> “Unlike the mRNA vaccine which targets only the spike protein, CDO-7N-1 induces immunity to all major SARS-CoV-2 proteins and is highly effective against all major variants to date.
> “Importantly, the vaccine remains stable at 4°C for seven months, making it ideal for low- and middle-income countries.”
This being a more traditional vaccine, I wonder if any vaccine hold outs will be more receptive
I think there is a large percentage of people who got the original mRNA vaccine but don't plan on getting it again, due to being sick for several days or from other "long covid" or vaccine injury fears. So I wonder if that group would be more receptive.
Assuming they actually mean that it would stop you from getting and transmitting covid with high probability, and that they're correct, thats a pretty attractive selling point.
But like with any other pharma innovation, I'm not gonna be a part of the first commercial wave, or even the second or third unless I'm incredibly worried about the alternative, which I'm not at the moment (although let's see how hard this thing is "marketed" - am I going to be able to live life without it?).
I didn't want the mRNA jab (and didn't get it), but I WOULD definitely take this intranasal vaccine as its a classic (live attenuated) vaccine. That class of vaccine technology is not flawless, but it has decades of successful deployment and study.
The lowest risk option for the herd is that everyone get vaccinated. The lowest risk option for healthy young individuals may or may not be.
The parent is publicly admitting that they chose the more selfish of the two options. This rubs the rest of us (who considered the greater good more important than the incredibly small personal risk) the wrong way.
It's sometimes ok to be selfish, but it's never going to be the most popular decision and don't expect the herd you are a part of to respect your disdain for the well being of the larger group.
> The lowest risk option for the herd is that everyone get vaccinated.
If the vaccine was very good at stopping infection and transmission, this would be true. It's not though, is it?
Are you aware of the numbers needed to treat in order to prevent hospitalizations and deaths in the younger cohorts (especially in those who had already recovered)? It's quite a lot. Like numbers you probably wouldn't ever guess if you didn't already know them.
We destroyed a lot of faith in public health in the meantime, adding more to the negative side of the ledger for whatever future infectious shit storm comes our way.
Is it better for the herd to hear these people and try to convince them through talking, or to push them away/hiding/ridiculing them, potentially causing the Streisand effect?
If you want to chastise those who elected against having mRNA injections, you'd better be sure you have the correct information on how the mRNA jabs prevented transmission (or not).
For one, it's NOT too new, biology has been using mRNA forever. mRNA is well characterized, and well understood. mRNA for use in vaccines has been rolling around in research for a decade or so as well.
What "unknown" are you concerned about? Why do you believe we don't have a good understanding of how mRNA works in the body?
I'm not sure "biology" uses a synthesiser to build nucleic acid into a man-made sequence, and then injects it into the muscles (or accidentally injects it into a blood vessel) of billions of people within the space of a few months.
> What "unknown" are you concerned about? Why do you believe we don't have a good understanding of how mRNA works in the body?
Dr Robert Malone is one of the founding fathers of mRNA vaccine technology. You can read his impressive body of research on the subject here:
He made a video statement regarding the Covid mRNA vaccines which I found very alarming. He described negative effects on the heart, brain, lungs and reproductive system. I won't post links here in case I am cancelled for doing so.
For whistleblowing about the mRNA vaccines he was made an instant pariah online, and there was a swift campaign to cancel and silence him, with media outlets instantly refuting his statements (interesting how media "factcheckers" deemed themselves more qualified to opine on mRNA vaccine technology than Dr Robert Malone himself).
I'm not a scientist (at least, not a scientist of biology), and I don't know if Malone was right or wrong about the jabs.
However, the Malone episode made it clear to me that society is NOT "doing science" correctly, while politicians and the media suppress any inconvenient scientific opinions while rolling out their policies and lucrative Big Pharma contracts.
I don't know what Dr. Malone was like before COVID, but afterwards he was kind of wacky (by anyone's standards).
He made claims about the vaccine killing some kid who died in 2013, talked about how the vaccine causes a form of AIDS, and tried to cure it with Pepcid (the anti-acid) and horse-paste. All of that was despite the fact that he took the Moderna vaccine himself, because he had long-COVID. Honestly, I wonder if COVID didn't' damage his brain somehow.
Either way, you probably shouldn't believe some fringe guy from the internet more than mainstream science. If your mind is too wide open the flies will get in.
