Read on Twitter
Next vaccine thingy to address. Getting asked mostly about long term vaccine effects. Important to be straight/honest. Nobody knows yet. Best way to understand the future is to look at past so... 1/n
... if you look at every vaccine ever developed, you see a clear pattern. Side effects are overwhelmingly short term. It is built into how vaccines work. 1-2 doses promote short term immune response that primes us for later. 2/n
You probably don't even think twice about this when you get your flu jab. Let's be honest, who has read the evidence for flu jabs (I haven't). It is such a non-event I roll up and get one, feel a bit rough for 2 days, moan to my wife then get on with life. 3/n
Antivaxxers use 2 examples when trying to scare you about this. Autism is so easy to debunk I'm not going to waste time. Go google the evidence which is rock solid. Narcolepsy/swine flu is the other one. I work in the same hospital as the team who found this link. 4/n
To save time there are good reasons to believe this was a real link (no need to debate. Not point of thread). Occurred in about 1 in 50000. You need millions of people to be vaccinated to pick this up. Conventional non-COVID trial process would never have picked up.. 5/n
... and that is why we don't stop reporting side effects even when vaccine are in widespread use. Additionally these were not in fact "long term" anyway. These diagnoses were all made within months of the vaccine (that is how they made a link). 6/n
Long story short. Vaccines long term effects rare as hens teeth but, I can't tell you they won't happen, I can only tell you the chances are very, very, very low. I can tell you that if the regulators license them the risks to you from COVID-19 will definitely be higher. 7/n
Watch the data yourself as it comes out. Take good counsel. If you are worried, keep an open mind and don't rush. You are unlikely to be offered a vaccine for months. We trust you to make a good decision :)
