about 5-10x more so called "hesitancy" studies per a side effect survey, despite me not search for it.

I'm fully vaccinated, and there's no shortage of studies about efficacy, so no problem there. But people that proclaim how well the side effects are studied, because of how many millions of people were already vaccinated just sound ridiculous to me now. Where are all the actual studies?

From what can be found it just seems that very little fuck is given about serious study of so called "mild" side effects, and some guidance given on how to mitigate them, based on results.

("no compensation for from anyone" is because my country actually passed a law that allows for compensation for covid vaccine gone wrong; but with no proof of some statistical relationship, this was just another bullshit anti-hesitancy stunt from the government, and will be of no real help to the affected)

From societal perspective, why would you do it if you can transmit it in the same amount as if you are not vaccinated?

Doesn't makes sense to me, but well..

I do think that it's a good thing for people that have disease that can complicate covid recovery and older generations.

That's one of the topics in this video, https://rumble.com/vkopys-a-pathologist-summary-of-what-thes...

[Posted in case it provides a data point for your friend to discuss with a local doctor, not to debate this doctor's affiliation, credentials or motivation. Would love to see more presentations of physical evidence from autopsies and lab tests, to complement statistical studies.]

Question, do you personally know anyone with long term health issues that they believe we're caused by the vaccine?

ER neurologist she saw was not very surprised/dismissive, because she apparently went through a nasty reaction to the vaccine herself. And GP was also accepting, did run some diagnostics, but ultimately it's all back to hoping it will resolve by itself (+ as always, some analgesics).

Said another way, what was the extra steps that needed to happen between EUA & full approval?

That's plausible. Thanks!

If Trump succeeded at gutting the FDA and installing people like Scott Atlas in order to override the career officials and experts at the FDA, or something similar, then yes my answer would likely be different.

Again, the POTUS at the time has nothing to do with the decision making.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4516275/

"I took it, but here's a bunch of reasons to not to" is THE best argument for equanimity and individual decision making; its Informed Consent. You should try to learn everything you can; the stuff the media tells you, the stuff the government tells you, the stuff doctors tell you, and even the stuff on the hard anti-vax it'll give you autism side says. Take all of it with a grain of salt, but different amounts of salt depending on the credentials and biases of the source. Sieve it through your own personal belief system. Then act to your beliefs. You'll probably be wrong, but you were already wrong before; the goal isn't to always be right, but to continually improve your ability to recognize when you're wrong.

There is no one truth to any aspect of our reality. You may actually find some compelling arguments against a belief system you once had. For example, one soft anti-vax argument I've heard recently stuck with me: that these vaccines are effectively the "kills 99.9% of germs" equivalent of ultra-fast evolving viruses, imperfect vaccines which allow both the host to live and the virus to evolve, thus creating even more vaccine resistant strains of COVID. And, maybe, at a global public health level, these vaccines are a REALLY bad idea long-term, and our efforts to save a few million people today will kill millions more in the future. Maybe. Its hard to say, but its an interesting thought.

You won't hear that from the CDC. Their bias in PR right now is: everyone get vaccinated, downplay anything negative about the vaccine, don't allow for nuance because we can't trust the public with nuance, we just need them vaccinated. That's fine! Its a legitimate goal that will almost definitely result in a lot of good. But that doesn't mean the whole truth is everything they say.

As for mine. I got my first shot in December. Probably one of the first in my area. Got second 2 weeks after. I think everyone should get it as soon as they are comfortable with doing so. There is such a thing as being unreasonably suspicious and antivaxxers fall into that pretty easily but there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting more than emergency approval. Furthermore, private companies can definitely make it a term of employment but I am strongly against the government requiring it. I am a firm believer that everyone has the right to be a dumbass.

"Through the remainder of 2021, racially- or ethnically-motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists will remain a national threat priority for the United States. These extremists may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks. Pandemic-related stressors have contributed to increased societal strains and tensions, driving several plots by domestic violent extremists, and they may contribute to more violence this year.

Foreign and domestic threat actors, to include foreign intelligence services, international terrorist groups and domestic violent extremists, continue to introduce, amplify, and disseminate narratives online that promote violence, and have called for violence against elected officials, political representatives, government facilities, law enforcement, religious communities or commercial facilities, and perceived ideologically-opposed individuals. There are also continued, non-specific calls for violence on multiple online platforms associated with DVE ideologies or conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud and alleged reinstatement, and responses to anticipated restrictions relating to the increasing COVID cases."

https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisor...

Doesn't sound Orwellian to me at all.

Is that happening? I cannot find any federal law of any kind (let alone stemming from the oval office) requiring individuals to get the vaccine.

“If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the Doctors, tell us we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it I'm not taking it.“

Note “But if…”. That programmers aren’t able to parse this if else statement is concerning.

[0]https://www.cms.gov/medicare/covid-19/medicare-covid-19-vacc...

