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Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 27, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 26, 2021

I will note that infection with a virus is also a potentially triggering event. That said, if you believe you have a solid reason to consider your risk of vaccine related condition to be higher than average, then you’d be foolish to not take it into account. The data I referred to earlier could also be consistent with a small subset of people being at substantially increased risk of a side effect compared to others (i.e. Simpson’s paradox). No idea if the authors actually attempt to correct for this, I’d imagine it would be quite difficult to do so given the low frequency of this. Also yeah, these mRNA vaccines are quite “hot”, which is unfortunate from a lot of perspectives, but understandable from the perspective of the makers. Better to aim slightly high… (indeed looking at curevac and a few of the other failures, a lot of them seem to have been too tolerogenic).  If you think your family has an increased likelihood of these events, you might find it an intriguing idea to get your genome sequenced (recommend nebula genomics). Perhaps in the future we’ll actually be able to figure out any such risks in rare populations in advance of delivery. 

Reply to: Best two-week emergency survival food for preppers Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: (Official discussion) Best long-term dehydrated canned foods (#10 cans) Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Best two-week emergency survival food for preppers Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021

That is what the evidence suggests. See this preprint from the UK (whose cases are almost all Delta strain now).  “With BNT162b2 there was a small reduction in effectiveness post dose 2 from 93.4% (95%CI: 90.4 to 95.5) with B.1.1.7 to 87.9% (95%CI:78.2 to 93.2)” BNT162b2 = Pfizer vaccine.  Note the wide confidence intervals on the delta strain numbers  78.2 to 93.2 as opposed to the much tighter interval on the alpha variant (B.1.1.7). I want to stress that it is normal for our understanding to change over time and that other factors (e.g. testing frequency, climate, number of cases in a country) can also cause genuine fluctuations in this number.  Despite the relative uncertainty around the precise number, lower protection from the delta variant even after dose two does makes sense based on the reduced protection we see after dose 1, as well as  based on what we see in in vitro tests of sera binding affinity from vaccinated individuals. 

Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021

RE your MS comment: I think it is important to note that MS is an immune mediated disease, so of course any symptoms of MS will appear similar to vaccine side effects. Since you stated that your MS was caused be a tetanus vaccine, I think it is important that I give some context about MS, the tetanus vaccine and vaccines in general. 1. Getting the tetanus shot is actually associated with lower rates of MS. You can see this meta analysis in the peer reviewed journal Neurology (impact factor 8). I do however want to make it clear that this does not mean that you are lying, or even wrong about the tetanus shot “causing” your MS. Although MS has a substantial genetic component, it is typically triggered through some sort of immune/inflammatory event. Typically this is a viral infection (most often a virus that infects or stays latent inside neurons for obvious reasons), but in theory an event such as vaccination could lead to the onset of MS. What this meta analysis shows is that the even considering the extremely small chance of the tetanus vaccine in particular leading to the onset of MS, on net it actually appears to slightly lower the risk of MS (through somewhat unclear pathways, although there are a number of workable hypotheses). 2. There is no evidence for thinking that the two approved mRNA vaccines lead to increased risk of MS. At this point hundreds of millions of people have been dosed and no negative safety signal has been found. (Note that this is the kind of thing they look for, as failed vaccine candidates in the past have failed by leading to elevated rates of MS or other immune disorder). Indeed the J&J vaccine trial got paused for a bit because of this very type of concern (they just got unlucky and had 1 or 2 people out of 20,000 coincidentally develop immune disorders right around the time they were dosed, we know this was chance because now that they have given the vaccine to 100x more people they haven’t seen anything deviating from the normal MS rate). You can of course make the statement that we don’t know whether or not the vaccine might cause increased likelihood of MS farther down the line. While that statement is true, it is also true with respect to literally any condition. Maybe the vaccine leads to an increased risk of stroke when you are 85, maybe it decreases it. Based on our understanding of the biology of MS, and from experience with previous successful and failed vaccines, we can assert there is little to no likelihood that MS is likely to be caused later down the line by the vaccines. That is not to say that it is impossible! Just that the evidence for it is at the same level as we would give to any long term positive or negative effect. Sorry for the long post, let me know if something is unclear (or wrong!!) or if you want sources for something I said.

Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021
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Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 27, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 26, 2021

I will note that infection with a virus is also a potentially triggering event. That said, if you believe you have a solid reason to consider your risk of vaccine related condition to be higher than average, then you’d be foolish to not take it into account. The data I referred to earlier could also be consistent with a small subset of people being at substantially increased risk of a side effect compared to others (i.e. Simpson’s paradox). No idea if the authors actually attempt to correct for this, I’d imagine it would be quite difficult to do so given the low frequency of this. Also yeah, these mRNA vaccines are quite “hot”, which is unfortunate from a lot of perspectives, but understandable from the perspective of the makers. Better to aim slightly high… (indeed looking at curevac and a few of the other failures, a lot of them seem to have been too tolerogenic).  If you think your family has an increased likelihood of these events, you might find it an intriguing idea to get your genome sequenced (recommend nebula genomics). Perhaps in the future we’ll actually be able to figure out any such risks in rare populations in advance of delivery. 

Reply to: Best two-week emergency survival food for preppers Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: (Official discussion) Best long-term dehydrated canned foods (#10 cans) Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Best two-week emergency survival food for preppers Posted June 23, 2021
Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021

That is what the evidence suggests. See this preprint from the UK (whose cases are almost all Delta strain now).  “With BNT162b2 there was a small reduction in effectiveness post dose 2 from 93.4% (95%CI: 90.4 to 95.5) with B.1.1.7 to 87.9% (95%CI:78.2 to 93.2)” BNT162b2 = Pfizer vaccine.  Note the wide confidence intervals on the delta strain numbers  78.2 to 93.2 as opposed to the much tighter interval on the alpha variant (B.1.1.7). I want to stress that it is normal for our understanding to change over time and that other factors (e.g. testing frequency, climate, number of cases in a country) can also cause genuine fluctuations in this number.  Despite the relative uncertainty around the precise number, lower protection from the delta variant even after dose two does makes sense based on the reduced protection we see after dose 1, as well as  based on what we see in in vitro tests of sera binding affinity from vaccinated individuals. 

Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021

RE your MS comment: I think it is important to note that MS is an immune mediated disease, so of course any symptoms of MS will appear similar to vaccine side effects. Since you stated that your MS was caused be a tetanus vaccine, I think it is important that I give some context about MS, the tetanus vaccine and vaccines in general. 1. Getting the tetanus shot is actually associated with lower rates of MS. You can see this meta analysis in the peer reviewed journal Neurology (impact factor 8). I do however want to make it clear that this does not mean that you are lying, or even wrong about the tetanus shot “causing” your MS. Although MS has a substantial genetic component, it is typically triggered through some sort of immune/inflammatory event. Typically this is a viral infection (most often a virus that infects or stays latent inside neurons for obvious reasons), but in theory an event such as vaccination could lead to the onset of MS. What this meta analysis shows is that the even considering the extremely small chance of the tetanus vaccine in particular leading to the onset of MS, on net it actually appears to slightly lower the risk of MS (through somewhat unclear pathways, although there are a number of workable hypotheses). 2. There is no evidence for thinking that the two approved mRNA vaccines lead to increased risk of MS. At this point hundreds of millions of people have been dosed and no negative safety signal has been found. (Note that this is the kind of thing they look for, as failed vaccine candidates in the past have failed by leading to elevated rates of MS or other immune disorder). Indeed the J&J vaccine trial got paused for a bit because of this very type of concern (they just got unlucky and had 1 or 2 people out of 20,000 coincidentally develop immune disorders right around the time they were dosed, we know this was chance because now that they have given the vaccine to 100x more people they haven’t seen anything deviating from the normal MS rate). You can of course make the statement that we don’t know whether or not the vaccine might cause increased likelihood of MS farther down the line. While that statement is true, it is also true with respect to literally any condition. Maybe the vaccine leads to an increased risk of stroke when you are 85, maybe it decreases it. Based on our understanding of the biology of MS, and from experience with previous successful and failed vaccines, we can assert there is little to no likelihood that MS is likely to be caused later down the line by the vaccines. That is not to say that it is impossible! Just that the evidence for it is at the same level as we would give to any long term positive or negative effect. Sorry for the long post, let me know if something is unclear (or wrong!!) or if you want sources for something I said.

Reply to: Confused about vaccine info (Discussion) Posted June 20, 2021