>This removes any opportunity to nudge more people toward getting the shots, he added.“The whole idea behind a good vaccination campaign is making not getting vaccinated the harder choice, and getting vaccinated the easy choice. Right now it’s the exact opposite — it’s easier not to be vaccinated."
So people are supposed to be "nudged" into it? And they are supposed to do it because it is easier, as opposed to safer? So have these people already written off the idea of convincing people that vaccinating is the safer alternative?
I mean, it appears that they are not even trying. But I guess it makes sense, because convincing people is harder, and when you can just put mandates for everything in place, and there is no opposition from people, it is much easier.
It is ridiculous really. I have been vaccinated with Moderna, which didn't even bring anything else to the market as far as I know.
Listening to these people wanting to nudge others I wish I didn't get vaccinated.
I think the damage Covid can cause is significant, but this is an experimental treatment. To my disappointment I didn't get magnetic, but doctors claiming there cannot be any unforseen dangers are lying to you.
If someone forces the vaccine on you, they should be liable for any damages. Perhaps not the manufacturer but government in this case.
I´m less worried by vaccine safety than the vaccine strategy. You don´t normally vaccinate in an ongoing pandemic, usually you vaccinate when a virus is not in circulation. By vaccinating in this way, in an already infected population, you add selection pressure that creates an advantage for more contagious vaccine-resistant strains. This is the real danger in my opinion, but of course side effects of this new vaccine technology can emerge. We´ve already seen Pfizers vaccine downgraded to 64% efficacy in Israel due to the Delta-variant, so vaccine resistant mutations are a real thing.
There´s one scientist that predicted this development perfectly, Geert Vanden Bosschen. He´s the only one so far that has made correct predictions in this pandemic. He said that mass-vaccinating during ongoing pandemic will result in rising numbers of cases among fully vaccinated people a couple of months after vaccination, caused by selective pressure leading to vaccine resistant mutations dominating. He also warns strongly against vaccinating children. But he praises the new vaccine technology, so he´s not antivaxx.
> But he praises the new vaccine technology, so he´s not antivaxx.
It's sad how this has to be stated every time one brings up criticism of the current vaccine strategy. For many people there's only two possible stances: "I've already taken the vaccine" and "I'm an anti-vaxxer". I also remember that back when Trump was boasting "We'll have the vaccine soon! It'll be the greatest vaccine. And then we can all go back to normal!" there was a healthy skepticism on the left of promoting nation-wide use of a rushed vaccine, but as soon as Biden took over this disappeared.
Yes, I think Mareks disease is theorized to be a prime example for this. It is deadly by now for any unvaccinated chickens and it probably was caused by a leaky vaccine and the Covid vaccines are too.
What's the alternative? Let the pandemic rage on for a few more years, wait till everyone has been affected or dead, and then vaccinate?
Oh wait, that will have the exact same problem, because as more and more people get natural immunity the same selective pressure arises causing new variants. See cold or flu viruses.
Congratulations, you've just caused much more suffering, death and economic damage and achieved nothing by waiting with vaccinations. Good job!
> He´s the only one so far that has made correct predictions in this pandemic.
How likely do you think is it, that a vast field of virologists, immunologists, molecular biologists, medical doctors and scientists in general are all wrong but this one person is right?
> There´s one scientist that predicted this development perfectly, Geert Vanden Bosschen. He´s the only one so far that has made correct predictions in this pandemic. He said that mass-vaccinating during ongoing pandemic will result in rising numbers of cases among fully vaccinated people a couple of months after vaccination,
No, its not one scientist who got that right; this was widely flagged that as a likely outcome if the deployment was not so rapid and universal as to essentially curtail significant community spread before that occurred, which is why there was so much imperative from experts for rapid and universal deployment and so much criticism of the slow speed and uneveness of the actual deployment.
> He also warns strongly against vaccinating children.
Given the reason for the other risk (which isn’t “vaccination” but “incomplete vaccination which leaves an large unvaccinated population in contact with the vaccinated population”) that seems.
> But he praises the new vaccine technology, so he´s not antivaxx.
Supporting vaccination in the abstract but arguing that we shouldn’t actually vaccinate people with the actual real vaccines that exist in the actual real circumstances that exist is…not an uncommon antivax position, so, while the conclusion of this argument might still be true, the premise offered is not sufficient to justify the conclusion.
What if there's unpredictable long term consequences? Like, turns out XYZ compounds gives cancer but that only become detectable after 18+ months. Although I admit I don't know if regular trials would uncover these either.
I have no dog in this fight, I'm just providing a possible answer.
All of the components have been used before, these things aren't that new.
mRNA tech itself has been in development since the 80s, and for immunisation since about 2012. It's gone from the body within a few hours AFAICT. If you're that worried, go for the J&J or AZ vaccines, which are more 'traditional' and don't use mRNA.
Being new or not is not the crucial point. What matters is that it's in the interest of the society at large that as many people as possible are vaccinated quickly. This might present certain incentives to treat possible side effects in a political way, basically downplaying them.
I'm not saying this is what is happening now, but it has definitely happened in the past. When you read the history of Pandemrix[0][1], you will note that:
> In August 2010 the Swedish MPA issued a statement which included the following: "An investigation is ongoing, but any relationship between the vaccination and the reported symptoms can not be concluded."
and:
> In the Irish parliament, TD Clare Daly commented that, “The Health Service Executive (HSE) decided to purchase Pandemrix and continued to distribute it even after they knew it was dangerous and untested, and before most of the public in Ireland received it.”
When we're talking about "we don't know the long term effects", it's certainly a crucial point, because it shows that we can have a good idea of the long term effects already.
I agree there's likely to be huge political pressure to downplay side effects, however the scale of this rollout and the attention it's getting worldwide mean that it's going to be very unlikely such things sneak through, simply due to the size of the vaccinated population.
Downplaying the side effects is always a negative, people should be informed.
The fear is that people are irrational, and when informed will overreact and not get vaccinated. This fear is not unfounded, so they downplay the side effects. Then people notice this downplaying, lose confidence anyway, and don't get vaccinated.
> What if there's unpredictable long term consequences?
That same question can be asked about covid so I don't understand how this single point brings anything to the discussion. We don't know the future. We don't know the future vaccine effects just like we don't know the future for covid effects.
We do definitely know that the effects of covid (even if you discount them by the fact that not everyone gets covid) are much worse than the vaccines. Everything points to the vaccines being much better than the disease.
That was my point from the beginning, but you still cannot exclude risk completely. This is why manufacturers are explicitly exempt from responsibility of damages. Why would that be needed then? Why do people getting the vaccine need to wait a while before being released? Because of the unknowns that I meant.
And it doesn't even have to be intrinsic to the vaccine, it could be a manufacturing error like there was with Polio.
As I said, I am vaccinated, but this reaction and militancy really puts me off and frankly, I think it is a bit stupid. Not your comment though.
Of course you can't exclude the risk, but there is _no_ usable information in that fear. Just because something can happen down the line, doesn't mean it's actionable. What if these vaccines start giving us super human strength in a few years? Can we discount that possibility? Why or why not? Should I act on that possibility today?
All we can consider is _actionable_ information. All information so far points to the side-effects of the vaccines causing problems at negligible levels compared to the the side-effects of getting covid. That is information we can use and it really only supports one conclusion.
I believe this to be actionable enough that the decision to take it or not should remain an individual decision and I believe that is the extend what people demand. Nobody is talking about throwing it off the market because it isn't deemed safe.
How so? You can still get covid. Even the people vaccinated can get covid. Besides there is nowhere where everyone is vaccinated but you anyway. Some places have high rates some places have low rates. So your hypothetical situation just doesn't apply anywhere.
Anyway if you'd like an anecdote, I have a friend in Spain who just got the delta variant along with his 4 friends a few days ago. He was about to get his second shot yesterday (obviously it's postponed now) and his 4 friends were all completely vaccinated when they got sick.
That's traditionally not how vaccines work. The side effects and consequences are short term, as in less than one month. The substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.
Off the top of my uneducated head, the one theoretical concern would be giving yourself an autoimmune disease, where your immune system attacks something it shouldnt. Like mistraining a model. Barring that, it seems general consensus is that long term consequences are infinitely unlikely.
>The side effects and consequences are short term, as in less than one month. The substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.
I am not sure this idea of "traditional vaccine" is true. The contents of Vaccines can be drastically different. And you cannot generalise that.
> substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.
You can generalize that traditionally vaccines don't last in the body.
In this specific case, you can argue the lipid layer throws a wrench in assumptions, and then the onus is on you to prove some proposed mechanism for long term effect. Because the protein the vaccine targets is not human, the risk of the immune system turning on the body after training was rhetorical, because if the antibodies were targeting our body, it would have come up by now.
Some toxins take years, or decades to manifest themselves.
As an example, see lead, asbestos, mercury, or other heavy metals poisonings.
As Taleb says, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
As a specific point regarding these vaccines, we don't really know the long term effect of the lipid nano particles used in them. And we do know that it took 20 years to create them, because all previous lipid nano particles tried were proven to be highly toxic.
AFAICT this applies only to Pfizer and Moderna, which are mRNA vaccines. The J&J and Astra vaccines are more 'traditional' and use adenovirus as a delivery mechanism.
No, I find those even more risky. The Novovax one in particular has a unique set or risks (circulating spike protein), combined with lower efficacy (because it doesn't stimulate T cell immunity).
After thorough analysis I took the Moderna one. If you're above 25, the risk from Covid is bigger than any vaccine risk. But I do assume I also took some risk with the Moderna shot. It's basically choosing the lesser evil.
Indeed, and these stand out. The current vaccination run is under constant, global scrutiny though, so I would hope that such things are unlikely to sneak through this time.
> but with a larger population, any adverse effects are likely to be noticed.
With time. Not every problem shows up immediately.
I'm vaccinated but I respect some people who decided against it.
My logic is easy enough to explain: the virus have bigger known side effects than the vaccine and I have personally no reason to belive that there won't be even more and bigger unknown unknowns with the virus than with the vaccine.
Not blindly trusting governments, media and big pharma however doesn't sound crazy to me. After all the worst crimes and crimes against humanity haven't been done by catholic inquisitors or the armed neighbor next door but by governments, and typically not in active war but in steady state after occupation or even typically by the country people belong to.
As for media: how anyone here can trust anyone of them blindly is beyond me. I actively support some of them but I always try to ask myself what really happened.
> Not blindly trusting governments, media and big pharma however doesn't sound crazy to me.
> As for media: how anyone here can trust anyone of them blindly is beyond me.
I think this is a problem in our current society, rightly or wrongly a lot of people don't trust government or many mainstream information resources, but unfortunately instead of becoming rationally sceptic, a lot go over to blatant misinformation and conspiracy.
> I think this is a problem in our current society, rightly or wrongly a lot of people don't trust government or many mainstream information resources, but unfortunately instead of becoming rationally sceptic, a lot go over to blatant misinformation and conspiracy.
Yep.
As I have tried to explain one of my friends: even if you assume every official is prone to lying something can be read from their words and actions.
When I see doctors who have 5-7 more years of studies in the field than me lining up for the vaccine that is a useful signal.
Same with the military and the politicians.
Then there is Ivermectin who according to some could have eradicated Covid-19 if it wasn't for Big Pharmas stranglehold on media and politicians.
Well in that case COVID-19 should be eradicated in Cuba, Iran and Russia now as none of those suffers the same stranglehold from Big Pharma.
> When I see doctors who have 5-7 more years of studies in the field than me lining up for the vaccine that is a useful signal.
Let me share some similar signals that I see.
Let us talk about the VAERS database. I wonder why is it not made in such a way that it can collect high quality data? Like for example, make strict mandates to the healthcare people to document each and every AEFI that they notice.
But right now, the covid vaccines are not even in the list of vaccines whos events are reportable under law [1].
And [2] where they choose not to enforce data collections in name of promoting vaccinations.
So when the authorities opt not to collect data, it is a big red signal for me.
>Well in that case COVID-19 should be eradicated in Cuba, Iran and Russia now as none of those suffers the same stranglehold from Big Pharma.
Well I guess anywhere in the world, the authorities will be taking a big risk by going against W.H.O. Not sure, just something that could be the case..Can you show some citation to show Ivermectin was being used in these places and found to be of no use?
> I wonder why is it not made in such a way that it can collect high quality data?
Because it's made in such a way that it can collect all data from self-reporting as well. It's meant to be a tool find signals in the noise, not be restrictive or definitive.
> But right now, the covid vaccines are not even in the list of vaccines whos events are reportable under law
That list seems to be things which are legally mandated reporting -
"In addition, healthcare professionals are encouraged to report any clinically significant or unexpected events"
That doesn't mean other things can't be or aren't being reported.
> And [2] where they choose not to enforce data collections in name of promoting vaccinations.
What part of that link says that? Hard to tell.
> Well I guess anywhere in the world, the authorities will be taking a big risk by going against W.H.O.
Why? What sort of risk do you think it might be? What sort of power do you think the WHO has to suppress effective treatments in countries around the world?
Ivermectin, like HCQ before it, appears to have been latched onto by the antivax crowd with no evidence to support it. We do have some effective treatments now, like tocilizumab and dexamethsone, supported with good clinical evidence.
>Because it's made in such a way that it can collect all data from self-reporting as well.
Obviously, I know that, which is why I am asking the question.
>It's meant to be a tool find signals in the noise,
How does it make sense to mix signal and noise together, and then trying to separate them on the other end? To me it it appears that it gives an opportunity to reject all the signal as noise. We can see that happening already, where news article that report on data showing up in VAERS calling it as unreliable because it is self reported.
Also, I asked specifically about not strictly mandating reporting of all AEFI events, you seemed to have ignored that important part of the question. So basically instead of allowing any one to do the reporting, allow only the
healthcare provider who administrated the vaccine to do it.
Also, some studies have estimated that only 1% of events are reported. So one can only speculate the actual numbers?
Why throwaway such an important body of data? Does not make any sense at all.
>That doesn't mean other things can't be or aren't being reported.
Basically the document makes a distinction between legally reportable and merely encouraged. I am not sure why that distinction is there in first place, but the concern is that covid vaccines, even though under EUA, fall under the latter and not in the former.
>What part of that link says that? Hard to tell.
Sorry, here.
>OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022.
>Why? What sort of risk do you think it might be? What sort of power do you think the WHO has to suppress effective treatments in countries around the world?
Basically since W.H.O is considered an authority, if a local authority takes a measure that contradict W.H.O, and later it turn out to be sub-optimal, then the local body will find it hard to justify in front of the people, and any political opposition. It is a risk most local authorities will not take, as I see it.
> Why throwaway such an important body of data? Does not make any sense at all.
Presumably it's not the only body of data, though, particularly when we're talking about worldwide, rather than just the USA. Side effects are detected in other countries too.
> OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects
So ... you're not required to report suspected covid-vaccine health problems your employees might be having. It seems a poor fit for something you'd want employers to do anyway? Much more suited to the healthcare system.
> if a local authority takes a measure that contradict W.H.O, and later it turn out to be sub-optimal, then the local body will find it hard to justify in front of the people
Good reason to stick to well-evidenced treatments then, regardless of the WHO, as if more reason was needed.
> doctors claiming there cannot be any unforseen dangers are lying to you
We have to sign a paper that we cannot hold anyone liable for any potential harm that might come from the vaccine (any time in the future). 5.6 million people have signed it and got the vaccine.
why do they need convincing, when it is quite self-evident that getting vaccinated, if you can, is better?