It was in the headlines because it is normal, and some people were trying to improve the system but they failed. There are tons of existing drugs that have been approved based on surrogate endpoints, e.g. iirc the entire class of statin drugs.

Moderna was not "approved" on December 18. Your own source says it was "authorized for emergency use".

I'm vaccinated and everyone I know is, but I cringe a bit at the tolerance of what seems authoritarian to me. If I were to wager, things get better once antiviral treatments improve and when data analysis gets better, not when "full compliance" happens. To me it's clear that there is a seasonal nature, but it varies based on latitude/climate/time of year. For whatever reason it seems taboo to mention this. Anyone wanting to prove a point about masks/vaccines working or not working often compares one region/climate to another.

nice use of the oxford comma btw.

According to what I've heard, you can just walk into any Walgreens/pharmacy to get it, without paying or getting an ID check.

Not sure how legal that is though. I understand that those should be for tax-paying citizens.

I have a friend in this group. There was no logical reason to not get vaccinated, her parents just kept regurgitating all the blatantly false conspiracy theories they were reading on the internet. The amount of times I heard "I'd get it if Bill Gates weren't involved, he's trying to track us" made my head spin.

Now work is requiring it to stay employed, so she's getting it. I'm both sad that's what it took, and happy that it was enough to overcome irrational fear mongering on the world wide web.

Nearly every decision one makes has an impact on the well-being of others. On the one end, you can't shoot someone just because you feel like it. On the other end, a teenage boy asks a girl out, the girl Decides to reject him, and he is so devastated he commits suicide. Somewhere in the middle, I decide to drive to work today, my wheel goes flying off, I careen into oncoming traffic killing myself and another; if only I had Decided to take the bus today.

Obviously we, as a society, draw a line somewhere. I don't know if where we draw that line today is actually the correct place, or if there even is a "correct" place to draw it.

My opinion on vaccine mandates, right now, is: They're probably bad. Not because of personal liberty, though that may be a valid argument; I'm just not sure (I'm not sure I'll ever be sure; I'm willing to admit that decision is above my pay grade). But because the vaccines we have right now are actually not great at stopping the spread of the virus. They do save lives and keep people out of the hospital, but that's separate from the argument that they keep your coworkers safe. We're definitely sacrificing personal liberty, which may be bad, for tenuous benefit.

There's another similar argument: Keeping preventable cases out of the Hospital is a public good, because medical care is a limited resource that is VERY stressed right now. This, actually, resonates more with me. I think this is a stronger argument for vaccine mandates. Your personal liberties may have to end when you call 911 and expect someone else to answer and save your life, and I think demanding wide vaccination is morally superior to refusing care to a dying man because he chose not to get vaccinated.

But the bigger issue with this argument is determining why the medical system is so close to the brink of collapse; I suspect it has less to do with COVID, and more to do with doctors and nurses being treated like shit, which significantly pre-dates COVID, leading to burnout and people leaving the industry. I have a vivid memory from 20 years ago, being 10 or something, sitting in the car with my mom after her nurse shift, she's near tears and asks me if I think its fair that Brittany Spears can make millions but nurses make almost nothing. I still feel guilt today, making so much money in tech, while our nurses (and teachers, and many other insanely important industries) make so little; it isn't right. If we, as a society, were significantly better at supporting our healthcare providers, its possible we could support personal liberty and manage the consequences of that liberty, at least in this domain. (and, to be clear, that support isn't just paying more; its also mental health, and time off, and streamlining management, and training more people to join the industry. its a big problem)

There's also one argument against mandates which resonates very well with me: That the systems we have in place to validate vaccinations rarely take into account natural immunity. If this were intentional, e.g. natural immunity sucks so we need you to get a vaccine, then that's one thing. But it seems like this is a discussion we simply haven't had, in the US. Natural immunity seems to be a thing, so we should be inclusive and give people that path. But we aren't; we demand the Record Card. This seems to be a net bad; either policymakers need to say "natural immunity isn't effective at stopping infection" or mandates need to allow for a positive test result, at any point in the past (e.g.) year, to be sufficient as a replacement for a vaccine.

One local company has taken on the policy "vaccination or get tested twice a week". This is utter insanity, and its a big reason why so much of America, on both sides of the political spectrum but especially the right, has lost faith in the system. These policies essentially, to many people, say "sacrifice your personal liberty, or significantly inconvenience both you and our health care system by getting tested a ton." Private companies should not have the ability to put that kind of stress on our already stressed health care system in the dumb pursuit of utilizing their expensive office real estate. At the very least, the government needs to step in and say that companies cannot demand ongoing testing; that I 100% support. If a company decides to mandate only vaccination after that, I think that's far more gray, and while I am fully vaccinated, it still doesn't sit right with me. But, maybe its the right decision for them and their workers.

That's generally how the media describes the papers that respectively go against, or with the narrative they're trying to push.

I don't believe that attending public school while unvaccinated is an essential Liberty.

