Should I risk getting vaccinated?

Vaccine data suggests that any long-term side effects are known within about 3 months. The mRNA it does not have the capability to affect you that far down the line because it does not linger in your body.

I will say, that this Delta variant is proving to be much more damaging. I know folks who are working in completely full pediatric units and full hospitals, even though they used to think it didn’t affect children that badly. And I also have a healthy friend who is actually an epidemiologist who contracted it, and she has had long-COVID, including everything she eats tasting rotten for months so far. It may seem like “just a cold and then it will be over” but it also has the potentially to be much worse. I personally know someone who developed a rapid advancing lung disease after having covid and died in two weeks.

I think overall for me, the long-lasting KNOWN possible effects of contracting the virus (permanent lung damage, mental fog, taste/smell, neurological problems, death) far outweigh the possible effects of the vaccine, which, so far, has not actually lent to very many issues, and no death. Many of the side effects people are reporting are also effects that you can see if you actually get COVID, but worse. For example:

There have been 594 confirmed reports of myocarditis or pericarditis after over 180 million people have received at least one dose. These cases are generally mild, and there have been NO fatalities.
SARS-CoV-2 causes myocarditis at a significantly higher rate than vaccination. One study has shown that up to 60% of recovered hospitalized COVID-19 patients have evidence of myocarditis. It has also been seen in patients with mild symptoms. A recent study at the Ohio State University showed that 15% of collegiate athletes with COVID-19 had evidence of myocarditis.

Things with very low chances like Guillan-Barre are a factor in every vaccine, and affects a very very small number of people. I would look into some visual charts comparing the number of people vaccinated to those with severe side effects if that helps.

These people put out some great content on fact checking and myth debunking. https://www.instagram.com/unbiasedscipod/?hl=en
They helped put the “blood clots” concern in perspective. I face a higher risk of blood clots due to birth control meds I took for a decade than the J&J vaccine that was a cause for concern earlier this year. Drs. Andrea Love and Jess Steier | Unbiased Science on Instagram: "More than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson and Johnson (Janssen) vaccine have been administered in the US. Six cases of a type of blood clot, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) have been reported. As a result, the CDC and FDA are temporarily pausing the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine across the country in order to review data tomorrow, April 14th. It’s important to note that so far, this risk of developing a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is 0.000088%. Each of these instances were observed in women between the ages 18 and 48, and symptoms developed between 6 and 13 days after vaccination. We do not yet know about additional confounding factors such as other medical conditions, medication history, etc. That is what the review will dissect. But, how does this risk compare to other incidences of blood clotting? In the general public, the risk of developing blood clots (including DVT, VTE, and others) is about 0.1%, with 300,000-500,000 blood clotting events reported annually in the US (population 351 million). The risk of developing clots as a result of COVID-19 ITSELF is quite high: it can be up to 30% particularly for those who are hospitalized in the ICU, but can also be up to 8% for those with moderate COVID-19 requiring hospitalization. Amongst people who take hormonal birth control, the risk of developing blood clots ranges between 0.3% to 1%. What does this tell us? The risk of CVST as a result of the J&J vaccine is EXTREMELY small. It is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and as of now, there is no definitive causal relationship. These clots are rarer than the general incidence of clots amongst the general population, and are orders of magnitude less rare than the clotting complications of COVID-19. If you have received your J&J vaccine, there is no reason to worry. Regulatory review is there for a reason, and we will continue to update as things evolve. Note: this rare occurrence of CVST has NOT occurred with the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. This has been reported for the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is still being administered globally after review determined the benefits outweighed the extremely small risk."

Hope this helps!

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Uh, no. How many are enough? Surviving with some kind of permanent damage is another negligible statistic too, right?

from July 31 to Aug. 6, 216 children with Covid were being hospitalized every day,

 

Uh, yeah. Notice the dates on the cited statistic.

They are not comparable risks.

Please read the info at this link about the information coming to light about the Delta variant and the statistics about the side effects of vaccines. If you are hearing people say “we just don’t know about vaccines” they are peddling fear and ignorance. Over 2 billion people are fully vaccinated globally, we know tons about vaccines. The idea that some side effect of a vaccine could show up years from now is pure BS. We’ve been giving vaccines for 200 years. We understand how they and human immune responses work at the molecular level. Nothing about what vaccines might do in the body is mysterious and we know that no one ever has a reaction to a vaccine or experiences a side-effect of a vaccine outside of a six-week window because of well-understood biological facts. It’s just an imagined thing to be afraid of if people are citing “effects ten years from now.” That’s not a real thing.

Right now I have a friend intubated and possibly dying in a hospital in Mexico. She is young, healthy, and already had COVID several months ago. She was unable to get a vaccine in Mexico. The Delta variant is killing her. Don’t think a lack of pre-existing conditions or youth is going to protect you. A vaccine will. (edited to be more accurate with my stat) Less that 1% of the vaccinated public is experiencing breakthrough infections.

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That complements @T_aquaticus’ comment above well.

There is much that we don’t understand about both the vaccines and COVID-19. But you can join the billions of people in the world like myself who have volunteered to be guinea pigs for this vaccine and one day the vaccines may even be approved by the FDA.

Yep… I finally got the first shot with my youngest son (pfizer) and will get the second at the beginning of next week. Then 80% of my (at home) family will be vaccinated with my mother being the only holdout.

