Aika pitkä, mutta;
Concern over unknown, future side effects is by far the most common reason I hear people give for why they aren’t vaccinating against COVID. At a quick glance, that may seem reasonable, but when yo…
thelogicofscience.com
In the case of COVID, we were able to get these sample sizes extremely quickly because there were so many cases of COVID and governments dumped so much money into massive vaccine campaigns. All of the currently recommended vaccines passed their initial phase 3 trials with large sample sizes. For example, Pfizer used over 43,000 participants (
Polack et al. 2020), and Moderna used over 30,000 (
Mahase 2020).
Following those phase 3 trials, numerous large studies have been released. Indeed, so many studies have been conducted that we can do systematic reviews and meta-analyses. As explained
here, these combine the data from multiple studies to look for overarching effects and are the highest level of scientific evidence. Qianhui et al. (
2021), for example, included 87 different safety studies, and concluded that, “Available evidence indicates that eligible COVID-19 vaccines have an acceptable short-term safety profile.”
Yet more studies have been conducted since that review/meta-analysis, and some of them are truly massive. Barda et al. (
2021), for example, compared over 800,000 vaccinated individuals to over 800,000 unvaccinated individuals to look at the rates of adverse events from the Pfizer vaccine as well as the rates of those same events in people who develop COVID. Not only did the vaccine have low rates of serious side effects, but, for most conditions (including myocarditis and myocardial infarction), the rates of those events were
higher in people who caught COVID than in people who received vaccines (
Note 2).
Figure 4 from Barda et al. 2021 showing the risk of adverse events from the Pfizer vaccine and from COVID itself. For each side effect, risk was calculated by by matching over 100,000 people who had been infected with COVID with people who were not infected with COVID (for COVID side effect rates), and matching several hundred thousand people who had received the vaccine with people who had not received it (for the vaccine rates). In most cases, COVID infection itself carries more risk of these specific side effects than does the vaccine. The most obvious exception (lymphadenopathy) is merely a swelling of the lymph nodes, which is not generally a serious condition.
So, if you are avoiding the COVID vaccines because of a fear of unknown, serious, long-term side effects, ask yourself, is that fear really rational given that future, long-term side effects of vaccines are virtually unheard of, and there has never been a case where those side effects were widespread and outweighed the benefits of the vaccines?
Why vaccines don’t cause future long-term effects: Low dose, short exposure
Let’s now talk about why vaccine side effects nearly always show up shortly after vaccination. The type of long-term consequence we are talking about typically comes from one of two causes: a very large dose over a short time, or a small dose over a prolonged period of time. Vaccines don’t fit either of those categories. They are fundamentally different from most medications because they simply train your immune system before being quickly removed. Your
own immune system is what provides a lasting benefit. Further, vaccines do this via low, non-toxic doses. Remember, the
dose makes the poison. Everything, even water (
Garigan and Ristedt 1999), is toxic at a high enough dose and safe at a low enough dose. So people who scream about “TOXIC CHEMICALS” in vaccines are ignoring basic chemistry. There is no such thing as a toxic chemical, there are only toxic doses, and the doses in vaccines are not toxic.
One of the most common arguments I hear people making to justify concerns over COVID vaccines is, “look at all the examples of drugs that were approved, then years later long-term effects were found.” Those examples are, however, nearly always for drugs that were taken repeatedly. It’s the cumulative effect that causes the risk (particularly for chemicals that persist in your body for long periods of time). Vaccines, in contrast, have limited exposure, and your body quickly eliminates them. Within a few days of receiving the vaccine, the vaccine itself has been totally eliminated from your body. The long-term protection comes from immune system memory, not from the vaccines themselves.
This is really important, because it means we don’t have a mechanism through which COVID vaccines would cause long-term harm. Because vaccines are a low doses given 2-3 times, we expect any consequences to happen quickly, which is exactly what we find. The most common side effects are things like soreness and moderate flu symptoms that start within a few hours or days of receiving the vaccine. These effects aren’t because the vaccine is “toxic” but rather because it is doing exactly what it was designed to do and stimulating your immune system. It’s that activation of your immune system that makes you feel unwell, but that activation is critical, because it is how your immune system learns to identify and fight COVID. Similarly, serious side effects from the vaccines, while rare, usually show up shortly after vaccination.
Side effects that don’t show up for months or years simply aren’t expected from vaccines because of how vaccines work. Nevertheless, in the following sections, let’s look more closely at the three main hypothetical sources of long-term harm: adjuvants/preservatives, mRNA, and immune activation.
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