In addition like previous precedents, public schools would not allow the unvaccinated in the future. These things all combined would mean individuals would be having to change their lifestyle since they’re choosing not to participate in a way that’s safe for others.

The problem is New York will fine any businesses not checking vaccine passes and are forcing them to turn away unvaccinated.

Ok - so can the unvaccinated start their own restaurants of only unvaccinated? Can we open up our own hospitals with the nurses that were fired from mandates? Can we setup our own public transportation? Why not?

Is it because of the scare mongering about variants? Well people who took the vaccine are also causing variants, actually their supposedly super-high levels of vaccine antibodies are not stopping breakthroughs that much - so they are putting evolutionary pressure on the virus to mutate and evade those antibodies. It makes no sense to blame the unvaccinated for that. So why take away unvaccinated freedoms to setup their own restaurants, services etc? That's not liberty for a business or anyone really, that's fascism.

All those field hospitals that were stood up in 2021 across the US have been torn down because they were not needed.

I don't know about you, but it looks more to me like all we are seeing is the breakdown of crony-capitalism. It's not a coincidence that the vaccines are some of the most profitable medical products ever produced.

While it might be fair to challenge the credibility of WSJ, you should know that the CDC study you cited had a relatively small sample size and was limited to a small geographic area over a 2 month period. Recent large scale multicentre studies with ~100x more participants have provided strong counter evidence that natural infection confers highly effective protection [3].

> A previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with an 84% lower risk of infection, with median protective effect observed 7 months following primary infection. This time period is the minimum probable effect because seroconversions were not included. This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals. [3]

For reference here's high quality publications supporting GP's claim that natural infection provides robust and durable immunity that is at least as protective as vaccination [1][2][3][4].

[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf

[2] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

[3] SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/

[4] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

Secondly, children have a very low risk, the flu is more dangerous to them than Covid.

Thirdly, assume that the growing body of evidence is correct . The vaccinated coworker who has a new Tinder date every week and mixes with large crowds in clubs will still be a higher risk than a reclusive, un-vaccinated, masked individual.

It's not possible to have anything remotely resembling a "debate" in such a climate.

Mandates have not been effective. Nothing that's been done can be said to have been "effective". We are apparently in an even worse place now, even with vaccines, than we were last year.

In reality though, we aren't.

The pathology of the virus is well-understood, as are the mechanisms to defeat it. But we're not allowed to talk about it.

It'd all be over in weeks if we were - as we saw in India recently, in all provinces but the one that stuck with the dogma.

And since you're here, why aren't you doing more to [flag/demote/whatever] content where people are saying that Covid booster shots and their requirements are nothing more than "petty tyrants wanting to control what others do."? Surely that's worse than a small attack on the person saying it?

Just like reducing cholesterol does not lower heart attacks.

Read more about that here: https://medium.com/@petilon/cholesterol-and-statins-e7d9d8ee...

This should be posted to the front page of the site. I get so tired of seeing comments pointing out some flaw in an institution and concluding that the institution is therefore useless. It really is lazy thinking.

So it’s not 20%. It’s a third.

Hospitalizations from Covid19 among the fully vaccinated stands at "thirty six per million fully vaccinated" and steadily increasing.

Since both outcomes come at the end of a process (get vaccinated -> get exposed to the virus -> get an infection -> require a hospital visit -> die from illness), there is naturally at least five or weeks lags between someone completing the full vaccination schedule and the hospitalization/death outcome occurring.

Given that about half the full vaccinations in the U.S. happened since April and given that the consensus seems to be that vaccine conferred protection lasts about 6-8 months, I would not expect the "deaths from Covid19 per million fully vaccinated against Covid19" to stabilize until October.

In the mean time, the unvaccinated will either have to submit or driven into the shadows with the current policies. Pretty soon, it will be a miracle to find anyone whose natural immune response without vaccination can be measured/tested at all.

[1]: Current version: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...

[2]: Snapshots since April: https://archive.ph/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hea...

Maybe some. But, while I don't really like governments and big employers wielding sticks in this case, you'll probably see even more people decide that they're not hesitant enough about vaccines to lose their jobs or be excluded from a lot of activities.

And while those sort of requirements could be implemented before full approval, a lot of organizations apparently wanted the additional air cover.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/12/judge-or...

No, it's the other way around. Transmission is correlated with viral load. In the unvaccinated, high viral load leads to early self-observable symptoms. The vaccines are designed to suppress symptoms, so a vaccinated person can be infected and transmitting, without knowing they should be isolating. That's why the CDC recommends testing of vaccinated people after exposure, https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210729/cdc-reverses-guidan... (July 29, 2021)

> Even if they’re not showing symptoms, fully vaccinated people should “get tested 3-5 days after exposure to someone with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and wear a mask in public indoor settings for 14 days after exposure or until they receive a negative test result,” ... “Our updated guidance recommends vaccinated people get tested upon exposure regardless of symptoms,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, told The New York Times

In dense urban areas, many of the remaining "unvaccinated" are likely to be Covid survivors with natural immunity, which offers nasal/mucosal immunity in upper respiratory tract, which is not possible with intramuscular (arm deltoid injection) vaccines. A future nasal vaccine may offer such protection.

