BUBBFAN said:
Darth Melon said:
The facts are that the more people in our society that are vaccinated against Covid, the quicker the spread of it dies out, that's the entire purpose of vaccines. Unfortunately, as with most things, our country has politicized the issue when it should be a decision solely based on evidence.
What we know is that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines protect the vaccinated individuals with 94-95% efficacy. It doesn't take a genius to see how valuable that is in stopping the spread of Covid. The most reasonable position against the vaccine is that there is no long-term data on it. If you take time to truly understand how it works, however, I think it's clear that you aren't going to contract some lung disease or have five tumors randomly spring up in your body. Think of it as introducing a protein sequence into your body (i.e. instructions) to prevent the covid spike protein from binding to your cells and making you sick.
All that being said, I have never seen anyone care about any other vaccine (hep B, flu, MMR, etc.) or a medication's side effects with any modicum of seriousness, but now they think "emergency phase" means the vaccine is a massive gamble on safety. I am confident Pfizer wouldn't bank their entire reputation as a company on a vaccine that isn't safe. Additionally, if you are familiar with FDA approval, it is ridiculously slow, and to wait for full approval for the vaccine in order to offer it would cost many more lives and keep this pandemic in effect for far longer than we can tolerate as a country and world.
Pfizer just pulled the plug on it antismoking drug that has been on the market for years because it has been found to have cancer causing qualities. Could it be possible the same type of thing could be found with this vaccine after years of use? Just asking.
That's one place where the concept of this mRNA based vaccine makes quick approval and emergency use authorization much safer. Again, please don't think that "emergency use" means "what have we got to lose? Just try anything!". This is a well researched, well vetted, and rigorously tested vaccine.
To be cancer causing, that is, carcinogenic, you basically have to be capable of interfering with the DNA replication process. That is NOT done on a "genetic" level inside the cell. When a cell decides to replicate, it "unzips" the DNA helix, copies both sides independently, and those copies re-fuse in the only way they can - exactly as before. That's how it's supposed to work.
When the DNA is unzipped (into RNA), the base pairs (those are the "stair steps" you see in DNA) can react. Normally, it'd be almost impossible to get them to do anything but wait around for their matching partner. However, some chemicals can glue them together in unexpected ways. One example is the UV radiation from the sun can weld together two "thymine" base pairs together to create a "thymine dimer". These are likely the basis of skin cancer. They're a mistake in the DNA that the body can't detect. If enough of these are present, they can begin their own replication. A tumor results.
Other chemicals have the potential to varying degrees to interfere with an otherwise reliable process. They cause mutations and are called "mutagens". The ones that specifically create cancerous mutations are "carcinogenic". If Pfizer is recalling a drug, it's likely they're concerned that, in certain conditions, a chemical component in that drug can be unexpectedly converted by the body into a possible carcinogen. Their drug is made of chemical substances that have to be metabolized by the body.
The beauty of the COVID vaccine is that it can't do any of these things. It consists of a fatty solution (like every hospital patient receives since most vitamins can only move around the body when dissolved in fats) as a carrier, and the exact genetic code of the COVID spike. The only thing it can do is interact with a ribosome and build that spike. If it doesn't do that, it just degrades into amino acids.