If the people holding out won't listen to evidence, no amount of evidence-based convincing is going to change their mind. So the alternative should be to "nudge" by policy.
Congratulations to America. You´re heading full speed towards a Nazi-style nation. Take your vaccine, you deserve it. Then afterwards, take a look at Pfizers criminal history of bribery and unethical behaviour:
It's definitely not everyone in the US. I keep thinking that it's around a third of the population that is extremely susceptible to propaganda. There's huge overlap between wokeness and vaccine eagerness, and there's huge overlap between conservatism and vaccine hesitancy (aka not being persuaded to undergo needless medical procedures)
We've banned this account for using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of ideology, because it destroys what the site is supposed to be for. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
As a healthy, 30 something year old living in the UK the only reason I took the vaccine (both doses) was in the civic duty which said that once a certain percentage of the population was done, then restrictions could end. Now it looks like that's kinda happening in a week but even so the BMA and others are calling this irresponsible and there's an unsaid expectation of further lockdowns. I'm really starting to wonder why I bothered with the vax. This will just go on and on.
There´s only one reason for taking the vaxx, to protect yourself from severe disease. You should not take it because you want restrictions to end, it has been clear for a long time that the restrictions will not go away. If you´re young and healthy, and maybe even already had covid, you benefit as much from the vaccine as you do from a tinfoil hat.
I already had covid. Extremely mild. The first vax does had me in bed for a day, missed work with chills, shakes and the worst "hangover" ever. The other main reason I got it is that I want to see my parents (abroad) and the vaccine status will no doubt factor into that. Not for another couple of months hopefully but I haven't seen them in nearly two years.
In the UK, most people getting into hospitals now with severe Covid are young and unvaccinated. So while yes, the risks are much lower for young people, there are enough of them getting seriously ill.
Not much different from how influenza also gets some young people in hospitals then? We don´t vaccinate young people against influenza either, because the risk is so low. Let the children build up natural immunity, they´ll benefit from that in the future. Vaccinate people at risk, elderly and sick people. Just like we always do. Changing strategy from what´s already known to work, when the stakes are this high, is very reckless.
The population has built in immunity to influenza. There's a combination of health risk and spread potential, and if you continue to limit the benefit to only one of the two, it's easy to distort the conversation in a way that benefits your point of view.
>Let the children build up natural immunity
If a vaccine is safer, why? Framing a covid infection as "natural" is pretty twisted. It's not like primates have been developing immunity to this strain of bat poop for millennia. Pretending a natural infection is better because its natural is reckless. I bet, and I could be wrong, most people who had chicken pox wish they had the vaccine instead.
> We don´t vaccinate young people against influenza either, because the risk is so low.
We do. You might want to read up on why the seasonal influenza is a seasonal influenza and how it is different from a new, pandemic strain. There is a reason children are ill all the time - their immune systems are naive with respect to (almost) all strains of influenza. That's also the reason the 1918 flu killed predominantly young people - it is conjectured that their immune systems hadn't seen the new strain yet, while older people had.
As of yesterday (2021-07-12), there were 563 people admitted to the hospital with Covid in the UK [1]. If 80% are young and unvaccinated (and I think the proportion is higher), that's 450 severly ill people going into hospital per day.
Doesn't sound much like the flu to me.
Even if "these young people" (makes me sound like a dinosaur, though in fact I'm in that cohort) don't care about that risk, they are wasting doctors' time, and taking resources away from overstrained health system.
So maybe I'd say: if you don't want to get vaccinated, without an overwhelming reason, then stay at home (so as not to risk infecting others) and if you do get sick, don't go to the hospital (as it was your risk you were taking).
> There´s only one reason for taking the vaxx, to protect yourself from severe disease.
My second reason to get vaccinated was to slow down spread as far as reasonably possible. Ergo, there are more reasons to get vaccinated than just that one you mentioned.
> If you´re young and healthy, [...] you benefit as much from the vaccine as you do from a tinfoil hat.
Bullshit. A tinfoil hat doesn't protect you against a covid infection a few weeks down the line, a vaccine does. And even though the likelyhood of severe symptoms for COVID-19 is generally lower for younger people, it's still beneficial to get vaccinated due to the lower chance on extreme symptoms and 'long covid'.
The risk of severe illness in healthy people is extremely low. Here in Sweden it´s less than 0.2%. If you already had covid the risk is something like 0.00008% to even get infected. In my view, both of those numbers are so low that protection from vaccination is equal to a tinfoil hat. Only an idiot vaccinates himself for a virus with 0.2% risk of severe disease.
Now, there might be a difference in what we call "healthy people" here in Sweden. Because we´re not fat.
So, I think you're trying to say the risk is low, but non-zero. And getting vaccinated would seem to lower this further. Making it more valuable than a tin foil hat?
Other than not wanting to get the illness yourself, there is another major reason to get the vaccine. The more that people get the illness, then the more likely the virus is to evolve variants. Regardless of how bad or not bad it is now, a future variant could always be much, much worse. And there is just no way to know if or when that might happen.
As many people as possible getting vaxxed is the best way to prevent some future deadly variant. Getting it naturally is and surviving does not help in this regard, because that is where most (all?) of the variants come from to begin with.
> There´s only one reason for taking the vaxx, to protect yourself from severe disease.
This is nonsense. There are several, and they include helping to protect other people both directly by reducing spread and indirectly by not acting as a host for potential variants.
> it has been clear for a long time that the restrictions will not go away
> there's an unsaid expectation of further lockdowns
Because the disease is still running rampant, unfortunately, as we still have a way to go with the vacciantion effort
> I'm really starting to wonder why I bothered with the vax.
Why? You've cut down on the chances of getting the disease, you've cut down the chances you'll be a vector that gets other people infected, and you've cut down the chance you'll be the source of a new variant.
> I'm really starting to wonder why I bothered with the vax. This will just go on and on.
Don't worry. This will not go on an on, we're just living through the death rattles of the pandemic completely dominating global, collective, and media awareness over the past year and a half. Of course the BMA are concerned: they are doctors, they have taken the worst of the pandemic, and they just want this damn thing to stop. The difference is that for them, this damned thing is people needing medical attention, and they can only wish it were possible for everything to just bloody stop if that would release them with dealing with the worst of COVID-19. But it will get better, with minor ups and downs.
SARS-CoV-2 is of course not going anywhere. There will continue to be new variants, the media will for a while loudly (and clumsily) echo any clinical paper about breakthrough infections, or increases of cases in this or that population, or collapsed ICUs [0]. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers will try to lobby governments into buying and administering newly developed booster doses for this or that variant of concern. The new variant may or may not really be truly concerning for public health, but their business is manufacturing and selling pharmaceuticals, so fair enough.
But in any case, once a critical mass of the population is vaccinated, COVID-19 will gradually become irrelevant. Virtually everyone will have significant immunity, a few people will catch it and think it's just a cold, fewer people will catch it and develop a nasty flu-like case which will be correctly diagnosed as COVID-19, and there will even be nasty and even deadly cases in vaccinated people. But there are nasty and deadly cases of flu, and even nasty and deadly cases of common cold viruses. However, as the media little by little gets bored of making a big thing every time this happens, the epidemiology of COVID-19 will slowly become only of interest to people actually working in the field — just like they have been silently studying the epidemiology of every seasonal flu strain without any media attention.
[0] For Spain at least, I can find you news about collapsed ICUs... during pre-2019 flu seasons!
I will be willing to admit I am wrong if, in a given country, we're still doing whatever-variant 6 months after the vaccination of school-age children is completed.
If it's virtually zero risk and it protects others, that's pretty justified. You know, like how we already take into account more than just individual risk when we vaccinate children.
Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.
FYI - there have been about 30 kids in hospital in the UK with covid in the last month, so the risks are non-negligible.
It would be great if we knew that, but we don't. We usually have long testing periods, but we didn't this time, for reasons that remain unclear.
> Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.
Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?
> We usually have long testing periods, but we didn't this time, for reasons that remain unclear
A pandemic ravaging the globe doesn't seem clear?
> Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?
Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand.
I'm surprised this is even a discussion on a place like HN... I guess I'm feeding the trolls...
> A pandemic ravaging the globe doesn't seem clear?
A fear campaign ravaged the globe. If there hadn't been a fear campaign, I don't think anybody but doctors and immunologists and such would have been aware anything significant was happening. Similar to previous seasonal illnesses that were technically pandemics, but no normal person recalls doing anything about it. For example, ask people who are old enough what they remember about the HK flu in 1968.
> Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand
I'm still waiting for the example from the past where we administered a vaccine to someone, saying to them "this is not to protect you, since you are not at risk from this virus, but it is just to protect someone out there, we don't know whom". Are you able to provide such an example?
> If there hadn't been a fear campaign, I don't think anybody but doctors and immunologists and such would have been aware anything significant was happening.
So the excess deaths, the health services stretched to capacity, this is nothing, nobody would have noticed at all?
I think this is a very, very strong claim given the numbers and would take some extraordinary evidence to back up.
At an individual clinical level they may not be at significant risk, but the justification for vaccinating them is not about individual clinical risks but public health. As far as I can tell, the potential risks of vaccinating children are overwhelmingly outweighed by the potential public health risks of them spreading the virus, acting as a reservoir, or suffering severe cases of the disease, however rare.
That is, unless we want to take "the long road" to the scenario I mentioned above. Yes, we could expect this to be eventually over by waiting until the population develops significant immunity because children usually catch the disease at school, spread it around, and the more vulnerable people in the population are little by little reduced in numbers. However, I personally prefer the vaccination shortcut.
> At an individual clinical level they may not be at significant risk, but the justification for vaccinating them is not about individual clinical risks but public health.
This is a very serious mistake. The duty of a doctor is to the patient in front of them and no one else. The question they have to consider is, is this proposed treatment more likely than not to help this particular patient? If so, the doctor advises the patient to undergo the procedure. If not, they advise against it. If a doctor is considering anything other than the health of the person presently before them, they need to make that clear, that they are treating a herd rather than a specific patient.
> As far as I can tell, the potential risks of vaccinating children are overwhelmingly outweighed by the potential public health risks
That's not the calculus. The question is the risk/benefit for them individually. And, I will add, the risk for even just them as individuals is not known. Some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, e.g. https://odysee.com/@OracleFilms:1/Dr.-Sucharit-Bhakdi-Oracle...
You're talking about the duty of a doctor with regards to their individual patient, but I'm taking about the duty of public health agencies with regards to the population as a whole.
But fair enough, let's focus on the individual patient. The fact that a child is now 10 years old and would most likely suffer from asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 if they were to catch it today says nothing about their possible condition if they catch it in 20, 30, or 40 years time. As long as SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in the population, and it will be for the near future, deciding not to vaccinate a child because they are at low risk at this very moment is at best wishful thinking about their future, and at worst an active hope that they catch the virus and develop some level of immunity before it is likely to harm them significantly. And if some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, they are more than welcome to publish their findings in a scientific journal rather than producing online films about it.
No it means both sides have serious ideological flaws and that their prototypical stances sometimes blur as a result.
For instance, the constitution ensures both the right to vote and the right to bear arms. The liberal stance is that voter ID infringes on rights, but gun ID does not. And the GOP stance is the reverse. Both are logically inconsistent, just different dog whistle topics.
You can feel however you want to about guns and the 2A, but yours intellectually dishonest to argue in favor of ID for one and not the other from a legal perspective.
An independent voter might say that showing ID for both, two very important acts, is not onerous and is an acceptable burden. But most people won’t argue that due to partisan allegiances.
You can or cant do X because of a legalistic reading of an old document seems like a more classic liberal approach. (And in both cases you coukd argue that the original document was explicit in excluding specific groups from these "rights")
The classic left position would be about disenfranchisment of certain groups and changing the rules to fix it.
I think you're also missing a key nuance to the reality of arguing for voter ID. Right wing didn't want to provide it but agreed it could be mandatory to vote,so it's reasonable to reneg and highlight the issues with that.
The constitution does not obviously guarantee a right for individuals to own guns. Nor a right to vote.
The second amendment is explicitly predicated on, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State".
You can easily now read that predicate as false in the contemporary united states, and hence, the derivative right not obtaining.
Ie., the 2nd A. says, "given it is necessary for Militia, individuals need arms". But there no militia, and there need be none. The US has police forces now, and a standing army. The citizens do not form Militias when the US is under attack, nor to police themselves.
As for a right to vote, the 15th A. says only what grounds are invalid for denying it -- it can, and is, denied for other grounds (eg., being convicted of a crime).
The US constitution, as far as I'm aware, is not a "democratic" document in the sense of establishing anything like an electoral democracy.
The US constitution is a series of essentially jointly-incoherent political principles and stipulations that provide the judiciary independent means of constraining the legislature and the executive. There isn't a particularly coherent contemporary political stand point which makes sense of it all.
And certainly modern political principles like "individual rights to arms" and "voting rights" are not really to be found in the constitution in anything like a contemporary form.
Well the Supreme Court disagrees with you on that, but I think Penn and Teller’s description and explanation might appeal to you a little better: https://youtu.be/Hx23c84obwQ
As of 2008 -- which indicates that this view of the constitution is extremely contemporary, as a legal doctrine.
My point wasn't, in any case, about the "facts of the matter". I dont think there are facts about how one should interpret the US constitution.
My point was that the commenter I was replying to assumed that these issues "ID for guns", "ID for votes" were somehow prescribed clearly by the constitution -- and one would be hypocritical to defend only one.
That view is wholly incorrect. The text of the constitution settles almost no matters. Matters are settled at the interpretive level, and much of what passes for "interpretation" is actually established by the historical tradition of the supreme court.
There is no hypocrisy anywhere, because there isnt a stable ideological dogma written down
In your previous comment you said claimed the constitution doesn’t give people the right to own guns, I guess you didn’t watch the video in the reply. Says right at the beginning, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms”. You seem to use your language art skills to talk about the actual conversation instead of contributing to it.
They're arguing about the placement of a comma: which is exactly my point. I guess you havent understood my point.
The constitution does not verbatim say "you have an individual right to own and use weapons".
It says, "given the necessity of a millitia".
If you whole argument depends on arguing over a comma, then it's pretty clear, there is no "hypocrisy" one way or another. The whole thing is a matter of interpretation.
What are you referring to? Classifying some of the talking points as left and right is pretty reductive.
When I was just a little longer it was an undeniably truth for me that left wing positions are plainly just smarter. I still think that way, but I also believe mental illness is far more common in people that declare themselves left wing.
I think we should separate out ideas like "discrimination" from "left vs. right". That would clarify the change that has happened.
The language and ideas of civil rights etc., coupled with identity politics, has a political life of its own. And it has been adopted by most major political institutions in the west: "equality", "diversity", "discrimination", etc.
Neutrally, this could be called "identity-first politics" (where "anti-vax" is a tenable identity signifier).
In that sense something has won, but it isnt really The Left. Nor least, because many of these political institutions are quite right wing (eg., the republican party).
What appears to have happened is really the defeat of The Left as a collective political force.
What we're left with is a new awakening across the political spectrum which is more religious than political. Virtue, Struggle, Sin -- and so on -- is attaching itself to new forms of identity which use political vocabulary, but are really not political at all.
Neither the "modern activist left" nor the "alt-right" are political movements, they're more like religious movements centred on a new mode of identity. Their "political" project is merely that their identities be respected.
