Everyone wants protection from COVID-19 for obvious reasons. Everyone is happy that a vaccine may soon be available. But the fact that it happened so quickly cuts both ways: “rush job” doesn’t exactly imply safety.
I’m Not Sure Whether I Really Want the Vaccine or I Really Want to Evade It
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Not only they developed a vaccine in months and promote it by comparing it with other indisputably proven vaccines that took years in the making, but they also tout its new -and improved, natch- revolutionary technology.
I’m not an anti-vaxxer. However, given big pharma record profits that allow them to pay lawyer fees, albeit probably huge, but only minor fines (when levied), therefore making it financially preferable risking patients’ lives rather than testing thoroughly, I’m certainly not going to get vaccinated any time soon.
One thing I’d like to be publicly advertised are the details of the responsibility waivers in the purchase contracts hastily signed by our governments.
I wish this blog’s moderator to be as fast as the new vaccine…
I don’t want to sound anti-vax. Most of the American Indians who died when Europeans brought smallpox, measles, chickenpox, etc., to the New World never even saw a white man. And the media is already salivating about reports about severe reactions to the shot.
Ask a doctor. Don’t take my word for it: all of these vaccines have very low rates of severe reaction. That’s known. Some people are allergic to shellfish, but I don’t see anyone picketing raw bars down at Key West. We’re all edgy. Let’s not give in to panic.
Even a hastily produced vaccine has had safety protocols surrounding it. The risk–much like with the Challenger space shuttle–is when the safety protocols are overridden because some bureaucrat with no scientific training thinks real life is an episode of Star Trek and listens too much to the PR department.
I’m not afraid of the vaccine. I’m afraid of what might have been willfully and deliberately overlooked by some management type who thinks double-blind testing is when you pull the cord to raise and lower the window shades twice to make sure they really work. (You know, business as usual, like with the Ford Pinto.)
The underlying technology that led to the vaccines (plural) is well-established, powerful and always expanding. Yes, some of these vaccines will represent the first time their particular strategy has been used. But I’d rather take one of them instead of one, and there is at least one, based on “old” technology (inactivated, previously infectious, whole virus.)
The technology is relatively rapid and the whole process got a jump start from China whose scientists, early in the outbreak, determined the entire genetic sequence (30,000 A,C,G,T units) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and then, like all evil countries trying to infect the whole world, immediately published that sequence for ALL to see and use as they liked. That critical information allowed vaccination strategies to proceed without the need to handle infectious virus but only lab-made copies of its genetic material.
Adding to the speed with which vaccines were developed is the nature of the immune response that the vaccines stimulate. This is lightning fast compared to, say, development of cancers and, thus, treatments for it.
That is, for the vaccines currently discussed in the press, two doses are given within three weeks of one another. So, after about 5 weeks after the first dose, the antibodies against the virus should be present in the serum of those receiving the vaccine.
There is also available supporting technology to assess the efficacy of the vaccines. The antibodies intended to be induced by the vaccines should be readily detectable with the tests that have been in use routinely for months. I doubt this direct confirmation of efficacy is going to be provided along with the vaccine but it is available to those who want to be sure.
Yes there are risks. But the clinical trials performed did assess safety of the vaccines. The most widely publicized vaccines were administered to a few tens of thousands of people. The “side effects” reported were the very symptoms a per-son would be expected to show when mounting immune reaction. So they might be unpleasant but exactly what one wants. (Whatever factors have led to less than 100% credibility of clinical trials, in general, has been in place since long be-fore this pandemic arrived. It is of course due to medicine in the age of profit be-fore people.)
All safety concerns, of course, were not addressed in clinical trials and I’m not going to delve into every possibility for every technologically distinct vaccine type. Of course, the imminent mass vaccinations will quickly fill in any information that clinical trials did not reveal and presumably confirm other aspects. For the wary, just wait for awhile to see what is being reported about the effects of the vaccines.