*EDIT* I should also add that he didn't even come close to "inventing" the MRNA vaccine. He was one of many people who worked on a a similar concept and contributed to the field. No one person could be said to have invented it, but if there was one person it would not be him. His name was not even listed as one of the main authors of the paper he most frequently cites as proof of his claim.
The claim about the kid who died in 2013 was a poor choice of retweet on Twitter. Anyone who's used Twitter would understand that at 2am after a few beers it's easy to retweet something silly. That single act shouldn't destroy a man's entire scientific credibility, any more than Musk's "pedo guy" tweet should destroy his status as a titan of sustainable travel and space technology.
Malone's discussion around "a form of AIDS" was in reference to the negative efficacy of the Covid mRNA injections recorded by some studies.
Annecdotally my wife (tripled mRNA jabbed) has caught symptomatic Covid twice since being jabbed. I tested positive for it only once (I tested as she had it), I had no symptoms. [Obviously the usual caveat applies. Just one data point, etc].
I don't think the science is "done" yet when it comes to understanding the long term side-effects on the immune system of the Covid mRNA injections.
I used the term "horse paste" because people in my country were literally going to "farm and feed" stores to purchase paste made to treat horses for parasites and then eating it, rather than taking the free and safe vaccine that had been tested for human safety and effectivness. Some of the horse paste eaters died of COVID, and many experienced side effects from the unapproved drug.
A lot of people are bad at evaluating risk. The internet makes it worse.
As to the "long term side-effects on the immune system of the Covid mRNA vaccine", I think it's safe to say that we would know them by now.
It's years later now, and most/all of the effects from the first round have long faded to a memory. Hence most folks have been boosted at least once. Millions upon millions of people have taken those vaccines, and some of us have taken them several times now. There hasn't been any uptick in all-cause mortality among those people that rose above the noise floor of the reports. In fact the vaccinated cohort tends to have died less often (as one would expect).
They're safe, they're effective, and they're cheap. They aren't perfect, but nothing is. Even if they do prove to be dangerous, the numbers show that the difference would have to be so minimal that your limited attention would be better spent installing new sticky things in the bathtub to prevent you from slipping and falling. Your death by those means are many tens of thousands of times more likely.
Seeing as at first they said any unexpected reaction would be impossible because "science" and then reports of myocarditis came in and people said "impossible" which then became "maybe" which then became "yeah, in some cases, but the disease is worse!"
The tech was new enough we didn't know about the myocarditis potential side effect. Everyone was so sure, just like you seem to be. "It doesn't work like that" -- except it does cause myocarditis in some patients
All the while forgetting that benefit is heavily skewed.
Those that would really benefit from its protection are often the same group that would be knocked sideways by its side effects (the very old, infirm, already sick or otherwise vulnerable).
The majority get nothing much in terms of side-effects, but also nothing much in terms of protection over what our bodies could already do for us.
There’s only a small group that are vulnerable enough to benefit significantly, while also being strong enough to tolerate it.
Believe it or not, most people who simply question the safety of mRNA vaccines have nothing against vaccines in general. The people who are skeptic with regarding to the mRNA vaccines (or COVID vaccines in general, whatever) are not your typical anti-vaxxers, and it is unfortunate that they are perceived to be.
Mostly because of them not being totally honest to the public from the start with the COVID vaccines, stating that it would be 100% safe (something that's _never_ true about vaccines) and would prevent spreading.
It made me distrust my government, something I've never done before, only to be fueled by backlash people received for asking questions, including having 0 TV time. If they would've taken it seriously and were able to answer some simple critical questions, even repeatedly (because it's their goddamn job), then I would not think like this. But they STILL don't want to really talk about it in any "real" media, and in my country you get called a "Wappie" for even asking some questions. They tried (effectively) to turn the general population against critical thinkers, which is something you never do, right?
So a big no from me, they messed it up.
Respectfully, i'm not sure you can both claim to be a critical thinker and make a falacious argumentum ad logicam argument at the same time. You kind of have to choose one.
Sure, you're right. Maybe I should've asked more questions, even though I was being vilified, unfriended, and hated for it. It's just so incredibly weird to me that even in the Tweede Kamer (I guess the Dutch House of Representatives?) they just wouldn't seriously answer questions some people had. I watched every debate, every new item, everything (in the Netherlands). They have NEVER done this as bad as this before.
