Will the new vaccines be safe?

[Covidfears]

I’ve read a lot about the vaccines (mainly Oxford and Pfizer ones) and know that they have gone through all of the safety tests albeit in just a shorter amount of time as they have had money thrown at it so haven’t had to secure funding etc etc which takes the time.

However, does this mean that they haven’t had the chance to see if there are any long term effects?

I think I feel less worried about the Oxford one as that is based on old technology but the Pfizer one is the new r-DNA one. I’ve read a paper on it that says that the chance of it ‘getting into your dna’ is low. That doesn’t sound great! Am I worrying unnecessarily.

I’m certainly not an antivaxxer - the whole family had had everything going and I really need to the Covid vaccine as I’m very high risk (2% chance of death).

Is it just a matter of picking whether to take the risk of Covid or the risk of the vaccine when the long term effects of neither are known?

It must have been awful @jayde28

www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-54880084

It’s not that rare! After SARS it was something like ten in every million doses..... much higher than you would expect in the general population

@Lurkalot

Laura If you bother to go back and read my posts properly you’ll see that I said that the reports I read implied reporting bias. I then tried to explain how that could happen because that helps to explain why the evidence is not at all clear cut. But I know you won’t bother because of your own bias.

Clearly the NHS are lying...

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

It’s not that rare! After SARS it was something like ten in every million doses..... much higher than you would expect in the general population

Correlations, especially ones as tiny as that, are very often statistical 'noise'. You can't go on a fishing trip for correlations otherwise you start to think very strange things. For example, that Miss World controls deaths by steam...

And ten in a million isn't 'not that rare'. It's VERY rare.

@Jroseforever

What on earth would make you think mumsnettters would know?

Exactly.

@PuzzledObserver

The fact the vaccine was manufactured in the millions before the full testing was completed or even approved is very strange to me.

In normal times they wouldn’t do that, because if the vaccine turned out to be either unsafe or ineffective, the money spent making it would have been wasted. During a pandemic - the months spent scaling up production after trial results came out would mean thousands of lives would be wasted. So it’s not strange - it’s the company saying we will risk the money in order to avoid risking the lives. Good on them, I say. (I think this applies to the Oxford/Astra Zeneca one, not sure if it’s true of the Pfizer/Biontech one too)

I had pandremix for swine flu and developed narcolepsy as a result. Sorry to hear that, @jayde28. How old were you when you had the jab, and how much later did you develop narcolepsy? (That’s just pure curiosity, btw. I don’t remember there being a swine flu vaccine at the time, and didn’t hear about the narcolepsy thing until it started coming up in vaccine threads here.)

Hey,

I was 18 when I had Pandremix vaccine for swine flu/h1n1 and symptoms started a few months after, however initially we put it down to being a typical 18 year old! They continued to get worse and more and more symptoms came into play. I am now on medication daily to halo me function and to get through the day with no naps, but it's not always effective. And the other symptoms of narcolepsy aren't known by the general public.
Such as hallucinations, insomnia, muscle weakness, full collapses etc. 1 in 50,000 people were effected.

I work part time for the nhs front line and will be offered the vaccine and will be refusing.
I am not anti vax at all; my daughter has had all of her routine jabs.

I d rather have a vaccine than long covid19

I think Ill talk to my gp about the vaccine and see what they think

My worry is with the long term effects of this vaccine is, you just don't know what could happen.
What if you ended up infertile for example to protect against an extremely small chance of you contracting COVID and dying. That would impact you physically, emotionally, within relationships, mentally etc. I just don't think that it is worth it.

Such as hallucinations, insomnia, muscle weakness, full collapses etc. 1 in 50,000 people were effected. That would be 0.2 people per 10,000. Affected with something terrible but not fatal in most cases.

I think the UK COVID mortality rate is currently at 7.6 deaths for 10,000 population. Mortality, not long COVID, which would be additional people. It's simple maths. Cost: benefit.

What if you ended up infertile for example

Explain the mechanism for this. Not just, ooooo scary vaccines. The actual mechanism by which a vaccine would cause infertility. Use examples from other vaccines. Peer reviewed studies preferred.

Ironically, if there was a way to inject a simple vaccine and gain long-term infertility, it would be in widespread production as birth control.

