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from the it's-[almost]-all-in-your-head? dept.
More Than Two-Thirds of Adverse COVID-19 Vaccine Events Are Due to Placebo Effect:
The placebo effect is the well-known phenomenon of a person's physical or mental health improving after taking a treatment with no pharmacological therapeutic benefit – a sugar pill, or a syringe full of saline, for example. While the exact biological, psychological, and genetic underpinnings of the placebo effect are not well understood, some theories point to expectations as the primary cause and others argue that non-conscious factors embedded in the patient-physician relationship automatically turn down the volume of symptoms. Sometimes placebo effects can also harm –the so-called "nocebo effect" occurs when a person experiencing unpleasant side effects after taking a treatment with no pharmacological effects. That same sugar pill causing nausea, or that syringe full of saline resulting in fatigue.
In a new meta-analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled COVID-19 vaccine trials, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) compared the rates of adverse events reported by participants who received the vaccines to the rates of adverse events reported by those who received a placebo injection containing no vaccine. While the scientists found significantly more trial participants who received the vaccine reported adverse events, nearly a third of participants who received the placebo also reported at least one adverse event, with headache and fatigue being the most common. The team's findings are published in JAMA Network Open.
"Adverse events after placebo treatment are common in randomized controlled trials," said lead author Julia W. Haas, PhD, an investigator in the Program in Placebo Studies at BIDMC. "Collecting systematic evidence regarding these nocebo responses in vaccine trials is important for COVID-19 vaccination worldwide, especially because concern about side effects is reported to be a reason for vaccine hesitancy."
Haas and colleagues analyzed data from 12 clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. The 12 trials included adverse effects reports from 22,578 placebo recipients and 22,802 vaccine recipients. After the first injection, more than 35 percent of placebo recipients experienced systemic adverse events – symptoms affecting the entire body, such as fever – with headache and fatigue most common at 19.6 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively. Sixteen percent of placebo recipients reported at least one local event, such as pain at site of injection, redness, or swelling.
In comparison after the first injection, 46 percent of vaccine recipients experienced at least one systemic adverse event and two-thirds of them reported at least one local event. While this group received a pharmacologically active treatment, at least some of their adverse events are attributable to the placebo – or in this case, nocebo – effect, as well given that many of these effects also occurred in the placebo group. Haas and colleagues' analysis suggested that nocebo accounted for 76 percent of all adverse events in the vaccine group and nearly a quarter of all local effects reported.
Journal Reference:
Julia W. Haas, Friederike L. Bender, Sarah Ballou, et al. Frequency of Adverse Events in the Placebo Arms of COVID-19 Vaccine Trials [open], JAMA Network Open (DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.43955)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @01:35AM (4 children)
It must be said that whether or not one should take the vaccine depends on one's risk profile. Broadly, the younger you are, the less benefit you receive from the vaccine. It's insane that the government is pushing everyone regardless of age to take it. Pfizer's own experimental trial data showed that more children would as a result of taking the vaccine than of not taking it! Now, you may say it's statistical noise, but even this generous interpretation means it is of no benefit to kids.
(Score: 1) by higuita on Thursday January 20 2022, @02:52AM (2 children)
The idea is that the kids, being unvaccinated, are helping spread the covid for other people, specially those that can't be vaccinated or aren't by choice. shutdown that transmission vector would help everyone... but now omicron changed everything, even vaccinated people are helping spread the virus, luckly this variant is much less dangerous for vaccinated people, while still hit hard unvaccinated people
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 20 2022, @04:01AM (1 child)
The idea that the kids are spreaders was disproved by the data in the pre-Omicron days. It never made sense to mask them or vaccinate them. As you said, now with Omicron, most people -- kids included -- are spreaders of a nothing-burger virus strain.
The idea that children should be burdened (masked all day, stunting their educational and behavioral development in the case of very young kids) to potentially put an old person at a little less at risk is very wrong. We do not sacrifice the young for the old. That is the type of thinking that entitled old people and childless people would make, and boy do we have a lot of them in charge nowadays. Take responsibility for your own health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @02:29PM
It's pretty much demanded that politicians be married, actively attend religious service, and spend a lot of time lying to people. Nobody ever demands they be fertile, morally upright, honest, or unacquisitive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 20 2022, @07:59PM
And the risk profile of the people you're exposed to. I work in and around hotels and restaurants. Even though I'm not in a very exposed position (bean counter behind the scenes) the choices I make do not affect just me. That's why I have my booster shot.