Either we were being lied to, or they chose the path of "let's make them sound crazy so nobody will think like this" for actual good. I'm not sure, and leaning more to the first (for the first time in my life, mind you), and it has served me well this time. Will keep betting on my own body's ability.
In my experience, if you give the conspiracists a foot they take a mile.
If we're all being a little more honest, I think many of those "just asking questions" types aren't just asking questions. They're working in bad faith and already have an anti-vax position, and so they're prodding hoping for a "yes, but..." so they can say "aha! Exactly!"
Is it the right thing to assume all those asking questions are of this variety? No. Is it the right thing to just lie to these people? Also no. But will they respond well to honesty? no. Does being honest pose a danger in the context of these people that will manifest as real lives lost? I think, yes.
So I think that's how this sort of thing came to be. It's a legitimately hard problem because of the stakes.
"Many of those asking questions" is using a weasel word: many. What is many? It allows hand wavy arguments.
Pre covid, I knew about half a dozen anti vax "it causes autism" people; esp my cousin/neighbors as they blame vaccines for their son's autism despite the information available. Post covid, I knew only a couple more similar people. I also know probably closer to 150 people who are/were "this is a new thing being too aggressively pushed" who otherwise take vaccines. Nearly 10x in my circles.
It is fallacious to group these two together. A common question was, "if I already caught it and developed immunity, why would I want to additionally vaccinate?" And people shut them down as nutcases. Nobody was asking that question in bad faith and even if they were it was a fair question. However, when you are told to shut up and take what we are telling you, it is a normal human reaction to be skeptical. People were actively pushed to the fringe as those were the only people willing to even entertain "these evil thought crimes of not blindly towing party lines."
I don't know because I actually can't read minds. However anecdotally, most (almost all) the people I knew who didn't take the Jab did so because they listened to some alex jones type podcast with a quack talking about crazy conspiracies. This INCLUDES my family, so I am being generous with my descriptions. No I'm not misrepresenting them.
> It is fallacious to group these two together.
They are separate, but it is fallacious to claim they share no commonalities. The entire reason the Covid vaccine was under any skepticism is because the idea of vaccine skepticism had already broken the mainstream. It was, 25 years ago, accepted as a position people could have.
Some of the people you describe here:
> this is a new thing being too aggressively pushed
Are now FULLY 100% anti-vax. Is that a coincidence? No, it's not, and you know that.
Where is the logical fallacy? Actually, where’s the argument? His post is just a few reasons he doesn’t trust his government; he’s not trying to argue that you shouldn’t trust your government (you probably shouldn’t, though, for reasons I won’t go into).
Respectfully, I'm not sure that you can both press enter after putting together this string of words and be taken seriously as somebody that isn't full of themselves or in the "I am very smart" camp.
Humans are mushy and can hold opposing views at the same time. They say they lost trust. I would say that even a critical thinker should be suspicious when a liar says even obviously true things.
Of course, losing trust is a completely human thing. Like most emotional reasoning, its a heurstic that works pretty well in most cases. Nothing wrong with that.
My only objection is to the term "critical thinker". It literally means the opposite of what you are talking about. To quote the dictionary: "the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.". If you allow emotions to cloud your judgement, than you're not thinking critically, by definition. That would be true if you got the covid vaccine primarily because you thought the gov PR person was pretty. Its just as true if you don't because you don't think the PR person is trustworthy. Either way you are jumping to conclusions based on your personal opinions about some random gov employee who had nothing to do with the vaccine and is reading a statement that they probably didn't even write themselves. Like maybe it would be different if the gov is the one making the vaccine, but they basically have nothing to do with the actual manufacture of it. You can get much more relavent data by actually going closer to the source.
It’s not “some random gov employee” btw. It’s our Minister of Health, Hugo de Jonge. He was on stage weekly (sometimes multiple times a week) to inform the population.
What I’m saying is that he didn’t do that correctly, knowingly or unknowingly. And for that, I lost trust in him (and Mark Rutte, who was always next to him).
I would expect the Minister of Health of my country would at least know that no vaccine is 100% safe. But alas.
Now Rutte is Sec. General of NATO, as a side note.
It was not a formal argument that could be easily dismissed due to a logical fallacy, it is a critique of communication and trust. There is no logical fallacy in the OP's comment. Do you trust the Government with your life? If you do, great, but do not silence ("cancel") people who ask fair questions (i.e. have critical thinking).
