I don't fully understand what you mean by "the data quality doesn't allow for that level of sensitivity" - we have already had two instances where very rare side effects of Covid vaccines were recognised - blood clotting for AZ and myocarditis for Biontech.
You wrote, and that's what my question was hinting at:
> "one could question the potential for autoimmune conditions due to the way the mRNA vaccine works"
What do you mean by that? What is specific about the mRNA mechanism that could lead to autoimmune issues?
Sure. So those two issues are not only rare in relation to the vaccine, but also rare in the general population. In fact the clotting issue is occurring at the same rate as in the general population - 5 per 1M people. The types of stuff that will slip through the cracks will be things that are similarly rare in vaccines, yet more common in the general population and tend to be dismissed as unrelated without concrete evidence of that. For an example, take strokes in patients under 30. You have a general occurrence of about 5K per 1M. In order to show a significant difference, you would need a much higher number of cases reported. I believe there's some research being done about some covid vaccines potentially increasing stroke risk, just as covid has been suggested as doing this. I actually know someone who was hospitalized with a stroke between their first and second dose, and it wasn't reported.
This can be especially hard if even the fairly rare adverse events that have previously known relation to vaccines are being reported as little as 12% of the time. Keep in mind that these two events are listed in the packet inserts and are required by law to be reported by the medical professional and are still being massively under reported. What chance do we have of actually catching the rare events that have statistical "cover" of a large bed of naturally occurring incidents in the general population?
https://gnigh-66270.medium.com/vaers-underreporting-and-the-...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33039207/
"What is specific about the mRNA mechanism that could lead to autoimmune issues?"
This is just a theory. The immune system generally codes off of multiple proteins. If we are exposing a spike protein on a cell wall, then there's a possibility that the immune system may code off of the proteins normally found on our cell in addition to the intended partial spike protein. There's no data that I could find on pre vs post vaccination autoimmune antibody levels. So it seems nobody is looking at this. Even then, little is known about the relation of those antibodies and actual development of autoimmune conditions.
No, blood clotting occurred at roughly 1.5-2x the rate, so ~1 per 100k. Look at the data from the UK, Germany or Norway, which raised the rare side effects independently with the EMA [1].
No doubt that underreporting is a real issue, but how is it different to Covid or any other drug/disease? Wouldn't you agree that underreporting is lowest in a pandemic?
> "This is just a theory."
How likely do you think your theory is? Have you spoken to a medical professional or an immunologist about your theory?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embolic_and_thrombotic_events_...
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56594189
"No doubt that underreporting is a real issue, but how is it different to Covid or any other drug/disease? Wouldn't you agree that underreporting is lowest in a pandemic?"
I don't think it's significantly different. The emergency use order did carry additional reporting requirements, but it also opened it up to be administered by people who would not normally administer vaccines and would not likely be familiar with VAERS, and in some cases patients doesn't know who administered it to contact them to file the report. If you couple this with the massive increase in vaccines administered, I think the number of unreported events are higher now, but the rate is likely similar to before. That's just my guess based on the reasons above and my own experiences. Why do you think it would be lowest now?
"How likely do you think your theory is? Have you spoken to a medical professional or an immunologist about your theory?"
I'm not sure how likely it is. I feel like it depends mostly on the individual, like most autoimmune diseases do. I did discuss this with a doctor and they said that it is a reasonable question and theory that appears not to have any studies looking into either side of it. It's possible we won't know for years or decades, especially since we don't even know how autoimmune antibodies levels lead to disease in general.