This isn't politics: there is no material, economic, or institutional goal.
> Neither the “modern activist left” nor the “alt-right” are political movements, they’re more like religious movements centred on a new mode of identity. Their “political” project is merely that their identities be respected.
While all political and other ideological movements share a certain degree of the character of religious movements, the idea that either for the “modern activist left” or the “alt-right” the political program is “merely” respect for identities is…buying in way to much to some of the superficial language used in each movement, and paying far too little attention ot the details of what each means by respecting their identities.
> This isn’t politics: there is no material, economic, or institutional goal.
It is politics, and the goals are absolutely an intertwined combination of material, economic, and institutional objectives.
For the “modern activist left” we can narrow that to, say, The Movement for Black Lives, one of the (but not the only) organizational and agenda-setting organizations of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and look at its concrete policy agenda, digging into the subcomponents of the 2020 platform [0]:
* Divest from surveillance, policing, mass criminalization, incarceration and deportation.
* Invest in making communities stronger and safer through quality, affordable housing, living wage employment, public transportation, education, and health care that includes voluntary, harm reduction and patient-driven, community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment.
* Invest in community-based transformative violence prevention and intervention strategies, that offer support for criminalized populations
* Uncouple access to services, care, and support from the criminal punishment system.
* Provide reparations to survivors of police violence and their families, and to survivors of prison, detention and deportation violence, and their families.
* Decriminalize youth under 23.
* Remove police and surveillance from schools.
* Direct resources toward violence prevention and transformative responses that create a nurturing and positive school climate for all students and create opportunities for youth to thrive in community.
* Interrupt and end criminalization and deportation of Black women. Develop and support non-criminalizing and non-coercive, voluntary, accessible, harm reduction-based and trauma-informed responses to unmet mental health needs, drug use, involvement in the sex trades, survival theft, and community and interpersonal violence. These responses must prioritize, promote, and protect the safety, agency, and self-determination of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people.
* Ensure that Black women have access to resources that will enable them to escape and avoid interpersonal and community violence, including living wage employment; quality, accessible, and affordable housing; immigration status; universal, quality, and accessible health care; comprehensive, culturally appropriate community-based mental health care; universal, quality, and accessible childcare; and healthy environments.
* Ensure full access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care and eliminate discriminatory barriers to health care for all people.
* Eliminate the foster system’s power to permanently and irreversibly destroy Black families through termination of parental rights.
* End profiling, criminalization, police, and prison violence against Black trans and gender nonconforming people.
* Ensure access to safe and equitable, affirming, accessible, quality housing, employment, healthcare, social services, and education for trans, queer, and gender nonconforming people. This includes reducing unemployment and workplace discrimination; providing real, meaningful, and equitable universal health care; and full and equitable access to services, including counseling, community centers, and shelters.
* Affirm gender self-determination in all aspects of life from birth, and ensure freedom fro...
Christians of every era have their political goals too. And of course, claimed to own peace, equality and justice.
And there is no doubt a political core to each identity banner 'BLM'.
The question is whether the mass movement and the institutional and cultural mass are even 'aware of' let alone 'coordinating for' these political ambitions.
Clearly they are not. The culture of these projects ARE these projects and they are fundamentally demands for a 'theatre of identity' to be created.
Contrast this with union activity, the temperance movement, civil rights era -- etx.
These are political projects whose adearents aim towards them.
This 'identity-fist politics' is not a politics; its a religious awakening for a new era of identity.
You will no doubt find genuine politics going on, and evangelists like Colbert appearing to champion them -- but this isnt a political awakening. It isnt the 20s or 60s.
Its the 19th C. and what we have is a new era of religious identity and new claims to who owns virtue-- across all of society.
Your 'list of demands' is just another Lutheran political gesture -- no one standing alongside you has read them. They are there to demand respect for their newly minted identities.
> Christians of every era have their political goals too. And of course, claimed to own peace, equality and justice.
Christianity has been fairly expressly political for most of its history post-Constantine, and the divisions between different Christian subgroups have often turned more on the political divisions than any notional theological divides.
> The question is whether the mass movement and the institutional and cultural mass are even ‘aware of’ let alone ‘coordinating for’ these political ambitions.
And the answer is, quite clearly, that yes, they are.
> Contrast this with union activity, the temperance movement, civil rights era – etx.
And…what? I’m rather deeply familiar with all of those — while I’m currently working in technology, this is actually the domain that I studied deeply. The division you are drawing is absolutely without any substance whatsoever.
> This ‘identity-fist politics’ is not a politics; its a religious awakening for a new era of identity.
That is no more true than it was of the rise of labor unionism or the civil rights movements, which had an equally “religious” (and quite often overtly religious, as well) character…and an equal focus of political objectives.
The dichotomy you are trying to draw is bogus.
> You will no doubt find genuine politics going on, and evangelists like Colbert appearing to champion them – but this isnt a political awakening. It isnt the 20s or 60s.
Well, sure, if I were comparing the modern BLM movement, for instance, to the Civil Rights movement, I would compare it more to the mid-1950s than the 1960s. But that’s not a difference of degree of political nature of the movement, but degree of political leverage that comes from successful mobilization around a broad concept that brings the power to not merely have a variety of competing political demands within a movement subordinate to the broad problem statement, but actually be in a position to have the leverage to be in a position to implement them.
M4BL itself fairly explicitly acknowledges this (without the historical comparison): “Our movement and Black communities are not currently in a position to set agendas to scale, control the institutions that affect our lives, or create mechanisms to mitigate harm. This assessment should not be interpreted as a failure of our social movements, but it does expose a critical gap. We have created a popular strategy to guide us through the next five years; it is rooted in transformative goals that can impact the millions of Black people looking for direction and leadership in this moment. Chiefly, Black governance and ultimately positioning our communities to set agendas sits at the heart of M4BL Project 2024: Black Power Rising.” [https://m4bl.org/black-power-rising/]
> They are there to demand respect for their newly minted identities.
The idea that black identity is a novel development of the recent activist movement is amusing, but ludicrously false; even the broad outline of the substantive political demands aren’t, mostly, new. All that is new is the sense of urgency for political and institutional change change.
You're the one talking about BLM. You're the one talking about "Black".
I happily said "anti-vax" was an identity marker.
The relevant comment here, and context, is the use of the term "discrimination" by the right wing. And indeed, see for example, the recent CIA advert using "equality, diversity" and various identity markers.
The unifying phenomenon isn't political -- even if we take BLM itself to be a purely political manifestation. The unifying phenomenon has to account for the alt-right alongside BLM.
What is occurring ACROSS the political spectrum is a new civic religious awakening.
This fervour you have, as a political hobbyist, is at base an identity fervour. Much more akin to a religious fervour. You are commenting on a website advertising your identity. You aren't on any barricades.
The US, and to some degree the west, is undergoing a religious revival disguised as a political movement. It may contain them ("BLM", "Capital Riot", etc.) -- but the social transformation is one purely in the space of "signification" (identity). The capital rioters, and the blm activists -- the TV evangelicals (fox, colbert) -- the CIA with its "diversity" -- celebrities with their metoo opportunism -- your local MegaCrop with its "heartfelt commitments" to the new dogma.
This is a religion. It isnt a politics. It exists purely in the space of identity, signification, public professing.
Trump is the perfect non-political president in this style: a person elected to do nothing political, and everything "religious" -- to be seen to be saying, not to be seen doing.
This is all of the same kind: the new activist left, the alt right, the CIA and Google. It's a religious awakening bordering on a hysteria.
Forgive me for asking a dumb question, and I mean no wrongthought in asking it: if I'm vaccinated, why should I care if others aren't? Does it change anything for my life from here?
EDIT: thanks for the answers, exactly the info I needed to update my prior beliefs.
There's a non-zero chance that the vaccine wasn't effective for you. Herd immunity reduces the amount of virus in the wild below a certain tipping point, making it far less likely that you could contract the virus if you happened to be one of the people it wasn't effective for.
1. you can still catch things as vaccines are not 100% (some are 50-60% effective, mRNA are 90-95% so far)
2. It can mutate in people that catch it to avoid vaccine / cause other issues. Imagine if it started causing blindness... would you care then of being forced to take a 5-10% / 50% chance of catching it?
3. No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated.
4. Some people can't get vaccinated or it wont work on them. They will catch it and die if others are not getting it / spreading it.
> 4. Some people can't get vaccinated or it wont work on them. They will catch it and die if others are not getting it / spreading it.
I think that needs to be highlighted more. It's like wearing seatbelts, but for other people. I would consider that the fabric that most societies are made of, taking care of the people that can't for themselves, and in many cases through no fault of their own (e.g. genetics).
Seatbelt's are for other people. If you are in the car with someone, and they are not wearing a seat belt, they are a projectile.
That's part of the reason debate over seat belt laws is often misguided under the guise of being only about self inflicted harm. It's also to protect you from others becoming a meat torpedo.
Which circles back to the crux of the original post. At what level does a society have the right to self assemble and govern and protect itself from others. Is it at the block level, the city level, the county level, the state level? Should people be able to go move to an empty spot in the desert and say "vaccinated people only" OR "unvaccinated people only." If those people only want to be around those people, are they allowed to carve out a space for themselves somewhere? When that area starts to rely on the infrastructure of others, how does that relationship change?
>That's part of the reason debate over seat belt laws is often misguided under the guise of being only about self inflicted harm. It's also to protect you from others becoming a meat torpedo.
Additionally, if the driver is belted in they are likely to have a higher chance of maintaining or regaining control of their vehicle if they aren't tossed around inside, allowing them the chance of preventing further harm to others due to a completely out of control vehicle.
Which is why there's still debate about motorcycle helmet laws. A motorcycle helmet basically only protects the person wearing it.
I don't think that's really the case. There are very, very few people who cannot take these vaccines due to allergies etc, and nobody claims the herd immunity threshold is anywhere close to 100%. To suppress it to the point that there are much greater threats in such a person's life only requires reaching that threshold.
Unfortunately, public health officials have admitted in public they are lying about the thresholds (e.g. Dr Fauci said he gave different numbers depending on what opinion polls were saying). However it's likely to be about 70%-80%, perhaps less because those numbers assume no pre-existing natural immunity, which doesn't seem to be correct. That means there is scope for very large numbers of people do decide not to take it if they don't want to, before herd immunity is threatened at all.
Double unfortunate, I feel like nobody cares about these things, because they see it as a chance to enforce collectivist decision making on people in the name of "society". The actual group safety arguments never come with concrete numbers to assist with the underlying intuitions and that is suspicious.
> There are very, very few people who cannot take these vaccines due to allergies etc
That is correct, allergies are very rare. I'm talking about patients whose immune system is weakened, either on purpose, e.g. transplant patients, or because they have an auto-immune disease (HIV etc.) or simply because their immune system is weak as a result of another disease (e.g. cancer) or they were simply dealt a weak immune system at birth (genetics) or their immune system is weak because they are very old.
Then add infants, children and pregnant women who can't get vaccinated in the majority of cases.
Now add the whole anti-vaxx crowd, people who became the victim of FUD, people who simply don't care, people who don't get their second shot, and it doesn't look very good, does it?
> The actual group safety arguments never come with concrete numbers to assist with the underlying intuitions and that is suspicious.
There are plenty of models to give you concrete answers, but there is even more uncertainty in the model assumptions, so we simply don't know with certainty. In any case we are already starting to find out in different countries.
The first groups you mention are all either very small and also threatened by many different kinds of virus (e.g. flu), or COVID is not a threat to them because they're too young.
As for the sizes of the other groups, you'd have to argue they make up more than 30% of the population for there to be real concerns. 30% of the population is a lot of people. There's plenty of room for people who don't want the vaccine in such a large slice.
Forcing a few million extra doses to a bunch of western skeptics won't compensate the fact that there are billions of people that will never have access to the vaccines. If it is true that only unvaccinated people generates new dangerous versions of the virus (which is completely false since leaky vaccines can cause enhanced versions of the virus), you will never be really protected, even if every western country makes it mandatory.
> there are billions of people that will never have access to the vaccines
False. Pfizer alone will manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year, 3 billion next year. Considering EU/US already at 50-60% vacicnated, there are a lot of doses for the rest of the world.
Moderna will likely have similar production. The other simpler ones even more.
> If it is true that only unvaccinated people generates new dangerous versions of the virus
You get infected, virus can mutate, it's that simple.
> which is completely false since leaky vaccines can cause enhanced versions of the virus
You do realize you are not on reddit or an anti-vax forum?
If yes, please back up this statement with proper scientific sources.
If in good faith, for your own well-being please get out of that conspiracy theory rabbit-hole
You are surprisingly optimistic. We have been a few months in the vaccination campaign and we are already in need of boosters to patch new strains. Even if the numbers you mention are true, you still have to deliver a product with extremely complex logistics in highly unreachable places (vaccinating westerners with our infrastructure is way easier than doing the same in Africa), hope that they will really deliver those numbers at that speed, and cross fingers that when this happens, the virus hasn't already mutated enough to make it obsolete.
Consider also that many people in third world countries do not trust westerners so I would predict that the percentage of people that will avoid the jab might be much higher than what you have in the USA or EU.
Anyway I am sorry I didn't share an article about what I mentioned, I thought it was known enough to not need an article. (I might say the same about your numbers)
> Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts.
The journal you reference studies Marek's disease in chicken. The vaccine does not prevent transmission (which farmers found good enough). As such, all vaccinated chicken can get the virus but dont get sick and still transmit it.
That is irrlevant since, its a study on chicken, with a vaccine that wouldn't be approved for humans. Also all vaccines stop transmission with 90-95% or less for poorer vaccines (you are 95% less likely to catch it)
All the study shows is the need to vaccinate everyone and extinguish the virus same as polio before it evolves.
The fact that it's about chickens is irrelevant. This is about how viruses evolve when confronted with an immune system.
But you are correct that the lower the transmission rate from vaccinated people, the lower the risk of enhanced viruses.
But your 95% is debatable. The number goes drastically down depending on which vaccine you use, the new strains, and probably time.
My point is that the myth that unvaccinated people are the part of the population creating enhanced variants is false.
Before the vaccination propaganda started it was known to everyone that isolating the sick tends to forces the virus to evolve in less dangerous strains.
> My point is that the myth that unvaccinated people are the part of the population creating enhanced variants is false.
Incorrect. By logic, 95% (or whatever % you want) of the vaccinated population will not catch virus. As such, virus cannot evolve in them. Logical right?
This is what they study says.
> ... anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission ...
The vaccines we have PREVENT transmission with various effectiveness. The vaccine in study did NOT. Since viruses could still infect vaccinated chicken, it evolved.
The numbers are between 95% of Pfizer at his best and 50% of Sinovac. And we are not vaccinating to avoid a pandemic, we are doing it during the pandemic making the risk of it happening much higher.
But the final point I was trying to pass is that isolation of the sick will slowly push the virus to evolve in more contagious but less risky variants.
Undetected infections in the vaccinated might cause strains that evade the vaccine and possibly be more dangerous (because of the lack of symptoms and isolation.)
You must be kidding me. This is proof that you pro covid mrna therapy are just mindless news consumers. Have you ever spent a second reading articles or watching the data about what you believe?
tot cases/1M pop -> usa 104525 india 22200
deaths/1M pop -> usa 1872 india 295
There is no single country in asia that did as bad as the USA in the deaths department.
What's now your next extravagant excuse? That the usa has been overcounting its deaths to scare its people into covid mrna therpies?
