Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?

It’s my civic duty to take it as soon as it’s offered to me, even if there’s some minuscule chance that there will be an averse side effect. That said, I’ll likely be towards the end of the line given my health and occupation.

Its a good question let me answer – some people can’t get the vaccine. Right now, it’s banned for people with allergies. Babies can’t get it. For some people, they can never get it due to their immune system. Their only chance is never coming into contact with a contagious person, so that means as many of us need to get the vaccine as possible to ensure that doesn’t happen.

because there are people who, due to age or immuno-compromisation or allergic response, cannot safely take the vaccine, so those who can safely take it should help contribute to herd immunity because there are many people out of work whose livelihoods depend on the types of establishments closed or restricted by COVID (restaurants, theaters, etc) because safely interacting with other human beings in-person is generally good for mental health

Assuming this is a good faith question: while this is not guaranteed, it is highly likely a vaccine will prevent disease transmission (given how the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines bind to spike proteins), breaking chains in viral spread.

? “What will you having this vaccine do for anybody but yourself ?” COVID is contagious meaning it’s as much about those around you as it is yourself. Second, in order to beat COVID we have to have a certain immunity threshold i.e. 75% or whatever, meaning, your participation in that effort matters. It is our ‘civic duty’ and I’m proud that the top commenter (at the moment I write this) has put it in those terms because that’s a good way to put it.

I’ll take it but only later in the year when it is more widely available. People at high risk should go first, then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague). Especially younger people, they need to get pricked. Do you really think they’re going to avoid drinking close physical contact in spring? Me neither.

No need to worry about who should go first. They will be rolling it out based on need. When it’s available to you, go get it.

this is exactly it. based on my demographic, i’m going to be one of the last in line. I’m not going to be trying to jump ahead in that line because i’m not an asshole and i know other people need it more than I do. but also I’m a little bit of an asshole, so i’m kind of reassured to know that hundreds of millions of people will have gotten it before me, and if there are any issues there will have been plenty of time to sort them out.

The other half of it, for the early days at least, is the fear of lining up with hundreds of people who are more likely to be high risk people. Putting yourself in higher risk. My pharmacy does COVID testing but only if you show no symptoms. The gov health networks tell symptomatic people to be tested in hospital set up centers. But high risk people are still high risk people, whether they are showing symptoms or not.

It’s worth separating the two types of ‘high risk’: There’s ‘high risk of having a severe response to COVID’ and ‘high risk of getting COVID’. The former (e.g. elderly) are not always the same as the latter (healthcare workers) – but there are some overlaps (e.g. care homes). My hunch is most of the queues for vaccines will be type A e.g. the elderly. Not necessarily more likely to have COVID, but more likely to be at risk of severe symptoms if they were to get it.

Not sure why you would think a vaccine being managed by the government will be rolled out in a sane and consistent manner? edit As was correctly pointed out, I should mention I’m speaking purely about the US and not any other country.

because believe it or not some people live in countries where the government manages to do just that.

This could use some elaboration. Have you been in all three of those countries recently? Or “watched” meaning “saw people talking about online” or such? Or something in between?

I was in Germany in October and with the individual the day they took the second shot. France is a professional contact who mentioned it on the phone, as is China. Same thing happened with tests a few months ago in Palo Alto. Billionaires with boxes of them at their homes while public stocks ran low.

If billionaires want to take part to the clinical trials go ahead. I mean they look for volunteers all the times. PS: They were no COVID vaccine in October but clinical trials.

Even taking all this at face value, I think the reason so many of your comments are downvoted is that they’re sort of off topic for the original suggestion, which was that the government should not be trusted to handle rollout of the vaccine in a safe or fair manner. That would include giving people in positions of power or with a lot of wealth some loophole to legally be vaccinated ahead of schedule. What you’re talking about is literally a black market. The people you are hanging out with are literally criminals, who are at best injecting themselves with an unknown substance provided by criminal doctors. Most of us probably wish to see such people prosecuted.

Okay so first of all I’m almost certain no approved vaccine existed in October, the first one started rollout this week, can you back this up with a source? Maybe you knew someone participating in a study but that’s not queue skipping. Don’t get me wrong I hate billionaires but this just seems like it can’t factually be correct.

Another possibility is these billionaires were scammed. It can’t be too difficult to forge a label and place it on a flu vaccine vial.

It doesn’t need to be approved to be used, and the results of the trial were likely known for a bit now. It’s easily conceivable that billionaires have been pushing to be ‘in the loop’ on the meds from the start, and will have gained access long ago to whatever was used in the most promising trials. They can take it as soon as the insider doctors flag that it’s ok, likely many weeks before any public announcement, and certainly before any governmental validation. The value of said vaccines are considerable, there’s massive money involved, I wonder if the R&D institutions themselves may have been able to find a loophole to allow for it. With the sheer number of doctors and patients involved in the trial, and vials worth possibly $100-500K on the black market … it’s bound to get out. And frankly, who cares? A couple thousand early vaccines is basically meaningless from a public health standpoint. It might even be moral to have publicly auctioned off the first mini batch and put the money into production. It’s rational because the ‘willingness to pay’ of some billionaires for the almost arbitrary early access to a vaccine which will soon be cheap and plentiful … works well as a ‘win win’ both for the buyer, and society.

Skip the queue for what? Did they get the vaccine already before it was approved? This is likely complete misinformation. Why is there so much misinformation on HN today?

Or alternately, what the GP is really telling us is that the rich and powerful are easily duped into spending their money on placebos.

> the rich and powerful are easily duped into spending their money on placebos That was frankly my line of questioning. But at least in the German case, the vials and packaging looked legitimate. And it was a reputable doctor administering it at their home who claimed to have directly procured it, though I’m sure that meant warehouse workers or something in the middle, so who knows.

Then you should contact the medical board or whatever the German equivalent is and tell them about this “reputable” doctor. They’d at least lose their license, and for good reason.

If that is the case everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game and I can’t imagine that this would be the norm, especially since I suspect the thieves will get greedy and screw up quickly.

> everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game Agree. From how prevalently I watched tests get mis-allocated a few months ago, however, I’m not optimistic about enforcement. Particularly given the political implications it would have for the leaders in power, who are supposed to be doing a better job at this.

I think pre-emptive enforcement of something like this is extremely difficult without getting downright creepy and invasive. The best you can do is drop the hammer on anyone greedy and dumb enough to get caught – and I’m sure there will be some of these! But personally, I prefer vaccines where the chain of custody didn’t require massive bribery and risk-taking.

> Did they get the vaccine already before it was approved? Yup. It’s sitting in warehouses ready for distribution. No idea how. And no idea how they trusted it to be legitimate.

Outside clinical trials nobody in Germany or France has been vaccinated as there are no approved vaccines in those countries.

> nobody in Germany or France has been vaccinated as there are no approved vaccines Which creates a force field around the warehouses in which it sits? Come on. I guess I’ll revise to I know of people with substantial resources, hundreds of millions and billions at their disposal, who have been injected with something they believe to be the Pfizer vaccine.

I’m sure it’s possible, but that means effectively that said person is now an undocumented trial participant. They have gotten injected with an unapproved medical product. That’s a risk they’ve taken in order to get in early. The physician that administered it has also committed a crime that can cost them their license to practice. There are easier ways for people in power to get vaccines. In China, the government has granted exceptional permissions to vaccinate a number of people with a vaccine that has not yet completed phase 3 trials. The list of people who qualify for that vaccine is said to be several million people long. It’s much easier to get on said list in China than it is anywhere else. A number of other governments have also made exceptions for political leaders and such, treating them with non-approved medication or vaccines. For example, the sheikh of Dubai has been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine before approval (in a very public display of faith in said vaccine, in order to promote vaccination to the population). Some countries are saying they won’t bother waiting for phase 3 trials to end on some products and will make vaccines generally available based on current data. This is the case for Russia (with Sputnik-V) and Morocco (with the Sinopharm vaccine). I consider it highly likely that their heads of state are vaccinated under an exceptional authorization.

JumpCrisscross is on point here, the level of naivte in the discussion is a little much. This is a global pandemic, trials with 30 000 patients x 5, each one of those vials worth an absolute fortune, there’s a 100% chance quite a bit of it has fled into the black market and a sophisticated one at that. And to wit – there are a lot of people being ‘officially’ vaccinated right now behind the scenes they’re not going to tell us about. It might be dangerous for politicians to get it early, because if asked by reporters either they have to lie, or say ‘yes’ and then public outcry. Special Forces, the Secret Service and some other security personal – just a some examples are going to get it long before we plebes. Among others.

In the UK this is being managed by the NHS (someone correct me if this is incorrect). They do this every year for managing the Flu Virus.

So your argument is “government bad”. I counter with “government good”. See how productive this discussion is?

I think his argument was “government is typically inefficient.” is your counterclaim that government is typically efficient?

If you’re in the US, you can look at the federal planning as well as the plans for your state most likely. From what I’ve seen, they look pretty reasonable.

Wait, I just realized now that universal free vaccination might not be a thing in the US. I live in a developing country with 200 million people, and the dozen or so most common vaccines are free to everyone, and everyone gets it and it is managed by the government. I’m sorry, but it works. Government here has /many/ faults, but managing vaccination for 200+ million’s not really one of them.

