Brad Mortensen wrote:
bpsymington wrote:
I think the vaccines are well past "experimental." Yes, in the US they are still under an EUA, but they are not new - they are based on research that has been conducted for years.
I've heard that argument before, so I assume it isn't original with you, but it strikes me as specious. Just because a certain class of vaccines has been studied for years doesn't mean that any particular vaccine in that class is safe. It would be like me telling my boss, "Computer science and the C# language have been thoroughly studied for decades. This software was written in C# so why test it? Let's just go straight to production." The difference is, none of our software will kill anyone if we get it wrong. And yes, part of both computer and medical science is thorough testing - a step these vaccines skipped. If you feel the testing was adequate for you and your family to take it, that's up to you.
@Mike Steele- thank you. Almost everyone I know has gotten one of these vaccines or another, so I sincerely hope I'm wrong to be concerned. It wouldn't be the first time. If I was convinced I was right I would have been begging everyone I know not to get it.
Brad - I would encourage you to reconsider. I've spent a lot of time with public health departments for my work (we created a tool to help them track Covid transmission vectors.) It's forced us to, unfortunately, become unusually well educated about how covid is transmitted and how outbreaks can be detected. The odds of you catching covid if you aren't vaccinated are quite high even with others getting vaccinated.
First, though, emergency use authorization isn't the same as experimental. We're far past trial stages where we don't know what will happen in great detail. That would have been early summer of 2020. Even then, the root of the vaccine had for Pfizer and Moderna had years of clinical testing against other Coronaviruses. The only vaccine available in the US that had any significant side effects was J&J with blood clots. That was paused over a risk tolerance that is less than what is accepted as the norm for almost any other vaccine and orders of magnitude lower than what you see in traditional pharma. I ran a sales division for Novartis in the early 90's - we were taught about how to present a drug or vaccine as a risk benefit argument.
The odds of having a serious side effect, especially one impacting the heart or circulation, from Pfizer, Moderna, or J&J is 0.005%. Worldwide, that has been less than 8,000 people. Anaphylaxis accounted for the vast majority of those reactions and occurred at, roughly, the same rate you see with flu and pneumonia vaccinations. World-wide 3 people total have died from the vaccines available to Americans - all three were blood clots from J&J. Your odds of dying from the vaccine are 1 in 50,000,000 (based on 150M fully vaccinated adults in the US.)
The other side of the coin...
So far, 10% of the United State Population has caught Covid (33.5M cases.) Today's variants are several times more infectious but that's lessened by half the country being vaccinated. If you aren't vaccinated, it is reasonable to assume you have a 1 in 10 chance every year of catching Covid. 600,000 people of those 33.5M died. Although data is showing that the death count is higher due to undiagnosed cases, let's use the 600K. That gives a mortality rate of 1.7%. However, treatments are better today than every before and if you have resources at your disposal, you can get the best treatments. Let's cut the 1.7% down to 0.6% (the current CDC estimated mortality rate.)
That math says your chances every 12 months of Covid killing an adult (kids have higher survival rates and elders have lower survival rates) is 0.06% or 1 in 1,650. The odds of the vaccine killing an adult American are 1 in 50,000,000. What people forget are the long-term disabilities Covid can cause. 10% of cases result in hospitalizations and 33% of those result in long term heart, lung, or brain damage. Yes, the odds of death are only 0.06% but the odds of being crippled from it are 1 in 333.
Brad - I'd encourage you to discuss getting vaccinated with your cardiologist. I would be shocked if they didn't tell you to immediately get vaccinated. Covid is a vascular disease, not a lung disease like a lot of people think. It changes how blood is handled and processed. Blood clots are very common for serious Covid cases - it's why the stroke rate for younger adults with Covid are terrifyingly high.
Whatever you decide, be well.
Fred