It was _never_ claimed that it would "prevent" the spread of the disease or that it would even prevent _you_ from catching it. If you thought that, you weren't reading anything. It was always claimed that it lowered the likelihood of catching it and _most importantly_ reduced the severity of the disease if you did catch it.
If anything, what you should mistrust is your own ability to read and comprehend.
They weren't lying, they just weren't being pedantic. It does limit the spread, it just doesn't prevent it "completely". Only someone looking for a reason to be upset would interpret what they said literally.
I’m sorry, but a press conference televised to everyone in a country that disrupts the default programming, every week, when most people were watching, by a government official about a novel virus that’s spreading around the world and the medication for it… and I shouldn’t take it literally?
What moment in the world would be a better moment to be as clear and pedantic as possible, with as little reason to doubt as possible? And when is it better to keep the talking point open to even the most “dumb” questions, even if it’s over and over again?
To be clear again, I’m Dutch and was watching the Dutch news.
Whichever of the many sides you believe, they dropped the ball there. They should’ve been informed and should’ve informed us correctly. They didn’t.
You're right. They should have spoken more directly, and with greater attention to the words literal meanings. The issue was too important to be imprecise with the language.
Still, in English when someone says "seatbelts prevent automobile accident related deaths" it doesn't mean that ALL automobiles will magically cease to crash once you've buckled up, nor does it mean that your odds of death fall to zero. It only means that SOME deaths will be prevented.
I really don’t care; they should have known the truth. And if they didn’t, they should have informed us on that, too.
The whole issue to me is that they acted like the authoritative figure who you could trust. Turns out, we could not. So why should I trust them from now on? They damaged it, and didn’t try to “fix” it. They just called everyone that asked questions conspiracy theorists, combining everyone into one word “wappie”. The officials did. They actually used that word multiple times on TV.
So I don’t know if they knew, but it’s besides the point.
I wasn't talking about what I read, I was talking about what they said on TV. I'm going to find the original clips soon (at work at the moment), but I clearly remember Hugo de Jonge telling us all, on national television, that we would be protected by the vaccine, and would stop the spreading of it. I'm not the only one that heard it.
I'm SPECIFICALLY talking about the Dutch news coverage here - I have no experience with others.
So this:
> It was _never_ claimed that it would "prevent" the spread of the disease or that it would even prevent _you_ from catching it.
Is just not true; they told our entire country on television.
And, the government officials and politicians got a lot more press with their dogmatic-but-false claims than the scientists did with their hedged-but-more-true ones.
Absolutely not. I have lost almost all trust (faith?) with medicine. FYI - I'm not doing/using anything wacky like homeopathy. I'm just simply not interested in anything related to medicine anymore.
Hopefully another perspective is interesting.
I’m on anti-epileptic medication that allows me to drive again, and to basically be a human again (Carbamazepine). Medicine in and of itself, nothing wrong with it, and we should absolutely NOT disregard it.
However I did lose trust in this one, and I’ll be keeping my eyes open much wider than before. See my other comments on this page if you want to know why.
> I'm just simply not interested in anything related to medicine anymore
My mother is this way now and I'm dreading the day it finally kills her. You can't smoke for 40 years then suddenly be anti-doctor. But she doesn't listen to me. Guess she trusts me as much as medicine.
You can't manage your health yourself. You just can't. You don't run your own blood tests. You don't know anything about diseases or disorders. Have some humility. Being anti-medicine is suicide.
There might be a small number but when the major problem is misinformation I just don't have much faith in it really moving the needle as much as is necessary.
Given that we are seeing serious problems with people even getting traditional vaccines right now.
For the record: I would love very much to be wrong in everything I said above. But the last few years just don't have me holding out any hope.
From my observations, the relentless and heavy-handed censorship of "misinformation" created more skeptics than "misinformation" itself, especially in cases where the squashed sources were credentialed medical practitioners and researchers.
> especially in cases where the squashed sources were credentialed medical practitioners and researchers.
Every profession has its quacks and those borderline educated people. You can get a 70% in school (or whatever your school's almost failing grade is) and still become a doctor.
The only reason things are more "heavy-handed' today against misinformation (also for the record, putting quotes around a word doesn't change it from being lies) is there being so many people pushing those lies for certain reasons. Largely political (control) and fear mongering. In an attempt to themselves build mistrust against something to further their own goals.
