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?

No, that's indeed different @diplodocusinermine

@rhowton

It will absolutely not be safe. Scientists don't know what they're doing half the time, and most of them are really stupid. Also, drugs companies always rush through medicine just because they want money... can you believe it... I certainly won't be having the vaccine that will save people's lives and means we can go back to relative normal.

Not half as stupid as armchair experts.

@MrsTerryPratchett

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."

Malaria has definitely killed more people worldwide over the years as it has been around for so long. similarly TB has killed massive numbers of people because it has been a problem for humans for centuries if not longer,.

However if you take a particular year, according to the WHO The estimated number of malaria deaths stood at 405 000 in 2018. This is a lot less people than have been killed by Covid this year so far across the world

Malaria is not an infectious disease in the same way so can't be compared really but this year it looks like Covid is killing loads more people, though I appreciate that the malaria numbers are estimates in the way the Covid ones aren't

A better comparison is TB. Again according to the WHO

• A total of 1.4 million people died from TB in 2019 (including 208 000 people with HIV). Worldwide, TB is one of the top 10 causes of death and the leading cause from a single infectious agent (above HIV/AIDS) . I think TB might be a notifiable disease so those numbers are more accurate and less of an estimate so possibly more comparable to Covid, which seems pretty similar in the number of worldwide deaths so far this year and we have another 3-4 months to get to a year of Covid

I think, from rhowton's last sentence, they were probably having a dig at the anti vax scaremongers.

Covid 19 1.3m deaths, TB 1.4m. They used to call TB the white man's plague and it was so feared, dreadful. My grandfather left school at 12 I think becuase he had it but recovered (he never went back to school). My aunt by marriage nearly died of it during WWII and managed to get then very new antibiotics probably because her husband was a doctor which probably saved her life (although she could never have children ever I htink as a result of damage done)

I am so pro-vax I spent £400 getting my twins the BGC which the NHS had provided free (or rather through our taxes) for my older children.

They used to call TB the white man's plague and it was so feared, dreadful.

I thought it was the white plague rather than white man's plague.

"For narcolepsy it was different; there was a small difference found between the groups in some countries but not in other countries where the same vaccine was used. The papers said it could not be concluded that the vaccine was the cause because other factors can come into play (it could have been reporting bias for instance eg if there are one or two reports and the alert goes out, then people might start thinking ‘I wonder if that’s what I have?’ and they go to a doctor who has also seen the reports and who asks if they’ve had the vaccine and if they say yes they get referred for further investigations. If someone unvaccinated presents with similar symptoms the doctor might come to a different conclusion, all because of unconscious bias - narcolepsy can apparently be quite hard to spot and is often diagnosed some time after symptoms first occur. That person might get diagnosed months or years later and therefore not taken into account in the figures. So it could have been a diagnosis bias if that makes sense - more people who had received the vaccine were diagnosed in a timely manner)."

There were also increase of narcoplepsy in China where the vaccine wasnt used . Similar increase of sleeping type sickness was found following the 1918 flu pandemic

For narcolepsy it was different; there was a small difference found between the groups in some countries but not in other countries where the same vaccine was used. The papers said it could not be concluded that the vaccine was the cause because other factors can come into play (it could have been reporting bias for instance eg if there are one or two reports and the alert goes out, then people might start thinking ‘I wonder if that’s what I have?’ and they go to a doctor who has also seen the reports and who asks if they’ve had the vaccine and if they say yes they get referred for further investigations. If someone unvaccinated presents with similar symptoms the doctor might come to a different conclusion, all because of unconscious bias - narcolepsy can apparently be quite hard to spot and is often diagnosed some time after symptoms first occur. That person might get diagnosed months or years later and therefore not taken into account in the figures. So it could have been a diagnosis bias if that makes sense - more people who had received the vaccine were diagnosed in a timely manner).

There were also increase of narcoplepsy in China where the vaccine wasnt used . Similar increase of sleeping type sickness was found following the 1918 flu pandemic

narcolepsy in China following 2009 H1n1 flu epidemic

"Results: The occurrence of narcolepsy onset was seasonal, significantly influenced by month and calendar year. Onset was least frequent in November and most frequent in April, with a 6.7-fold increase from trough to peak. Studying year-to-year variation, we found a 3-fold increase in narcolepsy onset following the 2009 H1N1 winter influenza pandemic. The increase is unlikely to be explained by increased vaccination, as only 8 of 142 (5.6%) patients recalled receiving an H1N1 vaccination. Cross-correlation indicated a significant 5- to 7-month delay between the seasonal peak in influenza/cold or H1N1 infections and peak in narcolepsy onset occurrences."

@MrsTerryPratchett

They used to call TB the white man's plague and it was so feared, dreadful.

I thought it was the white plague rather than white man's plague.

Correct - it was known as white plague because of the extreme pallor that is one feature

Thanks @RoseAndRose

Every day is a school day. I didn't know the reason (and am ashamed to say that the only reason I thought I knew it was the White Plague is Musketeers).

Do you member all the people who got narcolepsy from the swin flu jab rushed to the market. You tell them to suck it up. They have had their life's ruined

Why would anyone want to have anything genetically modified injected into their body?

*MrsT" I just looked it up - I had always read it in old lilterature etc as The White Man's Plague. I se there is a modern novel called teh White Plague so perhaps people are forgetting what I used to be called. It looks like in 1902 it was called as I was suggesting www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/5896328.dangers-of-the-white-mans-plague/

(the word man would have meant women and men of course as it is a general word including both - something we have lost recently too)

..may be we have "white washed" history ( all puns intended....) or through being PC ungendered it.... or something....

@Lourdes12 - see Bruffin's posts above - it appears the narcolepsy was caused by the virus, not the vaccine.

Will the vaccine have to be repeated every year ?