I know the anti-administration circle jerk is pretty strong here but the administration actually doesn’t have much of any control over the roll-out plan. I have physician friends with reservations for vaccinations as early as next week. There are hundreds of people working on the roll-out plan. Trump isn’t sitting in the Oval deciding which Walgreens are getting the vaccine when.

Well, I mean you could go review their plans, if you are so concerned. They will begin vaccinating any day now.

The US has managed to get the population vaccinated previously, and adults will be in charge of the executive again in a month or so. Unfortunately, that’s too late when it comes to ordering enough of the mRNA vaccines, but it will help to have the pandemic taken seriously.

You’re assuming distribution will work fairly and optimally. That’s very unlikely, especially because the initial rollout will still be overseen by the Trump admin.

I find this on the internet, though usually reddit rather than here. I am forever asking folks if they mean the US, and trying to explain to them that there is… a rest of world

Honestly it’s kind of hard to know what the audience for a site might be. If people are active during your hours and in your language, the assumption is easy to make.

America is the largest (primarily) English speaking community in the world and both Reddit and YC are US companies. It’s not surprising some assume the whole audience is American.

Oh boy, do I hope we don’t talk about the US in 2021, anymore. It’s been like a slightly different, ever the same car crash you drive by, every day. For four fucking years. I am sure my dopamine receptors look like old, all dries up raisins by now. I wish we as a species could agree stop all news for year or ten. Detox and heal, form new habits like life has value and shit.

You mean the admin that encouraged people not to wear masks? The one that downplayed the virus at every opportunity? The one that held rallies without masks required, but still had people sign waivers in case they got sick? Is it that one, or some other administration you’re thinking of?

No, they mean the administration that still hasn’t provided for adequate PPE, that turned down the offer of another 100 million doses of the 95% efficacy Pfizer vaccine, which is available now, and instead bought 300 million doses of the Astra-Zenica 62% efficacy vaccine, which does not meet the task force’s minimum efficacy requirements and will not be available until summer.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong but don’t the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines not grant sterilizing immunity, aka you can still be a carrier if you’re immunized?

As far as I can tell this is currently unknown, it has not been studied. My complete layman understanding would be that it should at least somewhat prevent the spreading because replication has to be limited if a vaccine works and replication is also an important part of giving the disease to others? If less cells are infected you can’t cough out the virus as much? But the exact timeline is important here, obviously. Again, complete layman, I know basically nothing about this.

> avoid drinking close physical contact I’ve gone whole months without drinking close physical contact!

While noble to give to the more acutely affected people first, I think distribution at random makes more sense since that decreases the ability of the virus to grow. I’ll let the epidemiologists be my guide however.

I believe the theory is, if the virus kills 85-year-old care home residents at 300x the rate it kills healthy under-30s, one dose given to the former is worth 300 doses given to the latter.

There’s no evidence that getting the vaccine doesn’t mean you can’t still be infected and spread it to others (you just don’t get sick). So giving it to super social/stupid people up front may not help, because they can still spread it and probably think it’s no big deal anymore because they’re vaccinated.

> ”then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague)” Many such people will have antibodies already. As do I. I’ll get the vaccine if it becomes a requirement to travel or whatever, but I see no need for it in the short term if you’re low risk and already had Covid.

> “Having antibodies does not guarantee immunity.” Sure, but it seems to have worked so far. And if having natural antibodies doesn’t give long-term immunity, then will vaccine-induced antibodies? We don’t know. > “How long IgM and IgG antibodies remain detectable following infection is not known.” Having detectable antibodies is not the same thing as immunity.

> I’ll take it but only later in the year when it is more widely available. Same. Just like first generation Apple hardware, even if looks as good as the M1, I’d rather have other people take the plunge before I do. In about a year, I may. By then, we’ll have 2 years worth of data from the test group – good enough! If I perceive any serious risk, I won’t. Being young and with no risk factors, I have little to gain – so the rational move for me is to leech off the group herd immunity effect. So people, please, do the right thing and get vaccinated!! Protect your parents and your neighbors!!!

What if every young person with no risk factors (that might be those more likely to be out and about spreading the virus) thought like that?. It sounds kind of selfish to encourage others to be your guinea pigs “so they can protect their parents”

Everyone keeps saying this like it’s a bad thing! I didn’t leave the house for three months back in March, and it was great. The ability to work from home, a functioning Internet, and a pre-existing Brexit stockpile which came in handy unexpectedly early. I would happily be dropped to the bottom of the vaccine queue.

Oh dont get me wrong, i am also ok with quarantine and all. And if others in a more risky position than me need the vaccin they get it before me. But i was talking about the ppl that dont trust the first batches. If it’s your turn to get the vaccin, take it or you stay in quarantine until you get it. That’s my take

So people that are young that have next to no risk from covid should take a highly experimental vaccine with no longitudinal analysis. Not so great risk analysis there.

> People who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague) What if somebody has asymptomatic covid infection? He or she spreads it without intent, you can not blame them.

> What if somebody has asymptomatic covid infection? He or she spreads it without intent, you can not blame them. Yes, given what is widely publicly known about the disease, I can very easily blame people who are involved engaging in high-spread-risk behavior despite being a-(or, more likely if they are actually spreading it, pre-)symptomatic and who are thereby spreading the virus they don’t know they have.

> Would you be comfortable convicting those people with attempted murder? No, attempted murder requires specific intent. For the most egregious conduct when they know they are at particularly high risk of being a spreader, even without intent, if someone actually dies, it might arguably be close to depraved-indifference rather than intent-to-kill murder, but more generally negligent homicide if they actually kill people and reckless endangerment, otherwise, would be closer selections from the generically-common American set of crimes. But I’m not arguing they should be criminally liable; saying that an act is not beyond moral blame is not the same that it technically fits — or, even if it does, should necessarily be prosecuted as — a crime.

Not who you’re replying to, but not for ignorance. On the other hand, if someone knows they’ve been exposed and still behave carelessly, I’m absolutely fine with charging people with attempted murder, endangering the public health, or something similar.

I completely agree if you test positive and don’t follow the isolation period then that’s a problem. However op seems to be saying that if you go shopping (could be classed as high risk?), don’t know you have the virus, and pass it on then that’s a problem too? What’s the difference between passing this on unintentionally and passing any other virus or disease unintentionally?

If they know it’s spreadable without symptoms, unfortunate, as is is, there’s a level of fault. Stupid is not a term I would use, though. Mingling with other people at a similar comfort level of contract Covid – that’s just adults being adults. That’s freedom. But if those people then go to unavoidable places like grocery stores, they’re putting people at risk who don’t have much of a choice.

I sure can, if they’re in the US. We’re still in lockdown. My state just announced even stronger precautions which go into effect in about 6 hours. If you are spreading COVID in the US, whether or not you’re symptomatic, it’s a conscious choice.

I was alluding to legal situation and term of Negligent homicide/Involuntary manslaughter; it is defined as “the killing of another person without the intent to kill, but where the person’s death occurs as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant.” In the situation of Covid it would be something like infecting another person without the intent to infect, but where the person’s health might be endangered as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant (the one who spread the virus).

How does this differ from any other communicable disease with a non-zero mortality that someone might spread either unknowingly or negligently? E.g. influenza just to name one.

They still haven’t definitively determined if it’s asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, or both that spread the disease.

I think there’s a difference between: (a) I WILL WAIT because I don’t trust it yet, and (b) I WILL WAIT because I want to let the more at-risk people to have access it to first That seems to be lost in the poll

Or (c) I will tell everyone that I’m waiting so that more at-risk people can have access it to first, but secretly I’ll be happy others are field-testing it for me…

That’s similar to mine. I will get it as soon as I can, but I’m also glad that “when I can” is not “first”.

The incentives seem to align: if I were a front-line at-risk worker I’d be much more accepting of possible risk than in my present situation of staying at home all day.

Speaking as someone who already has some (but not all) well-understood vaccines contraindicated and has to figure out which category covid vaccines will fall in… (d) telling myself that (c) is how I feel is how I assuage my feelings of disappointment at being old enough decision makers believe I’m likely to behave responsibly, but young enough + no apparent extra risk factors enough that I’m likely to be near last to get access.

Or (d) I will wait to see if Corona mutates so much over the next year that the vaccine is a yearly process. Edit: I feel like some people didn’t notice the mink culling in Denmark which was caused by fears that version of the virus would make the vaccines useless.

I think the implication is, if it’s available to you, the at-risk people have already had a chance to get it. At least that’s what I’ve heard from the rollout strategy.

It looks like some people in the comments are interpreting it differently

Isn’t that covered by the prompt? > Assumption: it is available to everyone at the same time This reads like “everyone who wants it will get it”

And many people claiming (b) also feel (a). Practically there is no difference between those options.

I’m not aware of any localities or nations that are just dumping the vaccines off at a pharmacy and letting people do what they want. Everywhere has a roll-out plan, with healthcare workers and high-risk individuals prioritized over the totally healthy mid-20’s athlete. So (b) in your list isn’t really a concern. If you have access to it, you should get it.

Depends on how people read the line saying that it’s available to everyone and no wait lines. The way I read it was, yay!, vaccines for EVERYONE.

