I am in favour of taking the vaccine - but I‘m still worried about any long term effects that the vaccine might have! or even risks for people who have any kind of health problems already. Do you have any advice/resource/idk for my anxiety?
My advice would be to talk to your doctor.
And also! Vaccines are very safe! We’ve gotten pretty good at them! This isn’t our first rodeo we know how to make a safe vaccine! The only reason this vaccine has come out relatively quickly is that all restrictions involving funding and the will or lack therof to work on it have been removed. It’s still been rigorously tested just like all vaccines!
Hi! I have information about this!!
So: we know vaccines and we know that most of the long term risks happen in the 4-6 week period, none of these have been happening in the trials
Additionally, I know some people are worried about the fact that it’s an mRNA vaccine, which is something that’s not really used in any other vaccine on the market right now, but there are other vaccines like that on trials (like Ebola) and so we do also have research that’s older than this year on that. They’re also very comforting
I’m typing this from memory, mostly cause I’ve read a lot about it the past few weeks, so I can’t really link my sources (also quite a few are not in English)
I don’t really know about the risks with existing health problems (I’ve wondered, but haven’t really gone in a research rabbit hole).
I don’t know how strict the checking in America is, but I know it’s very good in Europe (where I am), so I’m definitely trusting what comes out on the market here (No company here would ever risk another Softenon drama)
But conclusion: it’s really looking good! Sadly I’m not too good about linking sources on mobile, but I might go back and add them later
( @systlin Because I realise no one is going to see this on my blog)
ALSO, even with only the relatively short-term data we have, it’s almost certain that COVID carries some fairly serious risks of long-term health consequences, especially given what has been observed so far. And it’s absolutely not the first virus to carry such risks beyond the initial infection!!!
EVEN if the vaccine carries a chance of any long-term risk that is unanticipated, all the research and knowledge available leads to the reasonable conclusion that the risk is MUCH, MUCH lower than those of the virus itself
Organ damage caused by COVID-19
Although COVID-19 is seen as a disease that primarily affects the lungs, it can damage many other organs as well. This organ damage may increase the risk of long-term health problems. Organs that may be affected by COVID-19 include:
Heart. Imaging tests taken months after recovery from COVID-19 have shown lasting damage to the heart muscle, even in people who experienced only mild COVID-19 symptoms. This may increase the risk of heart failure or other heart complications in the future.
Lungs. The type of pneumonia often associated with COVID-19 can cause long-standing damage to the tiny air sacs (alveoli) in the lungs. The resulting scar tissue can lead to long-term breathing problems.
Brain. Even in young people, COVID-19 can cause strokes, seizures and Guillain-Barre syndrome — a condition that causes temporary paralysis. COVID-19 may also increase the risk of developing Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
So if you abstain from/ hesitate on getting the vaccine due to concern about the small chance of potential health risks you are more than likely actually only succeeding in increasing your long-term risk!
And if you want more information about the vaccine safety itself: https://www.cnet.com/news/covid-19-vaccines-are-safe-even-if-long-term-data-is-lacking/
Some Key excerpts with my bolding because despite the apparent newness of the vaccine itself this is NOT A NEW AREA OF RESEARCHl!!
The US FDA follows serious side effects with a surveillance program known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, she notes. No serious side effects have been seen in Pfizer's trial so far, though some participants have experienced pain at the injection site, fatigue and headaches, which MacIntyre says are all transient.
But concerns about speed or rushing the vaccine through evaluation are overblown, says Bennett. "We're not actually shortcutting anything except for the bureaucratic or administrative time."
Another element in speeding up vaccine development is the new technology used by Pfizer, which was built upon a strong foundation of research that stretches back three decades.
[...]
Once these mRNA instructions are read, they're destroyed. Like the self-destructing messages delivered in Mission: Impossible.
"mRNA has quite a short survival time in cells, since its job is done once the protein is made," says Trevor Drew, director of CSIRO's Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.
[...]
The novel vaccine strategy feels like it appeared almost out of thin air, but using mRNA as a therapeutic has a long history. As early as 1990, mRNA was used in mice and shown to kickstart protein production. mRNA's transient nature is one of the reasons it's considered to be safe and tolerable. This limited the capacity for it to be used as a therapeutic 30 years ago, but in the last decade a handful of biotech innovations have stabilized mRNA and allowed it to be delivered more successfully.
[...]
Cancer patients have received injections of mRNA in the past, too. It's not quite the same as a vaccine, but we have been able to evaluate its effects on the body. "We do know quite a lot about this molecule," notes Drew.
When the pandemic hit, the mRNA vaccine from Pfizer (and another, from Moderna) already had this research to build from. They could plug in the mRNA instructions and begin testing immediately. This is one of the key benefits of mRNA vaccines -- they are plug-and-play. If you have a gene sequence, you can plug it in and assess its safety and effectiveness on much more rapid timescales. It's no coincidence these are the first types of vaccines to receive emergency authorization.
[...]
Could there be effects decades down the track we haven't predicted? Potentially, but the transient nature of mRNA makes it one of the safer molecules we can use to combat disease.
THE TL;DR
I absolutely understand that we are wired to be more sensitive to active risk, as in “I take this action and therefore accept a risk” than risk due to inaction. But remind yourself that choosing to do nothing is ALSO an action it is a choice that comes with its own consequences and often those risks can be much bigger than taking the action.
And in this case the science is VERY clear, according to all the current data the risk posed by the virus (not just of death but of long-term consequences) is astronomically higher than that posed by the vaccine.