Hi, actual scientist here. I figured I should chime in since some room temperature (C, not F) IQ shit is being tossed around this thread.
Bolded part we still don't have enough data to say conclusively, but preliminary data seems to suggest this. Agree with the rest of the takes.
Having questions about any vaccine is legitimate. Constantly finding questions to get out of taking a vaccine and/or deliberately engaging in confirmation bias puts one into the category of acting in bad faith.
The vaccine was "rushed" because the magnitude of the public health emergency demanded a solution (accelerating the pace of the clinical trials). The actual technical manufacturing of the mRNA contents in the vaccines themselves took ~2 days. The 2 days number isn't because they rushed it, but rather because the technology is so advanced at this point that mRNA printer go brrrrrrrr and that's it. They had a very solid foundation of scientific data to work with when transitioning to vaccination for COVID, as they were originally trying to make cancer vaccines. With respect to the virus itself, the original SARS in 2003 and MERS from 2012 provided researchers with a good understanding of the virology of sarbecoviruses (SARS-CoV-2, the viruses that causes COVID-19, is one of these). This in turn helped researchers identify which parts of the virus would make good vaccine targets (the spike protein). All of the information+technological advances set science up for a rapid start to the vaccine manufacturing process.
We don't know the long-term implications of it because we haven't lived out the long term. This would require having a crystal ball. This sets anyone up for the gamble of getting a vaccine vs the actual virus. We know a lot more about the long-term complications that can happen after recovery from COVID-19 (despite the lower risk of death for younger vs older people). Long-term, semi-permanent/permanent damage (long COVID / long haulers) is so prominent that the US Congress allocated $1.1 billion to the NIH for a long COVID-specific research initiatives to help us actually grasp the magnitude and biology of this specifically. Not a gamble worth taking by volunteering to be a possible participant in that research by getting COVID-19 unnecessarily.
Wat
We should expand on this, since efficacy as a descriptor is misleading. Everything below taken from the Lancet and Secksii's post later in the thread, though it's worth restating:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00075-X/fulltextA statistic of 95% efficacy =/= 95% of people are protected. If we vaccinated a population of 100,000 and protected 95% of them, that would leave 5000 individuals diseased over 3 months, which is almost the current overall COVID-19 case rate in the UK. Rather, a 95% vaccine efficacy means that instead of 1000 COVID-19 cases in a population of 100,000 without vaccine (from the placebo arm of UK trials, approximately 1% would be ill with COVID-19 and 99% would not) we would expect 50 cases (99·95% of the population is disease-free, at least for 3 months).
"I'm not anti-mask, but here are all these anti-mask talking points from my "research" by the way, but I also won't link it even though its published."
Link your study then since you evidently know better than the entire scientific community regarding masks. When you're done finding your "research" you can take a look with your own two eyes at a dude wearing 6 surgical masks while hooked up to telemetry to see how the oxygen level thing is horseshit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5npQivAmcE - When you inevitably conjure up a reason why this is fake, consider keeping it yourself next time.
Also, if the mask thing was remotely true, then physicians, nurses, etc wouldn't wear surgical masks when doing actual surgery, otherwise they'd all be passing out. We woulda figured that one out a long time ago.
Also, just because experts aren't 100% accurate all the time doesn't give you the license to disregard the consensus of the entire scientific community lol
Oh fuck yea dude you totally got us!!!! That's super epic fortnite POGGERS brother thats all of science EPICALLY OWNED
Maybe if brainlets like you followed public health guidance and didn't spread the virus like wildfire, scientists could wait longer before asking regulatory agencies for vaccine approval to better gauge if there might be any long term effects. Since case counts are through the roof in the west, we don't have that luxury anymore.
Under 1% chance of death, not complications. The rate of complications is currently unknown, but the sheer premise of Long COVID/long hauling should be enough of a deterrent. The virus itself can infect many tissues of the human body (lungs/respiratory tract, brain, blood vessels, kidneys, testicles, and more), which is why there are so many weird sets of symptoms in so many different people. Gonna guess that you're biologically male, so here's some preliminary evidence that the virus (or your own immune system) can mess up the testicles:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33134901/ and
https://academic.oup.com/humrep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/humrep/deab026/6125160 - the 2nd one addresses men who have recovered and aren't actually dead.
Avoiding shit like that in your own body (rinse/repeat for every tissue/organ that the virus can infect) should also be a good motivator to getting vaccinated (in addition to protecting others and not being a selfish prick).
See above but balls instead
As he deserves to be since he's clearly acting in bad faith.
"Let's not protect the vulnerable and accelerate the end of the pandemic, but instead protect the feefees of anonymous lobotomy patient hockey posters on d2jsp.org and prolong the pandemic more" - you 2021
"tHeY hAvEnT dOnE tHe sTePs fOr tHe sIdE eFfEcts"
What "steps" should they do? Better hurry up and tell us so we don't vaccinate more people without doing more "steps"
It's worth noting that Canada used to have significant domestic vaccine production capacity until Brian Mulroney's admin sold off the university spin-off labs (which had been producing vaccine components for other vaccines for a very long time) to big pharmaceutical companies:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/we-took-our-eye-off-the-ball-how-canada-lost-its-vaccine-production-capacity-1.5204040It's also worth noting that Harper's admin (after the 2009 swine flu pandemic) noted this as an issue at the very top of the list with respect to pandemic preparedness, but elected to do nothing about it.