In practice, do they really? If you're vaccinated and catch COVID, you're probably fine, so you go about your life. If you're unvaccinated, you're more likely to get sick and thus stay home. You're also more likely to build up natural immunity. Seems to me like now that we know being vaccinated doesn't prevent transmission, we should want the anti-vaxxers to not get vaxxed, as we'll all reach herd immunity faster and they're less likely to get us sick.

Society is going through a mass psychosis event and people need to seriously prepare to see (or be a victim of) the next major genocide in world history.

Recommended: https://www.amazon.com/Affirming-Psychosis-Appeal-Adolf-Hitl...

> The Mayor will also be initiating a “Key to NYC Pass,” which is like the Covid-19 passport talked about a few months ago. It's a carrot-and-stick approach, as people will be required to show that they are vaccinated if they want to go to restaurants, gyms and other events. No vaccinations, no entrance. “If you want to participate in society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” de Blasio proclaimed. “If we’re going to stop the Delta variant, the time is now,” said the mayor. “This is going to make clear, you want to enjoy everything great in this summer of New York City? Go get vaccinated.”

> In an interview with MSNBC, de Blasio dialed up his frustration over the unvaccinated. “We’ve got to shake people at this point and say, ‘Come on now.’ We tried voluntary. We could not have been more kind and compassionate. Free testing, everywhere you turn, incentives, friendly, warm embrace. The voluntary phase is over,” de Blasio said last week. “It’s time for mandates, because it’s the only way to protect our people.”

De Blasio is talking about restricting access to entirely optional events and locations based on vaccine status, not mandating anyone get it or else.

You also have to double check beyond headlines. For example, I saw people talking about how the FDA EUA panel wasn't a consensus for Pfizer 16+ back in the day. Turns out, most of the people who were hesitant just wanted to start with 18+, not 16+. That's a huge difference from what some of the headlines were saying.

[1] https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-sur...

That said, there is general consensus in the literature that the vaccines are mostly safe for adults in the short term. However for certain sub-populations (eg pediatrics and pregnant women) there isn't enough evidence yet from clinical trials and longitudinal studies to conclude with certainty that the benefits of compulsory mass vaccination outweigh the risks.

[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...

[4] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/

[5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...

[6] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

Putting lives of other people at risk is not your "health choice".

Preventing obesity is *very* hard, or we wouldn't have obese people. Who actually WANTS to be obese?

Preventing your ICU trip due to covid is as easy as driving to the pharmacy once or twice and spending 20minutes there.

It's easier than grocery shopping.

FWIW, that's not even close to true among the Libertarians I know. And as a Libertarian myself, I know quite a few. The set of people who "believe a secret government agent has been working for the last four and a half years to extrajudiciously round up pedophiles and liberals" may include a few actual Libertarians, but I would posit that most of the so-called "Libertarians" in that group have only the thinnest grasp on what the Libertarian perspective is about, probably haven't read/studied Libertarian ideology extensively (or anything else for that matter), and are merely repeating a few superficial talking points they heard somewhere that may - by happenstance - align with Libertarian perspectives.

But a whole ton of people on "your side" of this debate are quite clearly not serious about regulatory overreach.

Those people sound more like the fringe of the "Tea Party" movement... populist, anti-establishment and perhaps "anti government" only in the sense that they don't like the current government. But these aren't, by and large, people who have rational, well-reasoned, comprehensive arguments for the need to reduce the size and scope of government across the board.

YMMV, of course.

Do you have a source for this? I’d like to read more about it. Also, what about people who have antibodies from prior infection with covid?

Maybe you are not talking about "me" but I guess I couldn't tell from your comment.

So they're not even all that good at providing the one thing companies may argue is necessary to go back-to-work; stopping spread. Similar with cruise lines and airplanes requiring it. Yes, the vaccines are very good at saving peoples' lives, but industry doesn't care about that, and it alone is not a good enough reason to mandate it.

You say everyone needs to get vaccinated so we can protect the people who can't get the vaccine or for whom it doesn't work. I have very bad news for you; the vaccine won't help. You can still get COVID, and you can still spread it to your four year old. I can still get it and spread it to my immunocompromised sister. It sucks. That's the reality we live in.

Now where we are: long lockdowns, talks of vax passports everywhere, no herd immunity, covid is here to stay with us (due to animal reservoirs), no overflowing ICUs but still gov'ts reigning with wartime-like superpowers.

The fearful/obedient have their vaccine, those who did not will not. Some died, most live. This is no spanish flu. So what was the problem again?

