Besides that, mrna tech started to be developed in the 1970's with the first labrat trials in the late 80's or early 90's.
Clinical trials on humans, to test their safety and effectiveness in combating various diseases and viruses have been ongoing for the past decade.
And as you said, the first several widely used vaccines based on mrna tech have been deployed to literally billions of people.
This is an incredibly gigantic sample size for data and there have been very few issues for the past 3 years.
And what bernieecclestoned brings up about herd immunity simply means the people they are talking to are, like most antivaxxers, blithering idiots that know some catch phrases and not a single meaning behind them.
You obtain herd immunity through hardening the herd with vaccines and then hope the immune systems of the herd adjust to further combat the disease. If data doesn't show that new variants are easily countered by the immune systems of the herd, you know you need to develop more vaccines.
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 9 months ago
Context: I'm fully vaccinated with 4 mRNA shots, I volunteered at a vaccination hub during the first lockdown.
It could be argued that they are still new in that we don't know of any long term affects that might crop up in 20 years time.
Conversely of course any long term affects of a fukll-blown Covid infection that could crop up in 20 years time are likely to be considerably worse.
SharkAttak@kbin.social 9 months ago
We're getting Long Covid effects now, but I've yet to hear about Long Vax side effects.
Centillionaire@kbin.social 9 months ago
Some people have to go on blood thinners due to the covid shot. It’s rare, and most people should get their shot, but there are risks involved.
I work in a pharmacy and I’ve personally filled medications for about 5 people who said they are on blood thinners from getting a covid shot.
Fermion@feddit.nl 9 months ago
I got long covid from an infection before the vaccines were available.
Getting the vaccination and boosters noticeably worsened my existing long covid symptoms. I still got the boosters because I assume a reinfection would be much worse than the vaccine’s effects. If I ever thought I could reasonably avoid risk of future infections I would not choose to get more boosters, but since exposure is inevitable, I’ll deal with the consequences of the booster.
When essentially everyone has had exposure to covid your statement can’t actually be tested. We don’t have a cohort of people we know got vaccinated but were never exposed to the virus.
Anyway, the vaccine is worth getting because the alternative is being exposed to the virus without protection, but that doesn’t mean the vaccine is actually free of side effects for everyone.
Echo5@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Hypothetically, it could be because those folks have already died or are experiencing effects that genpop refuses to corroborate with the treatment. There’s been a major bias against reporting side effects (not that the process has ever been fully hashed out) and iirc the ‘cine industry is the only one you can’t sue, so any potentially-educational lawsuits that might’ve been are a nonstarter. Not saying these things are confirmed but that there’s definitely room for a lot to fly under the radar.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
You can’t sue the makers because a federal agency has taken all liability. You can sue the agency though, and they do pay out occasionally for injuries caused by vaccines.
alvvayson@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yes, you could argue that, but it would be an extraordinary claim.
I might still get indigestion from that taco I ate in 1999.
But it’s really unlikely, since that Taco cleared my system way back then.
mRNA also clears the body quite quickly.
So to have side-effects after so many years, one would need to explain a mechanism.
Otherwise it’s really just very speculative. Might as well believe 5G causes cancer. After all, it’s new technology.
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 9 months ago
Sure.
Not really - one just needs to say 'this a novel mechanism of producing an antigen, we don't really know if there are any long-term affects'.
Very speculative and etraordinarily unlikely, I agree.