@Pezevenk @TheOneTrueChapo and @ClimateChangeAnxiety
:chavez-salute:
every time I see anti-vaxx shit posted here at least one of you is already in the comments, fighting the good fight.
@admins please reconsider chapo’s site-wide tolerance of anti-vaxx/vaccine-skeptical/vaccine-hesitant rhetoric
@admins please reconsider chapo’s site-wide tolerance of anti-vaxx/vaccine-skeptical/vaccine-hesitant rhetoric
I’m so tired of hearing this shit like this every time there is some mild deviation from the consensus on here. More than people being mildly skeptical of a vaccine. I’ve never seen outright anti-vax rhetoric being posted. If you see someone that isn’t informed inform them. Problem solved. Besides, there are a lot of valid criticisms to be had. Blanket banning everything you don’t personally like or believe is fucking dumb and regressive. Go to fucking resetera or something.
“I’m worried this vaccine was rushed out too quickly and skipped the regular approval process, likely just so we can ‘reopen the economy’ and make line go up.”
“Wow, what are you, an anti-vaxxer?”
What we do not agree on is that we need to be happy watching people say Fuck You to everyone who is losing everything in their life right now.
Where did I say that? I’m worried it might cause more harm than good, either because of some shitty side effects or because it’s not actually all that effective but people who got it will think they are completely immune from getting or spreading the virus.
I also feel a lot of people who raise concerns about USA vaccine tend to follow it all up with “damn wish we could have the China one” so it’s much different than anti-vax in general, even if it is “vax skeptical” or something similar.
Edit: not that i’m defending it either way, just that I really haven’t seen any straightup anti-vax rhetoric.
Tbh I don’t like this very much, feels like a call out lol
I’d prefer if someone who was actually a doctor or something talked about this. I understand why someone would be scared. But some posts do worry me, because I feel like it builds animosity towards the idea of getting vaccinated which is pretty much the only thing that could stop this shit. And some of the critiques tend to be pretty silly. Like, all the safety concerns that have been raised against the Pfizer vaccine are basically “I don’t trust pharma and also there were 3 allergic reactions out of a few hundred thousand that got the vaccine”. That’s not good enough.
On the other hand I should say I understand why someone would be scared or skeptical. I’m just also concerned that it may have negative consequences.
This article seems to raise significant issues with the Pfizer vaccine.
Conspiracy theories are often distortions of reality. Much like how antisemitism is a distortion of the genuine problems people have with banks and capital, antivaxx is a distortion of the genuine problems people have with the intersection of capitalism and the pharmaceutical industry.
We can critique capital without being antisemitic. We can critique pharmaceuticals without being antivaxxers or anti-science.
It’s a long article but quickly goes bad when the exclusion criteria which is complained about as hard to find is within the linked protocol document of the supplementary material section. Which is exactly where you would expect it to be. How none of them knew this is worrying.
Someone in the NakedCapitalism comments section mentioned it. I also found the exclusion criteria on Pfizer’s website, as I said in my previous comment about the article.
Skepticism is cool and good but what are we doing with that skepticism? People are panicking over 3 counts of allergic reactions, or stating the vaccine was rushed without understanding what was sped up, etc etc and not taking that much further. These questions/fears people have is a single google search away and seeing people in this thread double down on relying on their own limited opinions instead of being motivated to learn more is odd to see on a supposed socialist site. And if the argument ultimately boils down to “I don’t trust pharmaceutical companies” then I’d love to know how you handle the mumps or measles
Skepticism is cool and good but what are we doing with that skepticism?
People who aren’t essential workers or whatever might want to wait a bit longer before they get it.
The only “anti-vaxx” post that seem to get any traction around here are ones where people are skeptical about the covid vaccine. And personally the more I read about it the more skeptical I am.
Declaring that you, as someone who has read news articles here and there, deserves to be skeptical is a declaration that you have an understanding of covid and the vaccine that an entire global network of scientists, review boards, and clinics trials does not have. So would you like to share with the rest of the class?
This is the problem with vaccine skepticism, and being afraid and not knowing everything and latching onto a gut feeling is the very foundation of anti-vax rhetoric and I’m not gonna let it slide, sorry
I have lost people in my life because Purdue Pharma got FDA clearance to legally deal opiates.
“An entire global network of scientists, review boards, and clinics trials” does not mean shit when there is a profit incentive.
Opiates have legitimate medical usage which is why they have been approved by the FDA. A private company paying off doctors, pharmacies and insurance companies to push their drugs is not comparable to this, which is just a drug approval process. If Pfizer is caught pushing covid vaccines on people that don’t need them and lobbying against vaccine laws to keep the cash flow going you’re welcome to dunk on me
So we have-
Pfizer didn’t make exclusion criteria accessible (but it was able to be found, author had to make an edit)
Fever of 104+ not being in this particular paper even though this side effect has been noted enough that casual journalism has shared this fact
And that Pfizer had a direct hand in writing/publishing the paper the author is responding to.
So I ask out of curiosity, what this article does for you and what you’re skeptical about? Does an imperfectly written paper on the topic discredit the vaccine in your eyes?
