Regarding long-term risks – if this were a rare disease that many people would never be exposed to, I would agree with you. But it’s not. It’s ubiquitous, and it seems likely that essentially everyone will be exposed. And the actual virus triggers all the same problems that the vaccine triggers – to a greater degree.
Even so, we need to test vaccines for safety and side effects as well as effectiveness because we know that some vaccines have a more favorable ratio of effectiveness to side effects than others, and we want to versions distributed to be as favorable as possible. But if the vaccines are dangerous, then the virus is even more so. Yes, there might be some as-yet-undetected long-term risk. But if that’s from the effective action (and with blood clots, it is) then that means that covid carries the same long-term risk, to a greater degree.
I think all-in is a good strategy. With appropriate testing for vaccine safety and effectiveness.
Your links are a good source for convincing others how horrible covid is if things go bad. The inroads I may have made convincing people has been using this line of thought.
Yes. Some batches of the polio vaccine were contaminated with a monkey virus that might increase the long-term risk of cancer in those who had it. Which is a lot of us.
Now, that was due to contamination of the vaccine, because the virus that was used to make the vaccine was grown on monkey kidneys. It wasn’t due to anything intentionally in the vaccine.
And the increase in risk seems to be so small that it hasn’t been conclusively shown to be non-zero.
But it is possible for a vaccine, or drug, or food, for that matter, to have some long-term adverse effect that’s not immediately obvious.
In reality, no increased risk of cancer has been demonstrated in recipients of vaccines that once contained SV40. The finding of SV 40 in some tumor cells had caused concern. However:
"1. SV40 was present in cancers of people who either had or had not received the polio vaccines that were contaminated with SV40.
2. SV40 has not been present in any vaccine since 1963.
3. People with cancers who were born after 1963, when SV40 was no longer a contaminant of the polio vaccine, were found to have evidence for SV40 in their cancerous cells.
4. Epidemiologic studies do not show an increased risk of cancers in those who received polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963.
Taken together, these findings do not support the hypothesis that SV40 virus contained in polio vaccines administered before 1963 caused cancers."
If the choice is to die from some non-existent side effect or live in a world full of, and therefore run by, the idiots who aren’t vaccinating, bury me now.
Yeah, but theoretically, there could be a long-term issue.
But not with clotting. The clotting issues with the vaccines are directly related to the clotting problems caused by covid. The odds of some long-term problem with blood clots caused by the vaccine are dwarfed by the risk of blood clots from catching covid.
What remains true is that vaccine side effects manifest over a period measured in weeks, not many months or years. We didn’t have to wait long to know about the clotting issue with some Covid vaccines - though it’s rare, monitoring picked it up quickly.
The “we can’t predict what bad things will happen years from now” bogeyman is not realistic, despite being a favorite trope of antivaxers.
I think it’s a mistake to deny that there might be long-term risks. There might be. That doesn’t mean it makes sense to ignore an incredibly useful vaccine against a manifestly dangerous disease – especially since the vaccine has a very low risk of problems. But “all or nothing” thinking is problematic, whether you are using it to praise or to denigrate vaccines. Or anything else, really.
I haven’t sounded any alarms. I answered the question:
Last time i looked into this, it was widely believed that there was a small increased risk of cancer among those who got some of the early polio vaccines. (A cohort that probably includes me, so it has stuck with me.) I’m happy to see that that’s no longer believed to be true.
But even thinking it was, I was happy I was vaccinated for polio. I have friends slightly older than me who remember the time before there was a polio vaccine, and the polio vaccine was a miracle that enormously improved the world. I think one can acknowledge that a risk is possible and still endorse widespread vaccination. And just covering your face with your hands and saying, “nyah, nyah, nyah” isn’t going to reassure anyone who is afraid of the vaccine.
So would i. But my mom is ready to die, for a variety of reasons, including good ones. She has a number of medical problems that aren’t going to get better, and her quality of life isn’t very good.
My grandmother was the same at the end of her life.
My grandfather, Robert Korns, was an epidemiologist; he helped run the polio vaccine trials in the 1950s. “In the shrill anti-vaccination book The Poisoned Needle, he was vilified for his work regarding the Salk polio vaccine. History has proven Dr. Korns right, and his detractor incredibly wrong.” (Quote of some distant relative who made a genealogy web page). He would have been utterly mystified that willful ignorance of public health has only worsened in the sixty years since.
Anyway, my cousin (we share this grandfather) FINALLY got vaccinated this week, after months of stubborn refusal. She didn’t say for sure, but I like to think it was our grandfather (who died when we were young teens) who finally convinced her, through the example of his life’s work.
Just to get some actual data on the risk of blood clots here;
Also, It is not at all clear that the mechanism of blood clotting is the same after vaccination as after getting Covid.
Blood clots from vaccination are related to VIIT (vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia) where platelet counts drop and there are antibodies to platelet factor 4.
In contrast blood clots from Covid infection are related to antiphospholipid antibodies and are associated with higher platelet counts as well as some novel antibodies against neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) that slow the degradation of NETs. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abd3876
In short, someone speculated above that the vaccine caused blood clots in the same way as Covid itself, supposedly related to the body forming abnormal antibodies as part of a reaction to either the virus or the disease. However, this does not seem to be the case, since the vaccine-related blood clots occur in a setting of severely low platelet counts while the Covid-induced blood clots occur with elevated platelet counts.
There is also evidence of long-term increased coagulability in patients who have had Covid, especially in those with long Covid where there has not been any evidence of clots occurring later than shortly after vaccination.
I understand her position but there’s a good argument to make that death from covid is so unpleasant that it should be avoided even though she has health issues.
