If you can't be intellectually honest enough to admit that there is a difference between "we've used this platform in theoretical research in small numbers" to "we mass-market and roll out this novel vaccine to billions of humans worldwide", you shouldn't be in the discussion, IMO.
The speed of access for these vaccines is that they started mass production while testing was ongoing, rather than waiting until after testing to start production
The mRNA vaccines both seem to be fine, by comparison.
You can always argue for making things slower and experiments longer, the problem is, that there is a pandemic going on with 3M deaths in the past year. Actually people seem to think that you can develop vaccines without being rushed, but it doesn't seem to be the case. There are several reasons why other vaccines took years:
- it was a long time ago and scientists had a lot less knowledge, experience and older technology. (Think e.g. the mRNA vaccines, which J&J is not one of, where the first candidate could be completed in something like 2 weeks after the isolation and sequencing of the virus.) - they had to start from 0 for a new virus (because they new less, etc.). Like for the polio, or HIV. In the case of SARS-CoV2, they could build a lot on the experiments from SARS-CoV1. As far as I know, there was a vaccine candidate back in 2003, but by the time it would go into phase-3, the epidemic was over. Also, it seems that research never stopped about the coronavirus vaccines, so there were new results between 2003 and 2020 that the mRNA vaccines built on. - some viruses are easier to develop a vaccine for. (E.g. the HIV is not one of them, because it's very good at evading the immune system) - I've already mentioned this, but if the vaccine candidate doesn't get ready on time because of the above reasons, then you may have to wait for years before you can do a phase3 trial because there will be no people getting infected, so you won't be able to measure the effectiveness. This is what happened with the ebola vaccine in 2014. Now the vaccine is 7 years old, but it doesn't make it any safer, because there weren't people who could be vaccinated. (Well, of course, you could vaccinate them and wait for any long term side effect, just in case, that would show up without being infected, but that doesn't seem like a very important data point.)
But again: why would you want to wait for several years in a situation like this when we do have a pretty clear picture of both the worst case risks of the vaccines and the risks of the disease (which are higher than the worst case risks of the vaccines).
The batch is not "rushed" more than it's needed: there IS an emergency. It's also not experimental. The experiments have all been done (up to phase 3). It's perfectly normal to only see 1 in a million (or even 1:100 000) side effects after starting the vaccination of the general public. Simply because the phase 3 will never contain millions of people. I've checked, and the 30-40k studies we had with these seem to be indeed large. I.e. safe.
What you think about your immune system is kind of irrelevant for a few reasons, but talking up their immune system seems to be a general self-convincing strategy for a lot of people. First of all, it's not apparent that you have contracted the virus. Unless you have an antibody test showing that you are seropositive, you simply don't know, but the chances aren't very high. What you can be sure about is that you have not contracted "all" variants. If you live in the UK then you had the chance to meet the UK variant (B117, IIRC) and the base variant (D6.... whatever). Very likely not both. And the immunity for the base variant seems to work pretty well for the UK variant, so it doesn't even matter if you met both.
But even if you know you are already immune, the natural immunity doesn't last that long. The vaccines give you higher antibody levels (at least the mRNA ones do, again IIRC) and better immunity especially due to the second dose. (Which you can't really simulate with a second infection within a few weeks.)
And at last: you can't generalize from your own experience. Looking at the numbers, which we do have a lot of, people who haven't met the virus and don't have immunity should by all means get the vaccine. Because the virus is a lot more dangerous (several orders of magnitude more dangerous) than even the J&J or the AZ vaccine. Though the exact risk profile will depend on individual factors, of course, but since you've talked about all vaccines...
That's the definition of "rushed".
Vaccines typically take several years of testing before being approved. These aren't approved according to those standards. Manufacturers are absolved from risks because of this "emergency use" status. Why absolve them if there are no risks? If they truly believed these were safe and of tremendously important benefit, they could stand up and say "we accept responsibility for negative outcomes in accordance with ordinarily approved medication, and waive our rights to emergency use protections". Then everyone would rush to take them as doubts would be broadly eliminated.
(Why are we seeing mRNA vaccines for COVID and not other diseases, if it's not new technology? Because the vaccines for other diseases didn't work.)
You are totally right that there could be some magical protein in the vaccines that causes you to drop dead in two years. There probably isn't though, so what you call "rushed" other people call "saving lives".
The so called long-term effects have been mostly non-existent with any vaccine. First of all, the very expression "long-term effects" is vague. Do we mean effects that only materialize over the long term (i.e. a long time after being administered) or effects that last for a long time? The latter can be known (well, with a worst case estimation) even with short testing.