I agree. This is a bad poll that can be used to derive whatever meaning you want to derive from it. There’s no reason we can’t have fifteen more specific options listed. Is it no because you don’t need it because you already had the virus? Is it no because you’re allergic to vaccines? Is it no because the virus is a hoax?

Also you might split up the “No” answer as “No, because I’ve already had COVID and recovered” vs. “No, I’m an anti-vaxxer” (or something).

It might be a good idea to get the vaccine even if you’ve already had COVID. There’s not been any CDC recommendations about it, but here’s what they do say. > There is not enough information currently available to say if or for how long after infection someone is protected from getting COVID-19 again; this is called natural immunity. Early evidence suggests natural immunity from COVID-19 may not last very long, but more studies are needed to better understand this. Until we have a vaccine available and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices makes recommendations to CDC on how to best use COVID-19 vaccines, CDC cannot comment on whether people who had COVID-19 should get a COVID-19 vaccine. [1] Suffice it to say, I’ll do whatever the CDC recommends. I’ve already had COVID, so I’m guessing I’ll go last. But at the same time, I’ll get the vaccine if it is recommended. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/faq.html

Surely there is also not enough information on how long after vaccination someone is protected. This doesn’t seem like a strong argument to me. If infection with the actual virus doesn’t confer immunity, I don’t see much reason to think that the vaccine will work any better.

Everything I’ve read has suggested that people who’ve had COVID should still get the vaccine anyway, as it could act as a booster. And that, whether through natural immunity or a vaccine it looks likely that we’ll need to get it ‘topped up’ after awhile. Has there been medical advice anywhere that people who’ve had COVID don’t need to get vaccinated?

For questions you don’t know you have. I read the iperf man page earlier for laughs, discovered the -B option which I’d forgotten existed.

Ha! Although I have read the FAQ numerous times, but I don’t regularly check it. Maybe it needs an RSS feed 😛

Are their guidelines on what should and what shouldn’t be made into a poll question?

My assumption is that it follows general post guidelines: — What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they’re evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they’d cover it on TV news, it’s probably off-topic.

> If they’d cover it on TV news, it’s probably off-topic What would be the catastrophic consequences of this guideline if HN started a TV channel with news that would “gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”?

And I did it wrong. I thought you had to enter 1,2, or 3 in the text box… After seeing my comment that just had ‘1’ in it, I figured it out.

I pulled down a copy of HN earlier in the year for analysis and was shocked to find polls among the data. It was a very small % of the total content, small enough I assumed it was an old feature that got removed.

I voted WILL WAIT simply because the idea of becoming Will Smith in my own “I Am Legend” city is appealing.

Doesn’t it scare you more to actually be Will Smith in “I am legend”? He’s alone. All those other people were always hanging out together, chasing stuff, hiding from the sun.

Keep in mind that Coronavirus vaccine are novel and not field tested, whereas other vaccines are field tested for decades.

I dont think there is room for ambiguity here. When the government calls you for your shot are you going to say: ill do what you ask of me? Or are you going to say: nah thanks/ Just let me wait a bit and then maybe? The choice in this case is pretty binary. You dont get to have your cake and eat it too.

I’m surprised to see such a high percentage of “NO” responses. I’m genuinely curious to understand why

Pregnant women or women who are planning on becoming pregnant should not have it according to UK government guidelines. That’s a pretty good reason to click NO.

Because last I checked, HN was not pregnant women’s favorite forum. You could create a poll if you doubt it, I trust my gut 🙂

Note that there are differing professional opinions on this. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine recommends no special exclusion of pregnant women from vaccine trials or vaccine campaigns: [1] [2] “Despite the categorization of pregnancy as a high-risk condition for severe COVID-19, hospitalization, and mortality, pregnancy remains an exclusion for participation in vaccine trials. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) and other leading organizations, including the National Academy of Medicine, have consistently advocated for the inclusion of pregnant and lactating women in vaccination trials, particularly when the following criteria are met: (1) pregnancy poses increased susceptibility to or severity of a disease; (2) the best approach to protect the infant is through passive placental antibody transfer, which provides the most efficient and direct protection to the newborn before an infant can be vaccinated, and (3) there is an active outbreak.” “In general, SMFM strongly recommends that pregnant women have access to COVID-19 vaccines in all phases of future vaccine campaigns, and that she and her healthcare professional engage in shared decision-making regarding her receipt of the vaccine. Counseling should balance available data on vaccine safety, risks to pregnant women from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and a woman’s individual risk for infection and severe disease. As data emerge, counseling will likely shift, as some vaccines may be more suitable for pregnant women. mRNA vaccines, which are likely to be the first vaccines available, do not contain a live virus but rather induce humoral and cellular immune response through the use of viral mRNA. Healthcare professionals should also counsel their patients that the theoretical risk of fetal harm from mRNA vaccines is very low.” [1]: https://www.smfm.org/covidclinical [2]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.smfm.org/media/2591/SMFM_Vaccin…

Also people with allergies. This was found out after two people that got the vaccine had allergic reactions to it (no idea how severe)…

Dead people and newborns also should not take the vaccine. What’s your point? The poll’s intent is to understand why one would not want to take it, not whether they should. The government already makes that choice for you. See “People with allergies should avoid the vaccine.”

Um, you do know that alcohol is something that pregnant women should avoid? Will you quit drinking alcohol?

I was under the impression that this is common knowledge. Most pregnant women I’ve known did, indeed, forego alcohol during their pregnancy.

I think everyone in this thread has left too much of their argument tacit and the meaning has been lost. I read it as: 1. Why do many people say no? 2. Well it isn’t recommended for the pregnant [therefore either a large proportion of hn is pregnant or the vaccine is generally bad] 3. [not many people on hn are pregnant so] do you also refuse alcohol because that is bad for the pregnant? 4. [I think you’re suggesting that pregnant people often drink alcohol so I put it to you that] in my experience pregnant people don’t drink alcohol. 5. This comment

I’m surprised you would find that novel. Yes alcohol should be avoided if pregnant. Smoking as well. Cat litterboxes can pose a risk. Many other products are removed because of unknown risks.

Not the same. According to a former Pfizer employee, there is a ~70% risk that it could cause sterility in women. At this point (a) I don’t know if this guy’s a whack job or (b) whether he was implying permanent or temporary sterility. All I know is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to take it until there’s more certainty about the risk factors.

If GP is referring to what I think he is, it’s not an ‘unnamed’ former Pfizer employee, it was Michael Yeadon. I’m honestly unaware of where the 70% number came from (I may simply have missed it), but he, alongside former Council of Europe Parliament chair Wolfgang Wodarg jointly filed a document with the EMA urging that a large-scale roll-out of the vaccine be delayed until further trials could be ran on it which accounted for pregnancy [5]. His primary concern was that it would impact placental development. Michael Yeadon worked with Pfizer between 1995, and 2011 where he was the Chief Science Officer, and Vice President of the company’s R&D division focused on allergy and respiratory illness [0]. In 2011, Pfizer decided to narrow its focus down to five distinct areas of research, and closed down Yeadon’s lab [1, 2]. Yeadon, along with two other colleagues secured venture funding from Pfizer’s investment fund, and license from Pfizer to continue their research as an independent company called Ziarco, which continued to operate until it was purchased by Novartis in 2016 in 2016[3, 4] Since cashing out, Yeadon has operated as a research consultant [0]. Yeadon is notably a lock-down skeptic, and has made claims that London has long since reached herd-immunity. He’s a biochemist, not a virologist. I don’t know how correct he is or isn’t. But his history suggests that he’s not someone who’s opinion on pharmaceuticals should be taken lightly. Wodarg has similarly suggested that the COVID pandemic is overhyped. Wodarg’s a politician with some medical education. I don’t know that he’s anywhere near authoritative. [0] https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-yeadon-3818613/ [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/kent/hi/people_and_places/newsid… [2] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pfizer-narrows-its-f… [3] https://drug-dev.com/ziarco-pharma-acquires-pfizer-drugs-sec… [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2017/03/15/turnin… [5] https://dryburgh.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wodarg_Yeado…

Right now its 310 YES to 39 NO. From what I’ve been reading in the (fake?) news, surveys and polls in the USA, I’m actually surprised to see so many yeses.

Some of this can always be explained by the “lizardman constant”: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and… Also, ballpark 20% of Americans already had the disease, and the benefit for them (while still there) is lower. Also pregnancy. So multiple reasons why 10% is probably not crazy. For what it was worth, I was also a bit confused by the order, as I think they randomize it or something and almost tapped the wrong one.

> I also think most of us don’t know someone who believes reptilian aliens in human form control all the major nations of Earth. Really? I know multiple people who genuinely believe this. Yes you’ll always get some constant of random picks, but you also have to understand that our social circles hugely limit us from representative samples of the population’s opinions. The only people I know who have actually been in crazy cat lady houses were because they worked as repairmen, since there you’ll get a sample of the population which needs their furnace looked at sometimes

Immunity from having COVID lasts about 3 months, it seems. Immunity from the vaccine will last for a year or more and will still work as expected even if you had COVID. “I’ve had COVID” is a bad reason to refuse the vaccine.

This is simply incorrect, although I don’t blame you for thinking so since there were some sensationalist news articles tripping over themselves to imply that it was the case. Rates of COVID reinfection remain vanishingly small.

Experts say active immunity likely lasts for years. Antibodies drop off potentially quickly but that’s not a big deal if you have active immunity.