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Just because they haven’t cleared the FDA’s red tape does not make anyone a guinea pig. The more noble ones are those who volunteered for the initial trials, not anyone since. The CDC and the NIH signed off on them, didn’t they.

So you are saying the procedures the FDA requires for approving vaccines have no good reason for them and is nothing but a bunch of red tape?

Hmmm… when I read the warnings on the little paper they gave me saying I was taking a vaccine not approved of by the FDA… a guinea pig is exactly what I felt like.

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The pandemic is a global health emergency, and all three trial phases of the vaccines were completed successfully. The current crisis in the U.S is “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” and anyone delaying getting a vaccine is contributing unless they stay completely homebound.

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And we see right here why God doesn’t provide proof for His existence. Some people will so quickly leap for any excuse for self-righteousness that they can find, however bizarre it may seem to the rest of us. Perhaps we can call it the bane of His existence.

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I was very interested to read this in the link provided above on the delta variant…

Random mutations occur due to errors in the viral replication process. While coronaviruses have an enzyme which corrects most of those mistakes, some do still slip through to create a new variant.

It seems mutagenesis is not completely random in ALL viruses after all. It looks like some of the viruses repair their DNA just like bacteria and we do. It makes the corona viruses that much more scary.

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Or repair their RNA, in the case of viruses.

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I was trying to find out what proportion of viruses use RNA rather than DNA. No luck, except comparing lists of each, it does look like more of them use RNA. What I did find out that is that RNA viruses have a higher mutation rate while DNA viruses are more stable.

With RNA and a repair mechanism this means Covid mutates faster and more effectively to evade our defenses.

Interesting. That seems to contradict this quote in the Covid-19: The Delta Variant article linked above…

What’s the reason for the discrepancy?

The Delta variant was responsible for fewer than 1% of the cases in the US in April. It is now responsible for the vast majority of cases. (99% in Michigan in the last four weeks, for example.)

You can’t necessarily apply stats from studies on the original strains to the current situation and assume their projections will hold up. There are new studies being done and you have to look at the numbers that deal with the Delta variant.

The unvaccinated are in serious danger now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/08/13/children-hospitalizations-covid-delta/

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Maybe a doctor can weigh in, but as I understand it, there are two factors that lead to different symptoms. The Delta variant is a slightly different virus and interacts with the human body in slightly different ways compared to the other strains. Secondly, in vaccinated people the virus encounters antibodies that are somewhat effective in helping to fight off the infection in the blood stream, before it gets to the lungs. But it still is able to multiply fairly effectively in the mucus membranes of the nose and mouth, contributing to a heightened immune response in the sinuses.

I don’t see a “discrepancy” in CDC guidance. It isn’t based on some objective truth like “masks are wonderful,” it’s based on real time statistical analysis, current transmission rates, current hospitalization rates, and what is known about how the virus is currently spreading based on human behavior. There are things we can’t control like how infectious a virus is or how sick people get with it, but the CDC is going to make changing recommendations based on changing variables when it relates to the things we can control that inhibit the spread of infections. They aren’t “changing their minds” they are adjusting their advice to fit the situation today and what is being learned on a daily basis about a strain of virus we have not encountered before.

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One reason for returning to mask mandates is that the last four weeks have seen a shocking rise in cases and we are in the middle of a full-blown outbreak again.

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  1. Delta vs non-delta
  2. We don’t actually know how easily infected, vaccinated people transmit the virus. What we know is that viral loads in the nose are similar between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, but we don’t know whether viral loads are lower elsewhere, especially in the lungs, and we don’t know what fraction of viruses in the vaccinated have been inactivated by neutralizing antibodies.
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A repair mechanism doesn’t make the mutations less random; it just means there are fewer of them. Coronaviruses have unusually large genomes for RNA viruses and they may need proofreading capability in their RNA replication to avoid mutational meltdown. In any case, the proofreading slows down viral evolution, which shouldn’t make it scarier.

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Thanks to everyone for the helpful information so far! If I do end up getting the vaccine, I’m first going to have to respond to this article sent to me by a concerned family member:

18 Reasons I Won’t Be Getting a Covid Vaccine.

Some of the claims made in the article that are most worrying to me are:

  • Pfizer, Moderna, Astra Zeneca, and J&J all have checkered histories when it comes to vaccines. They’ve lost lawsuits, had to pay millions of dollars, and some of them haven’t brought vaccines to market before this.
  • They’ve taken extreme legal action to protect themselves from liability, which strongly suggests they don’t trust their product.
  • According to the FDA report, the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines are only known to reduce symptoms, not to reduce virus spread or reduce the chance of contracting Covid-19. Is there any scientific evidence to contradict this claim? What exactly do vaccines do?
  • According to a Harvard study, less than 1% of of adverse reactions to the vaccine are submitted to VAERS. So the negative side effects of getting vaccinated (including death) may be largely underreported.
  • Covid-19 death numbers, by contrast, are overreported since any co-morbidity is attributed to Covid-19.
  • Fauci and others have stock in the vaccines, which constitues a conflict of interest.
  • The Covid-19 vaccine may be causing the virus to mutate faster, because it’s put under more pressure, according to someone named Geert Vanden Bossche.

Which of these claims are outright lies? Which are partial truths? And which are right on target?

(I’d like to reiterate that I’m asking this sincerely, not as a “gotcha” or to try to change people’s minds. I haven’t made up my mind yet.)

Thanks for your help,
Skyler

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