Are vaccines the light at the end of the tunnel?

[cangelmd]

4 minutes ago, LGW59 said:

With all due respect, if one is worried about feeding their kids or paying off credit card debt, why would they be looking to book a cruise?

Whoops sorry, I thought you were responding to a different post. My apology 

I thought the original post was in response to why low paid healthcare workers are not getting vaccinated at the same rate as the “professional” staff. That professional is very much in quotes!l

Edited March 22, 2021 by cangelmd

[Fouremco]

1 hour ago, cangelmd said:

Whoops sorry, I thought you were responding to a different post. My apology 

I thought the original post was in response to why low paid healthcare workers are not getting vaccinated at the same rate as the “professional” staff. That professional is very much in quotes!l

LOL. To add a bit of clarity, @mayleeman was commenting on one of my posts, wherein I expressed surprise that the article on low paid healthcare workers included a statement that employers can mandate vaccinations, but some choose to entice the employees through cash payments, time off, etc., rather than using other methods to enforce the mandate.

 

What @mayleeman expressed was surprise that some employees don't/can't see the benefits of getting vaccinated in and of itself, but only the cash or other reward for doing so. It had nothing to do with healthworkers, whatever their pay.

[UnorigionalName]

On 3/21/2021 at 7:19 AM, TeeRick said:

cangelmd,

Can you comment on this article saying that only 52% of all frontline health care workers in the US have chosen to get the COVID vaccine?  That seems very strange and questionable to me.  And both sad and scary if true.

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/health-care-workers-covid-19-vaccine-half-not-vaccinated/

 

I think the pro-vaccine "camp" needs to be careful and not be seen as irrationally dogmatic.

 

One of the biggest reasons I have seen in frontline health care workers for vaccine hesitancy is the pregnancy question.  

 

While the proposed mechanism seems a little outlandish scientifically, there really is no data and it's a little premature to overly pressure or belittle people for holding this position in my opinion.

 

A lot of frontline health care workers (like nurses) are younger women, and many are fit with no health risk factors, and many of whom desire to eventually have children.

 

For these people, the risk of serious negative outcomes of COVID is really quite low, and the unknown pregnancy issue is enough for them to pause on taking the mRNA vaccine.

 

I feel like, while this may not be the choice I would have made, and definitely not a choice that gets us all out of the pandemic quicker, it is not an irrational choice and I have a hard time being judgemental on this issue.

[TrulyBlonde]

17 minutes ago, UnorigionalName said:

 

I think the pro-vaccine "camp" needs to be careful and not be seen as irrationally dogmatic.

 

One of the biggest reasons I have seen in frontline health care workers for vaccine hesitancy is the pregnancy question.  

 

While the proposed mechanism seems a little outlandish scientifically, there really is no data and it's a little premature to overly pressure or belittle people for holding this position in my opinion.

 

A lot of frontline health care workers (like nurses) are younger women, and many are fit with no health risk factors, and many of whom desire to eventually have children.

 

For these people, the risk of serious negative outcomes of COVID is really quite low, and the unknown pregnancy issue is enough for them to pause on taking the mRNA vaccine.

 

I feel like, while this may not be the choice I would have made, and definitely not a choice that gets us all out of the pandemic quicker, it is not an irrational choice and I have a hard time being judgemental on this issue.

My son-in-law is a lieutenant in the police force and only 20% agreed to take the vaccine when offered. They are young, under 40, and worry about possible unknown risks, such as fertility.

[LGW59]

13 minutes ago, TrulyBlonde said:

My son-in-law is a lieutenant in the police force and only 20% agreed to take the vaccine when offered. They are young, under 40, and worry about possible unknown risks, such as fertility.

Is he blonde?

[TrulyBlonde]

1 minute ago, LGW59 said:

Is he blonde?

Why are you so rude to everyone on the X board? I was giving an example of our many concerns as to why younger people are not getting it. He won't be visiting us until they are vaccinated. 

You are obnoxious!

[LGW59]

2 minutes ago, TrulyBlonde said:

Why are you so rude to everyone on the X board? I was giving an example of our many concerns as to why younger people are not getting it. He won't be visiting us until they are vaccinated. 

