I fully support the use of vaccines, but I worry about possible long-term side effects with the new vaccines. How can anyone say with any confidence there will be no long-term consequences with vaccines that have been developed so rapidly?
Hi,
Thank you for posting a proper question about a reasonable doubt.
This is the same for every new drug: we have to wait time to be sure of long times effect. This is the so-named "phase IV" of a clinical trial, the continuous pharmacovigilance about the long time effect.
In the past some disasters happened (I.e. talidomide), and every error teached us how to develop safer and safer drugs. This shit had been properly tested (please do not belive what you read there), but like every new drug we cannot be completely sure about long time effects, we can just reasonably predict that it is safe.This goes the same also for every new material (i.e. asbestos) or food or technology. We as humanity can only learn from errors and try to develop better and safer shit. We made errors, but they are relatively rare and are becoming rarer as time pass. And they WERE NOT MADE ON PORPOUSE.
Before injecting I checked some info (I have found besides other things a degree thesis on novel vaccines that was pretty instructive, I would share but it's in italian) and I have come to the conclusion that the mrna vaccine is probably safer that traditional vaccines (that are, of course, safe).
This is due to the fact that they have lesser additives (they are not poisons like stated here, but they can cause some allergic reaction when you inject a great number of people, so the lesser the better), have less cross-reactions and they cannot cause the covid disease (some type of vaccine can cause the disease, although it's very very rare).
On the long term, the most probable thing is that you will lose the temporary immunity you had acquired thanks to the vaccine. And stop. This thing degrades fast, and will affect only some of your fat cells of the arm and the memory of your immune system. Those feared of "reprogramming" are not only incompetent in this matters, but also american zoomers who didn't see
beatiful cartoons series instructing 90's kids about the immune system and the transcription mechanism.
On the contrary you can read there about my collegue losing her smell and taste after a covid paucisymptomatic infection in march, and for those who develops pneumonia some grade of permanent polmunary damage is not uncommon even in younger patients, also in cases that did never need pulmonary support.
You can choose the risk but you cannot completely avoid it. This is like wearing an armor made of unknown material to combat against a known and dangerous enemy.