I know people that have lost family members there. They were struggling to get them spots in hospitals, everything is mess of corruption, under reporting, overflowed hospitals.
They're not even testing properly... See the airplane full of corona positive people with negative 'PCR' tests.
I do know people from India. But these are the numbers like it or not. You seem to be cherry picking only the numbers that convalidate your vision.
I can't tell how much of it is undercounting in India, how much is overcounting in the USA, and how much of it is that the friends and family networks in India count hundreds of people as opposed to the westerner ones.
Numbers are usually fudged, especially in corrupt countries.
It's also easy to have good numbers if you issue negative results without doing the actual tests and if you count the deaths as that of something else.
- all of the ones that were positive had negative PCR tests... done in india
Similar things were happening in Communist Romania, hence my skepticism of India's number (back then - record "harvests", everybody well fed and happy, etc, meanwhile everyone was starving as crops were sold off on external markets)
Either way, best of luck, this discussion was fun for a while.
When did we decide that sharing aljazeera and citing what your friends told you > official data?
I mean, I agree that official data can be forged and should be taken with a grain of salt but come on. You can do better than this.
Also it has been proven that there is a strong inverse correlation between vitamin D levels and covid severity. If we assume that you are right and many more people died in India, how can you prove that it's because the vaccine that in Europe the mortality is so much lower?
And I'm happy you mention polio because it's a great example of what can happen when we allow companies to rush their product without enough safety standards:
In April 1955, soon after mass polio vaccination began in the US, the Surgeon General began to receive reports of patients who contracted paralytic polio about a week after being vaccinated with Salk polio vaccine from the Cutter pharmaceutical company, with the paralysis limited to the limb the vaccine was injected into. The Cutter vaccine had been used in vaccinating 200,000 children in the western and midwestern United States.[76] Later investigations showed that the Cutter vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, killing 10.[76] In response the Surgeon General pulled all polio vaccines made by Cutter Laboratories from the market, but not before 250 cases of paralytic illness had occurred. Wyeth polio vaccine was also reported to have paralyzed and killed several children. It was soon discovered that some lots of Salk polio vaccine made by Cutter and Wyeth had not been properly inactivated, allowing live poliovirus into more than 100,000 doses of vaccine.
2. Do you have to worry about polio now?, no, why?
3. We have processes in place to verify vaccines, that's why you got news about janssen or whatever throwing away millions of doses due to contamination.
You are not opposing my point:
1. shit happened
2. rules have been put in place to avoid it from happening again
3. we are now skipping these rules in the name of urgency.
These are not vaccines but gene therapies that have never been tested. History proves risks do exist when new therapies are given to people.
I suppose when a normal vaccine like the novavax is coming out there won't be as much opposition.
Also: many people that look into the data of how therapies are going, have high hopes for Novavax, which seems very promising and works in a more "classic way".
Sure some people will never get inoculated with anything but that's a different story.
This in essence states that given a immune population (either vaccine or natural), virus will evolve strains to escape anti-bodies... which is logical... if one such variant evolves, it will have a huge potential for multiplication.
It then states that strategies for viral elimination should be diversified... I would argue vaccinating everyone will lead to viral elimination... Otherwise virus is free to mutate in non-immune people.
It's a study on the viruses natural mutation potential... and it's worrying... nothing regarding vaccines and so on... it's basically a warning that it can evolve to bypass vaccines and we'll be back to square one...
Again... nothing to help your argument about 'leaky' vaccines...
1) Wrong. It does help my original statement:
"In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus [47], greatly increasing the risk of immune escape."
...
"Thus, our findings speak to the need for both public health and biomedical intervention strategies targeting SARS-CoV-2 to be designed to account for the risk of rapid evolutionary response to biomedical interventions."
2)Wrong again:
"In the presence of mixed sera from multiple previously infected and/or vaccinated individuals these infections would create the appropriate conditions both for genetic recombination to occur, and for selection to rapidly sort multiple recombination-generated combinations of input immune evasion, cell entry and replication impacting mutations."
My original point is that people that made use of covid mrna therapy can be the source of new versions of the virus (because the therapy doesn't prevent infection nor spreading of the virus).
While it's true that the second study talks about mutations in both vaccinated and unvaccinated hosts, the first is clearly looking into the spike protein based therapy:
"The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control. Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions."
> "vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity"
Here's the flaw in your argument. All vaccines provide immunity so the study does not apply.
> because the therapy doesn't prevent infection nor spreading of the virus)
Wrong. Biontech - 95% of the population is immune. It prevents spread to 95% of vaccinated people. The rest for some reason or another it doesn't work.
So you build your whole argument on a logical fallacy.
I think I repeated this a few times so no point in continuing if you can't wrap your head around this.
Wrong. Again:
Pfizer's chief scientific officer, Mikael Dolsten, said the recently reported dip in the vaccine's effectiveness in Israel was mostly due to infections in people who had been vaccinated in January or February. The country's health ministry said vaccine effectiveness in preventing both infection and symptomatic disease fell to 64% in June.
Wrong. Definition of immunity: Protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.
Damn man, you do have trouble with basic concepts.
64% or 95% or whatever of the population are IMMUNE.
It's not 'prevent infection 64% of the timr' as you would in a videogame... It's 'get vaccinated and you have X% chance to develop antibodies, if you do, you are immune.'
In this context, vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity (and therefore continue to permit transmission) will lead to the buildup of large standing populations of virus [47], greatly increasing the risk of immune escape
And this sentence is from the study. A study about Covid "vaccines". Not me.
> vaccines that do not provide sterilizing immunity
And those vaccines are which?, does the study allege any of the current vaccines does not provide immunity?, is so please put the quote and the study for that.
Otherwise this is a hypothetical... if x then y... when x is false in reality...
5. When unvaccinated people end up in the hospital, hospitals get stressed to their limits. This results in fewer beds for me and my family if we end up in a hospital for a different reason. This is also causing job burnout for nurses and doctors.
Society bends over backwards to accomodate ever-increasing levels of obese people. The majority of baseline hospital "stress" is due to morbidities caused by, and strongly associated with, obesity.
Why are we shunning the unvaccinated, a rapidly decreasing proportion of the population, but promote plus-size models, build ever-larger movie theater seating, and denigrate "fat shaming" in response to a problem that 1. exists largely as the baseline hospital "stressor", and 2. increases among the population monotonically?
I will give you the benefit of the doubt here, and give an answer to what appears to be rhetoric. Choice of vaccine is a single binary choice that essentially creates a step function. Food, on the other hand is a continuous function with a daily effort required to decide what to eat. While choosing to be unvaccinated may be it’s own daily struggle, it’s not the same order of magnitude as the struggle not to eat.
Now as to the body positive trend. I don’t quite agree with it, but there is a current belief that body shaming tends to backfire with individual weight loss, and that being pro body helps lead to better general health.
Personally I think much of the obesity epidemic is more a mental health epidemic. There are a lot of people who use food as a short term mood enhancer, and I’m reminded of experiments with rats showing that rates of drug addiction go way down when the rats are provided with an environment that better suites their needs.
That said, the current over abundance of highly processed food is probably the hardest thing to overcome in terms of obesity. Processed foods tend to act in the body quicker than our feedback mechinisms can handle, short term feelings of full happen too late, and long term satiation is harder to maintain. I’m not sure that fat shaming isn’t in the same category as victim shaming, the real vitriol should probably be pointed at much of the food industry instead.
> 1. you can still catch things as vaccines are not 100% (some are 50-60% effective, mRNA are 90-95% so far)
Sure, but it's far less likely to be severe even if you're in an at-risk group.
> 3. No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated.
Until it burns through the unvaccinated population and people build up natural immunity. I'm not arguing against vaccines, I got mine and I encourage everyone else to, but don't act like vaccines are the only way to get immunity or that they're enough to get rid of it entirely.
6. COVID is a problem because of it's virality not so much symptoms, i.e. it's about the network or community affect, less so the individual affect.
I don't know who people have this kind of narrow (and a little bit selfish) idea that it's only about 'them' and 'if they catch it'.
COVID is not that deadly on a unit level. It's dangerous because of how incredibly viral it is, then it becomes 'net scary' for the community.
By being unvaccinated - even if you survive - which you likely will you are passing it to others and you become a propagating agent of death.
Take the purely libertarian perspective of 'my body my choice' - well in that view, you'd have to be responsible for your actions as well, and therefore arguably liable for everyone you infect and all the damage you cause.
It's not going to work.
If we're going to live as a community and share services, resources and spaces ... then we have do adjust our behaviour at least temporarily so that this diseases doesn't kill a lot of people.
It's very troubling to me that this isn't obvious to every adult.
Every point here applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated. Point 3 ignores the role of natural immunity which has been shown to be just as effective as the vaccine. Ultimately, this has become a political issue. And like all political issues, people find all sorts of strawman arguments to demonize people who don't agree with them.
Firstly, vaccines aren't perfect -- they significantly improve your chances of not catching COVID, and having less serious problems. It is better if (almost) everyone gets the vaccine, which will reduce cases of COVID.
Secondly, I'm getting the COVID vaccine not because they believe that there is a high risk of getting serious COVID myself, but to help others -- some at-risk people can't get the vaccine at all, and immune-suppresed people are still at significant risk post-vaccine (although still lower risk than without).
> Secondly, I'm getting the COVID vaccine not because they believe that there is a high risk of getting serious COVID myself, but to help others -- some at-risk people can't get the vaccine at all, and immune-suppresed people are still at significant risk post-vaccine (although still lower risk than without).
People not getting the vaccine who are able are being incredibly selfish. They are exercising the opposite of personal responsibility. It's your personal responsibility not the harm those around you as much as possible. I know they are mostly ignorant, but frankly I find them to be disgusting people.
I think a lot of people just lack the education and context that you have, and so don't come to the same conclusion. Just 25min ago, I was in favor of getting vaccinated myself, but didn't understand why I should care about other people getting vaccinated too. And I'm not a bigot (I hope) or a person more ignorant than the average. If you believe this to be true, I think we can agree that it's probably fair to at least assume ignorance instead of vileness to the vast majority of vaccine-skeptic folks.
Especially if you consider the social landscape in the USA, where having beliefs misaligned with your in-group's is extremely damaging. It doesn't leave a lot of room for people to exercise independent thought and climb out of their ignorance.
I don't disagree with you that it's a lack of education and context, but I personally don't accept that as an excuse. Information about vaccination is totally ubiquitous. Being ignorant of this is just not okay. So no after a year and half of inundation of information explaining these basic fact I honestly am disgusted that people still hold these beliefs. I basically lose faith in society because of it.
As an aside, I never called you (or anyone else I was referring to) a bigot.
> So with that conflicting forces, it becomes a matter of opinion and perception. So it becomes no longer selfish, and just common sense.
All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine. It's not common sense to avoid it. It's highly irrational. If people are really concerned with not harming themselves, they _will_ get vaccinated.
>All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine.
No, at some point you are trusting some external entities. You trust the information because you trust the entities that provide it.
When you say that someone else is irrational, you are doing that because that person does not share your trust. And to that person, in all probability, what you are doing might be irrational.
In the end, I think no one have the right to impose their standard of trust on to anyone else.
What point are you trying to make by linking that post? It's not even about the same subject. There may very well be not very much information supporting covid passes for restaurants, but what does that have to do with covid vaccinations? There is an enormous amount of information there.
E.g. here is a point you made that doesn't even remotely apply here:
> If you do an experiment that very few people in the world is able to replicate, because it is hard or due to lack of resources, then the rest of the world have to trust you.
These vaccines have been taken by _millions_ of people. They have been given by many different independent organizations. So yeah this doesn't even apply at all.
> The trust of people should be won, research by research, not authority by authority, and the non-requirement of mandates goes along automatically with that idea.
Essentially all the research points towards the vaccines being much much better than the disease. It's your choice to stick your head in the sand if you so wish, but no one need respect your decision. You're not somehow wise simply due to your being contrarian.
I think this is really a case of self righteous indignation. There are people who truly believe you must take the vaccine, and nothing will convince them otherwise, but more importantly, If you say no you won’t take the vaccine, they take it as a personal attack on their beliefs. In other words: how dare you say no to what I want you to do.
Not trusting private companies that proved many times to be putting their shareholders interests before the public good by forging false research, generating opioid epidemics and bribing politicians and committees is the opposite of being selfish and stupid.
Fortunately, being forced to believe everything scientists say is neither a law nor a responsibility. And just as well because they routinely contradict themselves or turn out to have been lying. See: the denunciation of the lab leak theory by Daszak and other virologists, which successfully suppressed this obvious common sense idea for a year. So in fact people do have that "right".
Lying? You mean changing their understanding of something new as more information becomes available? That's how science works they use the best info available, and change their understanding as more info becomes available.
They didn't change their understanding with new information, they asserted with 100% confidence that the lab leak idea was a ridiculous conspiracy theory, back when there was simply no intellectual justification for that assertion whatsoever, whilst lying (yes, lying) in their conflict of interest statement about their actual conflicts of interest. The man who coordinated it all refused to sign his own "open letter" to avoid arousing suspicion!
Even today, in their newest letter, they are still trying to obfuscate the real situation and are certainly not apologizing for their prior stance.
At any rate, this claim that scientists are never dishonest or wrong, they just "update their beliefs" as more information becomes available, is getting very tedious. That's not what they're doing. "Science" is constantly bombarding our political leaders with wildly extreme statements delivered not just with 100% confidence, but the assertion that you aren't even allowed to disagree because it's a "scientific consensus". People read the papers and point out that they're making false assumptions or are otherwise pseudo-scientific, but they're suppressed and ignoring. Then when that "consensus" turns out to have been completely wrong a bunch of apologists appear to explain that scientists can never be wrong by definition.
Well, guess what? If a certain type of person constantly make confident statements as a group and insists reasoned disagreement is illegitimate, then is repeatedly proven to be wrong, all their statements become seen as less reliable. As a group.
> All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine.*
* : for the population cohort above approximately 50 years old or a BMI greater than 30.
For better or for worse (for society), it appears healthy-weight people under 50 making the choice to not get vaccinated on a calculus of myocarditis, menstrual complications, blood clotting, and various other longer-term risks are, in fact, not being "highly irrational"
> For better or for worse (for society), it appears healthy-weight people under 50 making the choice to not get vaccinated on a calculus of myocarditis, menstrual complications, blood clotting, and various other longer-term risks are, in fact, not being "highly irrational"
I'd be curious to read source of the statistics you're referring to (i.e. what rates of these complications you see and how they compare to the complications of covid itself in the same age groups).
Indeed, and as the vaccines do very little harm compared to the virus, it's definitely a good thing to get vaccinated. Especially as we are now getting the fuller picture that covid can lead to last lung and brain damage.
I am not so sure. Some side-effects do take time to manifest. They just started talking about how teens get heart issues from it and so forth. We did not know this before either, nor did we know about the AstraZeneca's blood clots. Some take longer time though. We simply do not know. Anyone leaning towards "it is safe" and "it is not safe" is silly, because we just simply have no idea, you cannot claim either for certain.
> Especially as we are now getting the fuller picture that covid can lead to last lung and brain damage.
Yes, we are just now getting the fuller picture of COVID-19 that it can lead to this and that. The very same can happen to the vaccines, and it is actually happening to some of these vaccines.