You are obnoxious!

It was a joke followed on your comment about going to the salon, really.....

[markeb]

50 minutes ago, UnorigionalName said:

I think the pro-vaccine "camp" needs to be careful and not be seen as irrationally dogmatic.

 

I think this is a very real risk. It seems beyond unlikely that there will be fertility issues, or  teratogenicity, etc., but to fully address that, you're going to need longer term studies. And with what's become a fairly common decision to delay children until later in life, a lot of the US population faces infertility, so demonstrating a difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (not easy, but easier to postulate mechanisms for women), I get it. And I'm not sure there's been much of a effort to address that.

 

And cangelmd's discussion of hourly and contract HCWs really highlights the other issue; if you're self-employed, or hourly with limited benefits, losing two days of work following the vaccine could be financially devastating. And there's a decent group of folks who are essentially on "call-back" status, so if they don't work today, there's no guarantee they'll be called back to work tomorrow. Especially for a lot of long term care workers (I don't want to use the term unskilled, because that's not accurate; they're just not licensed health care providers).

 

I would like to see a lot more engagement, NOT "education", with those groups to understand their concerns and see what can be done to address them. And not assume that the collective 'we' knows the answers!

[REEtired]

39 minutes ago, markeb said:

 

I think this is a very real risk. It seems beyond unlikely that there will be fertility issues, or  teratogenicity, etc., but to fully address that, you're going to need longer term studies. And with what's become a fairly common decision to delay children until later in life, a lot of the US population faces infertility, so demonstrating a difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated people (not easy, but easier to postulate mechanisms for women), I get it. And I'm not sure there's been much of a effort to address that.

 

And cangelmd's discussion of hourly and contract HCWs really highlights the other issue; if you're self-employed, or hourly with limited benefits, losing two days of work following the vaccine could be financially devastating. And there's a decent group of folks who are essentially on "call-back" status, so if they don't work today, there's no guarantee they'll be called back to work tomorrow. Especially for a lot of long term care workers (I don't want to use the term unskilled, because that's not accurate; they're just not licensed health care providers).

 

I would like to see a lot more engagement, NOT "education", with those groups to understand their concerns and see what can be done to address them. And not assume that the collective 'we' knows the answers!

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

[Ken the cruiser]

28 minutes ago, REEtired said:

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

Does this article address some of your fertility issues?

 

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-boston-doctors-address-concerns-around-fertility-pregnancy/2330291/

 

[markeb]

17 minutes ago, REEtired said:

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

There are a couple of physicians who regularly contribute to this thread, and hopefully they’ll reply.  And a couple of folks at least who’ve worked directly in vaccine development and the regulatory process. 
 

Given how these vaccines work, it’s very difficult to envision a realistic mechanism to infertility. And even harder to get to a mechanism for birth defects. I think you’ll find that most people who follow these vaccines would put those risks way below alcohol use, for instance. But you need time to gather data. And if you’re talking about an event that’s incredibly rare in the general population, you’d need a lot of time and a lot of cases to know.  But if there were a lot of early issues, we’d know by now. 
 

I don’t have kids, so there will be no grandkids. But if I did, I’d tell them to get vaccinated. I’d rather my actual kids be protected than worry about a theoretical risk to my theoretical grandkids. And, like it or not (we got married at just under 30 and never had kids), at 30 both infertility and birth defects increase. 
 

And the article Ken posted looks very good as well.

[D C]

3 hours ago, octoberdana said:

I am not an anti-vaccine person by any stretch of the imagination.  However, for many people the vaccines are too new and people are still getting Covid with the vaccine.  Masks are still required for travel, social distancing, PCR tests and quarantine.  More expenses added to travel for the cost of testing and extra insurance.  Nothing at all will change about the travel experience except perceived safety.  And for many that is not enough to get an unproven vaccine yet.  I'm sure over the next year or two more will gladly take it.  

I have yet to see a report about vaccinated people getting covid, especially serious cases.  Do you have a link to report or news story? 

 

How do you figure that the safety is "perceived" and not actual with the extremely high efficacy of the vaccines and the fact that they essentially eliminate hospitalizations and deaths? 

