[Finding Joy]

Off Road.  Right with you.  There is a greater good attitude with the vaccines, but it adversely effects some.  I research everything before it is put in mine or my kids bodies.  If others want this vaccine that is a choice they have.

I will take a wait and see approach.  Because in a new vaccine they have no clue of long term effects.  But of course we will all be pressured.  I was never one to conform with what others think is best for my family.  Being that we are very low risk, I have no intention of taking a vaccine for this.

[forthetrees]

The vaccine is not only about you and your health status. By getting the vaccine, even if sure that YOU are not at risk of the disease, you are protecting those of US who are at risk. Your flu spread could become my permanent state of neurological damage. Please read more about the purpose of vaccines before you opt out ´cause when you opt out you put at risk the immune compromised who even if they can take a vaccine, do not have a robust antibody production.

[OffRoad]

OffRoad: your post is EXACTLY what misinformation does when non experts doubt real expertise. If you are truly interested read this:

Marvin, this is EXACTLY what I am talking about. You appear to want to believe this article that was published for ncbi. The one that says " It is well understood by clinical trial statisticians that a single study cannot prove absence of risk."  I went with the recommendations of the cdc that pulled the RRV-TV vaccine in 2002 and even after this paper was published, never recommended that vaccine again.  Your choice. My choice. Which experts do you believe? Which do I? Neither group agrees.  Did your child have the rotavirus vaccine? Mine did not because no one agrees so I CHOSE not to take the risk. But I thought for myself, because it is not only my right to choose to read various sources for information and to interpret what I read to get to an informed choice, but it is wise for me to do so. And it is wise for people to not cherry pick one article and wave their hands about saying "See?".  Search for all information, then choose. We can't control anyone else, just ourselves.

There was zero misinformation in my post.

[marvin4242]

I think there is a great deal of misunderstanding and misinformation about what a vaccine really is flying around here. This is where knowledge and expertise is critical. What do most of you think a vaccine is and what do you think it does? Where do you think this “danger” of the vaccine come from? Can you actually point to a mechanism or what you think is “bad” or “dangerous” or is it just an unfounded belief and fear?

If we are going to simply make up our own reality in life we can not make good decisions in our own self interest. If any of you are saying you actually know what a vaccine is and what it does do you mind sharing what you believe is potentially dangerous? Because the most likely side effect of a vaccine is that it has no effect in preventing the disease it is targeting. A vaccine does not stay in your body, it is not an active chemical, it is not medication. It simply presents to your immune system a signature, a fingerprint to target if it sees it again. And modern vaccines are not even made from a “live” sample.

This is why knowledge is power, why expertise matters and lay opinion is not valid in situations like this. Specially when it is almost selfish to put everyone else at risk because someone rejects something from a complete lack of understanding. If it only effects us then it wouldn’t matter if someone decided to be willfully ignorant of facts, but when it impacts other then I have to say its a big problem.

[marvin4242]

Offroad you make assertions that are not backed up by facts. Please point out which real experts disagreed with safety and efficacy. What up I quoted is a statement of procedure, no single study unconfirmed and unexamined can be used on its own. But one with a large enough group is a very good start.

And I am not sure what you point is. That we all get to choose our “experts” to back up our own beliefs?

[MyBrainIsBroken]

This discussion is too interesting to pass up.

I agree with OR's assertion that people shouldn't blindly follow experts but should instead research and then make up their own minds. I also believe Marvin is correct in that most people aren't well suited to do so either by nature or due to lack of proper training. OTOH, I know that OR is more than capable of researching and making her own decisions and I applaud her for doing so.

The article Marvin posted is quite interesting. I believe that it proves OR's point about the virus she declined. The article describes not one but two similar but slightly different vaccines for rotovirus, the RRV-TV that OR declined and a second vaccine, PRV, that was being developed at the time RRV-TV was removed from use.

Some relevant sections of the article.

However, postmarketing surveillance studies detected a temporal association between RRV-TV and intestinal intussusception, the telescoping or prolapse of one portion of the bowel into an immediately adjacent segment. Intussusception is an uncommon illness with a background incidence of 18–56 cases per 100 000 infant years during the first year of life in the US [4]. The population attributable risk detected in the postmarketing studies for RRV-TV was approximately 1 additional case per 10 000 vaccine recipients [5–8]. No association between RRV-TV and intussusception was observed in clinical studies conducted prelicensure [9].

This section states that no problems related to intussusception were found during development of the RRV-TV but after it was released they found the prevalence of intussusception in those receiving the vaccination was approximately 1 additional case per 10000 recipients as opposed to those who didn't receive the vaccination. 1 in 10000 doesn't sound like a lot but it was enough to justify discontinuing the vaccine and it is enough to justify OR's decision to pass on the vaccine.

A decision was made to continue the PRV program because of the importance of a safe and effective rotavirus vaccine to public health [15–17]. The absence of an apparent association between wild-type human rotavirus disease and intussusception indicated that intussusception would not necessarily be associated with all rotavirus vaccines [9,18]. Furthermore, preclinical data suggested that there might be some biological differences between PRV and RRV-TV [19, Merck unpublished data]. However, evaluation of the safety of the vaccine with respect to intussusception became a critical question in the clinical development plan, and a large-scale prelicensure safety study was deemed necessary.

This section states that the developers of the PRV were concerned about the issues with the RRV-TV but decided to continue development of the PRV because they felt a rotovirus vaccine was still needed and that they believed there might be enough difference between the RRV-TV and the PRV for the PRV to work without causing an increased risk of intussusception but they decided to do a much more thorough pre-release safety study.

