Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#261

Post by licyeus » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:50 AM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #59

A lot of comments here asking for specific numbers and making comparisons to other risks. That's exactly how one should be looking at this. What I don't understand is why people don't apply this same critical thought process to the risks of Covid? For example, do you know what the risk of hospitalization from Covid is when unvaccinated? If you said >50%, you would be in good company. It's the most common answer. But…

How is Gallup calculating risk? As far as I can tell from their appendix, they're using total hospitalizations / total US population. Ie, 2.6mm hospitalizations / 330mm population = ~0.8% risk of hospitalization.

This is obviously misleading: the pandemic is still ongoing. We're now at 3.1mm hospitalizations, does this mean risk has grown from 0.8->1% between Aug 9 and today? Or that in May 2020 the risk was essentially nil?

Once infected, risk of hospitalization (across all ages) is currently 7-8% (using 7-day rolling averages from CDC). Lower than people assume, but still concerning.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admis... https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailycases|...

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#262

Post by AndrewBissell » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:53 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #171

pyronik19 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the establishment should just be honest about it instead of trying to fear-porn parents into wanting to "protect your kids from the deadly disease".... Just say.... we are going to put your kids at risk from the vaccine because we think the ends justify the benefits for old people.

> instead of trying to fear-porn parents > we are going to put your kids at risk from the vaccine A bit on the nose, don't you think?

How else should it be stated except "on the nose," given what's at stake?

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#263

Post by pvaldes » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

thepasswordis wrote: post #63

mschild wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comirnaty is the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine. Spikevax the Moderna one. I dont know Swedish. Does it provide any numbers for Spikevax?

Can somebody please get moderna and pfizer a new person to come up with these names?

All the good names were probably taken yet

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#264

Post by amluto » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:56 AM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #211

tptacek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of C19 fatalities under 30 in the US appears to easily exceed the number of vaccine-related myocarditis cases. The overwhelming majority of those myocarditis cases followed a benign course. Later Another thing to consider is that the myocarditis rate from C19 itself may exceed that of the vaccine, which would basically refute the argument against vaccination. (By all means, pick vaccines strategically.)

Even if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for society you cannot make that calculation. You cannot administer a vaccine to a healthy person just because it doesn't increase their risk of dying as much as it decreases someone else's risk of surviving. Young healthy men should not be coerced into accepting an elevated risk because getting to herd immunity or whatever might save old and at risk persons. For children a…

There is a surprising lack of mention of long covid. Good stats from a competent public health agency like NHS would be welcome.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#265

Post by twofornone » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

fspeech wrote: post #197

twofornone wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Your risk of myocarditis from COVID is 10x-20x your risk of myocarditis from a vaccine It really bothers me that people are still touting such numbers around as obvious, indisputable facts given the poor quality of both covid and adverse effect statistical data. 1. What are the odds that you will experience symptoms if you get myocarditis? 2. What are the odds that vaccine induced myocarditis will be reported as suc…

The virus is very proinflammatory so it's not surprising that vaccines that simulate parts of the virus are also proinflammatory. There even appears to be a dose dependence: Moderna packs in a lot more than Pfizer-BNT. So there is a rational framework to think about this. What is bizarre is how people could in the same breath show a lot of fear of the vaccine but then brush off the risk from uncontrolled viral reprod…

There are at least three reasons that an injection is not the same.

1. The sudden viral load is orders of magnitude larger than typical exposure and given the complexity of the immune system, may produce a different response. Also recall that unlike traditional vaccines this mRNA hijacks your cellular machinery to produce an inflammatory protein - so comparing it to past vaccines in this respect is invalid.

2. Again because of the complexity of the immune system, its possible that a sudden, massive injection of spike protein mRNA will not activate the immune system in the same way that a gradual infection by the full virus.

3. From what I've read, the spike protein when manufactured from snipped mRNA is then expressed on cell surfaces, in contrast to a true viral infection which releases the full viral particles into the bloodstream. This could induce autoimmune reactions which would explain many of the documented side effects.

My main point though is that many in the vocal pro-vaccine crowd are underestimating the borderline chaotic complexity of the finely tuned chemical soup that is our biology. And we are injecting an engineered substance which we know is biologically active in a novel way. It's hubris to casually presume that we got this right the first time.