[markeb]

8 minutes ago, D C said:

I have yet to see a report about vaccinated people getting covid, especially serious cases.  Do you have a link to report or news story? 

 

How do you figure that the safety is "perceived" and not actual with the extremely high efficacy of the vaccines and the fact that they essentially eliminate hospitalizations and deaths? 

Google it. None of them had COVID; they tested positive on PCR to SARS-CoV-2, probably to come back to Hawaii. The news articles all treat a positive PCR and COVID-19 as the same thing. 
 

They’re really bad, and I really don’t want to link them here. 

Edited March 23, 2021 by markeb

[cangelmd]

2 hours ago, UnorigionalName said:

 

I think the pro-vaccine "camp" needs to be careful and not be seen as irrationally dogmatic.

 

One of the biggest reasons I have seen in frontline health care workers for vaccine hesitancy is the pregnancy question.  

 

While the proposed mechanism seems a little outlandish scientifically, there really is no data and it's a little premature to overly pressure or belittle people for holding this position in my opinion.

 

A lot of frontline health care workers (like nurses) are younger women, and many are fit with no health risk factors, and many of whom desire to eventually have children.

 

For these people, the risk of serious negative outcomes of COVID is really quite low, and the unknown pregnancy issue is enough for them to pause on taking the mRNA vaccine.

 

I feel like, while this may not be the choice I would have made, and definitely not a choice that gets us all out of the pandemic quicker, it is not an irrational choice and I have a hard time being judgemental on this issue.

You cannot address people’s’ concerns unless you listen to them.

 I apologize if I was too dogmatic. It is hard when you see some of those same young women die, when many of them are obese or have other high risk factors.

There are a number of people who have well thought out reasons for delaying the vaccine - If pray that time will change their minds, or that a combination of natural immunity and others being vaccinated is enough to control the virus and keep them safe.

 I also ask that people with concerns take those to their personal physician or provider and not seek information from random people like me on random websites - that’s not where to get unbiased information to address your personal situation.

[cangelmd]

1 hour ago, REEtired said:

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210112/why-covid-vaccines-are-falsely-linked-to-infertility
 

There’s not much here, but it does address where this notion got started. It may have arisen from the petition of a vaccine skeptic scientist asking for the EU to delay approval. It’s also part of a plot of an Amazon Prime video called Utopia.

This is a good bit removed from my area of expertise, but if I’m reading this correctly the spike protein shares some DNA sequences with a common protein in mammalian placenta, ergo infertility. There are many issues with that idea - but the most important is that there is no solid evidence that infertility is appearing and that is with millions of vaccines given. Also, there was no evidence in animal studies, and while that isn’t the end all, be all, something as basic as a placental protein might well cross species.

 I have never heard of a vaccine causing infertility or of antibodies to placental proteins from any source being a common cause of infertility. There are some uncommon immune related conditions that can cause miscarriage (as opposed to infertility) and anti-sperm antibodies are thought to be a relatively common cause of infertility, so immune related mechanisms are reasonable, just not antibodies to vaccines

[K.T.B.]

7 hours ago, Crazy planning mom said:

Yes, will the US donate or sell to other countries?

 

They plan on giving it not selling it.  LINK

 

That link was posted above, but this stood out in the article (emphasis mine):

 

Psaki said that officials are working to finalize plans to give Mexico 2.5 million doses and give Canada 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not yet been approved in the United States. She said that the U.S. has 7 million “releasable” doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in total and suggested the administration could share extras with other countries in the future.

[d9704011]

6 minutes ago, K.T.B. said:

 

They plan on giving it not selling it.  LINK

 

That link was posted above, but this stood out in the article (emphasis mine):

 

Psaki said that officials are working to finalize plans to give Mexico 2.5 million doses and give Canada 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has not yet been approved in the United States. She said that the U.S. has 7 million “releasable” doses of AstraZeneca vaccine in total and suggested the administration could share extras with other countries in the future.

My understanding is that it’s more like a loan.  The US will ‘give’ Canada 1.5M doses now with the expectation that Canada will replace them in Q2 and/or Q3 when Canada receives shipments of AZ vaccine.