Based on the previous experience with RRV-TV, we designed a study of PRV in which the age and timing at which intussusception occurred with RRV-TV was covered. Had the prelicensure studies of RRV-TV been conducted using a similar design, it is likely (≥85%) the studies of RRV-TV would have been stopped due to a safety concern, based on the safety boundaries, as was shown by the simulation results.

This section from the Conclusions is the scary part. This section basically states that the RRV-TV probably wouldn't have been released if the pre-release studies had been more thorough. A lot of Covid-19 vaccines are currently being rapidly developed. It's possible that we could end up reading a similar statement in a similar study in a few years about a Covid-19 vaccine that was quickly developed and released and later found to introduce an unacceptable risk of causing harm.

I believe I understand what a vaccine is and what it does and I know that there is a small amount of risk associated with receiving a vaccine. If the vaccine is properly tested the risk is reduced to an acceptable level so that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for both the individual and the community but it is still possible that some people who receive the vaccine may be harmed. The antigens that trigger the immune response and the adjuvents that improve the immune system's response to the antigens aren't the only components found in a vaccine. There are other ingredients that are part of the delivery system and some people have sensitivites or alllergies to some of these components.

None of this should be interpreted as meaning that I am against vaccines. I believe we are fortunate to have them and I have received more than my share. When I was in the Air Force I received enough vaccinations to fill a couple of pages in my immunization record book. I received a full series of rabies shots after a close encounter with a bat and as a healthcare worker I had to have a series of shots for Hepatitis B. I also usually get a yearly influenza vaccine but I normally wait until they've been administering them for a month or two in case there are any unexpected reactions since the vaccine is updated every year. Once a vaccine for Covid-19 is released I will do my research and then I will decide if and when I get the vaccination.

My graduate degree is in Information Science. I was trained to critically evaluate information sources, including experts. I believe all high school and college students should be trained to evaluate the information they are accessing and I wrote and taught an information research and evaluation course for college students that was pretty popular.

If you've managed to read this far, Mr. SmartyPants and I thank you for your time and interest.

[Treasur]

For anyone thinking about making home made face masks who can sew.....https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sfsRitOUA0
This lady has years of experience as a high-end seamstress plus has researched the latest available advice on fabric types and percentage efficiencies of droplet transmission plus breathability and efficiency of use as well as being able to wash and reuse them. I suspect that home made 'funky' masks may become a new fashion item.....

[Ggg4life]

Hi Gang-

I did want to thank you all for keeping us update on what your finding.  My head can barely wrap around the news with so many twists and turns.  I appreciate all sides of your findings. I rather know now in hopes we aren't locked down again by fall. It seems probable at this time.  If we are, your discussions are educating me. Much appreciated.   . GGG

[marvin4242]

MBIB: thanks for the breakdown and views. The only thing I would like to add from my side:

Even in rapid development there are methods of studying to try to catch most side-effects. Only thing we can’t “speed up” is effect over time. If the scale of study is large enough with a wide enough spread of population it can find the rare side effects by sheer size and diversity.

Which brings up this interesting second point which is usually how misinformation spreads. The human mind is not very good at putting fear or information in perspective. What I mean is that if we are told “there is a 1 in 4 chance that xyz will happen” we can experientially have a good grasp of the risk, assess it and make a decision. I would even argue if I said “there is a 1 in 100 chance” some people will be able to have some capability of risk/reward measurement. After that we enter what I call the “lottery” trick. We simply fail at contextualizing, and this is why so many people buy a lottery ticket. If the odd is 1 in 100,000 we think we can buy 100 tickets and “have a near sure thing.” Well this is simply not true.

To be explicit a lot of people with agenda or from fear purposefully use this inability to try to create fear, and this applies to vaccines. Vaccines have not had reagents that have been dangerous for a very long time now. But this old event is still brought up as how “well then of course it can still be true.” Most people can’t get over that lie. Reagents and adjuvants in modern vaccines are not dangerous. If they are I would like to see someone point out exactly to which ones and what happens.

This brings up the next tool in the arsenal of disinformation: vagueness. “X is dangerous” without any data, facts or detailed explanation. It is the equivalent of saying: never fly in a plane, a plane crashed in the Andes because it was designed wrong and you will all die. There is no discussion of how that was an exception, that what was learned from the crash analysis was then applied to all modern planes and that event never happened again. We don’t notice the non-event but will over register the big event. No one goes around thinking about the millions of flights without events that occur constantly, but one bad landing will get everyone attention. Or they don’t think of the millions of people who lost their ticket money on the lottery but remember the one person who won. Again we are bad at contextualizing.

Finally the benefit of vaccines far far far outweighs any potential side effects. If you look at the statistics of the potentially dangerous side effects in any vaccines it is minuscule. Compare those rates to the chance of being killed crossing the street, or getting skin cancer from being outdoors, or the risk of lung cancer from being in a city, or heart attack from eating red meat. Then you will see that all the people who keep pointing to the how dangerous vaccines are and are convinced of it still engage daily in activities that are orders of magnitude (to be clear thousands if not tens of thousands of times) more dangerous every day without a second thought. But will absolutely be certain they are making “expert” and informed choices.

[Nerissa]

as An anecdotal aside, I know, or know of  five people acting as guinea pigs in the current vaccine trials.  All are fine.  I understand if things look good the usual long term testing may be truncated in order to get it distributed.  Not sure of the protocol being adopted  although someone did explain it briefly.

I’lll have no qualms at all about receiving it if it becomes available.  It will be immeasurably safer than taking the risk of receiving a high viral load on the train or in a restaurant. Maybe I’d have volunteered to be one except I’m  too old ☹️ - had to be under 55.
 Many people must have felt similarly because the trial filled up with adequate numbers of healthy volunteers in days.