Antidote for antidote side effects? Don't enter this vicious cycle!

Krishna: Till date, no.

However, let me explain to you why we can manage vaccine side effects in majority of the people.

Clinical researchers study in detail the side effects of any drug or vaccine before bringing it into the public domain. Only if the positives outweigh the negatives, they are approved and introduced.

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But let me also tell you, each person’s biochemistry is different. Just because 95% of the people have no side effects or minimal manageable side effects, rest of the 5% cannot get assurances that they don’t suffer any severe side effects.

And just because 5% of the people suffer from them, you cannot stop the rest of the people from getting the benefits from drugs and vaccines.

Did you know that researchers estimate vaccines have saved 154 million lives over the past half-century (1)?

An international team of health and medical researchers including workers at the WHO, working with economists and modeling specialists, has found that the use of vaccines to prevent or treat disease has saved the lives of approximately 154 million people over the past half-century (1).

But you get a very bad name because of these 5% people who suffer from them.

Despite the fact that the side effects of vaccines are extremely short lived. They usually involving acute, easily identified symptoms like allergic reaction, fever (from the positive immune reaction,) as well as dangerous but rare acute reactions found in specifically susceptible people (like anaphylaxis, the blood clots seen with some of the covid-19 vaccines, or the heart disorder found rarely in young men.) All of these reactions happen very soon after vaccination and are usually manageable. That is why the hospitals and health care workers keep you under observation for some time after giving you the vaccine.

The course of action in these incredibly rare instances of dangerous reactions or side effects is to treat the results. The side effects are usually caused by an immune overreaction, and there are treatments for them.

Real and theoretical risks of vaccine adjuvants (an adjuvant is an ingredient used in some vaccines that helps create a stronger immune response in people receiving the vaccine; adjuvants help vaccines work better and their safety is tested) comprise various local acute or chronic inflammation with formation of abscesses and nodules; induction of hypersensitivity to the host's own tissues, producing autoimmune arthritis, amyloidosis, anterior uveitis; cross-reactions with human antigens etc.

These can be treated or managed.

Serious side effects are very rare and therefore companies don’t go for antidotes for “medically manageable” side effects. Moreover vaccine is not a deadly poison to have an ‘antidote’ (counter poison)!

(Antidote means (3):

1. a remedy to counteract the effects of poison - needed the antidote for the snake's venom

2. something that relieves, prevents, or counteracts an antidote to boredom or headache)

Yes, you already have drugs to relieve pain, or swelling, or fever or inflammation, or severe immune reactions ( steroids) . There have also been reports that vaccination response was delayed in patients on chronic systemic steroids(4) . Based on previous reports, patients on high dose of systemic steroids have reduced immune response after vaccination, but this has not been demonstrated in all patients. The timing of vaccination and steroid use may also affect the vaccine response (4).

People who took steroids also face side effects (5). Side effects of steroid tablets

Taking steroid tablets for less than 3 weeks is unlikely to cause any significant long-term side effects. But you may get some side effects if you need to take them for longer, at a high dose or if you need frequent courses.

One of my cousins who took steroids in the initial stages of COVID -19 infection is still facing the side effects even after three years! If you take antidotes and if they too cause side effects, what do you do? You again have to take antidotes for antidote side effects! Where will this all end? You enter a phase of never ending vicious cycle. Is this really necessary?

Rare but serious cardiac disease side effects have been linked to COVID-19 vaccinations, especially in young people. However, in most cases researchers found very little evidence of an association between vaccination and mortality, except for in females after a non mRNA vaccine, but showed an increased risk of death following “actual COVID-19 infection” (2).

Covid-19 kills in most of the cases, not vaccine. You can bear or manage some small side effects, if they happen at all, to save your life from a deadly disease, can’t you?

Footnotes:

1. http://Andrew J Shattock et al, Contribution of vaccination to improved survival and health: modelling 50 years of the Expanded Programme on Immunization, The Lancet (2024). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00850-X
2. Risk of death following COVID-19 vaccination or positive SARS-CoV-2...
3. Definition of ANTIDOTE
4. Steroid injections in pain management: influence on coronavirus dis...
5. Steroid tablets