Both our comments were in regard to an article stating that more than half the trial participants for a Covid vaccine experienced “adverse” reactions, in some cases extreme. My, as of January 2019, deceased elder sister contracted seasonal flu then pneumonia after being vaccinated for both two months before. No offense intended. I simply have little remaining and ever decreasing faith in “expert” opinion, or the pharmaceutical industry. I respect yours but choose to take a different view.
“Both our comments were in regard to an article stating that more than half the trial participants for a Covid vaccine experienced “adverse” reactions, in some cases extreme. My, as of January 2019, deceased elder sister contracted seasonal flu then pneumonia after being vaccinated for both two months before. No offense intended. I simply have little remaining and ever decreasing faith in “expert” opinion, or the pharmaceutical industry. I respect yours but choose to take a different view.”
I took a flu shot for the first time last fall. My doctor (idiot)talked me into it. Now my shoulders are SLOWLY recovering from it after about 6 months. NEVER again!
I’ve always a very strong immune system. If my body craps out after 63 years, I prefer to die.
I’ll NEVER take any kind of vaccine again.
Also, very sorry to hear about your sister. It was most likely that vaccines that gave her the illness.
First, I am sincerely sorry for your loss. I’ve also lost too many family and friends at this point, and every one of them hurt. And there’s nothing anyone can say or do to make it alright, but I do hope time is easing the burden.
In terms of the adverse reactions, we need a lot more data about exactly how many and how severe. If 50% of the people have a low grade fever and a slight headache, that’s really negligible in the grand scheme of things. If they’re having severe reactions requiring medical intervention, that’s unacceptable. That’s why we have three phases of clinical trials: to identify any adverse reactions, see how serious they really are, and see how many people experience them, along with how effective the actual medicine/vaccine really is. It’s worth noting that the control group in any clinical trial (receiving either a sugar pill or a saline shot) will also report a certain number of “adverse reactions”. There’s a psychosomatic element involved.
Finally, I completely understand why your faith in the medical community would be hurt based on your experiences. I don’t blame you one bit for that. The Influenza vaccine is typically only 30-40% effective in any given year. Why? It takes months to make it, and in that time, Influenza has multiple strains that are rapidly mutating, and any one (or multiple) strains can suddenly take off and infect tons of people. We’re constantly behind the curve with Influenza.
Moderna’s vaccine candidate for SARS-CoV-2 is a new kind of vaccine (third generation), which doesn’t require that long, time consuming process of “growing” (technically culturing) viruses. Instead of giving us a weak or dead version of the virus or a harmless virus with the antigens of the virus we want to vaccinate against, it works by just introducing messenger RNA to our body’s ribosomes so they can directly produce the antigens themselves. The immune system reacts to those antigens and produces antibodies and lasting immunity through T-cell and B-cell activity. Because this is so much faster, it can be a really big leap forward in the fight against Influenza and other diseases that rapidly change. We could have a well targeted vaccine produced in weeks instead of months for Influenza, making it far more effective and saving tens of thousands of lives each year.
It does absolutely nothing for your sister. But it can prevent many other people’s sisters and brothers and parents and children from succumbing to illnesses like that. Our goal should be to protect human life as best we can. The vaccines we have against smallpox, polio, pertussis, and other diseases save hundreds of thousands of lives in the US every year. But we still lose people, and so more work needs to be done.