I think his goal was to make it clear that he was not an anti-science or conspirationist himself.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28262820

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28263222

>The same people that don't understand vaccines are also likely to think masks don't work

I don't see how this is relevant. It just seems like a strawman argument to dismiss people who might have legitimate reasons for not having the vaccine or otherwise just want to exercise their right not to have it.

Who are they killing? Others that didn't get the vaccine?

If you keep a tab on the news you might have seen antibody level from covid vaccines drops significantly over time. Actually same is true for people already have covid; natural protection wanes off within few months.

You are correct the flu shot targets different strains, but the H1N1 strain has been part of the annual flu shot since 2009 simply because it has continued to circulate. So just like you get an H1N1 shot every year (to boost your antibody levels), you will likely get a COVID shot every year to boost those antibodies.

For others, it seems that with Pfizer the antibody level drops over time.

Vaccine or not, you can still get covid and suffer the consequences depending on your body. So I dont see the point in getting a vaccine and suffer its long term consequences when it basically does nothing.

If you are saying it prevents covid death - you are wrong. Check England's data. More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less. Vaccinated people are getting covid less but the ones who died after getting covid are more. The math isn't adding up for the vaccines.

As a 30-odd year old knowledge worker (vaccinated), that's the thing that affects my personal risk assessment the most right now.

I have a lot of trouble arguing with these people (friends, family) because I read daily about how bad covid is and they are simply ignorant. For some of them it's basically "he said, she said" (so like: who should I trust?) as if anti-vaxxers and science are on the same level of trustworthiness. And also when you talk about data they say something like "I don't trust the data" and rather trust some stupid people in their social circle. Also it appears like they feel like "vaccination can be bad", "covid can be bad (but not necessarily, my daughter had it and it was like the flu!)", so they rather try to avoid both. Yeah, logic...

2. Some vaccinated people have been found to carry the same levels of the virus as unvaccinated people, so stating that unvaccinated people could be increasing risk to others is also a moot point

3. Once the so called "R" rate is below one, the virus is on a path to fizzling out

It's not as though unvaccinated people will be dying in their thousands for centuries to come. Herd immunity just needs to kick in which many countries have already achieved.

Are you saying it would be legal to ban cars for those reasons?

The three original videos he produced on the topic are a better example than the cartoonified version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdzW-S8MwbI&ab_channel=Acade...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFie-UCFV_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPcF-oLABE

I've listened to/followed the guy who runs that site for years now. He makes every video himself. I also pay for his members-only subscription.

Regarding the comments -- that's YT for you. The comments section is always weird.

You do realize that drunk driving is illegal, right? Do you think drunk driving should be legal because it's "unlikely" to cause harm to others?

> I say it doesn't.

628k confirmed deaths in the US from COVID. 37.8M confirmed infections. That's a death rate of 1.66%.

In 2016, 10,497 people died from drunk driving. 1 million people were arrested in 2016 for drunk driving. That's a rate of 1.0497%. So COVID is literally more dangerous than drunk driving.

Drunk driving stats: https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/impaired_driving/im...

Traditional flu jabs apparently [0] cost the NHS £5-8 (<$11) per dose; the Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine seems in-line with that charging $2-5 non-profit for the duration of the pandemic [1]. But I don't know how comparable that is to Pfizer's given that the latter's different, newer (mRNA) tech AIUI? (Perhaps that's a disservice to the researchers at AZ/Oxford, I don't know.)

[0] - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/17/nhs-attempts-sav...

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/11/covid-19-vacci...

Pfizer has also been strong arming small, Latin American countries, to the tune of trying to get military assets as "collateral" (https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/company-news/...)

But I do not believe that this is valid at all, being that this is the very first mRNA vaccine.

>By looking at other vaccines historically and seeing that side effects tend to happen in the first few weeks.

I feel like what you are saying is basically like someone asking "How do we know that self driving cars will be safe on the road" and you responding with, "well obviously by looking at the history of cars, we have been doing them for a century!"

"Other vaccines historically" work on fundamentally different principles. We can not use that data to assume that mRNA vaccines are going to work the same way.

From a quick Google, it seems that Phase III trials are about comparing a new treatment to existing alternatives, rather than monitoring side-effects. Perhaps the testing simply can't be complete before 2023, since it involves checking long-term immunity? In this case, the FDA may have approved the vaccine because they are confident that the risk of negative side-effects is sufficiently small, and that the vaccine gives some benefit - even if testing hasn't established exactly how much.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/28/alzhei...

Also to be fair it's not like they just rushed it out the door. There are probably very few things on the market (short of fully approved pharmaceuticals) that have been through more testing than these "rushed" vaccines.

edit: https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emerge...

Also vaccine requirements aren’t anything new, so is the concern here that they’re mandating vaccines or this specific vaccine due to how new it is? If the latter, then what’s your bar for acceptance?

What conspiracy theory?