> They just started talking about how teenage boys get enlarged heart from it and so forth
Inflammation/swelling of the heart, not enlarging, very rare given the number of shots that have been rolled out, and people recover pretty quickly. Definitely a concern, not a showstopper.
> We did not know this before either, nor did we know about the AstraZeneca's blood clots.
Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.
> we just simply have no idea.
This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.
> A CDC committee will hear about reports of 300 cases of the heart enlargement that have happened after children were vaccinated against COVID-19. The ailment is fairly common and easily treatable.
The heart inflammation happens too, though.
---
> Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.
But that is not the point. The point is that we did not know this would be the case. Other side-effects may come up as time goes on.
> This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.
Again, are you talking about the mRNA vaccines? I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.
> Sorry. I mean this, and this happens to children:
What source are you quoting there? I can find that line in an abc news feed, but no attribution and nothing much else about it. Every other source seems to be talking about inflammation of one sort or another (myocarditis or pericarditis), primarily in young men, very rarely and easily recoverable.
> The point is that we did not know this would be the case
We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.
> I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.
> What source are you quoting there? I can find that line in an abc news feed, but no attribution and nothing much else about it. Every other source seems to be talking about inflammation of one sort or another (myocarditis or pericarditis), primarily in young men, very rarely and easily recoverable.
I cannot find the source where I found it first, but that could be the case that they confused the two, I am not sure. Some are talking about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In any case, it can lead to chronically enlarged heart, which is dilated cardiomyopathy. Whatever.
> We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.
I suppose continuing discussing this is not very useful. If there are long-term side-effects, then we will know about them. If there are no long-term side-effects, same story.
> I am not so sure. Some side-effects do take time to manifest.
You're being irrational. It's true side-effects can take time to manifest. It's also true that problems due to the disease also can manifest. Taken together the fact that _something_ can possibly happen in the future gives you _no_ information today. For example, one of the side-effects of the vaccine that might manifest might be that you're _healthier_.
So yeah if you take the possibility of negative side effects, but not positive side-effects, you are being irrational. Said in another way, if you are taking statements devoid of information ("something can happen with some likelihood in the future"), you are being irrational.
All actual current information points overwhelmingly to the fact that the disease (even considering that not everyone will get it) is much worse than the vaccinations. That is information. That information points to one conclusion and it's not "wait forever and see what happens".
Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.
Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.
> Personally I have been exposed to COVID-19 at the hospital on a regular basis, and I have been quarantined before with people who were positive. It does not seem to pose such a risk that you are talking about to me. I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder, too. This is my personal experience and case.
There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.
> Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.
People shouldn't exclude that from the list of possibilities. But people _should not_ take it into account with their decision-making. If they are going to give weight to the future possibility of negative side-effects coming to light, they should also give weight to the future possibility that positive side-effects may come to light.
Said simply, there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now".
> There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.
Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :) I did add "personal experience", so yes, of course, it is anecdotal.
> there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now"
> Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :)
I never said I don't believe you. I just said there was nothing scientific in your reasoning. It's completely obvious that not all people get covid that are exposed to people. I've also been exposed to covid and not been infected. But it's just anecdotal information. I could get covid and die just the same. Drawing any conclusions off of these individual occurrence is not very intelligent.
Why I was mentioning that is because I personally would not like to get the vaccine because: I am in my twenties, I have an immunological autoimmune disorder (and I recently developed allergies, to my luck), and I have not caught COVID-19 despite constant exposure to it.
Does it sound a good enough reason for not getting vaccinated?
I don't think you should take into account the fact that you haven't gotten it despite being exposed. But yeah if you have a disorder that increases the likelihood for complications of course you should take that into account. (I also presume you've spoken to doctors about this.)
But none of that has to do with the issue that something may happen in the future. You are making your choices with the information you have _now_.
I suppose it is possible that some people may be more immune to COVID-19 than others. I am curious about this. I hope there will be research on this, but that is just for my curiosity.
By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.
> Republicans push to ban "discrimination" against unvaccinated people
I am sure many people are against it, but if we push people to get the vaccine because of society and its people, then surely they should care about those who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. They are currently unable to get a job here.
I mean it basically _has_ to be true. We all have different bodies. We are have different levels of health. We are of different ages. I find the question highly interesting as well and it might very well be that you or I never will get the disease regardless of vaccination. In fact I hope that that's the case for both of us. But it doesn't change the fact that it isn't reasonable to assume it's true just by our experiences. There are probably an enormous number of people just like us that one day get covid after a year of presumed exposures.
It might be genetic as no one on my mother's side got COVID-19, and a lot of family members on my dad's side got it. It is interesting. Even my dad's mother got it and they do not visit anyone nor get visited, only the GP visited them to give them the vaccine, and they got COVID-19 a week later.
It might be genetic and it might be anything else. It might just be dumb luck. We should expect this sort of thing to happen to people based on pure randomness alone. You should never expect to win the lottery. But you should expect _someone_ to win very often. If you were to win, it wouldn't be evidence that you somehow are luckier than others.
> By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.
I _do_ care. Which is why I find those who choose unnecessarily not to get the vaccine for unspecified and irrational fears all the more unforgivable. Their selfish irrationality is despicable.
This is ridiculous. The body as anything in nature is always struggling to stay in balance. To maintain this balance it had millions of years of evolution to optimize strategies that counteract external and internals effects. But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).
In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons).
You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).
> But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).
What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.
> In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).
It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already. But yeah if your point is that there are many people who for cultural/societal/ignorance/etc. reasons act irrationally, the of course that's true. I just don't understand why you're pointing it out.
> What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.
Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.
> It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already.
You are talking about possible future unknown effects. No it hasn't been proven at all. They aren't even looking for possible long term damage.
Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there: "The COVID-19 vaccine has gone through the same clinical trials and
safety checks as all other licensed vaccines, however the vaccine is new
and long-term side effect information is limited."
> Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there
The bullshit you have to sign before receiving the vaccine here is not downplaying anything here at least, but not that it stops people from signing it; they might as well just sign their rights to health care away altogether.
We literally have to sign our rights away for compensation in case something happens to us due to the vaccine, ANY time in the future. If you have complications from the vaccine, you cannot sue anyone, and you cannot get compensation from anyone.
They tell you straight that it is a new vaccine and we have no information with regarding to its safety, especially long-term, and that you are receiving the vaccine at your own risk, and that you are on your own if something bad happens.
How sketchy is that? More than 5.6 million people signed it. If needed, I will dig it up and translate the entire thing, but I think it is obvious what it is about. :)
> Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.
I'm not supposing it's safe in the long term. I'm supposing _nothing_ about the long term because we don't have that information. Maybe it is not safe in the long term. We'll find out some day I guess. Maybe it will lead to unexpected health _benefits_ in the long term? Who knows? So why would you weigh the potential dangers over any other potential advantages of taking it?
Anyway here are two serious questions to you:
1. Specifically how long is long enough before you'd consider the vaccine safe (compared of course to all the problems that can be caused by not taking the vaccine).
2. Do you feel ashamed allowing your fellow citizens to take on this potential risk and you forgoing when it helps end the pandemic for you and them? (Feel free to ignore this question if you are vaccinated, but are just being argumentative.)
1. Normal vaccines take 5 to 10 years to be approved. Covid mrna therapies have been rushed and they aren't even experimenting it correctly. The only data they are taking is what goes in the VAERS database, but if you even try to mention those numbers you get the usual answer that those numbers are meaningless. So tell me: if someone wants to know what the benefit/risk ratio of the therapy is, where should the numbers be found?
2. You cannot force people into taking experimental therapies even if you tricked half of the population into taking them.
" 7 million U.S. teens and preteens (ages 12 through 17) had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine" [...] "more than 300 cases of heart inflammation have been documented [...] mostly in teens and young adults between 12 and 39 years old"
Assuming every single one of those 400 (rounding up) cases was between 12 and 17, that's 400 out of 7 million or 0.0057%.
"The rate seen after these vaccines is slightly higher than the "background" rate. [...] Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine."
Which could well mean that only a handful of these cases are actually down to the vaccine, no?
And it's not even that drastic a problem; mainly just scary - "In a case study of seven teenagers who got myocarditis following vaccination published last week in the journal Pediatrics, all seven got better after routine treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs."
My source of skepticism on such reports is my own Government that makes people lie about the COVID-19 cases (we have more reported than actual) because it funds our hospitals and our Government in general. We have a huge history of taking EU money in such a way, and it is pretty much incentivized. Our president told us a few months ago that COVID-19 will go away during summer (tourism), and will return in September. We are also going to produce our own vaccines, so they will be trash-talking others when it is done (again, we (or they) have done such things often).
This is not the case. The US CDC is heavily backlogged and reports of vaccine injuries aren't being processed in a timely manner, so we don't actually know how many people are being injured by them. We only know lower bounds.
If you look at VAERS then it's clear that this is by multiple orders of magnitude the most dangerous vaccine ever deployed.
"The latest weekly US VAERS update added a shocking 2,083 post-vaccination deaths – by far the largest weekly increase to date – raising the total of reported post-vaccination deaths to 9,048. Not all of these 2,083 deaths occurred within a week, as there is a very significant reporting backlog. In total, close to 1,000 post-vaccination miscarriages, more than 3,000 heart attacks, about 7,500 disabilities, close to 20,000 severe allergic reactions, and close to 1,000 cases of heart muscle inflammation in people under 25 have already been reported to VAERS."
> raising the total of reported post-vaccination deaths to 9,048
Even if all those deaths were directly attributable to the vaccine (and that is unlikely), the US has vaccinated 159M people - that's 0.0057% or 99.9943% safe.
If you want to include all the illnesses as well to bring it up to 41,500 incidents, that's still only 0.026% or 99.974% safe.
For what is almost certainly the single biggest vaccination project in human history, with more scrutiny than any other mass medical intervention, those are pretty damn good numbers.
You're ignoring the clear evidence of large scale under-reporting.
But there's a deeper problem. Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine. A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe" and in particular that the vaccine is much safer than actually getting COVID. What this data shows is that these vaccines don't meet expectations established by prior campaigns, and that actually we have no real idea whatsoever of how dangerous they are, especially in the young.
Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline despite that COVID deaths have dropped to nearly zero. Something is raising mortality, and according to the largest virus surveillance programme in history combined with the laxest classification process imaginable, it isn't COVID.
I don't think anyone has ever said that, have they? They've said things like "vaccines are pretty safe" and "the risk of something going wrong is tiny compared with the risk of being unvaccinated", sure, but I doubt any medical professional has said "perfectly safe"?
> Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine.
Probably the smallpox vaccination program is the only one even vaguely comparable in size to this and, yeah, that had many fewer deaths (68 in the US in 10 years, I think, but I couldn't find out how many vaccinations were actually done.)
But then smallpox is a much easier thing to a) spot, b) treat, c) isolate people from, and d) create a vaccine for.
> Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline
The world is a big place my friend. Here's the British Society for Immunology saying it: [1]
"These vaccines are perfectly safe and are extremely effective at preventing serious illness from these infectious diseases"
Pennsylvanian officials: [2]
"PA (WBNG) -- Despite natural concern and curiosity over the coronavirus vaccine, Pennsylvania officials held a scientific panel Thursday to explain the vaccines are perfectly safe, even for children."
A professor advising the UK government via the primary COVID vaccination committee: [3]
"There is the concern that what’s happening in Europe might make people in the UK less confident in the AstraZeneca vaccine, unnecessarily so, because it’s perfectly safe"
Maybe you don't consider an academic to be a medical professional, so here's a doctor in San Diego saying the same thing: [4]
"“There’s no reason to think that a 16-year-old or 17-year-old is going to have a reaction that an 18-year-old is going to have. I think it’s perfectly safe,” Sawyer told ABC 10News."
Re: mortality. Go to https://www.usmortality.com/ and click the 25-44 and 45-64 age check boxes, the graphs will then appear.
A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe"
I was describing the scientific establishment's description of all vaccines, not just for C19.
You're right about [2], it may be an interpolation by journalists. Still, it's ascribed to them and I doubt any of those officials complained about this characterisation.
At any rate, this is a bit of an odd thing to be debating. "Perfectly safe" is a common turn of phrase in English. I doubt anyone who says it means it literally, and I didn't intend it to be read as such. It can be taken as a synonym for "so safe it's not worth anyone worrying about it".
Your vaccine is not 100% effective, so others in the community are still a potential threat.
If you are immunocompromised, or possibly allergic to the vaccines, then you may not be able to have one.
And as mentioned by the other poster, if the virus is still running rampant in the unvaccinated population, new variants may appear which skirt immunity.
Vaccination is a group effort, and while it's great that I am largely protected now, it makes a difference that society at large gets vaccinated too.
Anyone who remembers the discrimination against people with HIV (which still exists) is obviously cautious here.
WHO is against discrimination based on covid vaccine passports. I suspect because they deal with disease based discrimination all the time.
So you can be one of those people screaming at school meetings to kick out the kid with HIV in the 80's or take a step back.
Perhaps it is ok to discriminate, but it's not simple. This also should not involve heath care workers, as the article mentions these laws exclude them.
I would be surprised if the next best step to controlling this is to start discrimination.
The discrimination against people with AIDS was based on irrational fear of getting AIDS by touching or interacting with them.
The discrimination against non-vaxxed people is based on the fact they are non-vaxxed and potential sources of risk.
It's a little bit like discriminating against those who don't have a drivers license who want to drive a car i.e. reasonable grounds for discriminating.
Obviously, it's more complicated than that. British Coloumbia (at least at some point) refused to enact discrimination policies for public serves over fears of inequity in vaccine access for example.
But the nominal issues is legit: non-vaxxed people at least today, represent some kind of risk factor.
>The discrimination against non-vaxxed people is based on the fact they are non-vaxxed and potential sources of risk.
Poor people can be thought of a being more risky to be around, because they have low standard of living, can't afford prompt health care and so on, so there are chances that they might be carriers of contagious diseases..
So you can argue that being around poor people is riskier than being around rich people. Do you want to discriminate against them based on that?
No, if you don't want to be around poor people, you are free to do that. But you should not be able to mandate that poor people must not show up in community places.
>It's a little bit like discriminating against those who don't have a drivers license who want to drive a car i.e. reasonable grounds for discriminating.
Driving a car is not a fundamental right. Freedom is.
1) Being poor doesn't materially increase the risk of anything.
2) There's the issue of inequity i.e. poor people don't have access to healthcare, whereas everyone has access to vaccines.
3) Driving the car that you own seems to be more of a freedom, frankly than the ability to enter a restaurant. You have neither the right nor freedom to go on someone else's private property.
COVID is real, it's a deadly virus that spreads rapidly for which we have a variety of vaccines.
If a restaurant wants to keep their patrons safe and you don't want to have a vaccine, then you'll have to go to another restaurant at least for several months until COVID subsides to the point where there's little material risk to anyone.
> The discrimination against people with AIDS was based on irrational fear of getting AIDS by touching or interacting with them.
Sorry but this is wrong and feels like it's straight from a telemovie.
It was around body fluids and how often people swapped them in practice. Could someone throw up on someones eyes. Do kids fighting swap much blood, this was addressed in 1990's Degrassi High as an unknown. https://degrassi.fandom.com/wiki/Bad_Blood_(2)
Countries today discriminate on HIV, not because they are afraid of touch.
People with HIV are a risk especially in countries without adequate treatments, if America wants to discriminate based on risk, there's no reason other countries can't also discriminate on risk.
