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Those who are not planning on getting a COVID-19 vaccine, what are your reasons?
From my understanding, even the usual allergies to like the trace egg proteins of typical influenza vaccines (not some of the ultrapure, though) don't apply to the new mRNA vaccines. So all that's left, aside from some immune disorder I think, there are only personal reason left and I'm curious as to what those are.
Depends on what you mean by “not getting it”. I’m expecting there will be a shortage of vaccines, and so I’m planning on not getting it early on. I am easily able to work remotely and while it sucks, I’m capable of keeping inside and wearing a mask for a while longer. Also, as dark as it is, I am in the US and have some savings and really good health insurance and so I could afford care without going bankrupt whereas many people dont have insurance or the savings to cover a hospital stay and it would bankrupt them. I’d rather let people who are essential workers and at-risk get it first. Once it’s a bit more in supply or the at-risk are set the. I’ll get it.
I already got my hands on the shareware version, and I'm not sure that getting the vaccine for someone I already had helps me at all, compared to someone more at risk.
Assuming you mean you already had COVID, I think I've seen that scientists are unsure if the antibodies stick around forever after getting it, and so the vaccine would help with that. I agree though that you would most likely be way back near the end of the line.
You don't need antibodies, you need memory cells, which most vaccines provide for and provide antibodies. These are what will produce the antibodies needed for immune response. The presence of antibodies largely just tends to point to either the presence of a virus, or a recent response to it.
Admittedly, there's no certainty for how long this immunity would last, but it's expected to be in the order of a few months to a few years, but people have been panicking about antibodies like they're your only form of defense, which is untrue.
Same reason I don't use first release of something in production...
So phase 3 clinical trials don’t count? Looking for the long term?
In that case, what would be your threshold for when you would want to receive it?
For me, the worry is in how Trump forced the FDA to just rubber stamp it at the cost of jobs. But I'm sure by the time I'm in position to get it, we'll all know of any issues that it may (or indeed, may not) have.
The EU is about to greenlight it, Canada already has, the UK and Mexico, too
As I said, that's my only worry, and I fully expect things will have shaken out long before I get an opportunity. (I'm a stay-at-home that goes almost literally nowhere. For the entire month of November, for example, I did not leave the neighborhood.) So I'll be getting the vaccine, for sure. I don't want to give the impression that I'm at all an anti-vaxxer.
This is what gives me peace of mind. I think there's room for valid concerns about Trump rushing things and pushing things through without letting people do due diligence. However there are numerous other countries that are also validating that it's safe and effective, so it's very likely ok.
God, I hate that they randomly did this. The FDA were going to approve it anyway, it's been approved in Canada, in the UK, in the EU, but by doing this all they do is add unneeded doubt. The Pfizer vaccine was made in Germany anyway.
Oh, I haven't heard of this. Could you elaborate or link sources?
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-business-mark-meadows-coronavirus-pandemic-0902fbb041b0459e55da86be75b1457a
I will add the caveat that official sources are denying this. But given the media and official White House sources, I trust the media.
This isn't important, other than for showing what a jerk Trump is. It was about to be approved anyway.
On second thought, it seems that Trump may have done some good (for once) by getting the vaccine out a couple days early. It was going to be delayed until Monday because of paperwork. See: A Polite Request of the FDA
I want to interview face to face an actual human being I know, or a dozen, who have had the vaccine, so that they can tell me about their experiences with it over a couple of years after getting it.
That seems like a very high bar to reach. If you're planning on waiting a couple years, I hope that your case is mild and that you don't infect anyone else in the process.
Is this actually reasonable to you? This comes off as a "sophisticated" anti-vaxxer line. If you had a rare debilitating disease or form of cancer for which there was only a novel treatment, would you also wait for years and numerous other users?
Two reasons:
I'm not a high risk patient, young, healthy, no preconditions. I don't expect that even if I wanted it, I'd get it, others need it more.
I'm worried that the sped up trial phase might lead to mistakes, or missing long-term effects. Phase 3 for the BioNtech vaccine was nice and all, but 43k people, half of them receiving a placebo and like ~170 people who actually got sick with 162 from the placebo group and 8 from the vaccinated group to me isn't a very significant number. There's a reason why the development of a vaccine or new medication usually takes a decade.
Anecdotal knowledge from this point, haven't looked around much, so please take it with a grain of salt:
The entire paternal side of my family; grandparents, aunt, uncle, father, are all doctors of various specializations and they all are critical of the vaccine due to the short time it has been developed in. They've all had issues in the past with new medicine being approved and revoked later on due to problems, apparently because the approval process for new medications has been getting shorter. I understand that probably a significant portion of the approval process is taken up with waiting for beraucracy, but I can't believe that even if all of that was removed, it'd successfully be shortened to just a year.