StatNews[1]:

> Pfizer and BioNTech speed up timeline for offering Covid-19 vaccine to placebo volunteers

> Pfizer and its partner BioNTech plan to offer their Covid-19 vaccine to any clinical trial volunteer who received placebo by March 1, several months earlier than initially planned.

and NPR[2]:

> Long-Term Studies Of COVID-19 Vaccines Hurt By Placebo Recipients Getting Immunized

> Tens of thousands of people who volunteered to be in studies of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines are still participating in follow-up research. But some key questions won't be easily answered, because many people who had been in the placebo group have now opted to take the vaccine.

[1]: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/01/pfizer-and-biontech-spee...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/19/9691430...

In this specific situation, they would have been condemning through a choice to not treat, a fraction of the control group to die.

In either case, while non-mRNA vaccines may incentive the 'vaccine hesitant' to get poked, no amount of modification or scientific advance will get anti-vaxxers to get immunized edit: with a vaccine (I'm assuming an FDA-approved small molecule therapeutic would be OK with some of them).

https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/05/27/why-are-aztrazeneca...

https://www.europeanpharmaceuticalreview.com/news/155536/bre...

Regardless of interpretation too, this doesn't support the claim the commenter made - there has never been a vaccine recalled within a year.

Typically the dialogue is more...dialogue than just cynicism.

What's your reasoning it is Reddit?

There are also sufficient rates of infection of even healthy subjects to warrant concern considering that Covid cases are far more serious than most Flu cases - another illness that affects the healthy far less but can still lead to hospitalisation or even death. Also, before you mention it, the fact that there are more deaths caused by the Flu than Covid statistically per year is due to the greater proliferation of the Flu virus and it's variants over Covid.

On an individual basis, you are far more likely to develop complications from Covid than Flu, even for healthy subjects.

A drug should be approved once it is very likely causing more good than harm. But obviously that doesn't mean you should stop researching that drug.

What's happening here makes perfect sense. We have more than enough information to conclude that it is extremely likely that the vaccine helps a lot and causes little harm. However if there are any rare side effects then we'd still like to know that, therefore it is a good thing that the patients in the trials are still being observed for anything unusual.

I hope you didn't know it or didn't think it through, otherwise mention of Fox News seems to me a blatant hypocrisy. Either way it was an unnecessary ad hominem attack.

What about people with immune dysfunction? Are you going to dismiss them as Fox News viewers too because aren't having the vaccine?

But the local fire department isn't doing anything about it. Nobody around here is installing sprinklers as a precaution. They act like there is no fire at all.

Covid is a serious thing. But "engulfed by flames" is the exact overstatement that causes people to question the motivation of fear-mongers.

I'm vaccinated. I wear a mask. I think too many people are whipping up a frenzy for profit. Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? Why not lockdown breweries when there are 2 million drunk-driving incidents? Why isn't there a frenzy over influenza?

Covid frenzy has a better marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that has people claiming we are "engulfed by flames" when things get smoky.

Not to mention your article was about infection not hospitalization. If you do that it makes even less sense.

I don't think a society can be as "advanced" as Star Trek. Societies are hard. To abuse CS terminology, they're NP-hard (or harder?). Star Trek seems to have only external threats, all internal problems are solved. The most boring problem a real society has is that of production and it is definitely NP-hard (see Hayek?). Star Trek has not only solved that at galactic scales, but has solved much hard problems than production.

Nor I don't think Star Trek is advanced in the sense that I would consider it "progress" vs. just change. I view Star Trek as the propaganda reel of (not for, of) a techo-distopia. Vulkans and that Data android fellow freak me out more than the Klingons whose society, while brutal, I can understand. I see more humanity in a Klingon because I can see a human society degenerating into the Klingons'. I don't see any humanity in Vulcans.

Btw, their technology bores me. Their tech is either impossible (warp drives). Surpassed (communicators). Or fraught with angels-dancing-on-pins philosophical questions (the "beam me up scotty" machines)

So, with the caveat that you used ST as an example and I'm definitely not a Trekkie, let me address your question:

No, I don't.

Biological systems are far more complicated than any system mankind has made. Every "cure" or therapy is really a very good whack-a-mole with hopefully lots of statistical information to back it up.

Take blood. It has hundreds, if not thousands, of components. Some are in pg/dL level of concentrations (that's 10^-12g / 100ml). See this chart [1]. How can we every really understand all the interactions among those various components?

That is not to say that I'm a bio-luddite (I am, but that's besides the point). Take penecillin. It's brutal on the body, but is one of the most important discoveries in human history. It has saved millions, if not billions, of lives. Im very grateful for penicillin, and yet, what an illustrative example! We gave too much penicillin with too much abandonment. So now, we have anti-biotic resistant bacteria. And, almost 90 years after it's first discovery we're finally starting to understand it's role in the havoc in our gut flora.

Btw, gut flora is another, fascinating, example of how complicated bio-systems are. We're evolved to depend on a symbiotic relationship with a gut flora that we've destroyed over the last 70 years of anti-biotics and cheap sugar.