And if you want to do it based on intent, it opens up a Pandoras box of whether murders get blood transfusions, or hookers or junkies. It's a mess.
The amount of unsubstantiated and scientifically unproven or even completely unstudied claims in this thread is truly staggering.
These mRNA vaccines are safe for children? How on earth would you know that if the vaccines have only been studied on a handful of healthy kids for a couple of months. Does nobody understand the amount of time needed to do this kind of study properly and thoroughly?
I'd also love some scientific studies that prove that the following claims are true, because as far as I know they aren't:
"No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated."
"It's like wearing seatbelts, but for other people."
"Variants develop primarily in unvaccinated people"
"The main goal of all these actions is to end the pandemic in just a few years."
"In the UK, most people getting into hospitals now with severe Covid are young and unvaccinated"
Oh and I expect to be thoroughly downvoted for this because, you know, group think and all.
"Truly staggering" is 4 million dead people and maybe 61 million more who are dealing with "long-Covid" symptoms. The quotes you cited are just people being considerate of others. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn't need—or hasn't time—to be scientifically proven.
There is no right thing. I can fight rhetoric with rhetoric, too. Say: "Those who are afraid can stay home, mandating a new vaccine with no long-term track record is pure evil.".
I am saying this because of such statements:
> From a societal standpoint, he said people who skip the vaccine could compromise the safety of others.
> I hear everyone saying deciding to get vaccinated is an individual choice, but the calculus in that choice is twofold — one is to vaccinate yourself and the other is protect others. I think we have a responsibility to protect our communities.
It is absolutely disgusting to appeal to emotions and shame to make me have something injected into me that has not been extensively studied and of what we have literally no clue with regarding to its long-term effects[1] especially given that I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder.
In any case, what happens to those who cannot get the vaccine passport due to not being able to get the vaccine due to health reasons? Nobody seems to talk about this, or at least I am not informed on this.
[1] On top of that, recent evidence seems to be piling up about their serious adverse effects that are coming to light now. I am expecting more to come.
> From a societal standpoint, he said people who skip the vaccine could compromise the safety of others.
But this is a discussion of fact, not an appeal to emotions.
> we have literally no clue with regarding to its long-term effects
Except we have a great deal of information on the long term effects of vaccination, from studying many vaccines. It's quite wrong to say we have no idea.
> Except we have a great deal of information on the long term effects of vaccination, from studying many vaccines. It's quite wrong to say we have no idea.
Are you talking about mRNA vaccines? How many people have gotten such a vaccine before the COVID-19 vaccines and when?
> Does nobody understand the amount of time needed to do this kind of study properly and thoroughly?
Plus they do not get that new vaccines (I am not referring to vaccines using the same technology as the previous ones, I thought that was obvious) usually take 10-15 years (!) to develop. How long did it take to develop this one with a tech that has not yet been used on humans? Months?
Yes, and we have seasonal flu vaccines that do not take that much of a long time to develop, we know that. The same case with other vaccines that are based on what our other vaccines are using.
I was talking about the mRNA vaccines. When was the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been approved for human use?
> The process of getting a vaccine approved for use in the general public is no picnic and can take several years
---
If you know it differently, let me know. Please consider that I was not referring to seasonal flu vaccines and the like.
In fact, currently, no coronavirus vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, but three (or more by now?) were given emergency use authorization by the agency.
Plus, I did say the word "develop", but I was thinking about the whole process, my bad.
Well, mRNA vaccines have been in development for a number of years, unsurprisingly. It was first identified as a treatment vector in the 80s, and started development for vaccines in about 2008 AFAICT, with human trials for some of them (a prospective cancer vaccine from what I can tell) going back about ten years.
> When was the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been approved for human use?
Approved for widespread use? Certainly, this is the first, but that doesn't mean we don't have useful data on the likely effects.
How many people have received an mRNA vaccine pre-COVID-19? For example the one you have mentioned for cancer. Was it successful? Could you give me a link to studies with regarding to it? Just curiosity.
I do find it reassuring because it implies we have data from that trial and others going back over a number of years.
I imagine it didn't proceed as the treatment wasn't effective, rather than because everybody died from the vaccine. And if there were problems with the vaccine itself, then I would think that knowledge would feed into the design/implementation of future iterations of mRNA vaccines.
So yeah, that's what I take from that. I find the existence of a decade of trials of the tech, and the approval of these two vaccines after a bunch of their own trials, and the ongoing monitoring of outcomes, to be fairly reassuring.
That said, I got the AZ vaccine, because that's what I was offered!
> the approval of these two vaccines after a bunch of their own trials
Which two? If it is still the case, Pfizer and Moderna were not approved at all by the FDA. They were given emergency use authorization only by the agency. As I said before, the whole approval process takes years, unless they are authorized for emergency use, as it is the case with COVID-19 vaccines.
You have to realize that they did not have their own "bunch" of trials. It would have taken years to properly go through the process. We are studying them now, some time passed since first vaccinations, hence why there is emerging information about side-effects.
> You have to realize that they did not have their own "bunch" of trials.
Yes, they did. Sorry but this is where you veer into outright misinformation. There have been trials ongoing for a while. The specific two mrna vaccines you are concerned about have had trials, with phase 1/2 reporting last summer and phase 3 interim reporting starting late last year. Your own link above puts these at the end of the process, and your other link says development can take years, not that it must or always does.
Are all trials complete? No, they aren't. But to state they haven't had trials is incorrect.
So in summary -
The tech has been studied for 30 years.
Human vaccine trials using it started 10 years ago.
Trials have taken place and have reported, though phase 3 is ongoing and will continue to report (this is not the same as it not happening, there has already been useful clinical data).
We now also have several months of data from worldwide rollout, with multi-hundred-million doses administered, all of which is continuing to make these things look incredibly safe.
That's not enough for you? Do you need some sort of an absolute guarantee of safety handed down by god himself, amidst a raging pandemic?
There's no reason to think that there should be long term health consequences to these. We have lots of data saying short/mid term consequences are rare and mostly very mild, we have a fair body of data going back ten years which leads us to expect that mRNA vaccines are not long term dangerous as a category (or they would not be given their emergency authorisation)... at this point I think the judgement needs to be that any long term consequences that might appear are far less likely to be a problem than covid itself, yes, even for those age groups affected by pericarditis/myocarditis.
There is no reason to believe mRNA vaccine technology poses any particular risk compared to conventional vaccines. In fact, I would be willing to bet that they're less likely to cause problems than viral vector vaccines.
Less likely to cause short-term or long-term problems or both?
By the way, the "I would be willing to bet" is what I am talking about. We do not know, we can bet and all. All my comments started because I know that many people excluded the possibility that there could be any potential side-effects that may manifest a year from now or so. I am not talking against vaccination, just that we should not exclude this possibility. That really is all there is.
Yes, of course the possibility is there, but it needs a huge leap of the imagination to even hypothesise what that short or long term adverse effect from mRNA vaccinations could be. Don't forget that coronaviruses are themselves "mRNA vaccines", with the significant difference that they actually reproduce, are contagious, and cause disease.
One could also argue that there's the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 will trigger an epidemic of extreme early-onset Alzheimer's in people who are currently suffering from long COVID. I don't think this is likely either, but I would argue it's significantly more so than an abstract unknown unknown about mRNA vaccine side effects surfacing in the future.
Report that "The proportion of deaths involving COVID-19 has been highest in those aged 75 years and over throughout the pandemic, however, this proportion has been lower since the start of January 2021. This likely reflects the impact of vaccinations."
A quick Google search shows there are a lot of fake cards that you can download, and since the card is essentially a public document, I’m surprised more people are not just faking it. Maybe they are?
Forging a vaccination card is a Federal crime with up to 5 years of prison. Of course there may only be one or two high profile cases to come from such an abuse, but maybe it would dissuade at least a few people.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 365 ms ] threadSo people are supposed to be "nudged" into it? And they are supposed to do it because it is easier, as opposed to safer? So have these people already written off the idea of convincing people that vaccinating is the safer alternative?
I mean, it appears that they are not even trying. But I guess it makes sense, because convincing people is harder, and when you can just put mandates for everything in place, and there is no opposition from people, it is much easier.
Listening to these people wanting to nudge others I wish I didn't get vaccinated.
I think the damage Covid can cause is significant, but this is an experimental treatment. To my disappointment I didn't get magnetic, but doctors claiming there cannot be any unforseen dangers are lying to you.
If someone forces the vaccine on you, they should be liable for any damages. Perhaps not the manufacturer but government in this case.
There´s one scientist that predicted this development perfectly, Geert Vanden Bosschen. He´s the only one so far that has made correct predictions in this pandemic. He said that mass-vaccinating during ongoing pandemic will result in rising numbers of cases among fully vaccinated people a couple of months after vaccination, caused by selective pressure leading to vaccine resistant mutations dominating. He also warns strongly against vaccinating children. But he praises the new vaccine technology, so he´s not antivaxx.
It's sad how this has to be stated every time one brings up criticism of the current vaccine strategy. For many people there's only two possible stances: "I've already taken the vaccine" and "I'm an anti-vaxxer". I also remember that back when Trump was boasting "We'll have the vaccine soon! It'll be the greatest vaccine. And then we can all go back to normal!" there was a healthy skepticism on the left of promoting nation-wide use of a rushed vaccine, but as soon as Biden took over this disappeared.
Oh wait, that will have the exact same problem, because as more and more people get natural immunity the same selective pressure arises causing new variants. See cold or flu viruses.
Congratulations, you've just caused much more suffering, death and economic damage and achieved nothing by waiting with vaccinations. Good job!
How likely do you think is it, that a vast field of virologists, immunologists, molecular biologists, medical doctors and scientists in general are all wrong but this one person is right?
As you can see here. I am not sure what the exact time is, but they also suggest this possibility. It appears to me that this is common knowledge..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-RuvUkcyJI
By saying "everybody is wrong but I found this one guy who is right" parent is well down the road towards conspiracy theory.
No, its not one scientist who got that right; this was widely flagged that as a likely outcome if the deployment was not so rapid and universal as to essentially curtail significant community spread before that occurred, which is why there was so much imperative from experts for rapid and universal deployment and so much criticism of the slow speed and uneveness of the actual deployment.
> He also warns strongly against vaccinating children.
Given the reason for the other risk (which isn’t “vaccination” but “incomplete vaccination which leaves an large unvaccinated population in contact with the vaccinated population”) that seems.
> But he praises the new vaccine technology, so he´s not antivaxx.
Supporting vaccination in the abstract but arguing that we shouldn’t actually vaccinate people with the actual real vaccines that exist in the actual real circumstances that exist is…not an uncommon antivax position, so, while the conclusion of this argument might still be true, the premise offered is not sufficient to justify the conclusion.
Then this term has no meaning at all
I have no dog in this fight, I'm just providing a possible answer.
mRNA tech itself has been in development since the 80s, and for immunisation since about 2012. It's gone from the body within a few hours AFAICT. If you're that worried, go for the J&J or AZ vaccines, which are more 'traditional' and don't use mRNA.
I'm not saying this is what is happening now, but it has definitely happened in the past. When you read the history of Pandemrix[0][1], you will note that:
> In August 2010 the Swedish MPA issued a statement which included the following: "An investigation is ongoing, but any relationship between the vaccination and the reported symptoms can not be concluded."
and:
> In the Irish parliament, TD Clare Daly commented that, “The Health Service Executive (HSE) decided to purchase Pandemrix and continued to distribute it even after they knew it was dangerous and untested, and before most of the public in Ireland received it.”
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix
[1] https://www.thelocal.se/20201126/why-some-young-swedes-are-w...
When we're talking about "we don't know the long term effects", it's certainly a crucial point, because it shows that we can have a good idea of the long term effects already.
I agree there's likely to be huge political pressure to downplay side effects, however the scale of this rollout and the attention it's getting worldwide mean that it's going to be very unlikely such things sneak through, simply due to the size of the vaccinated population.
The fear is that people are irrational, and when informed will overreact and not get vaccinated. This fear is not unfounded, so they downplay the side effects. Then people notice this downplaying, lose confidence anyway, and don't get vaccinated.
It's a bizarre and ridiculous game.
That same question can be asked about covid so I don't understand how this single point brings anything to the discussion. We don't know the future. We don't know the future vaccine effects just like we don't know the future for covid effects.
We do definitely know that the effects of covid (even if you discount them by the fact that not everyone gets covid) are much worse than the vaccines. Everything points to the vaccines being much better than the disease.
And it doesn't even have to be intrinsic to the vaccine, it could be a manufacturing error like there was with Polio.
As I said, I am vaccinated, but this reaction and militancy really puts me off and frankly, I think it is a bit stupid. Not your comment though.
All we can consider is _actionable_ information. All information so far points to the side-effects of the vaccines causing problems at negligible levels compared to the the side-effects of getting covid. That is information we can use and it really only supports one conclusion.
Anyway if you'd like an anecdote, I have a friend in Spain who just got the delta variant along with his 4 friends a few days ago. He was about to get his second shot yesterday (obviously it's postponed now) and his 4 friends were all completely vaccinated when they got sick.
Off the top of my uneducated head, the one theoretical concern would be giving yourself an autoimmune disease, where your immune system attacks something it shouldnt. Like mistraining a model. Barring that, it seems general consensus is that long term consequences are infinitely unlikely.
I am not sure this idea of "traditional vaccine" is true. The contents of Vaccines can be drastically different. And you cannot generalise that.
> substance is broken down by you body, and all that remains is immunity.
It is quite misleading, to say the least.
Possibly. Or accurate.
In this specific case, you can argue the lipid layer throws a wrench in assumptions, and then the onus is on you to prove some proposed mechanism for long term effect. Because the protein the vaccine targets is not human, the risk of the immune system turning on the body after training was rhetorical, because if the antibodies were targeting our body, it would have come up by now.
Another theoretical concern that has not manifested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibody-dependent_enhancement...
This is actually a smaller issue. The big issue is that measures based on science that is tainted with trust issues must not be mandated.
Have written about this here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27817926
Basically, I think science require a global change in its perception that is updated to modern times.
As an example, see lead, asbestos, mercury, or other heavy metals poisonings.
As Taleb says, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
As a specific point regarding these vaccines, we don't really know the long term effect of the lipid nano particles used in them. And we do know that it took 20 years to create them, because all previous lipid nano particles tried were proven to be highly toxic.
After thorough analysis I took the Moderna one. If you're above 25, the risk from Covid is bigger than any vaccine risk. But I do assume I also took some risk with the Moderna shot. It's basically choosing the lesser evil.
People have been smoking for a very long time without noticing any apparent problem.
Vioxx is estimated to have caused a 100000 additional heart attacks in US alone, but no one noticed.
This is why we do systematic research. Point is "There have been millions of vaccines administrated", is not a proof for safety.
That is not even considering the censorship of Vaccine adverse effects, and how that can skew the perception of safety.
https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/vcc-open-...
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/canadian-doctor-removed-fr...
No, but with a larger population, any adverse effects are likely to be noticed.
With time. Not every problem shows up immediately.
I'm vaccinated but I respect some people who decided against it.
My logic is easy enough to explain: the virus have bigger known side effects than the vaccine and I have personally no reason to belive that there won't be even more and bigger unknown unknowns with the virus than with the vaccine.
Not blindly trusting governments, media and big pharma however doesn't sound crazy to me. After all the worst crimes and crimes against humanity haven't been done by catholic inquisitors or the armed neighbor next door but by governments, and typically not in active war but in steady state after occupation or even typically by the country people belong to.