Mind to share sources about the immunity lasting only 3 months? From what I read, Corona-virii are in general slow to mutate and infected people should be immune for a longer time. Also, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but this idea that a vaccine should neatly work in a way that it would be recommended to take it on every season smells of a pharma PR submarine.

Well – The hacker news community is not even remotely representative of the U.S. population (nor typical pops in other countries I suspect). If you thought it was, then you’d think 90% of everyone in America voted for Biden. But it was much closer to 50-50. So these forums are only useful for understanding the positions of people on these sorts of forums.

Yes there are other countries in the world on this forum, you’ll find Trump is not favoured in many countries like Germany where opinion polling was around 9/10 disproving of Trump. Many grains of salt to get that to 50/50

Do these vaccines prevent a person from spreading the virus? I’ve heard a number of times that these will prevent the person who got the vaccine from getting sick, but that it won’t prevent them from spreading the disease. If that is the case then I could understand why a young healthy person would not want the vaccine as the risk to them from covid is extremely low.

That paper doesn’t show what you’re claiming, because it lacked a control group. They explicitly say so: “The authors observed that neither symptoms nor blood investigations were predictive of organ impairment. “Causality of the relationship between organ impairment and infection cannot be deduced, but may be addressed by longitudinal follow-up of individuals with organ impairment,” the authors said.” The paper took 201 people who self-reported as long Covid sufferers, and found that 66% of them had something that could be characterized as “organ impairment” when a whole-body MRI scan was conducted. It’s not at all clear that this would differ significantly from any random group of people whom you stick in a whole-body MRI scan (let alone a group of people who had recently recovered from any other viral illness). Which is why we don’t do them. Thus far, ~all such “long Covid” research has been anecdotal and/or uncontrolled. The evidence quality is quite poor.

I have heard rumors in the medical field that it’s possible that having had COVID might be considered a preexisting condition in the future. Imagine having COVID now, fully recovering, then developing an unrelated lung disease 10 years later just to find out that insurance won’t cover anything to do with it because they’ll just blame it on COVID.

We know about as much about “long covid” as we do about the long term effects of the vaccines. So surely if you’re going to make that argument it should apply both ways?

Nothing is 100% yes or no, but it’s safe to say that the vaccine helps reduce the spread of the virus. Vaccinated people can spread the virus on a (there’s a better term for this) surface level, which is why it’s still important for them to wear masks and wash hands. Hypothetical example of how it can spread: an infected person sneezes on a vaccinated person right in the face. That vaccinated person then rubs his face all over an non-vaccinated person. Really high chance the non-vaccinated person is infected. I also want to emphasize that a vaccinated person that came in contact with the corona virus is far less contagious than an asymptomatic person.

Early thinking is that the virus still lives in the throat and can still be passed if you have had the vaccine. You won’t get sick but the whole problem with this virus is people spreading it because they have not yet developed symptoms. Short answer, it doesn’t look like it no.

Time has value, it takes time to get it. Also there are unknowns to any new medication and side effects of some vaccines. Of course there’s also unknowns to getting covid, but it’s at least internally consistent to favor one over the other.

Because it’s a new vaccine and the mRNA ones are a completely new type of vaccine. They seem safe in limited use over a short period of time, but we don’t know yet what effects they may have in the future. Also there is an aspect of if you are young and healthy your risk of serious effects from covid is low. Even if your risk of problems from the vaccine is low, if your risk of serious effects from the disease that the vaccine treats is also very low then why bother taking any action.

The vaccine is not field tested, so there is a risk in the unknown. The Canadian government at least is warning that some people may have an allergic reaction and are creating a tracking database to find out who is most at risk to such. Also, people are not perfect, so the entire supply chain poses some risk in delivering a bad batch of vaccine. In short, you should not be injecting things into your system unless you really need them.

> The vaccine is not field tested what exactly would you call phase 3 trials for the various vaccines that were done on thousands/tens of thousands of people?

Not enough to know with absolute certainty what will happen when millions of people get it. Especially unforeseen reactions that take several years to appear. As much as you trust each of the (5?) vaccines, you yourself can not know for certainty.. there is some doubt. You may judge that that uncertainty and risk is minimal and well worth taking the vaccine, another completely rational person may decide that it is not worth the risk. The point of my post was that there is real and legitimate risk, be it ever so small. Anyone who pretends there is zero risk to the vaccine is misrepresenting the truth and doing a disservice in the effort of persuading rational adults that vaccine delivery is being lead in an honest and forthright way.

You have a 0.5-1.0% chance to die from COVID-19, a higher chance to be hospitalized and experience serious consequences from that. And the chance to contract the disease is very, very high in many countries right now. The vaccines have been tested in 30-40,000 people each. The typical serious side effects for vaccines are something like 1 in a million or 1 in a few hundred thousand. Even if the vaccine had an usually high level of side effects, odds are it’s still far, far less harmfull than contracting the actual disease.

0.5-1.0% chance to die from COVID-19 assumes an even distribution across all people infected. Which just isn’t true, it very much depends on your current state of health. And again, my main point is that we should be honest about the risks and not pretend they’re zero.

I looked this up for a comment some time ago, and for someone in the 20-30 years range, the chance to die was somewhere aroun 1: 10,000. That’s still far above what you would usually expect for serious side effects of a vaccine (and I’m comparing death with serious side effects right now, so the actual comparison would be even more favorable to the vaccine). I’m not in the risk group, and I would take the vaccine right now if it was offered to me. Even in the worst case the potential risks are below what a real COVID-19 infection would entail.

It’s not just age range, it’s individual health, down to the specific person, not a group. Also you have to multiply the risk by the chance that you will actually contract Covid-19, which is very dependent on lifestyle etc. I’m not trying to talk you personally out of getting the vaccine, I don’t think it will turn you into a zombie or some foolishness. I’m just asking you to understand that it is a rational decision for some people to arrive at a different answer.

If you live in the US or in Europe, I don’t think the chance to contract COVID-19 is low enough to get anywhere close to where you could make that kind of argument. We’re really good at developing vaccines, and they’re a category of drugs that is by far the most sensitive to any kind of side effect. This disease is dangerous enough and also widespread enough that I don’t see any plausible argument that would make the vaccine more dangerous than the disease. And the risk is actually almost entirely age-dependent, the other risk factors weren’t that significant in studies.

CDC best estimate IFR for COVID-19 is as follows: 0-19 years: 0.00003 20-49 years: 0.0002 50-69 years: 0.005 70+ years: 0.054 So only age 50+ have at least 0.5% chance to die from COVID-19. These numbers also include everyone in that age range, e.g. the obese, diabetic, immunocompromised. If you know you are healthy, your odds are better. As a healthy 27 year old and something of a fitness fanatic, my odds appear to be 99.98% of surviving at minimum. Due to the reasons I just mentioned, in addition to being on the younger end of the 20-49 age range, my odds are actually quite a bit better than 99.98%, although I don’t know the exact number. I’ll roll those dice over a vaccine that has been rushed, and will get the vaccine some years in the future if no problems emerge. Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena…

Well luckily we _do_ know what happens with a great deal of certainty when you get actually infected with covid, and it turns out it sucks pretty hard. i find this “better the devil you know” mindset really weird when the “devil you know” is an extremely infectious virus that has killed _three hundred thousand_ americans (not to mention more worldwide), and thousands more by the day. these hypothetical vaccine side effects that have not come up during any of the trials that have been going on for _months_, across thousands and thousands of participants, would have to be pretty insanely bad in order to outweigh the negatives of millions more people contracting the actual virus.

Those are certainly arguments you can make. But you have to acknowledge that there are huge incentives for the drug manufacturers to have a successful test and a healthy scepticism until they have been truly independently verified isn’t unwarranted. Also a pure, as tested, vaccine doesn’t magically appear for your inoculation, there is manufacturing, and delivery, and other potential contamination points along the way. It means what goes into your system isn’t necessarily what has shown to be safe; not a huge risk, but a risk nonetheless. It would have made me feel better if you had started out your reply by saying.. “yes there are risks to this vaccine, but..”. That way I would know we’re working from the same starting point and I could trust that your views are calm and considered, and that you accept the reality that there is indeed risk to taking a foreign substance into your bloodstream. Many of us know people who have had Covid, and it wasn’t a very big deal. Even fat old Donald Trump shrugged it off in a few days; granted he had the best medical care possible. That’s not to diminish the loss of loved ones that have surely been taken by Covid. But it can make one question the statistical importance of Covid in the larger scheme of things. Again, i’m not really arguing with your points, just that they need to be presented with honesty, we shouldn’t put a religious halo around vaccines; we should be clear about the risks too.

Trump received the Regeneron antibody treatment. He did not shrug it off. There aren’t enough such treatments for everyone who would benefit from it.

From what I’m able to gather, a COVID infection produces robust immunity in most people, which is expected to last several years. Having recovered completely from such an infection, I should be fine without it, and vaccines generally don’t feel great and are not, in fact, without risk. I think vaccines are a wonderful technology, to be clear. I’ll get one for COVID only if it’s standing between me and, say, getting on an airplane or entering a foreign country, which, let’s be real: it probably will. States see like a state, after all; you can’t just be immune to infection, you have to be legibly immune.

maybe they’re environmentalists? seems like a deadly virus is good for global warming and habitat extinction. any other reasons?

