It isn't completely analogous to our current situation, since it does look like our vaccines do indeed lower the odds of contracting the delta variant (but not the viral load in a vaccinated person who suffers a breakthrough infection), but I'm always worried about the evolution of resistance against any mitigation strategy we come up with against any pathogen.On the subject of the vaccine, I wonder what @Lacius has to say about a phenomenon I learned about recently in passing. There’s an interesting disease that affects poultry called Marek’s disease, it affects a chicken’s lymphatic system, but the actual disease isn’t really of interest, but rather the prevention mechanism and its indirect effects. Areas affected by MDV generally vaccinate their poultry against the disease, however the vaccine is “leaky”, meaning it protects the host from harm, but does not prevent contracting or shedding the virus. This ultimately led to a somewhat vicious cycle of chickens having to continuously receive boosters against new mutated strains of MDV, and with each cycle the virus becomes more and more resistant, necessitating a new vaccine. This is oddly reminiscent to out current predicament, and it would be somewhat ironic if the booster model become a driving factor in COVID mutation, considering we already know that vaccinated patients can have viral loads of Delta that are equivalent to those in an unvaccinated patient (we just don’t really know if they’re “live”, so to speak).
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous
Thoughts? I found the parallel quite interesting, but I’m no virologist myself.
Even if we had a vaccine that was 99% effective against COVID-19, and we vaccinated 99% of people with it, there's admittedly a huge selective pressure for vaccine resistance. Herd immunity would almost certainly eliminate the the virus in that area of high vaccination, but if there are other parts of the world where the virus isn't eliminated, then each repeated exposure of the virus to the vaccinated population only increases the odds of vaccine resistance developing.
To use an analogy, it makes me think of this video that visually demonstrates the development of antibacterial resistance. Even the area of high antibiotic resistance (i.e. the area of the world with a high vaccination rate) will eventually become exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria (i.e. a vaccine-resistant virus). It's only a matter of time. The goal is to limit the spread of infection as much as possible to drastically slow down mutation rates and the development of new variants. Coronaviruses are also stupid because they might pick up entire segments of genetic information from other coronaviruses.
We have a lot of data with regard to the longer-term effects of vaccines, including the long-term effects of mRNA vaccines. The technology is not new. Given what we know about mRNA vaccines, vaccines in general, in addition to the fact that the vaccine is completely gone from the body within days/weeks of getting vaccinated, the odds of long-term effects are exceedingly low.Their only demonstration of safety is short term
There has been no demonstration of long-term effects, nor has there been any demonstration of any real mechanism for long-term effects. It's purely speculative.
The experiments were done before they were broadly available to the public.They are fully approved by the FDA, not my local sanitary authority, ANVISA.
They are all experimental over here.
There's no evidence of this. It's anti-vax nonsense based on feeling rather than fact, similar to the continued belief that vaccines broadly cause autism.And Pfizer is the one I trust the least. I fear those mRNA/Adenovirus vaccines can be quite potential triggers to autoimmune diseases, among other issue.
COVID-19 has killed about 4.55 million people worldwide. It carries substantial risk of serious harm that can require hospitalization. It also carries significant risks of long-term effects that have actually been demonstrated.I just think it is not worth the risk at the moment.
Yes, I think CoViD-19 isn't as bad as whatever the long term effects of those vaccines might be.