As for media: how anyone here can trust anyone of them blindly is beyond me. I actively support some of them but I always try to ask myself what really happened.
> As for media: how anyone here can trust anyone of them blindly is beyond me.
I think this is a problem in our current society, rightly or wrongly a lot of people don't trust government or many mainstream information resources, but unfortunately instead of becoming rationally sceptic, a lot go over to blatant misinformation and conspiracy.
Yep.
As I have tried to explain one of my friends: even if you assume every official is prone to lying something can be read from their words and actions.
When I see doctors who have 5-7 more years of studies in the field than me lining up for the vaccine that is a useful signal.
Same with the military and the politicians.
Then there is Ivermectin who according to some could have eradicated Covid-19 if it wasn't for Big Pharmas stranglehold on media and politicians.
Well in that case COVID-19 should be eradicated in Cuba, Iran and Russia now as none of those suffers the same stranglehold from Big Pharma.
etc etc.
Let me share some similar signals that I see.
Let us talk about the VAERS database. I wonder why is it not made in such a way that it can collect high quality data? Like for example, make strict mandates to the healthcare people to document each and every AEFI that they notice.
But right now, the covid vaccines are not even in the list of vaccines whos events are reportable under law [1].
And [2] where they choose not to enforce data collections in name of promoting vaccinations.
So when the authorities opt not to collect data, it is a big red signal for me.
>Well in that case COVID-19 should be eradicated in Cuba, Iran and Russia now as none of those suffers the same stranglehold from Big Pharma.
Well I guess anywhere in the world, the authorities will be taking a big risk by going against W.H.O. Not sure, just something that could be the case..Can you show some citation to show Ivermectin was being used in these places and found to be of no use?
[1] https://vaers.hhs.gov/docs/VAERS_Table_of_Reportable_Events_...
[2] https://www.osha.gov/coronavirus/faqs#worker
Because it's made in such a way that it can collect all data from self-reporting as well. It's meant to be a tool find signals in the noise, not be restrictive or definitive.
> But right now, the covid vaccines are not even in the list of vaccines whos events are reportable under law
That list seems to be things which are legally mandated reporting -
"In addition, healthcare professionals are encouraged to report any clinically significant or unexpected events"
That doesn't mean other things can't be or aren't being reported.
> And [2] where they choose not to enforce data collections in name of promoting vaccinations.
What part of that link says that? Hard to tell.
> Well I guess anywhere in the world, the authorities will be taking a big risk by going against W.H.O.
Why? What sort of risk do you think it might be? What sort of power do you think the WHO has to suppress effective treatments in countries around the world?
Ivermectin, like HCQ before it, appears to have been latched onto by the antivax crowd with no evidence to support it. We do have some effective treatments now, like tocilizumab and dexamethsone, supported with good clinical evidence.
Obviously, I know that, which is why I am asking the question.
>It's meant to be a tool find signals in the noise,
How does it make sense to mix signal and noise together, and then trying to separate them on the other end? To me it it appears that it gives an opportunity to reject all the signal as noise. We can see that happening already, where news article that report on data showing up in VAERS calling it as unreliable because it is self reported.
Also, I asked specifically about not strictly mandating reporting of all AEFI events, you seemed to have ignored that important part of the question. So basically instead of allowing any one to do the reporting, allow only the healthcare provider who administrated the vaccine to do it.
Also, some studies have estimated that only 1% of events are reported. So one can only speculate the actual numbers?
Why throwaway such an important body of data? Does not make any sense at all.
>That doesn't mean other things can't be or aren't being reported.
Basically the document makes a distinction between legally reportable and merely encouraged. I am not sure why that distinction is there in first place, but the concern is that covid vaccines, even though under EUA, fall under the latter and not in the former.
>What part of that link says that? Hard to tell.
Sorry, here.
>OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022.
>Why? What sort of risk do you think it might be? What sort of power do you think the WHO has to suppress effective treatments in countries around the world?
Basically since W.H.O is considered an authority, if a local authority takes a measure that contradict W.H.O, and later it turn out to be sub-optimal, then the local body will find it hard to justify in front of the people, and any political opposition. It is a risk most local authorities will not take, as I see it.
Presumably it's not the only body of data, though, particularly when we're talking about worldwide, rather than just the USA. Side effects are detected in other countries too.
> OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects
So ... you're not required to report suspected covid-vaccine health problems your employees might be having. It seems a poor fit for something you'd want employers to do anyway? Much more suited to the healthcare system.
> if a local authority takes a measure that contradict W.H.O, and later it turn out to be sub-optimal, then the local body will find it hard to justify in front of the people
Good reason to stick to well-evidenced treatments then, regardless of the WHO, as if more reason was needed.
We have to sign a paper that we cannot hold anyone liable for any potential harm that might come from the vaccine (any time in the future). 5.6 million people have signed it and got the vaccine.
why do they need convincing, when it is quite self-evident that getting vaccinated, if you can, is better?
If the people holding out won't listen to evidence, no amount of evidence-based convincing is going to change their mind. So the alternative should be to "nudge" by policy.
Different people have different definitions for "evidence". Something that can convince me, might not be enough to convince you.
That does not mean I can force my trust in a certain evidence upon you.
https://www.corpwatch.org/article/pfizer-admits-bribery-eigh...
https://usareally.com/8550-pfizer-was-fined-nearly-usd-5-bil...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>Let the children build up natural immunity
If a vaccine is safer, why? Framing a covid infection as "natural" is pretty twisted. It's not like primates have been developing immunity to this strain of bat poop for millennia. Pretending a natural infection is better because its natural is reckless. I bet, and I could be wrong, most people who had chicken pox wish they had the vaccine instead.
We do. You might want to read up on why the seasonal influenza is a seasonal influenza and how it is different from a new, pandemic strain. There is a reason children are ill all the time - their immune systems are naive with respect to (almost) all strains of influenza. That's also the reason the 1918 flu killed predominantly young people - it is conjectured that their immune systems hadn't seen the new strain yet, while older people had.
Doesn't sound much like the flu to me.
Even if "these young people" (makes me sound like a dinosaur, though in fact I'm in that cohort) don't care about that risk, they are wasting doctors' time, and taking resources away from overstrained health system.
So maybe I'd say: if you don't want to get vaccinated, without an overwhelming reason, then stay at home (so as not to risk infecting others) and if you do get sick, don't go to the hospital (as it was your risk you were taking).
[1]: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
My second reason to get vaccinated was to slow down spread as far as reasonably possible. Ergo, there are more reasons to get vaccinated than just that one you mentioned.
> If you´re young and healthy, [...] you benefit as much from the vaccine as you do from a tinfoil hat.
Bullshit. A tinfoil hat doesn't protect you against a covid infection a few weeks down the line, a vaccine does. And even though the likelyhood of severe symptoms for COVID-19 is generally lower for younger people, it's still beneficial to get vaccinated due to the lower chance on extreme symptoms and 'long covid'.
Now, there might be a difference in what we call "healthy people" here in Sweden. Because we´re not fat.
As many people as possible getting vaxxed is the best way to prevent some future deadly variant. Getting it naturally is and surviving does not help in this regard, because that is where most (all?) of the variants come from to begin with.
This is nonsense. There are several, and they include helping to protect other people both directly by reducing spread and indirectly by not acting as a host for potential variants.
> it has been clear for a long time that the restrictions will not go away
And this is pure conspiracy thinking.
Because the disease is still running rampant, unfortunately, as we still have a way to go with the vacciantion effort
> I'm really starting to wonder why I bothered with the vax.
Why? You've cut down on the chances of getting the disease, you've cut down the chances you'll be a vector that gets other people infected, and you've cut down the chance you'll be the source of a new variant.
And at what cost? Very little.
Don't worry. This will not go on an on, we're just living through the death rattles of the pandemic completely dominating global, collective, and media awareness over the past year and a half. Of course the BMA are concerned: they are doctors, they have taken the worst of the pandemic, and they just want this damn thing to stop. The difference is that for them, this damned thing is people needing medical attention, and they can only wish it were possible for everything to just bloody stop if that would release them with dealing with the worst of COVID-19. But it will get better, with minor ups and downs.
SARS-CoV-2 is of course not going anywhere. There will continue to be new variants, the media will for a while loudly (and clumsily) echo any clinical paper about breakthrough infections, or increases of cases in this or that population, or collapsed ICUs [0]. Meanwhile, vaccine manufacturers will try to lobby governments into buying and administering newly developed booster doses for this or that variant of concern. The new variant may or may not really be truly concerning for public health, but their business is manufacturing and selling pharmaceuticals, so fair enough.
But in any case, once a critical mass of the population is vaccinated, COVID-19 will gradually become irrelevant. Virtually everyone will have significant immunity, a few people will catch it and think it's just a cold, fewer people will catch it and develop a nasty flu-like case which will be correctly diagnosed as COVID-19, and there will even be nasty and even deadly cases in vaccinated people. But there are nasty and deadly cases of flu, and even nasty and deadly cases of common cold viruses. However, as the media little by little gets bored of making a big thing every time this happens, the epidemiology of COVID-19 will slowly become only of interest to people actually working in the field — just like they have been silently studying the epidemiology of every seasonal flu strain without any media attention.
[0] For Spain at least, I can find you news about collapsed ICUs... during pre-2019 flu seasons!
At what point would you be willing to admit you were wrong? If we're still doing whatever-variant this time next year, would you reconsider?
Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.
FYI - there have been about 30 kids in hospital in the UK with covid in the last month, so the risks are non-negligible.
It would be great if we knew that, but we don't. We usually have long testing periods, but we didn't this time, for reasons that remain unclear.
> Stop trying to make out like this is some sort of new or extreme position.
Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?
A pandemic ravaging the globe doesn't seem clear?
> Please remind me, when was the last time that we gave people vaccines not to protect that person specifically, but to allegedly protect some unknown other person, somewhere?
Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand. I'm surprised this is even a discussion on a place like HN... I guess I'm feeding the trolls...
A fear campaign ravaged the globe. If there hadn't been a fear campaign, I don't think anybody but doctors and immunologists and such would have been aware anything significant was happening. Similar to previous seasonal illnesses that were technically pandemics, but no normal person recalls doing anything about it. For example, ask people who are old enough what they remember about the HK flu in 1968.
> Herd immunity and personal protection are both parts of every vaccine, they go hand in hand
I'm still waiting for the example from the past where we administered a vaccine to someone, saying to them "this is not to protect you, since you are not at risk from this virus, but it is just to protect someone out there, we don't know whom". Are you able to provide such an example?
So the excess deaths, the health services stretched to capacity, this is nothing, nobody would have noticed at all?
I think this is a very, very strong claim given the numbers and would take some extraordinary evidence to back up.
Constantly, it's always part of why we vaccinate, to stop people being a vector as well as personal protection.
That is, unless we want to take "the long road" to the scenario I mentioned above. Yes, we could expect this to be eventually over by waiting until the population develops significant immunity because children usually catch the disease at school, spread it around, and the more vulnerable people in the population are little by little reduced in numbers. However, I personally prefer the vaccination shortcut.
This is a very serious mistake. The duty of a doctor is to the patient in front of them and no one else. The question they have to consider is, is this proposed treatment more likely than not to help this particular patient? If so, the doctor advises the patient to undergo the procedure. If not, they advise against it. If a doctor is considering anything other than the health of the person presently before them, they need to make that clear, that they are treating a herd rather than a specific patient.
> As far as I can tell, the potential risks of vaccinating children are overwhelmingly outweighed by the potential public health risks
That's not the calculus. The question is the risk/benefit for them individually. And, I will add, the risk for even just them as individuals is not known. Some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, e.g. https://odysee.com/@OracleFilms:1/Dr.-Sucharit-Bhakdi-Oracle...
But fair enough, let's focus on the individual patient. The fact that a child is now 10 years old and would most likely suffer from asymptomatic or mild COVID-19 if they were to catch it today says nothing about their possible condition if they catch it in 20, 30, or 40 years time. As long as SARS-CoV-2 is circulating in the population, and it will be for the near future, deciding not to vaccinate a child because they are at low risk at this very moment is at best wishful thinking about their future, and at worst an active hope that they catch the virus and develop some level of immunity before it is likely to harm them significantly. And if some people are advising that the vaccines could cause very significant injury, they are more than welcome to publish their findings in a scientific journal rather than producing online films about it.
Does that mean they lost the culture war or is it just a new phase?
For instance, the constitution ensures both the right to vote and the right to bear arms. The liberal stance is that voter ID infringes on rights, but gun ID does not. And the GOP stance is the reverse. Both are logically inconsistent, just different dog whistle topics.
You can feel however you want to about guns and the 2A, but yours intellectually dishonest to argue in favor of ID for one and not the other from a legal perspective.
An independent voter might say that showing ID for both, two very important acts, is not onerous and is an acceptable burden. But most people won’t argue that due to partisan allegiances.
You can or cant do X because of a legalistic reading of an old document seems like a more classic liberal approach. (And in both cases you coukd argue that the original document was explicit in excluding specific groups from these "rights")
The classic left position would be about disenfranchisment of certain groups and changing the rules to fix it.
The second amendment is explicitly predicated on, "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State".
You can easily now read that predicate as false in the contemporary united states, and hence, the derivative right not obtaining.
Ie., the 2nd A. says, "given it is necessary for Militia, individuals need arms". But there no militia, and there need be none. The US has police forces now, and a standing army. The citizens do not form Militias when the US is under attack, nor to police themselves.
As for a right to vote, the 15th A. says only what grounds are invalid for denying it -- it can, and is, denied for other grounds (eg., being convicted of a crime).
The US constitution, as far as I'm aware, is not a "democratic" document in the sense of establishing anything like an electoral democracy.
The US constitution is a series of essentially jointly-incoherent political principles and stipulations that provide the judiciary independent means of constraining the legislature and the executive. There isn't a particularly coherent contemporary political stand point which makes sense of it all.
And certainly modern political principles like "individual rights to arms" and "voting rights" are not really to be found in the constitution in anything like a contemporary form.
My point wasn't, in any case, about the "facts of the matter". I dont think there are facts about how one should interpret the US constitution.
My point was that the commenter I was replying to assumed that these issues "ID for guns", "ID for votes" were somehow prescribed clearly by the constitution -- and one would be hypocritical to defend only one.
That view is wholly incorrect. The text of the constitution settles almost no matters. Matters are settled at the interpretive level, and much of what passes for "interpretation" is actually established by the historical tradition of the supreme court.
There is no hypocrisy anywhere, because there isnt a stable ideological dogma written down
They're arguing about the placement of a comma: which is exactly my point. I guess you havent understood my point.
The constitution does not verbatim say "you have an individual right to own and use weapons".
It says, "given the necessity of a millitia".
If you whole argument depends on arguing over a comma, then it's pretty clear, there is no "hypocrisy" one way or another. The whole thing is a matter of interpretation.
When I was just a little longer it was an undeniably truth for me that left wing positions are plainly just smarter. I still think that way, but I also believe mental illness is far more common in people that declare themselves left wing.
The language and ideas of civil rights etc., coupled with identity politics, has a political life of its own. And it has been adopted by most major political institutions in the west: "equality", "diversity", "discrimination", etc.
Neutrally, this could be called "identity-first politics" (where "anti-vax" is a tenable identity signifier).
In that sense something has won, but it isnt really The Left. Nor least, because many of these political institutions are quite right wing (eg., the republican party).
