There have been a few, as there is with any vaccine:
Anaphylaxis and systemic inflammatory response are potential reactions to any vaccine because they are a result of stimulating the immune system, and immune response varies widely from person to person. These are much more treatable conditions than a serious case of SARS-CoV-2, so unless you have a specific reason to think that you may have an adverse reaction the benefit of the vaccine is worth the slight risk. You are statistically more likely to get into a serious car accident or mowed down in the parking lot walking into the pharmacy or injection site than you are to experience a life-threatening adverse response, and there is less you can do to protect yourself against those threats than you can to treat an adverse reaction.
The mRNA vaccines use a lipid nanoparticle delivery system. There are some valid concerns about allergic reactions from that, but then, our modern world is saturated with polymer nanoparticles so I doubt this is a major additional stressor. The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines use modified adenovirus vaccines. While this a fairly new type of vaccine vector it is a pretty well developed technology which is more robust (e.g. doesn’t require cryogenic temperatures for storage and transportation and can survive at normal refrigerator temperatures for months) and (I suspect) will be better at providing cross-reactive immunity, although the evidence will be in the post-vaccination studies that are ongoing.
It is a possibility that any medication or treatment, including one that has been in use for decades, can cause previously unsuspected long term effects. However, nothing has been seen so far in the large scale safety & efficacy trials, nor in the post-trial vaccination studies. On the other hand, multiple serious and potentially disabling conditions have been observed as a result of SARS-CoV-2 infection even in patients who initially had mild presentations of the illness. So again, the risk of a potential long term adverse reaction for which there is currently no evidence versus what has actually been seen in infections weighs heavily toward getting the vaccine as the smart movie.
Thanks to Stranger On a Train. That is exactly what I was looking for.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the report is so honest, it mentions all of the faults in its own methods - and an anti-covid-vaxxer will niitpick on them. However this may keep someone on the edge from falling into the rabbit hole.
I believe that one belief which leads to hesitancy stems from the fact that a person has to take action to get vaccinated - to run the (very low) risk of some reaction, whereas they have a false assessment of the risk of doing nothing because “Doing nothing has worked fine for me.” The one thing they need to understand is that the risk of “doing nothing” is continually increasing – and will continue to increase because of asymptotic spreading. And, of course the consequences are worse.
This reminds me of a passage from “Alas Babylon”, fiction about Florida after a nuclear interchange: “This is like a poisonous snake under the house. You know that you have to go under there and kill it. Or one day it will kill your dog or your kids.”
Yes, thanks @Stranger_On_A_Train, for your response to me and your most recent response here! Don’t know if it’ll make her concerns completely vanish but it will certainly help.
The rational argument is, what are the numbers? Don’t show me a video of people having bad reactions; tell me the number of bad reactions, out of how many shots. And then compare that number to the number of bad reactions to COVID. If you don’t have the numbers, you don’t have a real argument.
Not that I expect this to sway the person the OP is dealing with, of course. It should, but it probably won’t.
The only vaccine appointment my wife and I were able to find is at a pharmacy 110 miles away, for a total of 440 miles of driving, and I’m sure you are right about the relative dangers there.
Estimates of 2019 pedestrian fatalities from the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reveal that, through last year, the upward trend of deaths has continued. In 2019, according to GHSA, pedestrian deaths were up 5 percent compared to the year prior, with 6590 pedestrians killed, the highest number since 1988. That total translates to 2.0 deaths per 100,000 people, which is the highest since 1997.
Of course, I’m being a bit hyperbolic because that is pedestrian deaths per annum overall, not just people who are on their way to the pharmacy, but nonetheless, your odds of having a life-threatening adverse reaction to the vaccine are comparable (about 2.7 in 100,000), whereas the odds of having a severe presentation of COVID-19 are far higher, on the order of 2% or 2,000 in 100,000), and while there are no hard statistics on how many people experience “long-hauler COVID-19” effects, it appears to be somewhere in the 10% range of infected people.
Would you be able to put a finer point on those two bits of information? On the one hand we have ‘life-threatening adverse event’ and on the other we have ‘severe presentation of COVID-19’. What criteria exist for those two categories?
Also, did your data (‘about 2.7 in 100,000’) come from the VAERS database?
I gather that anyone who had an anaphylactic reaction in the past should not (must not?) be vaccinated.
As for dying on video … sounds like a local drama class project. I have not seen a single verfifed account of a death due to vaccination. There is a case of a 42 year old woman who died a day or two after being vaccinated, but not in a manner consistent with an allergic reaction, and other factors may well be involved. Can anyone update on that?
Well, how does she rate the potential long-term unknown effects of a vaccine that has been carefully designed and tested to the greatest extent possible against the potential long-term unknown effects of a virus that has been marinating randomly in bats?
Yes. Nowadays a person “sits as many risks as he runs” (Henry David Thoreau). The problem is that people think that “doing nothing” avoids all risk. But that has been a vaccine concern long before this new plague.
Actually, a third arm would be pretty useful, for this reason:
I believe the video of someone dying is the one with a nurse who fainted after the injection because of some phobia. She is not dead, though if you know you may faint after injections, you shouldn’t get it done in front of a camera.
I’m not afraid of injections, but they do make me pass out, if I’m not lying down! It’s not immediate, it takes half a minute, or so. I had a lot of shots before I figured it out. Now I always say, ‘I have to lie down.’, never had anyone care in the slightest, always ‘no worries, right over here!’ And, it always works!
Sigh, while shopping yesterday I made an innocuous comment about how hard it is to schedule for a vaccine here, and set someone off on a rant. I’ll edit the rant down to the least nonsensical statements:
I’M NOT GETTING THE VACCINE, I’VE READ WHAT IT CONTAINS!
I’VE HAD IT (the virus?) AND IT WAS NOTHING!
I’m morbidly curious as to what this person believes that the vaccine contains, albeit not enough that I would personally engage with them. You can’t fix crazy with reason or logic.