That privatization is what essentially boxed in Trudeau into being reliant on other countries for vaccine doses. He should have also threw money at domestic vaccine production efforts the moment the pandemic started, but didn't. It's almost as if politicians have vested financial interests that compel them to ignore scientists and decrease scientific funding/government holdings in scientific enterprises. They're all guilty, but Trudeau didn't start the problem. He just made it worse. He's since thrown money at domestic vaccine production, but it's too little too late for COVID-19. Hopefully that investment is fully realized and comes in handy when the next pandemic happens.
He wasn't entirely reliant on China, but also relied on western mRNA vaccine producers in the EU. He was afraid Trump was going to ban vaccine exports to Canada, especially after possible re-election. The problem is that the EU producers essentially did the same shit (save doses for EU countries, lol UK), leaving Canada entirely reliant on China after that happened. Sinovac (the Chinese-produced vaccine in question) has a lot of shady efficacy percentages thrown around from various trials conducted in various countries, so I'm still extremely skeptical of data surrounding it.
It wasn't recommended by adults 65+ initially because not enough of people in the trials from that age group
actually got sick for the trial data to have any meaningful interpretation. This led to Germany/France only recommending it for adults under 65 years old. The UK released new data that convinced French officials to recommend it for 65+. German officials are under pressure to do the same, and I would expect Canadian regulators to feel the same pressure soon.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-older-adults-51614699357I hope you're one of them so I don't have to intellectually demolish your fuck trophies too
See the part about politicians being incentivized against investing money/resources into science
The "test subjects" are the people in the clinical trials. Everyone else isn't a guinea pig and this isn't some lab experiment on a massive scale. This is a public health emergency that we have to address and has been since the very beginning.
I am legitimately concerned about people being forced to go back to work in an effort to restart the economy with non-mRNA vaccines, as this still has the potential to cause undue harm via infection for those receiving vaccines with <95% efficacy. With that being said, however, scientists were praying for at least 50% efficacy, so all vaccines that we're talking about have outperformed expectations. See the earlier post about how efficacy =/= percent effectiveness from Secksii. There is no data yet on combining an mRNA vaccine with any of the others, and just about everyone is advising against that currently. We may have to revisit this when we talk about the variants and the likely need for a booster or additional vaccines to address them.
With respect to the variants, the UK variant is covered by all vaccines, so don't be worried much about that in terms of vaccine efficacy. It's the South African/Brazil variants (or any other variant with the E484K mutation) that are the most concerning currently. Moderna is already working on developing a booster for this, and I assume other companies/labs will follow suit as more research emerges.
66% efficacy, see the post, etc. It's 88% effective at preventing death and hospitalization. It likely makes any infection after vaccination much more mild and reduces severity of symptoms. We also need to note these numbers are across all geographies, which averages in the reduced efficacy against the South African/Brazil variants. Higher efficacy in places where those variants aren't dominant (yet).
The single dose and regular refrigerator storage components are worth noting as well. This can be used to reach rural areas where people are unlikely to return for a 2nd dose of a mRNA vaccine or experience difficulty in getting to a clinic for the 1st dose in the first place. Developing countries also stand to benefit here.
There has been a correlation, not causation, between vitamin D levels and severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Google "spurious correlations" to understand this point better since you google half the shit you believe anyways
Many people are deficient in vitamin D (long before the pandemic), so it's not a bad idea to supplement with it. Very hard to OD with OTC vitamin D.
GORILLA NOISES INTENSIFYIf you had a shred of scientific literacy in your brain you'd understand that blind googling shit about science and medicine without the prerequisite skills to interpret what you're reading is a recipe for disaster. Correlation, not causation. Vitamin D is notoriously difficult to study via RCT due to confounding factors (latitude, diet, outdoor activity level, patient compliance), so the jury is still out.
Imagine if your government actually took your taxpayer money and improved the education system (instead of spending it all on drone striking Yemeni weddings or helping the US do that) so people like you didn't fall through the cracks.
Depending on the distribution in your area, you may not be offered a choice. If you get offered any of them, get it. 66% is better than 0%.
holy FUCK, some self-awareness. NICE
Oh god you advise people??? They're all fucked and deserve refunds yesterday. You don't know if those people were legitimately vitamin D deficient and the extent of their subsequent physiological disregulation or if you just placebo-effected them...
Thank you for engaging responsibly. You are an example of someone with legitimate concerns that should be taken at face value.
I appreciated your comments quite insightful and I learned a lot.
You could have done without the obnoxious name calling.
"It doesn't increase red blood cell production. It doesn't increase your oxygen-carrying capacity." The mask doesn't actually lower the concentration of oxygen in the air, the way altitude does. It simply lowers the amount of air you can breathe. The mask feels kind of like training at altitude: By decreasing the volume of air you can breathe and by capturing expended air, making you re-breathe air that's richer in carbon dioxide, it makes exercise harder.
I didn’t even take it reduces the amount of oxygen in your body, all I was saying is that masks make it harder to breathe... which they do.
I wear masks and have been before the mask mandate.
I will always play devils advocate because if I hadn’t we wouldn’t have had your insight, which like I said above is much appreciated.
E/ also yes I advise people but I always suggest they get bloodwork done before supplementing with any vitamins.