[Goose]

[If they think the vaccine caused someone to get transverse myelitis, that would be bad news. Neurological complications like Guillain-Barre and transverse myelitis are rare events generally, and may be associated with vaccinations. If they can't find any other reason for it.....hard to say. N of 1. But worth pausing. If one in 30,000 gets transverse myelitis, that vaccine is definitely getting pulled. If one in 300,000 does, probably the same.

During a pandemic, safety should be paramount. You're ideally injecting most of your populace in a short period of time. If a small fraction end up paralyzed or dead or in constant pain or ....., that could be a lot of people. Especially for a virus that kills less than a half percent of the people that get it, and a significantly lower percentage than that for younger and healthier people who will still need to be vaccinated.

I agree with what you are saying here. This virus, while causing major numbers of deaths, is still not a "big problem" to most people who get it. The vaccine has to be significantly "safer" than the alternative of just getting the virus.

One very large problem that is still in play is the nature and duration of immunity. If a vaccine conveys only a short-lived immunity people will have to take it multiple times to avoid getting COVID-19. If it is similar to the flu, you would need it once a year. The repeated administration requirement and a cumulative risk would require a vaccine that is even "safer" than something you take once in your life. Unfortunately, we don't know much about the immunity duration for COVID-19 since the disease has not yet been in existence for a full year.

We will know even less experimentally about the immunity conferred by a vaccine, although there would be reasons to assume it was similar to getting the disease. This situation will make the decision process even more difficult for individuals at "low" risk from COVID-19. They just won't know what their immunity duration will be. If you are "probably going to get it anyway", why bother?

[Goose]

[If they think the vaccine caused someone to get transverse myelitis, that would be bad news. Neurological complications like Guillain-Barre and transverse myelitis are rare events generally, and may be associated with vaccinations. If they can't find any other reason for it.....hard to say. N of 1. But worth pausing. If one in 30,000 gets transverse myelitis, that vaccine is definitely getting pulled. If one in 300,000 does, probably the same.

During a pandemic, safety should be paramount. You're ideally injecting most of your populace in a short period of time. If a small fraction end up paralyzed or dead or in constant pain or ....., that could be a lot of people. Especially for a virus that kills less than a half percent of the people that get it, and a significantly lower percentage than that for younger and healthier people who will still need to be vaccinated.

I agree with what you are saying here. This virus, while causing major numbers of deaths, is still not a "big problem" to most people who get it. The vaccine has to be significantly "safer" than the alternative of just getting the virus.

One very large problem that is still in play is the nature and duration of immunity. If a vaccine conveys only a short-lived immunity people will have to take it multiple times to avoid getting COVID-19. If it is similar to the flu, you would need it once a year. The repeated administration requirement and a cumulative risk would require a vaccine that is even "safer" than something you take once in your life. Unfortunately, we don't know much about the immunity duration for COVID-19 since the disease has not yet been in existence for a full year.

We will know even less experimentally about the immunity conferred by a vaccine, although there would be reasons to assume it was similar to getting the disease. This situation will make the decision process even more difficult for individuals at "low" risk from COVID-19. They just won't know what their immunity duration will be. If you are "probably going to get it anyway", why bother?