Im skeptical
I think its rushed
I don't understand how they know its safe.
I worry about long term damage we won't see

I will still get it if i can. I work in a corner shop in a hard hit poor area and watching people come in day after day for months devastated either by deaths,long term symptoms or losing jobs i believe its the right thing to do.

Use examples from other vaccines

These are vaccines that are using new 'technology'

There are no other vaccines to compare them to

There lies the problem

@trulydelicious

The Pfizer vaccine uses new technology. The Oxford vaccine uses a very established technique. I think we can be hopeful of more than one vaccine with different technologies behind them. I am very optimistic that the Oxford vaccine will be as (or almost as) effective as the Pfizer vaccine so it's very likely you could choose to have a more "traditional" vaccine in due course.

Thank you, @jayde28

I won't be rushing to get it but I won't be one of the first week n the queue anyway. I'll probably get it when everyone is but that will be further down the line, anyway. I've had cancer treatment, though, so I've learnt to compartmentalise risks, somewhat, anyway. It's probably not as risky as some of the treatments I've already had...

The question I have which i haven't seen answered anywhere and wondering whether any of the knowledgeable people here can answer - what would happen if the vaccine isnt kept at minus 70 and is then injected? Would it just be ineffectual or could there be damage in some way? This is the part which worries me with this particular vaccine, the very cold temperatures and keeping it at that the whole way through the supply chain. Has this ever been done before? It feels like so much could go wrong!

They’ll know if it wasn’t correctly stored and will bin it. It will be shipped with temperature monitors and gps trackers.

Smallwhiterat

Do you know that or hope it?
-70 freezers are always breaking down due to their high energy use. I can't really see this working for that reason alone. How are they going to produce all these specialised freezers so quickly? How appalling to develop a vaccine that can't be used in the less developed countries.

Well I don’t work for Pfizer, so I don’t “know”. But the media reports refer to aforementioned precautions so it’s not just my blind optimism.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/uk/special-shipping-for-pfizer-vaccine-with-remote-temperature-monitoring/amp/

I’m quite sure they didn’t deliberately design a drug with such requirements just to spite less developed countries, it’s just what their brand new technology turns out to require. They are apparently researching and hopeful of making it stable at fridge temperature for longer by December. Hopefully some of the other more easily distributed vaccines will be along shortly too. Last thing I’d describe any vaccine that works as is appalling.

They did deliberately design it to require -70 conditions because all RNAs are highly unstable and are always kept at -70 in research labs.

I also did not describe the vaccine as appalling

How appalling to develop a vaccine that can't be used in the less developed countries.

It's incredibly difficult to make vaccines that don't need refrigeration. I think there's only two or three.

Fortunately the mortality rate in majority world countries is much lower. And the asymptomatic rate is higher. Africa has been the 'best' continent by far. If you want to worry about African countries, please worry about the half a million deaths per year of malaria, most of which are babies and young children. I donate to www.againstmalaria.com/ who are great.

Covid will come and go and malaria will continue to kill more people than any other thing since the beginning of human history. Mosquitoes have killed half of the people who have ever lived. Most of them in early childhood.

I do wonder if people in Africa are thinking, "FFS these idiots worrying about COVID. Try Ebola and malaria, dengue and AIDS, diarrhea kills over a million a year. Soft as shite."

Are you as appalled that drug companies don’t design cancer treatments, arthritis drugs etc with less developed countries in mind? Are you as appalled by the plenty of other less high profile public health issues in less developed countries that could be more easily solved than covid with a bit more international cooperation and money, including vaccines we already have for other things? Do you really only want new medical treatments if they are accessible to everybody worldwide?

Plenty of other groups are making vaccines in different ways with different conditions. If it turns out the Pfizer one is too expensive or impractical then it just won’t sell, others will. I don’t understand what is appalling about it.

I think I'll speak to my consultant first before I have it (neutropenic) but more than likely to
The thing is even without vaccines you can be happily living your life and then bang, diagnosis. I had a few medical conditions and then neutropenia diagnosed out the blue, then hashimotos and a few other autoimmune conditions. So I kind of see it as you can get them at any time
It's balancing the risks, benefits and life. My new meds have an increased risk of cancer to me but my thought process went - I can't cope any longer without them, they know how to treat cancer, I might get cancer anyway, better to try the meds and have a good lifestyle for a while than living with what if