[D C]

1 hour ago, markeb said:

Google it. None of them had COVID; they tested positive on PCR to SARS-CoV-2, probably to come back to Hawaii. The news articles all treat a positive PCR and COVID-19 as the same thing. 
 

They’re really bad, and I really don’t want to link them here. 

That side why I'm asking.  The poster had a concern or belief about people getting Covid after being vaccinated.  I can't find any actual cases of people being sick, hospitalized, or dying after being vaccinated.  

 

Thus I'm curious as to the source of the belief/perception that it's happening. 

 

I see tons of posts on various sites claiming that one can still get covid after being vaccinated, but I have yet to see a source for the information that people are presumably repeating. 

[markeb]

3 minutes ago, D C said:

That side why I'm asking.  The poster had a concern or belief about people getting Covid after being vaccinated.  I can't find any actual cases of people being sick, hospitalized, or dying after being vaccinated.  

 

Thus I'm curious as to the source of the belief/perception that it's happening. 

 

I see tons of posts on various sites claiming that one can still get covid after being vaccinated, but I have yet to see a source for the information that people are presumably repeating. 

Local in Honolulu, and Forbes. I think I googled ‘3 vaccinated people in Hawaii get COVID’. If you can’t find any of the stories, I’ll try to find them again and break down and post them. 
 

You are correct. The stories are positive tests, not disease. 

[UnorigionalName]

2 hours ago, REEtired said:

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

 

It's not really my area of expertise, and It's quite challenging topic to talk about generally because there is so much false statements floating out there.

 

I feel a little guilty from my previous post for not making more clear that at this time the claim is dubious at best, or else I would hesitate to even get into this topic.

 

I do feel like the team-vaccine (which, disclaimer, I am fully a member of) risks alienating people by going the other way and dismissing the concerns off-hand or incorrectly.  It is important to understand people's worry, and go through it in a systematic fashion.  I feel like most of the websites arguing against this effect doesn't have a full grasp of the details, and hence are not effectively arguing, or arguing against a strawman position and further alienating hesitant people.

 

The difficulty in this instance, is that the systematic fashion goes WAY OVER the heads of most of the population and needs sophisticated understanding of molecular biology to really appreciate.

I feel like this website does a good job at describing the full issue:

https://edwardnirenberg.medium.com/are-covid-19-vaccines-going-to-cause-infertility-939bbdb62b64

 

 

It's not my area of expertise, so I don't want to go into it in too much detail, but in broad strokes, to the best of my understanding:

 

1) There was a concern raised of potential fertility effects due to kind-of-shared amino acid sequence.

             1a) The proposed mechanism seemed very dubious and highly unlikely.  However not impossible.

2) However unlikely, it is a significant concern that would have serious repercussions and researchers have done an excellent job exploring it from all angles

3) All the data so far is not seeing an effect in pregnancy, from any stage, of any effect.  So at the very worst, it would be a small subtle effect if any at all.

4) All the indirect data is not seeing any potential evidence that the proposed mechanism works at any step of the way

 

But 5) The critical large dataset look backs that will definitively put a nail in the coffin (I believe) are not available, because the vaccine has not been around long enough to carry pregnancies to term.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by UnorigionalName

[markeb]

33 minutes ago, d9704011 said:

My understanding is that it’s more like a loan.  The US will ‘give’ Canada 1.5M doses now with the expectation that Canada will replace them in Q2 and/or Q3 when Canada receives shipments of AZ vaccine.

I’m assuming no vaccine will physically change hands as once it leaves AZ control, giving it to someone else is difficult. What I’d expect is the US will allow AZ to deliver product currently reserved for USG delivery to Canada and Mexico and grant export permits. And they’ll reciprocate, other than it’s in the US and the wouldn’t have to allow export. That’s kind of ‘inside baseball’, and lost in most discussion. 

