I'm not sure I can explain anything related to the FDA (I'm European) but maybe I can shed some light on the insight what people are worried about.
These vaccines have been applied hundreds of million times in the past year, true. Therefore, we have a very good understanding of their adverse effects in the first 6-12 months. What we cannot know, however, are possible adverse effects that are longer term. Susceptibility to other diseases maybe due to a weakened immune system. Possibly a higher prevalence of autoimmune diseases.
If these vaccines were regular, inactivated virus vaccines, we could extrapolate long term effects from other similar vaccines. But this is brand new technology which affects our immune system, which is far from completely understood.
Agreed on concerns about long-term effects! But I don’t believe FDA approval includes that. If anything, I suspect long covid, mRNA surprises, and similar issues will only be truly apparent in the multi-year timeframe. Again though, FDA approval doesn’t seem to address that. So I understand, “I want to understand the long-term side effects”, but not FDA approval versus emergency authorization.
I had originally hoped that Europe’s use of AZ might have avoided the concern over new methodology. But ultimately the various problems during production, testing, and rollout, “seem” worse than the newness of mRNA (in my circles).
> If these vaccines were regular, inactivated virus vaccines
There are also inactivated viral vector vaccines for COVID. I got J&J because it was what was available to me. I would have gotten an mRNA vaccine if I could. I agree that the mRNA vaccines should be studied for long term effects, but with what we know about them so far, my prediction is that we will find them to be much safer in the long term than viral vector vaccines. Only time will tell.
Viral vector vaccines are not the same as traditional inactivated virus vaccines, and are in fact similar to mRNA vaccines in some important ways:
1. mRNA vaccines and viral vector vaccines deliver genetic instructions so your own cells produce the targeted proteins
2. Like mRNA vaccines, there has never been widespread use of a viral vector vaccine prior to this year.
I challenge you to try again without assumptions! Unless you are saying, for those who are unsure of long term health risks, to just follow your expectations?
Please take a pause before replying to understand why people are hesitant to blindly follow the blind
There actually have been mRNA vaccine trials for more than a decade[0]. The thing about mRNA vaccines is that they have far fewer moving parts, so to speak, than conventional vaccines. So the mRNA vaccine for two different diseases will differ far less than two conventional vaccines for different diseases.
As I understand it, a reasonable comparison is between two mRNA vaccines and two flu vaccines from different years. So if you trust the 10 years of studies that don't show any long term negative effects, and you trust that the particular protein won't have long term ill effects (and, well, if it does, you'd also get them from the virus and probably worse), then the set of assumptions you need to make are relatively small, and essentially the same as the ones you'd make in getting any given flu vaccine.
So please also take the time to educate yourself before calling others "blind"!
Thank you for making a good point. I'm saying we should use the limited data we have to make the best predictions we can until all of the data comes in. Of course, predictions don't always end up being right, weather forecasts being the obvious example, but there is still value in making them and trusting them (with a grain of salt).
Yes! And do not forget, the limited data includes the botched 1970s flu vaccine as well. Don't forget the infamous Tuskgee experiment. These are all valid data points that people can use to say "well i'm not going to be a guinea pig until the long term data comes out". There is also data that most people don't find out they are allergic until the first shot. That's anxiety inducing!
When you start becoming empathetic to the other side, you realize that there are gaps where simply hand waving doesn't make the problem go away. And this is a problem everyone with an opinion, on this topic, seems to forget
There are several adenovirus based vaccines, including vaccines for tuberculosis and influenza, among others. The first adenovirus vaccine I'm aware of was developed in the 1970s.
According to [1] there are only Covid and Ebola approved vaccines based on an Adenovirus vector. Only for the latter we have a couple of years of data and I am not sure whether it has been administered to large populations.
For tuberculosis there is no approved vector based vaccine [2]. Neither for influenza [3].
The effects of covid are far from completely understood. We do know that it kills a decent percent of the people infected with it and gives long term symptoms to another relatively large percent. The long term effects are unclear but they are almost certainly much worse than the long term effects of the vaccines.
My question is whether or not it is a rational position that the risk of the vaccine is higher than the risk of getting covid? Is this a conclusion that someone could reasonably come to - that they would rather have covid than be vaccinated?
If the answer to the question is no, I believe mandates from private companies are something that needs to happen as the government will not be able to act.
These vaccines have been applied hundreds of million times in the past year, true. Therefore, we have a very good understanding of their adverse effects in the first 6-12 months. What we cannot know, however, are possible adverse effects that are longer term. Susceptibility to other diseases maybe due to a weakened immune system. Possibly a higher prevalence of autoimmune diseases.
If these vaccines were regular, inactivated virus vaccines, we could extrapolate long term effects from other similar vaccines. But this is brand new technology which affects our immune system, which is far from completely understood.