That’s an interesting take. There are a lot of negative affects caused by covid too. Disposable masks, boxes for shipping, social distancing means you need to build more so people are spaced out, public transit is inefficient since everyone is, etc.

Reasons I’ve heard: – The rushed nature of the vaccines. “Fastest approved vaccine” is not re-assuring if you don’t understand what trade was made for that accelerated timeline. – “I’ll just stay isolated until it dies off” – “I don’t trust western medicine” – “I don’t trust the FDA or big pharma” – “I don’t care if I get covid . People at risk can take the vaccine” Don’t forget how many people don’t even take the flu shot.

They spent 2 decades building technology platforms that enable rapid development of vaccines for specific diseases. The specifics of the Moderna vaccine took 2 days once they had the genome of the virus. But there was an awful lot of work done before then.

Can you elaborate on what you mean it took 2 days? is this akin to a programmer creating a simulation for weeks and then taking an hour to ingest the input data into the simulation?

They were also working on SARS and MERS vaccines prior to this so they had a really good head start that they should target the spike protein.

Plus: – “These are the first mRNA vaccines ever released. We don’t yet know the long term effects.”

> Don’t forget how many people don’t even take the flu shot. That’s a funny comparison from a UK perspective where the flu shot isn’t even offered to the general population (only the elderly, vulnerable or those whose work in healthcare or similar). I’d say there is much more reason to take the COVID vaccine than the flu shot.

What are you talking about? Most companies offer the flu jab to their employees for free, and otherwise it’s like a tenner to save yourself the risk of 2/3 days of feeling horrible.

Fwiw, every time I have taken a flu shot, it has guaranteed 2/3 days of feeling horrible. That said, I don’t get the flu every year (iirc, I’ve had it twice in the past 20 years).

Are you sure about that? I know you can easily get it in a local chemist for about a tenner, I’m nearly sure you can book it with your GP if you’re willing to wait a bit longer

I voted NO and here’s my reasons: I believe there’s enough science to support my expectation that if/when I get covid it will be mild to no symptoms case – my body can take care of it without a vaccine. And for the vaccine – so far I don’t like the odds – reportedly 0.6% of population have allergic reaction to it. I’m not a big fan of auto-immune issues so I’ll take my chances elsewhere.

I elected “NO” because I have already have had COVID-19 and verified antibodies, and an mRNA vaccine is unlikely to provide any additional level of protection. I believe this should have been a separate option.

I abstained from voting for the same reason. It seems likely that people with a high enough level of antibodies will at least be at the very back of the line for vaccination.

Like many others (from reading the sister comments) I voted “NO” because I already had Covid-19, not because I don’t trust the vaccination or vaccinations in general.

From a community perspective, no, because AFAIK no vaccine confers sterilising immunity, so my being vaccinated isn’t likely to help reduce transmission. I will be very happy to see human studies that prove otherwise. It’s be shown that AZD1222-vaccinated macaques still spread virus, with upper respiratory viral loads the same as controls. From a personal perspective, no, because my age-based health risk, and my local community transmission rates approach zero, so vaccination has negligible upside at this point in time and space for me. I might see data that could change either perspective and my willingness to be vaccinated. Also if I need to travel internationally I may be willing or forced to do so.

Edit: before you downvote, these are reasons I’ve read/heard. They do not represent my own views. 1. This is an mRNA vaccine and is the first of it’s kind to be widely offered. This appears to be different than the rest of the vaccines out there for other illnesses. 2. There isn’t a perceived benefit for many people: the vast majority of people won’t get sick or be impacted in any way. 3. It apparently doesn’t stop people from getting or becoming transmissions vectors. So, if you get the vaccine and it makes you less sick, then you may take “riskier” actions than if you were to get it and actually have some symptoms. (IOW, why take it?) 4. Some people can’t take it due to allergy concerns? This is just what I’ve found in my online research.

> 3. It apparently doesn’t stop people from getting or becoming transmissions vectors. So, if you get the vaccine and it makes you less sick, then you may take “riskier” actions than if you were to get it and actually have some symptoms. (IOW, why take it?) From what I’ve seen this is not established at all. They are careful to say that they don’t have conclusive proof that the people who were in their study were not ever contagious – but that doesn’t mean that they were contagious either. They have simply called out that further studies will be needed before we can say whether and to what degree.

It’s also not binary. Even if a vaccine is not 100% effective at preventing asymptomatic disease and transmission, it’s likely to have some effect.

Regarding point 3 – isn’t it just that they haven’t studied that yet? The trials for the mRNA vaccines did not test for asymptomatic carriers, so they don’t know if it prevents transmission.

Not sure about the testing, but as someone else pointed out to me, if you touch someone with dirty gloves, dirt will rub off. I am not sure if asymptomatic transmission has been confirmed or not. I kept hearing that if you didn’t have symptoms then you couldn’t transfer it, but given the uptick in cases, it wouldn’t seem like that is the case.

> I am not sure if asymptomatic transmission has been confirmed or not. It’s been confirmed, from early experience e.g. with the Diamond Princess and USS Theodore Roosevelt. It seems to be rare. But paucisymptomatic transmission — transmission before symptoms have manifested in people who will eventually be symptomatic — is much less rare. So just quarantining people with symptoms doesn’t work.

> But paucisymptomatic transmission – transmission before symptoms have manifested in people who will eventually be symptomatic – is much less rare. The definition you give is for presymptomatic not paucisymptomatic (the latter is basically having trivial/mild symptoms that don’t raise complaints), but transmission in both cases is a significant risk, much more so than true asymptomatic transmission.

1. mRNA technology has been in varying phases of human trials since 2013. The trials conducted by Pfizer and Moderna were absolutely massive compared to normal study sizes. While this will be the first mass-distribution vaccine using the technology, it’s not untested. Further, the results so far suggest it’s far more effective than the Oxford vaccine. 2. It’s really curious to see people saying, on the one hand, that they’re uncertain about a vaccine because of some unexpected long-term impacts, and then saying on the other hand that they’re unconcerned about unexpected long-term impacts from a brand new and as-yet-poorly-understood disease. There are still a lot of question marks about covid-19 and researchers are still discovering far more “quiet” impacts in apparently healthy individuals, including blood clots and pericarditis. 2a. Overall though I’m in favor of anybody avoiding this vaccine that wishes to. The disease would continue to disproportionately affect the populations of people who believe it’s a hoax, or believe it’s not a serious health risk, or believe it’s a conspiracy, or believe the vaccine is a conspiracy, or believe that vaccines in general are conspiracies — and we could do with fewer of those people. 3. As two other people have already pointed out, the researchers have only been cautious about not stating something that they don’t know to be factual. It’s funny: when researchers are cautious, people read too much into it and draw bad conclusions, and that leads to the kinds of research press releases that other people then criticize for making statements unsupported by evidence. Researchers have repeatedly stated in various media that there’s no reason for them to expect people to be infectious after taking the vaccine, they merely haven’t tested for this specifically. 4. The people they’re talking about here are the sort that need to carry an epi-pen with them wherever they go. If you are one of those people, then yes, at this time there’s an uncertain amount of risk associated with these vaccines. The situation is still developing and there should be better information available as the vaccines are distributed.

I appreciate your direct but non-confrontational reply. FWIW I’m quite carefully staying behind the line of “death-wishing”, in “it is what it is” territory. Multiple social issues throughout 2020 have together completely exhausted my usual compassion and optimism towards people. 300,000 Americans and 1.6 million people worldwide are dead but many millions more still don’t see this as a public health emergency. Moreover, beleaguered medical workers have been harassed everywhere online and fist fights and other assaults have been reported across the country that were started by wearing a mask. And then there’s the cyclopsian intersection in the venn diagram of “people who are aggressively anti-mask” and “people who are unconcerned with or even violently opposed to the health and safety of anybody outside their tribe”. From an entirely pragmatic standpoint, the freedom to choose one’s own destiny is arguably the most important human right. All of the information necessary to protect yourself and those around you from this disease is now widely available. Most people who wish to minimize their risk of exposure can do so, with the notable exception of the many medical workers who have been, not asked, but demanded, to put themselves at risk in the service of people who believe those same medical workers are part of some vast conspiracy. So, I’m asking honestly here, to you or whoever else: convince me to care about the plight of terrible people.

People keep forgetting that the vast majority of people under 45 that get in never have any idea that even had it and over 97% of deaths are people over 45.

Some of us are over 45. Some of us have regular contact with people over 45. Some of us know people who’ve died of COVID who are under 45.

Not trying to be snarky, but just curious: do you know anyone under 45 who has died from it?

I know someone who is under 45 who got it & had to be put on a ventilator. It was close, and thankfully, she made it. (I also know someone else under 45 who got it, and was symptomatic.)

People keep forgetting that death is not the only effect this virus has and many of the side effects afterwards are quite bad. There have been more than a few cases with people losing taste/smell, heart and lung damage that may be permanent, and other nasty effects that we are still learning about, truly heartbreaking stuff when it is young people who were training for or attempting to become high performance athletes their entire lives just to have it stripped away because of this virus.