This misinformation is causing serious problems that are being pushed to the side.
Unlike those that are pushing this misinformation, the scientific method is willing to admit when it is wrong. It is entirely how it is built to work.
Maybe instead of being so worried about the "censorship" (which again, to be clear they can continue to say whatever they want but they are also not free from the repercussions), you should ask why there is so much passion behind fighting the misinformation and the damage that misinformation is causing.
> created more skeptics than "misinformation" itself
I highly doubt it, because all of this started from misinformation itself. The only reason anyone had any reason to distrust vaccines is because they "cause autism". Which is entirely made-up, by the way. Like not even close to true. A 25 year old lie that has snowballed to something so extreme and so crazy.
If you give these conspiracists even a hint that there might not be a perfect solution, they WILL run with it. I mean, it was one obviously false study and here we are - vaccines cause autism.
So no, from where I'm sitting the misinformation is because of the misinformation. And because people want to believe it. I mean, you can just lie and people will eat it up if it's vaguely anti-establishment. That's dangerous. I'm talking thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives dangerous. It's a legitimately difficult problem to address and I think some level of "censorship", or fact checking, is necessary.
> The only reason anyone had any reason to distrust vaccines is because they "cause autism
With the covid vaccine specifically the reason to distrust appears to be totally different. It was the extreme rush "to production" with a new piece of biotechnology without a long term track record, mandating its administering to the public, and at the same time the total suppression of any discussion of the risk-benefit balance and the side effects. This was precipitated also by the mask communication fiasco (they are "useless" first, then they are suddenly required). I hope you can see that distrust is a very expected outcome in people who tend to think critically.
At the time, a friend asked why I didn’t want the vaccine. I’d done my research, and I knew my benefit was marginal and that my risk from COVID itself was close to nil.
But best I could articulate at the time was that it was too tied up with letting us visit public places (remember passports?). It seemed manipulative, too much about theatre and very little about public or individual health.
Didn’t want to ruin a friendship by being too honest, although I wish I had been now.
Right, but the only reason this even became a discussion is because a seed of doubt was planted 25 years ago. Otherwise, people wouldn't care about a rush to production because vaccines wouldn't be perceived as having the ability to cause harm.
> I hope you can see that distrust is a very expected outcome in people who tend to think critically
How very slick, implying I'm stupid. No, I am able to think critically I'm just also able to see the writing on the wall and string together events.
The Covid distrust did not happen in isolation and anybody who thinks so must be blind and deaf. It was a long time coming, as conspiracists increased in radicality and reach. Before Covid MANY MANY new technologies and treatments were already beginning their spiral of distrust. 5G, MMR vaccine, therapy...
As soon as Covid began I knew there would be a select group of people who will oppose the largest narrative, regardless of what that narrative is. It was obvious to me that people would refuse to wear masks. They had no reasons of course - wearing a mask is hardly difficult. But because you tell them to wear it, it's a problem. Because that's how these people operate. They don't care about outcomes, they care about authority.
Even if the masks are barely effective or might not work, there's no harm in wearing them. But to the conspiracists it doesn't work that way. They fear becoming sheep, so they oppose for the sake of opposition.
> communication fiasco (they are "useless" first, then they are suddenly required)
Something I think people don't understand about Covid is that it was a NOVEL disease. Have you ever had a circumstance like Covid in your life before Covid? No, right?
So what does that tell you? That clearly these were new waters. Yes, what is true DOES change because people actually don't know! People's understanding of Covid over time changed because they learned new things.
To be clear, I don't think distrust is a bad thing. But I do think that the particular brand of distrust around Covid was largely not legitimate. And I think everyone knows that.
I myself am a skeptic. But for the right reasons. Not because I enjoy being difficult, or because I'm inherently opposed to authority. The majority of Covid "distrusters" are anti-science, radical conspiracists - more along the lines of flat earthers. These are not critical thinkers, quite the opposite.
Just like blindly following advice makes you a sheep, blindly distrusting advice makes you a sheep too, just in the opposite direction. You need to analyze the situation and your sources. For Covid, that largely meant understanding Covid is a unique situation with therefore unperfect solutions.
> “Importantly, the vaccine remains stable at 4°C for seven months, making it ideal for low- and middle-income countries.”
This being a more traditional vaccine, I wonder if any vaccine hold outs will be more receptive