[docsneeze]

3 hours ago, REEtired said:

I respectfully ask for more information on the sterile aspect. I have a brother with two adult children (30 and 24) and he absolutely objects to them receiving the vaccine. “I want grands”. I thought at first this was a Facebook post or something but reading this now I’m not so sure.  Please don’t flame me but would the scientific members who have offered so much information please help me understand. Is it really a threat to childbearing young adults. It’s caused quite the situation in our family.  Appreciate your polite input. Thx. 

Highly doubt there is a significant risk in pregnancy, breast-feeding, Male potency, etc.  However, since this is a cruising board trying to promote the positive aspects of cruising, think about this.  A dear friend of mine had trouble getting pregnant so gave up after 5 years of trying.  Started cruising everywhere with her husband for the next five years and became pregnant naturally at 46 and delivered a beautiful child 

 

Moral of story: Cruise more and worry less.  But please vaccinate and stay safe!!!!

[markeb]

11 minutes ago, docsneeze said:

Highly doubt there is a significant risk in pregnancy, breast-feeding, Male potency, etc.  However, since this is a cruising board trying to promote the positive aspects of cruising, think about this.  A dear friend of mine had trouble getting pregnant so gave up after 5 years of trying.  Started cruising everywhere with her husband for the next five years and became pregnant naturally at 46 and delivered a beautiful child 

 

Moral of story: Cruise more and worry less.  But please vaccinate and stay safe!!!!

 

Wish that had been us...

 

Data guy, but there are times I'll take a good anecdote!

[markeb]

I'm fighting a drug induced insomnia tonight/this morning. Good news: Had my second Pfizer last Thursday. Massive COVID arm on Friday! Otherwise fine, and it's gone. Bad news: One of my drugs is a steroid that is associated with insomnia, and some adrenergic "spillover". So I'm not sleepy and aggressively irritable. Great internet combination... 

 

A polite suggestion to the crowd: We're at 155 pages and approaching 4000 replies. And going. And mostly relevant and polite. If you haven't noticed, Anne locked a couple of threads today that got out of control. I'm not a moderator or host on this board; do some of that in another life. But if I can politely suggest that those of us (and that includes me; I can be guilty) that have been here from July can try to bite our tongues and only engage once or not at all when something we think is blatantly stupid gets posted, and let it go after that. Sometimes the poster actually has a legitimate question and they deserve a legitimate, usually not too technical (absolutely right is probably the enemy of not wrong and understandable) reply, and there have been a few people I thought were trolling that ultimately ended up as good contributors to the thread. And the true trolls can just be ignored and let the thread flow around them.

 

But, eventually, arguing, even if you really are right, is just going to escalate, and I'm very happy that @Host Anne and @Host Jazzbeauhave cleaned up the aisle on occasion and let the thread itself ride.

 

I have no enforcement authority. You are free to ignore this post, and if you feel like it, me. But it's been a good discussion, I think both for those of us who are geeks on some part of this whole topic, and for CC members just looking for information, or even to be told the information doesn't exist.

 

And thanks to Ken for starting this. I'm pretty sure you had no idea where this would go when you posed a seemingly simple and innocent question in July!

 

Cheers.

[TeeRick]

9 hours ago, docsneeze said:

Highly doubt there is a significant risk in pregnancy, breast-feeding, Male potency, etc.  However, since this is a cruising board trying to promote the positive aspects of cruising, think about this.  A dear friend of mine had trouble getting pregnant so gave up after 5 years of trying.  Started cruising everywhere with her husband for the next five years and became pregnant naturally at 46 and delivered a beautiful child 

 

Moral of story: Cruise more and worry less.  But please vaccinate and stay safe!!!!

There has been quite a bit of discussion on why the fear of impotency or sterilization or infertility or whatever due to the SPIKE protein expressed in these vaccines.  All good rational arguments against this possibility have been presented here and a few publications too.  But from a very simple standpoint, we have all been exposed to a large number of coronaviruses.  About 30% of us at any given time with the common cold have an active coronavirus.  The SPIKE protein is pretty highly conserved (but not completely).  My educated guess is that long ago the medical world would have discovered a link between SPIKE and infertility if it existed.  And a high percentage of the world population would be affected. We would probably be far less than 8 billion people on the planet. See this link for the analysis on various coronavirus SPIKE proteins.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151553/