In reality it’s more like over 80. Yes the incidence of severe cases does go up with age, but it’s the very elderly who are most at risk. I’m 54, I had it, and it was a couple of days of slight nasal congestion and a very mild sore throat. If it had been any other year I wouldn’t have paid it any mind at all and would have probably attributed it to the dry winter air.

My dad is in his 50s and he was in the hospital for a week near death on a ventilator. I know within 2 degrees of separation at least 6 people who have died. All were in their 50s and 60s. How they commit the crime of being older.

Who the hell do you think looks after the old and vulnerable? Mostly the under 45s! Therefore the under 45s should really be making sure they don’t get it.

And, of course the #1 reasons even in tech circles: ”BILL GATES IS GOING TO MICROCHIP AS ALL” or ”Covid is just a flu, it’s not going to affect me”

Please don’t set up strawmen just to knock them down. It’s too easy to cast everyone who has some rational scepticism as nutjob’s, but that just alienates those who could otherwise be persuaded by civil discourse.

I’m not setting strawmen, this is my actual experience. Tech is not immune to this kind of conspiracies.

The microchip is not a opposite viewpoint. It is a fantasy that is trivially debunked. It is on the same level of the viewpoint that the vaccine is unicorn blood.

Indeed the microchip is not the opposite viewpoint. The opposite viewpoint is “I won’t take the vaccine” or “I won’t take the vaccine right away”. GP is saying the #1 reason for that viewpoint is that people think they’ll be microchipped.

I’m sorry but I’m going to mock anyone who suggests that Bill Gates is going to microchip people through the vaccine. These people are choosing to ignore reality, and should be put in the same boat as Flat-Earthers. On the other hand, people are of course free to have a healthy scepticism about a new-form of vaccine, and I will happily respect that.

There are like 5 vaccines Doesn’t that concern ironically mean we should take the Russian one? Bill Gates would only pollute the Moderna one, if those theories factored in geopolitics at all.

There are barely 80 votes at the moment of writing this comment, of which barely 10 are a “NO”, so it’s a bit early for “high percentage”. (Edit: Now it’s 73/(798 + 279 + 73), less than 7%, so the point stands.) But I’m a “NO”, FWIW. And while I’m not surprised by the “high percentage” of “YES” votes because of HN demographics, I do not approve. I mean, I don’t really care what other people do with their lives, but this shouldn’t be expected to be the default choice. For the record, vaccines are not a controversial topic in my country like they seem to be in the USA. Kids are vaccinated at school, I received numerous vaccines during my life, some of them totally optional and quite expensive, which I paid for anyway, because it felt like a safer way to be. And of course I do not think vaccines are an evil plan of Bill Gates to… I’m not even sure what the crazy conspiracy theory about that is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure there is some. But I am a crazy conspiracy theorist in a sense that I firmly believe that COVID-19 is hugely overhyped. Of course, I’m scared and ashamed of saying that, because nowadays this seems to be a stronger version of saying “Hitler did nothing wrong”, but you are asking about “why no”, so here we are. Basically, it’s a trade off between reasons to do it and reasons not to (as always). Is there a reason to avoid doing it? Well, yes. Basically, expectation that everyone should do it is that reason: the topic is insanely hot, and it’s never a good thing. This is a huge business opportunity for every pharmaceutical company that gets to push their vaccine right now, and this is some hastily cooked shit you expect me to take. Some of these vaccines are quite a novelty, which is not a bad thing on its own, but this is unlike most vaccines I have ever taken, which are basically decades old and literally millions of people have taken them before me. Maybe it’s totally safe, maybe it isn’t. No couple-months-long trial will ever answer that. Is there a reason to take it? Well, sure. Like there is a reason to take a flu vaccine. Which I don’t do, because there are new mutations every year, and there are countless more versions of “common cold”. Yes, people die of that, and it’s never a pleasant experience, and I live in a cold climate, where this is a very common seasonal thing, but it’s just how things are. It’s ok. And I’m not going to elaborate on all “Hitler did nothing wrong” thing, because what I’ve said so far is more than enough to trigger someone, but, well, I know people that had been sick with COVID-19. I contacted them in person when they were already sick, and it just so happens that neither of us was wearing any mask. I wasn’t really a responsible citizen all the time. It doesn’t seem that the stakes are much higher than with a flu. For some of people it seemed to be more like a really light version of a common cold. So there’s a little of “no” vs a little of “yes” and it just so happens that “no” overweights quite confidently. Maybe it is fair to say that I should’ve voted “I’ll wail”, because this “no” isn’t final. But then no “yes” is final either, anything can happen, the last year should’ve taught us that if anything. And I don’t have any specific date I have to wait for. The point is, currently I’m not going to do that, and I hope it stays this way.

> I firmly believe that COVID-19 is hugely overhyped I’ve read your concerns and take the gravest possible offense to this. It’s not just about the new coronavirus, but what comes next. Tools like crispr are now within the means of the nuclear boyscout, who can unleash an airborne pathogen upon humanity that performs genetic engineering at scale. All that’s required is the will to do so. Stuff like that frightens me far more. If the reaction to this new coronavirus is what’s needed to help humanity prepare, then we’re likely to be far safer and healthier down the road.

It’s not about what happens to you or to your healthy friends. The major difference here is the long incubation period. You catch the virus, you become contagious, you pass it on, and a few days later you develop your mild cold symptoms. You go through it and you are fine. But by allowing yourself to get infected in the first place, you have spread the virus to an unknown number of people. Down the road, perhaps months later, if not enough people have vaccinated to end the pandemic, you may have indirectly caused deaths among the more vulnerable. Information on contagion: https://medical.mit.edu/covid-19-updates/2020/10/exposed-to-…

Surely the same logic applies to all infectious diseases, and we should all get yearly flu shots, permanently practice social distancing, wear masks, etc. lest we maybe be complicit in the deaths of the vulnerable?

I’ve had Covid-19. As far as I know we still don’t know if having it leads to immunity but wouldn’t having it and recovering be “better” than a vaccine? If so, why get a vaccine for something you are immune to?

There has been people in several countries who have got Covid twice so having it does not equal immunity.

Those “repositives” are not infectious cases though. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w “There was a low repositive rate in recovered COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. Results of virus culturing and contract tracing found no evidence that repositive cases in recovered COVID-19 patients were infectious, which is consistent with evidence from other sources.” Same paper also states that asymptomatic cases are much less likely to be infectious.

Better to say the vast majority of them are later viral shedding or very minor, probably not contagious cases. There’s probably been a few reinfections, and some decent documentation of a couple. If you repeat an experiment millions of times on diverse individuals, you can expect some variation.

As far as i know, there has been multiple cases in Finland alone. There has been multiple news reports regarding to it. We just don’t know the extent of it yet.

As far as I know the number is way lower than the immunization of the Vaccines and the false positive rate of the tests.

If your immune system failed to get trained by the virus, wouldn’t that apply to the vaccine also?

No. The vaccine is a concentrated flood of the proteins that are necessary for the immune system to target the virus. There are vaccines that cause better immune response than the disease it protects against.

There are some diseases where the vaccine is more efficient at promoting an immune response than the actual disease. Tetanus is the most well-known example here. That’s why it makes sense to vaccinate you even after potential exposure.

Tetanus is highly fatal, 2015 saw 209,000 infections with 59,000 deaths. That includes people who are treated with the vaccine after potential exposure. It’s not a good example of something to which people develop natural immunity, because if you are infected, you’ll probably die, and even if not, suffer life-changing injury.

I’m in the same boat. I had it and it was super mild so I already… – have very likely immunity or at least a much better response the next time – despite having been exposed to it the first time having had super mild symptoms so I don’t need protection from a non threat – coronaviruses mutate a lot slower and people who had sars-cov-1 still had a t-cell immunity even 10 years after their infection and there is little reason to believe that sars-cov-2 couldn’t be similar Given that I won’t be offered the vaccine for a long time I luckily don’t have to decide and know that I won’t have it at least until enough production testing was done.

> it was super mild It might be that weaker cases give less immunity. If you were exposed to smaller amounts of the virus in the first case.

Having it and recovering from it still occasionally leaves your body altered/damaged in a way we’re not sure how to predict/treat. As far as we can tell, the vaccine does not cause the same amount of damage that actually suffering from the disease can cause. Getting it early and getting immunity works great for fairly mild things like chicken pox, which is less likely to leave permanent/long term damage. But not for something where so many people report that they’ve still never fully recovered from even months later.

Another question you may ask is why get a vaccine for something your body has proven it can fight?

Because you can unknowingly transmit it to someone who simply cannot take the vaccine (allergic people, pregnant women, etc).

> It looked at all these components of immunity up to eight months after infection and found that some of these “memory” cells responded to the coronavirus, or parts of it, in more than 90% of people, said Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist who participated in the study. “This is good news,” she said. The decline in response was slow, a sign that immunity could last a long time. But Weiskopf emphasized that “nobody knows” how things will look in a year or 18 months. > Worldwide, there have been less than 30 cases of known re-infection among COVID-19 survivors, although more are suspected. Experts said the numbers would likely be much higher if most people had not developed immunity. > “I think that tells us that there’s some level of immunity after you’ve recovered from the primary infection,” Wherry said. “We don’t know how durable that is.” It’s hard to read even this article as anything but “It seems there is a high level of immunity, but we don’t know for sure, so let’s be careful.” I don’t know any reason to say otherwise, except if you are afraid people will get infected voluntarily for immunization.

