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NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

nytimes.com

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Re: NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

#5
Thousands believe the vaccine implanted mind control chips.

Thousands believe the earth is flat.

Thousands believe their fillings send them person radio transmissions.

Don’t toss the baby out with the bath water. Would it have been better to let everyone die of Covid? Or get debilitating effects of long Covid?

This headline is unnecessarily alarmist.

Re: NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

#7
How do you disentangle damage from the vaccine vs damage from COVID, which often was asymptomatic? There are some acute sudden onset symptoms associated and documented for the vaccine, but I honestly have no idea how to distinguish root cause for effects further distanced from vaccine delivery?

Re: NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

#8
post #5

Thousands believe the vaccine implanted mind control chips. Thousands believe the earth is flat. Thousands believe their fillings send them person radio transmissions. Don’t toss the baby out with the bath water. Would it have been better to let everyone die of Covid? Or get debilitating effects of long Covid? This headline is unnecessarily alarmist.

> The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

Re: NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

#9

Honestly that was a risk we all knew about, but the risk of dying from the disease was much higher. That's how it works. Now we'll have these data points to make new medicines safer, because that's what we do.

The issue here is denialism: people with legitimate issues caused by the vaccine reported their problems and aren't getting help. That is at least partly because the public health establishment chose to suppress information and research into COVID vaccine side-effects (whether caused by batch contamination or inherent in the vaccine itself). It took quite some time for the medical establishment to even admit widely that the side effects existed, and it's still hard for people to get compensation from VAERS.

Public health is effectively a multidimensional utilitarianism problem and the mainstream medical establishment chose to de-emphasize legitimate problems, likely because they considered it important to reach high vaccination rates, and any message that would cause people to decline the vaccine was viewed as affecting the rates significantly. Most of the major officials have done their mea culpas, and I think it's high time that we actually invest more into addressing vaccine side effects.

Anecdotally, I was at the doctor's office today and was offered shingrix since I'm over 50. Shingles is terrible, but my doctor basically talked me out of getting the vaccine, by explaining that it had significant and common side effects (sore arm, puffy arm, tired feeling) and that I wasn't really at high risk (other than my age). She also no longer prescribes dual vax (for example, flu + pneumo at the same time), also because of commonly reported side effects (again anecdotally, in my case when I got both, my whole left arm was useless for days and I felt sick, tired, and pained for over a week).

Re: NYTimes: Thousands Believe Covid Vaccines Harmed Them. Is Anyone Listening?

#10
post #8
post #5

Thousands believe the vaccine implanted mind control chips. Thousands believe the earth is flat. Thousands believe their fillings send them person radio transmissions. Don’t toss the baby out with the bath water. Would it have been better to let everyone die of Covid? Or get debilitating effects of long Covid? This headline is unnecessarily alarmist.

> The officials each responded with “that very tired mantra: ‘But the virus is worse,’” Dr. Murphy recalled. “Yes, the virus is worse, but that doesn’t obviate doing research to make sure that there may be other options.”

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be looked into.

I’m saying the headline overplays the danger and is the kind of irresponsible sensationalism that has lead to a massive increase in vaccine denialism.

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