So, while I think ab-initio methods (what Star Trek does) can inform and accelerate drug discovery (I worked on that briefly in my PhD), ultimately, no, I don't think we can ab-initio drugs through the whole pipeline (need-->development-->safety_evals-->approval).

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Referenc...

We can do better than guilt by association. It's a very weak argument, and turns more people away from potential vaccination. In fact insulting the remaining audience is worse than preaching to the choir, because it even turns away people who were previously 100% on one's side.

Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID.

Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it?

> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.

Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches.

[1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/

[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes

I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.

The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.

mRNA's short half-life - on the matter of a few dozens of minutes - and pre-existence in our bodies helps us not worry too much about the differences in delivery mechanism.

You seem to be saying that the only issue is a question of time. Be specific: how much time? Will you say a specific number? “I will accept an mRNA-based vaccine if it has been around, and proven safe, for x years.”

We are way past the time frame for long-term effects to manifest themselves for a corona-like vaccine.

https://www.uab.edu/reporter/resources/be-healthy/item/9544-...

"This is particularly true of the mRNA vaccines. mRNA degrades incredibly rapidly. You wouldn't expect any of these vaccines to have any long-term side effects. And in fact, this has never occurred with any vaccine."

So go get vaccinated! If you trust the vaccine that it works, and that it's safe, go get it. I certainly have urged people I know who are high-at-risk and don't share my ethical concerns about them to get the vaccine.

If they're safe and effective, get vaccinated!

If they're safe and not effective, or lossy effective, we have very big problems and vaccinating the hold outs will not change anything

If you want to take part in exchange, you must do it in terms acceptable to both parties. You are not entitled to take from society on whatever terms you dictate on your own.

In this context it is not as relevant how long the median time is for side-effects to show, but rather how long it takes before the vaccine is no longer used.

When you said "visible" I assumed you mean visible to the OP - but you meant visible in general. So you are not wrong, but as we can see from the case of Pandremix, a median of 42 made it take two years before the usage of the vaccine was stopped.

There are a lot of reasons why it would probably be different in the case of covid (e.g. more media presence from the beginning) but in general, you cannot directly compare thus number (like the 42 days) with the 4 years of the OP.

Yes, except there is an established process for quantifying "clear for a while now" and it involves sufficient time and control groups. That process isn't being followed and it is concerning for a number of reasons, including the effect of political pressure on expedited drug approvals in the future now that this precedent is being set. The elected leaders capable of bringing such political pressure to bear are invested in the very companies which stand so much to gain by relaxing the time-tested regulatory approval process. This is bad science and bad governance.

> Transparency advocates have criticised the ... (FDA) decision not to hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval of its covid-19 vaccine ... Kim Witczak ... a consumer representative on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, said the decision removed an important mechanism for scrutinising the data ... "The public deserves a transparent process, especially as the call for boosters and mandates are rapidly increasing. These meetings offer a platform where questions can be raised, problems tackled, and data scrutinised in advance of an approval" ... She warned that without a meeting “we have no idea what the data looks like.”

“It is already concerning that full approval is being based on 6 months’ worth of data despite the clinical trials designed for two years,” she said. “There is no control group after Pfizer offered the product to placebo participants before the trials were completed. “Full approval of covid-19 vaccines must be done in an open public forum for all to see. It could set a precedent of lowered standards for future vaccine approvals.”

... Joshua Sharfstein ... former FDA deputy commissioner during the Obama administration, said that advisory committee meetings were more than just a way of receiving scientific input from outside experts. “It’s also an opportunity to educate the public about the important work that the FDA has done reviewing an enormous amount of data about a product,” he told The BMJ. “It’s a chance for questions to be asked and answered, building public confidence."

Yes the vaccine has been proven to be safe for most adults in the short-term. But blanket statements like this over-simplify the reality of the situation.

People need to be aware that for certain sub-populations (eg pediatrics & pregnant women), there is insufficient scientific evidence - in terms of clinical trials and longitudinal studies - to conclude that the benefits of vaccination always and universally outweigh the risks.

Until consensus has been established in the scientific literature - and even after that - everyone should be making their own decisions based on personal risk evaluation with the consultation of doctors and other medical professionals.

It really depends on what your definition of “safe” is. The vaccines have stated side effects, some of which can severe. The side effects are relatively rare, but non-zero.

The other component is time. We’ve proven that the vaccine is mostly safe…for at least a year out. After that, we have no data.

You don’t have to look that far back to find things that were deemed safe at one time have disastrous consequences years down the line. Cigarettes, asbestos, etc.

True.

> Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine generated $7.8 billion in revenue in the second quarter[1].

Note that with Pharma, there is a fixed cost up front. After that, the marginal cost is relatively small and every extra dose prints money.

Also, there are people in other countries who are being called back for a fourth dose right now.