I will take it after a year or two. The US did a great job at politicizing the virus such that I don’t really trust that pharma companies actually did their due diligence with regard to testing and safety measures. I accept that doctors and scientists will take it under the guise of them “knowing it’s safe”, and I accept that lots of people will say “If they’re doing it, you should too”, but I think this strategy just generally ignores common sense. Doctors use and prescribe drugs all the time with unintended adverse side effects, the difference here is that those side effects are known and well studied. A vaccine that showed up to save the world (and also start a culture war in some countries)? I do not accept that the powers at be have verified this drug’s safety. I think that this vaccine is a choice, and once it’s readily available it is still a choice. If you choose not to get it, you are accepting the possibility that you might get COVID and die. Once the vaccine becomes available to my age group and health demographic, the people that actually need it will have been given the option to make their choice as well.

No, you are accepting the possibility that you may get COVID and die and that you may be spreading it to other people who may contract it. Most people in this thread seems to be forgetting that second part.

I suggest that Western culture’s understanding of risk is immature. Is it the case that driving at the speed limit is safe and driving 5% faster is dangerous? Of course not. Driving at any speed carries risk; driving faster, on a given road, in given conditions, is usually more dangerous; and society needs to decide the degree of risk it will accept. (This applies especially in cases such as driving, where the benefit of speeding accrues to the driver, but much of the risk is imposed on others without their consent.) A better approach to the safety of the vaccine is to ask whether it’s safer to take it or to abstain, and who bears the risk in each case. I accept that the numbers won’t be the same for everyone: they depend on age, sex, gregariousness, medical condition, culture, job, and perhaps (I don’t know) ethnicity. However, people I know who’ve had Covid-19 say it’s brutal: even if it doesn’t kill you, it can give you a really rough time. I know of four friends of friends who’ve died of it, including one in his twenties. And let’s not forget long Covid, which can strike at any age. Set against that the clinical trials that the vaccine has undergone, with trials halted if even one person became seriously ill. Finally, there seems to be at least a reasonable possibility that being vaccinated will reduce a person’s ability to infect others. All in all, any of the leading vaccines available in the West look like a better bet, for me and the people around me, than just crossing my fingers and hoping. Should I take it now or wait? There seems little doubt that vaccines will be refined over the coming years. A vaccine taken in 2023 will probably be safer, and certainly better understood, than one taken in 2021. But someone who waits two years has endured two extra years’ risk of suffering, spreading and possibly dying from Covid. You would have to think that vaccines are much more dangerous than I do for that to be a reasonable trade-off.

Hey, we don’t really know how safe it is to the extent we understand other drugs. But we’ve bounded the risk to be much, much less than COVID in almost all populations. (This may not end up being true of adolescents, but there’s substantial reasons for adolescents to get vaccinated even if we cannot yet prove that the risk is lower than COVID. > I think that this vaccine is a choice, and once it’s readily available it is still a choice. If you choose not to get it, you are accepting the possibility that you might get COVID and die. Generally, a whole lot of the reasons why we take vaccines is to provide collective protection. E.g. it’s not critical that I be vaccinated for pertussis because of my own risk of whooping cough.

These things aren’t cut and dry, but probably what you mean is that without the vaccine you’re increasing the possibility of passing the disease on to at risk groups.

Not sure why you’re telling me what I mean? At risk populations have the same choices I have. I will choose to wait because I am not at risk. The risk level is obviously a factor that should play a part in making an individual’s choice. Now, for the people that _cannot_ get the vaccine for whatever reason, ultimately my decision is definitely more selfish, in that I am taking precautions in favor of my own safety as opposed to theirs. I guess I don’t think this is unreasonable though?

Yes, emphasis is sometimes not clear, so just highlighting that you yourself are unlikely to die as you highlighted, but the increased likelihood of passing the disease on to those who can’t take the vaccine is of greater emphasis

There are a lot of half-wits, especially in tech, who think reflexive contrarianism is a sure sign of intelligence and wisdom.

Why do I need the vaccine? I can just just setup rsync on a Linux box instead.

I’m imagining an anti-vaxx Bill Gates conspiracy theorist whose day job is a distinguished engineer at Microsoft.

Young and healthy, don’t really care to get covid as risk is very low. But the vaccine is new we never know what we could discover about its effect in 10 years

This argument, while technically true, is relatively dismissive of all that we have learned about the virus. Of primary importance, COVID-19 appears to be easily and completely cleared by the human immune system and does not appear to become latent by settling in immune privileged areas or by integrating itself into the human genome or body in any other way (like Epstein-Barr, Herpesvirus, HIV, etc.) Outside of the mainstream media and in the medical research literature COVID-19 has been thought to be easily “curable” since early on in the pandemic. In my opinion there appeared to be more uncertainty around the FDA and the rapid development timelines than there ever was around whether or not an effective and complete treatment could be developed. A severe infection or cytokine storm may obviously cause lasting damage. I do not mean to suggest that everyone will be off the hook in the future!

What do you think about all these people with long covid then? I’ve seen studies suggesting that it’s pretty common, as well as anectodal observations, although I don’t have any links handy off the top of my head.

You’re correct in principle, but when weighing the “unknown long term risks” of a vaccine versus the “unknown long term risks” of COVID itself it really needs to be an apple to apples comparison. We know both the virus and the vaccine will be out of your system within a short period of time. So any long term effects would have to be derived from what happens while they’re in your system. The vaccine generates a few proteins, which your immune system learns to fight off in short order. The virus generates similar proteins, but continues to replicate many times over, attacking your cells and triggering a much more severe immune response as it goes. So while there are unknown long-term risks for both, I think it is pretty safe to say the number of vectors for long term consequences are much more numerous with the virus.

There’s nothing particularly special about this vaccine (EDIT: okay, the mRNA is a little special), and we data information about long-term negative effects of past vaccines ([0] has positive events, plus several false positives[0]). Overall, sure looks like the risk is substantially lower than the risk of COVID-19 is, including for a young, healthy person. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history….

Well, dunno if I should explain my reasoning but here goes… For the same reason I never got a rabies vaccine until having to work in close proximity with rabid animals. Up until that point, my chances of dying from rabies were pretty slim to none. Likewise, my chances of severe complications, death, or even experiencing any symptoms at all are slim to none. The at risk people around me will be likely vaccinated, so i’m not putting them at risk. Now, the rabies vaccine came with some known risk, a bit higher than others, hence why it’s only given to people who request it or need it. This covid vaccine is brand new, rushed, the manufacturers are legally exempt from liability for damages the vaccines cause most places in the world and it’s a mostly new technology not really tested or used before. There are potential side effects, these side effects are potentially long term and severely debilitating and despite being a low risk, it’s still a higher risk for me than experiencing anything terrible from covid. So, why put myself at some unknown risk from some unknown thing over something that, is more than likely not, going to cause me severe problems?

Here’s my answer the to “why”. We need to achieve herd immunity and you’re part of that. Get it for the sake of other people. Someday the tables may be turned and you’ll be hoping others make a sacrifice for you.

Why? It’s a disease with a 97% survival rate. A huge majority of cases are asymptomatic. As in zero symptoms, zero negative health effects, none. Why does it even matter either way? 3% of the population is severely at risk from this. 3%. If those 3% of people are vaccinated, then why does it even matter if anyone else is?

For one because 3% of 7 billion is a lot. For another, because a good percentage of those who survive will have super long recovery times and suffer needlessly. For a third, because are you willing to risk it being considered a preexisitng condition and not having your lungs covered by any medical insurance in the future? And lastly because it’s really fucking dumb to skip it because “I’ll only kill 3% of my friends and family.” Don’t be a nitwit. Get the fucking vaccine.

> If those 3% of people are vaccinated, then why does it even matter if anyone else is? They can’t all be. A significant chunk of the people at risk are also immunocompromised, which means the vaccine will be counter indicated and they rely on the disease not reaching them. In order for the disease not to reach them, you need herd immunity. Also, do you want to have a normal life again? Take the damn vaccine. We won’t get to looser restrictions without achieving herd immunity, and herd immunity needs 60 percent of people, not the 3 percent at risk. “I’ll let others get it and be part of the 40 percent who want to have a normal life ASAP but won’t do anything to contribute to that” is the most selfish shit.

You’re presupposing that the vaccines make you incapable of becoming contagious – that has yet to be proven.

Yes, that line of logic requires this to be true. But although it hasn’t been proven in the field (since, you know, we have just started handing them out), it is the desired (and likely) outcome of the vaccine. This entire exercise in waiting for the vaccine was so we could get there.

> There are potential side effects, these side effects are potentially long term and severely debilitating and despite being a low risk, it’s still a higher risk for me than experiencing anything terrible from covid. Your risk perception is way off. Like orders of magnitude off. You’re also assuming the risks of catching COVID are known and minor, but the risks of a vaccine are unknown and possibly off. In reality it’s the inverse. We have well over a hundred years of research into how vaccines interact with our bodies, as well as similar knowledge of things like manufacturing safety, injection best-practices, etc. While the exact mechanism of the mRNA vaccines is new to vaccines, it’s been studied very closely in tens of thousands of people over several years (there have been several mRNA vaccines in the pipeline, but due to less immediate advantages their approval is slower going). It’s mechanism is new for vaccines, but well understood. COVID on the other hand is a virus where some of the immediate, worst effects are known and feel safer. But that’s completely not true. The immediate effects we know are very dangerous (As a 39yr old male, I stand a 1/2000 chance of dying if I get the disease) and you’re not factoring the risk of unknown long-term effects, which are unknown. It’s entirely possible that damage done from the virus could have long-term hidden consequences that we won’t know for many years. So then you’re left with your risk of catching the virus. Of course, this varies greatly based on behavior and region. You may feel safe, and you may indeed be relatively so, but of the hundreds of thousands of people who found out they tested positive today I’m willing to bet a good chunk of them felt just as safe as you.

