Covid vaccine

[planesick]

I am not looking for a fight, I am looking to be educated.
If a vaccine is produced, how will we know it is safe? Don't new vaccines and drugs normally go through rigorous testing to see if there are long term effects before they get into the population?
Is anyone else worried that giving a vaccine that has been rushed through is a bit like playing Russian Roulette?
What if it is made compulsory? Do I break the law and protect my child or give her the vaccine and who knows what could happen?
Like I said, I would like to be educated by any scientist who is on MN, it might calm my brain down a bit. Thanks.

Surely no vaccine can be compulsory?

The Government cannot force people to have any form of medical treatment/intervention against their will.

I'm not a scientist but the reason the vaccine can be produced so quickly is because of the amount of money being thrown at it and because the various stages of development are being run alongside one another rather than consecutively. A large part of vaccine production is waiting for funding and/or approval to proceed so once those two barriers are removed the process speeds up.

The Government cannot force people to have any form of medical treatment/intervention against their will.

No, but they could make some things such as education inaccessible to the unvaccinated by choice (as opposed to those unable to vaccine for medical reasons).

It’s been rushed through in the sense that all the trials and stages that any new vaccine needs to pass will still happen the same as always but a number of other scheduled drug trials have been sidelined to make room for it. You can’t just skip steps when trying to get a new drug to market.

And no you can’t be forced to have a vaccine but they could and hopefully will enforce certain sanctions if people refuse such as preventing nursery and school access, free healthcare or benefits. Unless they have a valid medical expedition.

I believe that the virus is structurally very similar to another virus that they had already done a lot of work on the vaccine for, and that they know is safe, so that saved them a lot of time. There is also massive worldwide resource being thrown at this. I don't think anyone is suggesting just skipping the testing stages. Also no vaccine in the UK is compulsory for schooling etc so I doubt this would be

There has been ongoing research into coronaviruses for many years so they haven't been starting this vaccine research from scratch which has also helped speed the process.

The government have made various noises about anti-vaxxers and increasing vaccine take up, only last week Johnson called anti-vaxxers "nuts" and has stated the government wants everyone to have a flu vaccine this year. I don't think they'll make vaccines a condition of accessing school/nursery/travel, etc but I wouldn't be shocked if the idea was discussed in Parliament in more detail.

Do I break the law and protect my child or give her the vaccine and who knows what could happen?

It sounds like you've already decided it's not safe. What if giving her the vaccine was the best way to protect her health? (which it almost certainly is)

This is no different to the situation with flu that needs a different vaccine every year. They are very safe without years of trials.

This trope about the vaccine being "rushed through" really needs to be tackled. Its just not factually accurate and I find it incredibly frustrating to see it trotted out all the time here.

The vaccine is being trialled in an accelerated way in the sense that a huge level of investment is going into it (for obvious reasons). But its just not physically possible to "rush through" a vaccine. Any drug needs to follow a series of steps to secure approval. There are ways to speed this up in the sense that you can push money into it. But you can't short circuit this process. Do you not think that if any politician or pharmaceutical company could find a way of "rushing through" a vaccine someone would have done it by now?

It's true that in normal circumstances there may be additional trials going on post market approval which would lead to a wider body of evidence about the way the vaccine affects the body etc. Which may not be the case with an approved COVID vaccine. But no new vaccine will have this.

Not having the vaccine is not a risk free option.

I'm a T1 diabetic, I imagine I'll be pretty high up the pecking order to get it. I would happily pay for my children and husband to have it at the same time.
Honestly can't believe some people seem to think they're just going to bash out some untested nonsense 🤦‍♀️

I believe I asked to be educated and not turned upon...but I guess that's human nature to some.
Thank you to those who took the time to explain the testing schedule of a vaccine. I haven't decided against a vaccine, but one that has not been through a vigorous process is not ideal and I want to make an informed dexision.
Again, I asked for information so I could educate myself!

decision

Force no but they could put in measures in place like not being able to travel, have access to schools, healthcare etc if people don’t sign up for it.

Until a year ago, I worked in health research. A lot of my former colleagues are involved with the trials for this vaccine, and many are participating. I have signed up for the next phase as a volunteer. The vaccines being produced in the UK are going through exactly the same stages as any other novel medicinal project or procedure. As a pp said, it's just that there is no waiting around for funding to arrive and that is usually the most time-consuming part of research. Because this vaccine is being given top priority - rightly - the normal barriers to research are just not there, hence the accelerated time tables. However, the normal legal safety framework for research still fully applies.

I hope that eases your mind a bit.

I can imagine the loony ant-vaxers would be glad to get together and have a huge demonstration outside the schools that won't let their kids in.

Also, I think this is a vaccine that builds on previous work done on SARS 1. So they didn't start from scratch but slightly further along in the process.

The process is just as vigorous as normal. It’s just progressing through each stage faster because it’s the top priority. Normally you have to wait ages for your turn to present your ethics application and then a months till it gets signed off then further time to process paperwork and get signed off so you can go to the next stage. There is no waiting for administration in this situation.

And no you can’t be forced to have a vaccine but they could and hopefully will enforce certain sanctions if people refuse such as preventing nursery and school access, free healthcare or benefits.

That is being forced to have a vaccine, coercion by such methods is still coercion.

The swine flu vaccine was just as rigorously tested, just faster, based on well researched flu vaccines and had to be withdrawn quickly due to side effects, and it still consumes the majority of the vaccine payments.

There's always a risk, because of that it's very unlikely that anyone who is not at high risk of covid will be given a vaccine until it has had the same amount of confidence in lack of side effects as other vaccines (which takes time you cannot make it faster, some things really do take time to develop). It will be a vaccine for the high risk where the risk of the very unlikely is still lower than the covid risk.

I am currently sending off paperwork for DC3 nursery place. I have been asked to provide proof of all her imms. This only includes those on the actual vaccine schedule.... and I am not sure what would happen in terms of placement if she wasn't fully vaccinated but it is certainly becoming a slippery slope.

So if you want facts

• An insane amount of money is being thrown at this with other research being put to the side

• They are building on existing research not starting from scratch

• The stages of trial are being done concurrently where it is safe to do so

• Some vaccines are already being produced in case they work instead of waiting for trials to work first

I can't wait to be vaccinated

Well perhaps this will make you more confident:

"In April, Sarah Gilbert’s three children, 21-year-old triplets all studying biochemistry, decided to take part in a trial for an experimental vaccine against Covid-19.

It was their mother’s vaccine—she leads the University of Oxford team that developed it—but there wasn’t a big family talk. “We didn’t really discuss it as I wasn’t home much at the time,” Gilbert told me recently. She’d been working around the clock, as one does while trying to end a pandemic, and at any rate wasn’t worried for her kids. “We know the adverse event profile and we know the dose to use, because we’ve done this so many times before,” she says. “Obviously we’re doing safety testing, but we’re not concerned.”

With safety low on her list of worries (her triplets are fine), Gilbert is focused on quickly determining how effective the vaccine will be and how it will be made. "

www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/oxford-s-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-coronavirus-front-runner

My only worry with it is we cant know how the body will react to this vaccine in the next 5 years or so. What if it starts well but in 5 years thousands of reports of vaccine damage come out from it?

@ryanbergarasteeth look what @coffeeandcroissant posted, that's a hell of a statement, she's developing it and let her triplets go for the trial!

We might find out in 5 years time cucumbers are bad for you, who knows, its highly unlikely though. Same as these trials, if the vaccine is deemed to be safe then the chance of it not being is SO SO tiny! None of the teams producing vaccines will want to risk a backlash down the line, it could end a company