[1]: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/pfizers-covid-19-vaccine-g...

There are going to be some people and even large swathes of some countries that are never going to get vaccinated. If everyone took safety and science seriously, there probably would still be a control group in place. There were probably numerous people in the control group that had little to no risk of death nor complications even if they caught the virus and had to be quarantined. Ultimately, the vaccines will never meet the "gold standard" that Fauci and others applied to all other potential treatments.

Also, if vaccines become mandatory, the systems in place to address vaccine damage and liability need to be reformed. The excuse about scary yet isolated incidents having a disproportionate impact on vaccine adoption rates would no longer be valid.

The government is not forcing me to get a security clearance.

People who argue against vaccines don't seem to think enough about that aspect.

Garasdil was approved by the FDA in 2006 and, as this press release shows [0], continued running studies into it as a condition of the approval. They conceded that full results could not be available before approval; “While the study period was not long enough for cervical cancer to develop, the prevention of these cervical precancerous lesions is believed highly likely to result in the prevention of those cancers.”

From what I can gather, the Phase III study participants continued to receive follow-up checks for at least a decade.

[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20091019080918/https://www.fda.g...

[0] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/fast-track-drug-approval-design...

The completion date was changed multiple times since April 2020 and they clearly appended booster trials to the existing trials and pushed back the dates.

It truly is that simple.

Nothing here is an indictment of vaccines per se. However, it is legitimate to have concerns over a process the rules stated at the outset were thrown out, possibly for personal profit and political motivations.

Also, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28280087 for a link to an articulate consideration of a number of concerns regarding this approval.

Of course, but it's a lot worse when a cure causes issues. The point of medicine is to "first, do no harm".

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

Your proposition is "a virus many times deadlier then the flu in a target group who have more serious outcomes from anything, what could go wrong?"

And your evidence is: "well for someone who currently has effective natural immunity.."

[1] https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021...

I don't need an academic, peer-reviewed study to tell me that using this site is safe. I don't need one to tell me that masks are safe. It's NICE to have such things, and I'm NOT opposed to them, but they are also NOT necessary for day-to-day reasoning.

I do think we should continue vaccine trials, because we might uncover subtle risks. But until we do, we are in fact at a point where we can conclude that the vaccine is significantly safer than going unvaccinated. What we expect to find going forward is small refinements like "X group should prioritize Y vaccine", not "Y vaccine is in fact more dangerous than Covid"

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...

And at the same time not forcing everyone to take the vaccine.

As an example Denmark will reach about 75% vaccinated without any mandates, though a Corona passport will be in effect until October 2021.

That is one of the better ways of handling it in my opinion.

Continued assignment of subjects to placebo is unethical, once there is good evidence to support the efficacy of the trial therapy.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) since there was such strong evidence to prove the efficacy, it became unethical for the continued assignment of placebo.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCHEARTFAILURE.111...

Here's an article on the ethics of a placebo-controlled trial in the first place. It's complicated.

https://acrpnet.org/2018/12/06/ethical-deliberations-on-usin...

Besides that, just their overall fatality rate beats your numbers, let alone serious cases.

> Given that COVID-19 disease is far milder in the majority of children than in adults, the risk–benefit of a pediatric SARS-CoV-2 vaccine must be carefully weighed [0]

> The prognostic significance, long-term implications and mechanism of this myocardial injury needs to be studied further, especially as vaccination efforts are rolled out to younger children. [1]

> While the safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy data for the 4 authorized vaccines are reassuring so far, none of these vaccines has been systematically studied in pregnant and breastfeeding people [2]

> it is important to remain transparent about the lack of information, acknowledge concerns, and support those who decide to defer vaccination until more data are available [2]

[0] SARS-CoV-2 vaccine testing and trials in the pediatric population: biologic, ethical, research, and implementation challenges (Feb 2021) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41390-021-01402-z

[1] COVID-19 Vaccination-Associated Myocarditis in Adolescents (August 2021) https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/ea...

[2] SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination During Pregnancy: A Complex Decision (April 2021) https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/8/5/ofab180/6220034

BTW, if you /don't/ get the vaccine, you'll still almost-certainly get covid antibodies eventually, via contracting the virus. As a reminder, the virus itself has not been FDA approved, and is known to have both short and long-term harmful side effects. The vaccine is many orders of magnitude safer than the virus.

I wouldn't be surprised to see that Denmark does the same, and more, if vaccinations number don't reach the thresholds needed to prevent healthcare systems from collapsing.

And you should know that Denmark is far from as "laissez faire" as many Americans imagine. For example even before Covid they were enforcing some very harsh social measures targeting self-isolating communities, in order to maintain social cohesion, for example.

I see your point that more research is better, but given the current uncertainty you still have to decide whether Covid or Vaccine is the bigger risk, and all the science says that Covid is the bigger risk.

I'm honestly not sure where we disagree.

"Information is not yet available about potential long-term health outcomes."