It is absolutely fine to ask for information.
An easy first step is looking for fact checks that specifically address that source.
Or this one:
Evidently the author of that 18 reasons article is not just anti-vaccine, he is a germ theory denialist. Going to him for medical advice would be like rocket scientists consulting flat-earthers.
Trouble is, it is not the outright lies that are the worst. It is the half-lies and distortions. That is what conspiracy guys excel at. Lots of good info posted, so will not add to that other than to say that most or the VAERs reports are unrelated to the vaccine. I have personally seen a lot of “reactions” that are purely psychosomatic as they occur before the vaccine could even hit the bloodstream. In addition, many adverse events reported are simply coincidental and not a result of the vaccine.
The question in the title of this thread “Should I risk getting vaccinated?” is of course the wrong question. The question is, which is the greater risk?
All our objective evidence makes the answer to this quite clear. Not getting the vaccine is the greater risk.
On the other hand, this objective assessment of risk is a matter of statistics. What will actually happen, and how we experience things is a different matter. If we don’t get the vaccine the probability is that nothing bad will happen. It seems that 40% are asymptomatic, only 17% require hospitalization, and only 1.7% have died. If you do get the vaccine the probability is even greater than nothing worse will happen than a sore arm for a few days. In that case only .0019% have died after getting the vaccine (whether bad reaction, breakthrough cases of covid 19, or some other unrelated cause) – a thousand times safer than getting covid-19.
Yes and no. It’s not just being hospitalized or dying that is bad. Getting COVID is bad, even if you are asymptomatic. A mild case does not seem to ensure that you won’t suffer long COVID, something they are finding in crazy high percentages of people who have had infections. None of the people I know who have been dealing with debilitating long-COVID syndrome had serious COVID cases. But they still can’t work full time a year and a half later.
Also many who had mild cases and were young and strong still end up with myocarditis. They found it in 15% of the college athletes who tested positive.
This would only be the case if the repair mechanism is just as random as the source of variation. But since the repair mechanism is a product of evolution, this means that there is going to a bias in the implementation of any repair mechanism to prefer survival of the species, which means repairing when the errors are more likely to decrease survival. Clearly the variations are also very important for survival of the species.
Of course, it is possible that in this case the only advantage to survival being served by the repair mechanism is the decreasing mutation rates to avoid levels which are population lethal. Viruses are the simplest of organisms after all.
And no I am not saying that the repair mechanism can tell when an error will produce a bad result. I only mean that some areas of their DNA can be more crucial than other areas and thus more in need of protection.
Yes–you don’t want ongoing kidney failure, myocarditis, Guillain Barre syndrome, shortness of breath and fatigue, or (less severe) the inability to taste or smell anything other than ammonia and rotten meat for months. Yuck.
That is the issue people face who worry they will be taking part in a drug trial without their permission. Of course the potential harm posed by COVID doesn’t require anyone’s permission. As has been noted here before, those who choose to undergo the risks without the vaccine are taking part in the very same trial.
I did not even give a probability for not getting covid 19 if not vaccinated. The numbers show the virus is not slowing down so that is looking inevitable, especially since the vaccine is obviously not preventing the spread of it.
Christy raised the issue of long term effects of the virus even among those with mild or asymptomatic cases. It took a while to get statistics on that and it is higher than I might have guessed. It looks like 33% so far are having lasting effects from this virus. And the vaccine helps with this as longs as the worst symptoms have passed. So it makes sense that the immunity you get from the virus is not as good what you get from the vaccine, and we have been seeing people getting the virus again after they have already had it.
Spoken by a physician worth listening to.
Breakthrough infections are a minority of the vaccinated. The vaccine isn’t preventing the spread in areas where vaccination rates are low. All it takes is looking at a map. States where vaccinations are lagging behind are suffering. As for the long term, Delta is as contagious as chickenpox. Herd immunity is a myth in our current environment. I expect that almost all the unvaccinated will be infected eventually, and some of the vaccinated will be hospitalized as well. It’s a binary choice at this point.
In this case it’s RNA, not DNA. That kind of bias is already built into the genetic code, that is, a bias against mutations with functional effect. I think it unlikely that proofreading mechanisms significantly increase that bias. In any case, the mutations are still random in the same sense that mutations in human are random: there is no mechanism that favors beneficial mutations over detrimental ones.
Those questioning vaccination (and many others) may not be aware that COVID has been characterized as more of a vascular disease than a respiratory one, since it can produce microclots anywhere throughout the body. That also explains the wide range and varying degrees of symptoms.
It is not something you want to come down with or risk infecting children with, even (or especially) if you are asymptomatic! In weighing getting or not getting vaccinated, please look at the big picture and the overall statistics, including the current spike in infections. It is only a matter of time before you will likely be exposed in one way or another, so the time to get a vaccine is now, ASAP. It is not being called a ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ for nothing.
And speaking of microclots, docs @jpm and @Randy might be interested in this:
Just get the stupid shots.
On Fox News – that’s a good thing!
The process for full approval includes factors that do not directly affect vaccine safety or vaccine efficacy. For example, for full approval the FDA must review how the vaccine will be marketed and the language the drug company will use on the package and in advertisements. This is why the Emergencey Use Authorization exists, to fast track medications when there is an obvious and immediate need for them.
Watch this documentary, it may give you perspective - an histroical perspective and explanation
Jabbed
I just wanted to note that I checked out this link (we are monitoring the info that gets recommended here pretty closely, since there is so much misinformation out there) and this checks out.
Here is an informative review of the production if people would like more information. It’s probably good to have some resources that don’t focus so exclusively on the US context. This one is made by an Australian and has a global perspective while also highlighting how vaccine hesitancy has played out in the UK and Australia.
Jabbed: Love, Fear and Vaccines was made in 2013. The video is better than the review by “The Conversation.” It is confronting, especially the opening scenes when parents, grandparents dont get the hooping cough vaccine.
I am unsure if those outside of Aus/New Zealand can create and account & watch on SBS.
You can rent it here
Forum with Dr. Sunya Pemberton who is the director of the documentary. (Video documentary is better!)
The greatest challenge currently in Australia in terms of Covid, contrary to frequent media narratives, is vaccine supply. There is hesitancy, but it’s not the limiting factor, yet, and when it eventually is, it will serve to slow the progress to adequate vaccination rates, but not block it entirely.
Speaking of national vaccination rates, this was an interesting article on Iceland, which had the highest vaccination rate in the world at 70%. They are seeing a big outbreak of delta cases. However the takeaway is not “the vaccines don’t work.”
Adjusted for population, both Iceland and the United States are reporting new cases at clips that rank among the top two dozen countries in the world, but the United States probably has many more infections that are going undetected, because of lower rates of testing.
Iceland quickly became a go-to talking point for the anti-vaccine movement. Fox News’s Laura Ingraham aired a segment in which a guest posited that “it’s almost as if the vaccine invited this explosion of cases” in Iceland.
Such observations are false, said Philip J. Landrigan, an epidemiologist and the director of Boston College’s Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good. They omit the fact that the vaccines are “providing almost absolute protection against death,” he said.
The Iceland outbreak shouldn’t be surprising, Landrigan added. When a high percentage of the population is vaccinated, it’s more likely that the people who test positive are inoculated.
“We’ve seen in many places the so-called breakthrough cases, but invariably the rate of serious disease and death is exceedingly low, and that really is the core message here,” he said.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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