And as far as I am aware, there is very little evidence of the former happening with former vaccines. I.e. the vaccine inducing some systemic change in your body that remains undetectable for years.
> If they truly believed these were safe and of tremendously important benefit, they could stand > up and say "we accept responsibility for negative outcomes in accordance with > ordinarily approved medication, and waive our rights to emergency use protections".
First of all who? You seem to mingle several groups into one here. It's not the pharma companies who believe that that these are very important, but the society. (Well, at least the ones who don't live in denial.) The importance stems from the seriousness of the epidemic.
And safety is not a binary/boolean attribute. Safety can be measured and the accuracy of the measurement has a confidence (i.e. a probability that it's within the estimated limits). Now the claim is that this measured safety is way above the safety of contracting COVID. And this is the very reason we know that it's beneficial. For the society. It's pretty clear that pharma companies don't make nearly as much profit as much it is beneficial for the individual countries. Just try to add up the cost of the lockdowns e.g. for a year and then devide it by the number of doses and see how much they should cost if calculated like that. You know what, let me do the math for you: a year of lockdown has been estimated to cost 251bn GBP for the UK[1]. The UK has 66M population. Let's calculate with 266M doses. That would give you 19GBP/dose (~26USD) for the vaccines per dose. Per year. But they won't vaccinate everyone, 80% would already be an over estimation (which would increase the value of price/dose to 32.5GBP and we're not just talking about money we're also talking about lost lives and a lot of frustration, which would further increase the value of these shots.
Comprared to that, the AstraZeneca costs about 2USD, IIRC, the EU pays about 16EUR (14GBP) for the Pfizer/Biontech one.
So it's not that the tremendous value gets all snatched up by the pharma companies. Also, they do have a responsibility. In the US they have been waived, but not in the EU. And guess what: a lot of people keeps saying the same things over here. (
Including* that they don't take responsibility.)The reason the US waived these companies is exactly because the vaccines are so important and valuable for the sate (i.e. for the people). A quick rollout was more important for them, than for the pharma companies. As a side note: some politicians over here (EU) think that the US did it the right way by not wasting time on negotiating hard with the pharma companies and that the EU is behind exactly because of that and that we should have waived them as well. (I'm not sure I buy into it.) But the EU non-waiver is an assurance for everyone else, including the US citizens. Yes, you may not get a million $ check if you happen to be unlucky, but it still shows that the companies indeed do have the confidence in their product you were talking about.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/22/a-year-of-c...
> I expect I've had all variants
No evidence of this.
> and apparently my immune system is on top of it
No evidence of this.
> in which case there's nothing to pass on
Even if the above were true, we don't know how long you'd have immunity.
> and the people in my area clearly don't care if I did.
They would if they caught it and had severe symptoms.
I mean, you can question anything, but that has about zero value. Answers with evidence backing them have value.
No, it's not. That's a misunderstanding of how the vaccine development process works and what takes time.
What takes time in the normal course of development is testing the vaccine, yes. Specifically, determining how effective it is. The reason that takes so long is that in general there are very, very few cases of most of the diseases vaccines are developed to prevent -- and you can't just go giving people Ebola to check how many of them catch it.
It's fearmongering, plain and simple.
There's mountains of data for your perusal online explaining how and why it got done fast -- here's one example. [1]
[1] https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-p...
Similarly, while wider population testing for safety and efficacy would likely correlate with long term safety, it’s not a total substitute.
I think it could be completely rational for young, healthy, low BMI people to delay vaccination till they’re more comfortable with any potential long term issues.
Those folks aren't being immunized to protect themselves but those around them. This is a team effort and everyone's gotta pitch in.
I got my J&J a week ago. No side-effects here.
I'll also point out some anecdata. I know someone in their late 20s that got COVID. They have felt miserable every day in the 9 months since having it. Others have relayed similar stories. Public health authorities are worried about severe consequences like death, but death isn't the only possible outcome. You could just feel like shit for the rest of your life.
To me, this is a nasty disease that I do not want to contract. I probably won't die if I get it, but there is more to life than merely not being dead. As a result, I got the vaccine as soon as I could.
Do you still really need to get the vaccine in that case?
The CDC says yes, but their reasoning is purely based on FUD: "experts do not yet know how long you are protected from getting sick again".
According to the available data, there has been only 71 confirmed cases of reinfection out of over 137,000,000 cases.[1]
Meanwhile, states in the US are reporting hundreds of "breakthrough cases" of fully vaccinated people.
So, the data we have indicates naturally gained immunity is stronger than vaccinated immunity.
It's funny how many people treat nuanced, data driven discussion like this as heresy to be shamed and censored.
[1]https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-t...