The issue with whether or not people who have received the vaccine can still transmit the disease is known and from what I know it is normal that it wouldn’t be known so soon, because it is harder to test.
I did find a very lengthy document that details the trial protocols of the Pfizer vaccine. It does say they excluded pregnant women, people who had recently received a transfusion, immunosuppressed patients and some other groups so that answers the concern of the author for these groups. I am not sure if it included the allergy thing because it is extremely long and I’m not gonna go through the entire 197 pages. If it doesn’t include people with strong allergic reactions to other vaccines, that’s weird and irresponsible and I don’t even understand why they would do that (when they do mention other excluded groups) but it’s not an instant disqualification either.
EDIT: So I just noticed that the author does mention in an edit to their article that they DID eventually find the paper I talked about, and they raise the concern that it wasn’t adequately cited so they could find it earlier. Maybe they have a point there, although I found it pretty easily.
But in any case, the vaccine is out now. We can see the results. And so far, it’s going… Fine? We saw hundreds of thousands of people get vaccinated and the worst adverse reactions were 3 non life threatening anaphylaxis cases which can now easily been addressed. The point about anaphylactic reactions in the countryside is kinda moot because it’s gonna be a long time before the vaccine will reach people in the countryside who don’t have access to hospitals, and so far there have been 3 such reactions out of a few hundred thousand. Vaccinations start from healthcare workers, who are the very definition of people who have access to hospital facilities.
The part that talks about headaches, chills and muscle pains is… Eh? Like, I really don’t care if I have a headache for a couple days if it means I won’t get covid ? Apparently it’s more common than with other vaccines. I don’t see why that should be a major red flag or unexpected, especially not “the whoppers”. I read the report by that volunteer who got a high fever. But apparently that did not last very long at all and all side effects subsided after a day. That’s… Not so bad, if it’s only a rare case.
What I found really odd was this:
Given the fact that this virus is largely asymptomatic in more than half the people infected, what exactly are we doing here?
This is in relation to the fact that about half the people will experience some kind of side effect from the vaccine. What is implied here is that the vaccine will be… Worse than covid for some people because they may get some side effect? Sorry, but the most common side effects (namely the ones that a big percentage of people may get) are fatigue (by far the most common), chills and headaches. If some people who weren’t going to have temporary headaches end up having headaches in exchange of… People dying or permanently scarring their lungs after torturous days in an ICU, that’s certainly good, no?
The article also says this:
It is very important to note that based on the trial’s own data, conveniently laid out on the very top of the figure in green, blue, orange and red, a temperature of 104.9F or 40.5 C is described as a Grade 4 event. The definition of a Grade 4 event is anything that is life-threatening or disabling. A fever of 104.9 can have grave consequences for any adult and is absolutely a Grade 4 event.
OK, but did the trial say specifically a 104.9 degree fever is a Grade 4 event, or did it just say Grade 4 events are life threatening or disabling? Because I’m not a doctor but a brief fever of 104.9 degrees (which subsided before she even called them to report it) isn’t in general life threatening. If it persisted throughout the day then yeah, alright. If it was their policy that any fever of 104.9 should be reported, then there is something amiss here.
The final concern is also kinda silly. It’s not a safety concern, it’s a concern that we don’t know yet if people who have received the vaccine can still spread the virus, and that if that is the case then apparently there is no point to it form a public health perspective. I’m sorry, what? This is obviously silly. Alright, let’s assume that you can still transmit the disease even after being vaccinated. Now let’s assume most of the population receives the vaccine. That STILL means hundreds of thousands of people will be saved from death, and the virus would no longer be a threat for anyone but the unvaccinated ones.
So overall there are some good points but it seems like the author is exaggerating some important things.
First, you’re a person on the internet not some authority on anything. Second, who cares what you view as valid or invalid skepticism? Who do you think you are? And you’re not going to let what slide? What are you going to do? Post more? Grow up. Some of you have such internetbrain it’s not even funny. Like your ass has read all the whitepapers and gone to medical school. Even people who are doctors don’t stay current on all the research and journals. If you’re going to do the DUDE SCIENCE shit then do it right.
The fact that they didn’t even test the vaccine to see if it stops the spread of covid is worrying. Elimination of symptoms is great and perhaps the most important part but they haven’t even tested to see if it will stop the spread yet.
This will be tested but unfortunately it is much harder to test it than just basic efficacy tests and it will take much more time. Like, in order to test that you have to have 1) someone vaccinated 2) that same person contracting COVID 3) confirming that that person has contracted COVID, 4) that person being in an environment where they can give COVID to other people, 5) determining if they ended up giving COVID to these people and 6) ascertaining that it was indeed them who gave the other people COVID. So that is a very non-trivial test. It is important though and I have even heard of some proposed tests to gather some volunteers and infect them on purpose after vaccinating them to see if they can transmit it to each other, how they cope etc. Which, like, sounds pretty scary and it will probably be some time before anything like that can happen, if it ever does. So it’s not a trivial test and we shouldn’t expect results like that to be confirmed any time soon.