There are potential side effects, these side effects are potentially long term and severely debilitating and despite being a low risk, it’s still a higher risk for me than experiencing anything terrible from covid. It’s not known with any kind of certainty which carries more risk of long term side effects. Or aggregate harm if you want to look at it that way. The vaccines do seem to reduce risk of severe Covid, across age groups (One didn’t have any severe disease in the vaccine group).

I’m no anti-vaxxer, but the current situation feels like a scam to me. “Hurry, take this vaccine, save lives!” I’m being asked to suspend critical thinking and accept a chemical into my body under duress and time constraints. “Take it now, this is your time! It’s finally available to you. Don’t you want to resume your normal life?” I’d rather wait and see, even if waiting carries a small, known amount of infection risk. That’s much better than the unknown risk of taking a brand new vaccine in hurry. “While supplies last!”

I ignore all of the COVID vaccine messaging histrionics. The level of ignorance and political maneuvering out there is astounding. When I’m afforded the option to get the vaccine, I’ll make an assessment of risks based upon data we have at that time vs the risks of contracting COVID. If I had to make that decision today, I’d take the vaccine. But by the time I’ll likely be able to get it in February or so, we’ll have millions more data points that I’ll be able to consider.

It has been through human testing for 10 months or something like that? We’ve also had stay at home and social distancing guidelines for about the same amount of time and I think we’ve had the opportunity to see what effect that’s had. I think in this case what you’re highlighting is number of people vaccinated, so you’d like to see more people vaccinated first, rather than increasing the duration of analysis of the existing people that have been vaccinated.

Now that the vaccine is rolling out, all I hear is that only select groups are getting it now, and that the majority of people must wait. By the time most people even get the option to take it, thousands of others will have tried it. There is no rush.

If you’re not in one of the early target groups, I would assume that tens of millions will have received it before you – in the USA alone. We should have a lot of data to look at in a short amount of time.

This sums it up pretty well. I’m not opposed to vaccines, and probably have had a lot more than the average HNer, but I feel like I’m being “sold” this a bit too hard… question everything, as they say.

Well, there IS a pandemic. So there IS a good reason for “selling it” “a bit hard”. It will literally save lives and end a world-wide economy-crippling disease. Now I agree the process was quicker than usual, that it brings up a lot of questions. But it’s the studies we should question, the efficiency, the long term effects. The way it’s sold and “advertised” is just equally as dramatic as the disease it’s trying to stop, in my opinion.

“It will” is a strong choice of words. The root of the matter is I don’t, personally, trust the people doing the selling. It varies by region but where I’m from, back in April-ish, we were sold: “just two weeks of lockdowns and the virus will die out! everything will be back to normal!”. So we did. Businesses shut down, transit basically stopped running, our downtown core was a wasteland. Everyone parroted “stay safe, stay home” back and forth at each other and sat at home for a few weeks. It sucked, everyone had a bad time, lots of busineses had to go out of business, but we all were told it was for the greater good and it’ll be worth it. And… it didn’t do shit. Now here we are again. Odds on, in a few months, it’ll be either “turns out this vaccine doesn’t protect you as well as we thought”, or “turns out it only protects you for six months”, or “turns out the virus mutated so the vaccine isn’t effective at all anymore”? In exchange for, what, testing not only a new vaccine, but a whole new method of vaccination on yourself? Whether that’s worth it to you or not is a personal choice, but “it will literally save lives and end [the disease]” is firmly TBD.

That doesn’t make any sense. The worse the virus is the less you should need to “sell” the vaccine. If it was a rushed vaccine to prevent you from becoming a zombie you wouldn’t need to sell it. If it was a vaccine for the common cold you would need to sell it.

There’s been far too much ‘noble lying’ going on during the pandemic for me to have trust in any of these institutions anymore. Aside from the fact that I’d be skeptical of any drug that was rushed to market (especially if it was the first of its type to ever be brought to market), I simply don’t trust anybody involved to be honest about its safety. Even the reporting on how the roll out is going is highly questionable. All reports of potential side effects are disclaimed with weasely statements “no evidence it’s linked to the vaccine”. If I were in an at risk group I might have a different perspective, but as it stands I’m happy to wait and see how it goes. If I end up never having to take it, even better.

There is an obvious reason you are being “sold hard”. Because this vaccine will save lives and end the pandemic. Just because some person or group conveys urgency doesn’t mean you’re being scammed or that they’re lying. It’s both sad and funny to me that this is the reaction people are having.

I feel reasonably confident my overall health is good enough that if I got COVID it would be OK. The vaccine, while probably fine, seems like more of a wildcard to me. It seems like a low-probability lottery ticket to bad news, whereas COVID seems like a lower-probability lottery ticket to bad news. (Of course, the government may force the issue. I hope not, though. My body, my choice and all that.)

You should be adding up the probability of complications to all your loved ones that you unknowingly spread it to should you get infected, too. (The same reason I usually get a flu shot: it’s not that I can’t withstand the flu, it’s that there are those around me who might not withstand it. I don’t want to be responsible for having passed that on to someone.)

The overlooked differentiator: Vaccine “bad news” is not highly contagious to your family, friends, and colleagues.

A series of questions/answers I’ve had with doctors and nurses and quite a few intelligent and educated people. (PhD’s, MD’s and RN’s included) Q: Does all medicine go through a rigorous efficacy testing that is certified by the FDA? A: Yes. Q: Do vaccines? A: No. Q: Why? A: It would be unethical. This is surprising to people who don’t know how vaccines are made. edit: removed hyperbole

This is some real forest for the trees bullshit here. It likely would have been good to do challenge trials with the vaccine groups (to speed up the testing). It would of course not be nice to do it with the placebo group. But you are plucking a single evidentiary standard out of some dark place and then asserting that it is the only useful one. Of course it is not, and Phase 3 vaccine trials are well designed to provide clear evidence of effectiveness. Go look up the Pfizer result going around on the memes if you don’t believe that.

So what is the reason given for it being unethical? Of course I realize there is a tradeoff involved in delaying the rollout of a vaccine but I don’t see how that is related to the way vaccines are made, specifically.

To truly prove the efficacy of a vaccine you would have to intentionally give a test subject the virus to see if the vaccine actually works. It’s not been done once by modern western medicine because it would be unethical by modern medical practices to intentionally infect a person.

What, why would you need to do that? That’s not how preventive medicine is tested. Please explain how would your proposal be any more valid than a proper controlled study where you do the treatment on portion of your participants and wait how it works out for them.

Efficacy is still tested with vaccines because there is a statistical expectation of contracting a given disease. If you give 40,000 people a random mix of placebo and vaccines and then monitor whether or not they contract the target disease, you get an indication of efficacy by comparing the vaccinated group to the placebo group.

If it’s never been done then I don’t understand how this is specifically problematic for the covid vaccine then.

Vaccines go through phase 3 testing which is about efficacy. (And some other properties) What do you think is missing from them?

Challenge studies get performed on non-human (animal) test subjects (this was done for the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine), and there’s a volunteer human challenge study planned in the UK for January. A challenge study is one where you intentionally give a live virus to your subjects. Arguably, releasing your subjects into an environment full of live virus, such as the United States, is a kind of challenge study, which rapidly delivers efficacy data. This is why approval could happen so much faster than usual for these vaccines.

That would speed up the test, sure. But as far as the quality of the results goes, why is that different from the existing test where a large number of vaccinated (real and placebo) subjects gets exposed/infected? It’s still testing efficacy.

Is this an American thing? If you didn’t have efficacy testing you’d have the vaccine available in March probably?

Show me one double blind efficacy study of any vaccine. It’s never been done that I have seen. Edit: removed hyperbole

There is double blind studies that tests efficacy of new vaccines for diseases that already had an approved vaccine. And those studies do find differences in efficacy (just because the old vaccine was 96% effective doesn’t mean the new one can’t do better) as well as in occurrence rate of side effects. There have even been studies where the vaccine that you get in the control arm of the study is the vaccine against Meningitis and then after a year or two they do give you what ever vaccine you had not received yet. (Sorry, forgot against which disease the vaccine under test was protecting.) And of course there is double blind studies where you get three injections, one of which is saline, two are active. They are given a few weeks apart, you don’t know the order and they check antibody level in the blood every week.

Look up “efficacy” it has a specific medical meaning. Those tests are not about efficacy. Scientific method require each person be equally exposed to the virus under strict lab conditions.

Scientific method uses statistics and can make reasonable assumption that for large enough randomised groups the collective exposure is the same without strict lab conditions. From the group size and number of infections, you can calculate the confidence of the result you find. Keep in mind that even under strict lab conditions your results would never be 100% certain.

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