@SophieGiroux
I'm a healthcare professional and I'm concerned about how this has been rushed through. There is no long term safety data. It will most likely be given out whilst still unlicensed. The law has been changed so the manufacturer doesn't accept liability. Many of my colleagues feel the same way as we may have to administer it. It's not being anti-vaccine to question something that has been rushed out. It could be the first mRNA vaccine that is licensed with no long term safety data. Not something that sits comfortably with me.
Also to compare it to holiday vaccines is wrong as they have been thoroughly tested long term.
Of course there is no long term safety data - not enough time has elapsed. You canna’ change the laws of physics.
It will not be given out while still unlicensed. It will receive an EMERGENCY licence due to the exceptional circumstances of a global pandemic. That will be for a limited time, and with restrictions (e.g. on the types of people to whom it will be administered)
The emergency licence will be for those people for whom, on the basis of as much evidence is available, the potential risk of adverse effects (none recorded so far in the trial, remember) is vastly lower than the risk of harm or death from Covid. For example, it may initially only be licensed for the over 50’s in the general population, and for younger adults only if they are front line health or care staff (as a guess.)
It would be the first mRNA vaccine licensed, full stop. There are no others, yet. Every established technology was new once, right? mRNA vaccines have huge potential to treat other types of disease, including cancer and Parkinson’s.
So it seems to me that a global pandemic, when millions are at risk of serious disablement or death, is exactly the right time to trial a technology which in other times we would take decades to do. How many lives would be saved if most cancers became treatable conditions?
If you are a prescriber, you are prescribing drugs every day to which some patients, somewhere, will have a serious adverse reaction. Maybe be permanently disabled, or die. It happens - I have been on drugs which were subsequently withdrawn, because the risks were found to be unacceptable. You know this - does it stop you prescribing? I imagine not, because otherwise you couldn’t do your job.
Of course, if a new as yet unreported side effect happens to one of your patients, you would report it. This is what leads to some drugs being withdrawn after they have been in use for a while - and when better alternatives have come along.
The Pfizer vaccine is not the end of the story, it is the beginning. It will save lives, and also save people from long-term, possibly permanent damage. Some may be damaged by it - so, yes, it’s a risk. But a much lower one than allowing the virus to continue to run free. I would have thought that a health professional would understand this.