But as I said in my first point, I'm not a critically endangered person, so other people will trial run it for me wherever I want to or not.
Re: long-term or latent side effects, I would be a little less concerned about them for these vaccines because they use mRNA (which just goes in and does its thing, and is consumed in the process) rather than a weakened pathogen (which in rare cases for some vaccines has caused similar effects to actually catching the real disease). There’a a lot more on this here.
Edit: My bad, I meant to link this piece.
To use a silly analogy, old vaccines were like giving your immune system a training dummy to practice on. These new mRNA vaccines are like in The Matrix when you download new knowledge directly to your brain.
Also, if you have any chance of catching covid at all, remember that it’s empirically proven to cause lots of nasty long-term effects (or, you know, death) in some of those who are infected. So keep that in mind when weighing the options.
To provide a counter-anecdote, many of my family are doctors, and I don't know a single one of them who is critical of the vaccines.
This is why I wanted to stress that it's anecdotal. I'm sure that there are a lot of competent scientists, doctors, etc. out there who support the vaccine for good reasons, and they have a more educated opinion than I could ever have. But I can't keep up with the research, I probably could, but I don't want to. I'm already apathetic to a lot of things and I have the feeling that if I got more invested, I'd break apart. so I'm just going to roll with the opinion of the professionals I know and trust.
I am one of those autoimmune disorder people. Every doctor I have had since I was a teenager has told me to avoid vaccines because there's a possibility it could trigger a relapse of my condition. When I asked my current doctor a few months back about the potential COVID vaccines, he said straight up, "I will not give it to you, and I will not allow anyone in this office to give it to you." :-(
Dang, even for the new mRNA one? Fingers crossed over time the data will come out in your favor.
I currently live in Hungary. If I get vaccinated here, I do not get to pick which vaccine they give me, and I might be given the Russian vaccine. Until I either see clear evidence the Russian vaccine has been properly tested, or until I can choose a different vaccine that I believe has been tested ... I'll wait.
I can probably hop a border and get vaccinated in a country where all vaccines being used, have been properly vetted according to best medical practices ... and ultimately, that may be the route I go.
Alternately, I think there's a ~30-40% chance I already had Covid, way back in Feb. I'd like to get an antibodies test first, to find out.
I'm with you on this, zero chance I'm getting the Russian vaccine. Thankfully it's not in the cards here.
I had COVID in march and antibody tests are already not finding it anymore, FWIW. They're unlikely to tell you anything.
I plan to, but the vaccine talk has definitely raised a bit of a moral quandary for me .
Namely, I see elderly people getting earlier access than many others, which I am conflicted about.I love the shit out of Grandma. But Grandma has like 15 years left, tops, and my kid has 70+. I get how the elderly are more susceptible to dying from COVID, but since it's showing signs of long-term damage I want my kid safer first. My heirarchy for vaccine distribution would look something like this:
I understand the ghoulish nature of it, hence the conflict. If it were not a supply issue, I'd probably care far less.
Think of it as an expansion of a lifeboat problem. 10 people, 6 seats. Who you leaving to die? I choose Grandma.
Because it's not a mile swim.... it's permanent long-term damage of almost every critical organ.
If it was a simple case of 'catch this, you die or you move on with life,' it would be different. But there's substantial findings that show it's more 'catch this, you die, or suffer numerous complications for the rest of your life.'
Yes, risks increase with increased risk factors, but that doesn't contradict that a nonnegligible number of youths experience those long term issues. We still have the same rough discussion on the table: protect the population with a higher likelihood of poor outcomes, but lower stakes due to shorter projected lifespans, or protect the population with a lower likelihood of poor outcomes and higher stakes.
I'm not familiar enough with statistical reasoning, let alone the specific numbers, to try and work out the "mathematically correct" approach, but we can't brush away any conversation with the argument that it's unjust to the elderly to consider these things seriously, as it's equally unjust to assume that the highest risk population needs vaccination the most without closer examination. It's the job of politics as a whole to make these ghoulish compromises.
I'll be devil's advocate for a second here. Obviously I (nor anyone else) don't have a 'correct' value for this, but I don't think you should be quick to equate Grandma's years and the kids' on a strictly numerical basis. Consider the long-term effect of a nation losing a large chunk of its oldest generation at once - the accumulated experience, expertise, history, cultural capital, etc. that is gone forever... while we could always breed more younglings.