Edit: for the programmers, think of it as a very clever and involved hack. And hacks can have unintended side effects, especially when the system is poorly understood.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#266

Post by nojokes » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 12:58 AM UTC

twofornone wrote: post #161

tptacek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of C19 fatalities under 30 in the US appears to easily exceed the number of vaccine-related myocarditis cases. The overwhelming majority of those myocarditis cases followed a benign course. Later Another thing to consider is that the myocarditis rate from C19 itself may exceed that of the vaccine, which would basically refute the argument against vaccination. (By all means, pick vaccines strategically.)

>Another thing to consider is that the myocarditis rate from C19 itself may exceed that of the vaccine, which would basically refute the argument against vaccination No, because you need to consider not just the odds of getting myocarditis from covid vs vaccine (Pc:Pv), but the bayesian probabilities of getting infected (Pi) or vaccinated (1) and then getting myocarditis, such that the full risk analysis would look m…

This is true and if it was flu kind of virus with very low reproduction number, it would be right but Delta variant has very high reproduction number and it is guaranteed to infect eventually almost everyone who is without immune response against it.

There is also this fact that myocarditis has high prevalence among teenage boys (even CDC might underestimate it) and it looks like it is caused by some form of immune reaction and its occurrence is immune reaction size dependent (Moderna causes more myocarditis than Pfizer that causes more than AstraZeneca). It allows to postulate that it might be that the people who get myocarditis after vaccination have high risk of getting it after infection.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#267

Post by dukeofdoom » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:00 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #215

bjourne wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for society you cannot make that calculation. You cannot administer a vaccine to a healthy person just because it doesn't increase their risk of dying as much as it decreases someone else's risk of surviving. Young healthy men should not be coerced into accepting an elevated risk because getting to herd immunity or whatever might save old and at risk persons. For children a…

I don't think that's the right question or comparison. If this young person below 30 gets a side effect from the vaccine, is that side effect worse than what they'd get by having the virus? It should be clear that we aren't going to suppress or eradicate covid, so you shouldn't be comparing getting the vaccine or nothing happening, but getting covid with or without the vaccine

More precisely shouldn't we be comparing the number of life years lost. If for every young healthy person that develops myocarditis or increases his lifetime cancer risk by 1%, how many 84 year old getting to live another year, is worth the risk to the young healthy person.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#268

Post by not2b » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:01 AM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #186

yes_man wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/-/thl-monitoring-myocarditis-... According to Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, an additional 4 cases per 100k men under the age of 30. They also note that having covid is a risk factor for myocarditis. So perhaps still worth it to take the shot. Possibly they are doing this to put out the antivax wildfires in social media by reacting to statistical information about risks. So a…

> They also note that having covid is a risk factor for myocarditis. So perhaps still worth it to take the shot. No: Absolutely not worth it to take that particular shot, as there are others available which don't have that side effect.

That's very unclear, since people who got Moderna are getting fewer breakthrough infections that people who got Pfizer, and are being hospitalized less (from studies by the Mayo Clinic and confirmed elsewhere). So you can't look just at side effects, you also need to look at effectiveness. They could inject you with a placebo known to be side effect free.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#269

Post by nojokes » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #162

nicoburns wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a young male who got myocarditis from both covid and the vaccine, the other thing that's worth knowing that I wish I'd known earlier: if you do get it, then the best thing to do to prevent long-term damage is to avoid exercise completely (potentially for 6 months to a year, or until you've been cleared by a doctor).

Is rest the only treatment for it? Also, how was it diagnosed?

Ibuprofen also helps.

Re: Finland joins Sweden and Denmark in limiting Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

#270

Post by 8note » Fri, Oct 08, 2021, 1:05 AM UTC

freyir wrote: post #77

peakaboo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these comments fall to the bottom, which means the majority believes the vaccine is safe and effective. The majority also supports the censorship carried out by all social media platforms. I think it has always been like this. The majority follows what they are told and the minority doesn't get listened to.

It falls to the bottom because it lies about the facts (vaccines were never declared 100% safe and effective) and reaches an incorrect conclusion (if one vaccine is determined to be safer than another, it doesn’t follow that vaccines are objectively unsafe, or that being unvaccinated is safer than being vaccinated). It’s a silly comment to make, and potentially harmful. The majority of people in this case don’t, on a…

"very capable of evaluating facts and data and responding to data"

Sounds very incorrect. I'm at least very easily mislead, eg. Fusion advocates talking about the energy they put into plasma vs get out of plasma, rather than the energy they put into the system vs take out of the system. I don't know enough to know that they're lying to me about the prospects of ITER producing as much energy as it uses.