What appears to have happened is really the defeat of The Left as a collective political force.
What we're left with is a new awakening across the political spectrum which is more religious than political. Virtue, Struggle, Sin -- and so on -- is attaching itself to new forms of identity which use political vocabulary, but are really not political at all.
Neither the "modern activist left" nor the "alt-right" are political movements, they're more like religious movements centred on a new mode of identity. Their "political" project is merely that their identities be respected.
This isn't politics: there is no material, economic, or institutional goal.
While all political and other ideological movements share a certain degree of the character of religious movements, the idea that either for the “modern activist left” or the “alt-right” the political program is “merely” respect for identities is…buying in way to much to some of the superficial language used in each movement, and paying far too little attention ot the details of what each means by respecting their identities.
> This isn’t politics: there is no material, economic, or institutional goal.
It is politics, and the goals are absolutely an intertwined combination of material, economic, and institutional objectives.
For the “modern activist left” we can narrow that to, say, The Movement for Black Lives, one of the (but not the only) organizational and agenda-setting organizations of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, and look at its concrete policy agenda, digging into the subcomponents of the 2020 platform [0]:
* Divest from surveillance, policing, mass criminalization, incarceration and deportation.
* Invest in making communities stronger and safer through quality, affordable housing, living wage employment, public transportation, education, and health care that includes voluntary, harm reduction and patient-driven, community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment.
* Invest in community-based transformative violence prevention and intervention strategies, that offer support for criminalized populations
* Uncouple access to services, care, and support from the criminal punishment system.
* Provide reparations to survivors of police violence and their families, and to survivors of prison, detention and deportation violence, and their families.
* Decriminalize youth under 23.
* Remove police and surveillance from schools.
* Direct resources toward violence prevention and transformative responses that create a nurturing and positive school climate for all students and create opportunities for youth to thrive in community.
* Interrupt and end criminalization and deportation of Black women. Develop and support non-criminalizing and non-coercive, voluntary, accessible, harm reduction-based and trauma-informed responses to unmet mental health needs, drug use, involvement in the sex trades, survival theft, and community and interpersonal violence. These responses must prioritize, promote, and protect the safety, agency, and self-determination of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people.
* Ensure that Black women have access to resources that will enable them to escape and avoid interpersonal and community violence, including living wage employment; quality, accessible, and affordable housing; immigration status; universal, quality, and accessible health care; comprehensive, culturally appropriate community-based mental health care; universal, quality, and accessible childcare; and healthy environments.
* Ensure full access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care and eliminate discriminatory barriers to health care for all people.
* Eliminate the foster system’s power to permanently and irreversibly destroy Black families through termination of parental rights.
* End profiling, criminalization, police, and prison violence against Black trans and gender nonconforming people.
* Ensure access to safe and equitable, affirming, accessible, quality housing, employment, healthcare, social services, and education for trans, queer, and gender nonconforming people. This includes reducing unemployment and workplace discrimination; providing real, meaningful, and equitable universal health care; and full and equitable access to services, including counseling, community centers, and shelters.
* Affirm gender self-determination in all aspects of life from birth, and ensure freedom fro...
And there is no doubt a political core to each identity banner 'BLM'.
The question is whether the mass movement and the institutional and cultural mass are even 'aware of' let alone 'coordinating for' these political ambitions.
Clearly they are not. The culture of these projects ARE these projects and they are fundamentally demands for a 'theatre of identity' to be created.
Contrast this with union activity, the temperance movement, civil rights era -- etx.
These are political projects whose adearents aim towards them.
This 'identity-fist politics' is not a politics; its a religious awakening for a new era of identity.
You will no doubt find genuine politics going on, and evangelists like Colbert appearing to champion them -- but this isnt a political awakening. It isnt the 20s or 60s.
Its the 19th C. and what we have is a new era of religious identity and new claims to who owns virtue-- across all of society.
Your 'list of demands' is just another Lutheran political gesture -- no one standing alongside you has read them. They are there to demand respect for their newly minted identities.
Christianity has been fairly expressly political for most of its history post-Constantine, and the divisions between different Christian subgroups have often turned more on the political divisions than any notional theological divides.
> The question is whether the mass movement and the institutional and cultural mass are even ‘aware of’ let alone ‘coordinating for’ these political ambitions.
And the answer is, quite clearly, that yes, they are.
> Contrast this with union activity, the temperance movement, civil rights era – etx.
And…what? I’m rather deeply familiar with all of those — while I’m currently working in technology, this is actually the domain that I studied deeply. The division you are drawing is absolutely without any substance whatsoever.
> This ‘identity-fist politics’ is not a politics; its a religious awakening for a new era of identity.
That is no more true than it was of the rise of labor unionism or the civil rights movements, which had an equally “religious” (and quite often overtly religious, as well) character…and an equal focus of political objectives.
The dichotomy you are trying to draw is bogus.
> You will no doubt find genuine politics going on, and evangelists like Colbert appearing to champion them – but this isnt a political awakening. It isnt the 20s or 60s.
Well, sure, if I were comparing the modern BLM movement, for instance, to the Civil Rights movement, I would compare it more to the mid-1950s than the 1960s. But that’s not a difference of degree of political nature of the movement, but degree of political leverage that comes from successful mobilization around a broad concept that brings the power to not merely have a variety of competing political demands within a movement subordinate to the broad problem statement, but actually be in a position to have the leverage to be in a position to implement them.
M4BL itself fairly explicitly acknowledges this (without the historical comparison): “Our movement and Black communities are not currently in a position to set agendas to scale, control the institutions that affect our lives, or create mechanisms to mitigate harm. This assessment should not be interpreted as a failure of our social movements, but it does expose a critical gap. We have created a popular strategy to guide us through the next five years; it is rooted in transformative goals that can impact the millions of Black people looking for direction and leadership in this moment. Chiefly, Black governance and ultimately positioning our communities to set agendas sits at the heart of M4BL Project 2024: Black Power Rising.” [https://m4bl.org/black-power-rising/]
> They are there to demand respect for their newly minted identities.
The idea that black identity is a novel development of the recent activist movement is amusing, but ludicrously false; even the broad outline of the substantive political demands aren’t, mostly, new. All that is new is the sense of urgency for political and institutional change change.
I happily said "anti-vax" was an identity marker.
The relevant comment here, and context, is the use of the term "discrimination" by the right wing. And indeed, see for example, the recent CIA advert using "equality, diversity" and various identity markers.
The unifying phenomenon isn't political -- even if we take BLM itself to be a purely political manifestation. The unifying phenomenon has to account for the alt-right alongside BLM.
What is occurring ACROSS the political spectrum is a new civic religious awakening.
This fervour you have, as a political hobbyist, is at base an identity fervour. Much more akin to a religious fervour. You are commenting on a website advertising your identity. You aren't on any barricades.
The US, and to some degree the west, is undergoing a religious revival disguised as a political movement. It may contain them ("BLM", "Capital Riot", etc.) -- but the social transformation is one purely in the space of "signification" (identity). The capital rioters, and the blm activists -- the TV evangelicals (fox, colbert) -- the CIA with its "diversity" -- celebrities with their metoo opportunism -- your local MegaCrop with its "heartfelt commitments" to the new dogma.
This is a religion. It isnt a politics. It exists purely in the space of identity, signification, public professing.
Trump is the perfect non-political president in this style: a person elected to do nothing political, and everything "religious" -- to be seen to be saying, not to be seen doing.
This is all of the same kind: the new activist left, the alt right, the CIA and Google. It's a religious awakening bordering on a hysteria.
EDIT: thanks for the answers, exactly the info I needed to update my prior beliefs.
2. It can mutate in people that catch it to avoid vaccine / cause other issues. Imagine if it started causing blindness... would you care then of being forced to take a 5-10% / 50% chance of catching it?
3. No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated.
4. Some people can't get vaccinated or it wont work on them. They will catch it and die if others are not getting it / spreading it.
I think that needs to be highlighted more. It's like wearing seatbelts, but for other people. I would consider that the fabric that most societies are made of, taking care of the people that can't for themselves, and in many cases through no fault of their own (e.g. genetics).
That's part of the reason debate over seat belt laws is often misguided under the guise of being only about self inflicted harm. It's also to protect you from others becoming a meat torpedo.
Which circles back to the crux of the original post. At what level does a society have the right to self assemble and govern and protect itself from others. Is it at the block level, the city level, the county level, the state level? Should people be able to go move to an empty spot in the desert and say "vaccinated people only" OR "unvaccinated people only." If those people only want to be around those people, are they allowed to carve out a space for themselves somewhere? When that area starts to rely on the infrastructure of others, how does that relationship change?
>That's part of the reason debate over seat belt laws is often misguided under the guise of being only about self inflicted harm. It's also to protect you from others becoming a meat torpedo.
Additionally, if the driver is belted in they are likely to have a higher chance of maintaining or regaining control of their vehicle if they aren't tossed around inside, allowing them the chance of preventing further harm to others due to a completely out of control vehicle.
Which is why there's still debate about motorcycle helmet laws. A motorcycle helmet basically only protects the person wearing it.
Unfortunately, public health officials have admitted in public they are lying about the thresholds (e.g. Dr Fauci said he gave different numbers depending on what opinion polls were saying). However it's likely to be about 70%-80%, perhaps less because those numbers assume no pre-existing natural immunity, which doesn't seem to be correct. That means there is scope for very large numbers of people do decide not to take it if they don't want to, before herd immunity is threatened at all.
Double unfortunate, I feel like nobody cares about these things, because they see it as a chance to enforce collectivist decision making on people in the name of "society". The actual group safety arguments never come with concrete numbers to assist with the underlying intuitions and that is suspicious.
That is correct, allergies are very rare. I'm talking about patients whose immune system is weakened, either on purpose, e.g. transplant patients, or because they have an auto-immune disease (HIV etc.) or simply because their immune system is weak as a result of another disease (e.g. cancer) or they were simply dealt a weak immune system at birth (genetics) or their immune system is weak because they are very old.
Then add infants, children and pregnant women who can't get vaccinated in the majority of cases.
Now add the whole anti-vaxx crowd, people who became the victim of FUD, people who simply don't care, people who don't get their second shot, and it doesn't look very good, does it?
> The actual group safety arguments never come with concrete numbers to assist with the underlying intuitions and that is suspicious.
There are plenty of models to give you concrete answers, but there is even more uncertainty in the model assumptions, so we simply don't know with certainty. In any case we are already starting to find out in different countries.
As for the sizes of the other groups, you'd have to argue they make up more than 30% of the population for there to be real concerns. 30% of the population is a lot of people. There's plenty of room for people who don't want the vaccine in such a large slice.
False. Pfizer alone will manufacture 2.5 billion doses this year, 3 billion next year. Considering EU/US already at 50-60% vacicnated, there are a lot of doses for the rest of the world.
Moderna will likely have similar production. The other simpler ones even more.
> If it is true that only unvaccinated people generates new dangerous versions of the virus
You get infected, virus can mutate, it's that simple.
> which is completely false since leaky vaccines can cause enhanced versions of the virus
You do realize you are not on reddit or an anti-vax forum?
If yes, please back up this statement with proper scientific sources.
If in good faith, for your own well-being please get out of that conspiracy theory rabbit-hole
Anyway I am sorry I didn't share an article about what I mentioned, I thought it was known enough to not need an article. (I might say the same about your numbers)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/info:doi/10.13...
The journal you reference studies Marek's disease in chicken. The vaccine does not prevent transmission (which farmers found good enough). As such, all vaccinated chicken can get the virus but dont get sick and still transmit it.
That is irrlevant since, its a study on chicken, with a vaccine that wouldn't be approved for humans. Also all vaccines stop transmission with 90-95% or less for poorer vaccines (you are 95% less likely to catch it)
All the study shows is the need to vaccinate everyone and extinguish the virus same as polio before it evolves.
As for numbers source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-09/biontech-...
As for difficulty distributing vaccines in Africa. Where there's a need people will figure out a way.
But you are correct that the lower the transmission rate from vaccinated people, the lower the risk of enhanced viruses.
But your 95% is debatable. The number goes drastically down depending on which vaccine you use, the new strains, and probably time.
My point is that the myth that unvaccinated people are the part of the population creating enhanced variants is false. Before the vaccination propaganda started it was known to everyone that isolating the sick tends to forces the virus to evolve in less dangerous strains.
Incorrect. By logic, 95% (or whatever % you want) of the vaccinated population will not catch virus. As such, virus cannot evolve in them. Logical right?
This is what they study says.
> ... anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission ...
The vaccines we have PREVENT transmission with various effectiveness. The vaccine in study did NOT. Since viruses could still infect vaccinated chicken, it evolved.
But the final point I was trying to pass is that isolation of the sick will slowly push the virus to evolve in more contagious but less risky variants. Undetected infections in the vaccinated might cause strains that evade the vaccine and possibly be more dangerous (because of the lack of symptoms and isolation.)
I bet you would like to go back in time and tell the people that vaccinated against polio that they were doing it wrong too?
We are vaccinating to stop the pandemic.
India is an example what happens without vaccines btw
tot cases/1M pop -> usa 104525 india 22200 deaths/1M pop -> usa 1872 india 295
There is no single country in asia that did as bad as the USA in the deaths department. What's now your next extravagant excuse? That the usa has been overcounting its deaths to scare its people into covid mrna therpies?
I know people that have lost family members there. They were struggling to get them spots in hospitals, everything is mess of corruption, under reporting, overflowed hospitals.
They're not even testing properly... See the airplane full of corona positive people with negative 'PCR' tests.
I can't tell how much of it is undercounting in India, how much is overcounting in the USA, and how much of it is that the friends and family networks in India count hundreds of people as opposed to the westerner ones.
It's also easy to have good numbers if you issue negative results without doing the actual tests and if you count the deaths as that of something else.
Hints of the false tests are:
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/20/49-passengers-on-in...
- all of the ones that were positive had negative PCR tests... done in india
Similar things were happening in Communist Romania, hence my skepticism of India's number (back then - record "harvests", everybody well fed and happy, etc, meanwhile everyone was starving as crops were sold off on external markets)
Either way, best of luck, this discussion was fun for a while.
I mean, I agree that official data can be forged and should be taken with a grain of salt but come on. You can do better than this.
Also it has been proven that there is a strong inverse correlation between vitamin D levels and covid severity. If we assume that you are right and many more people died in India, how can you prove that it's because the vaccine that in Europe the mortality is so much lower?
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/cl... + https://revista-fi.com.br/upload_arquivos/201606/20160600681... + https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24054...
In April 1955, soon after mass polio vaccination began in the US, the Surgeon General began to receive reports of patients who contracted paralytic polio about a week after being vaccinated with Salk polio vaccine from the Cutter pharmaceutical company, with the paralysis limited to the limb the vaccine was injected into. The Cutter vaccine had been used in vaccinating 200,000 children in the western and midwestern United States.[76] Later investigations showed that the Cutter vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, killing 10.[76] In response the Surgeon General pulled all polio vaccines made by Cutter Laboratories from the market, but not before 250 cases of paralytic illness had occurred. Wyeth polio vaccine was also reported to have paralyzed and killed several children. It was soon discovered that some lots of Salk polio vaccine made by Cutter and Wyeth had not been properly inactivated, allowing live poliovirus into more than 100,000 doses of vaccine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine
> The inactivated polio vaccines are very safe
2. Do you have to worry about polio now?, no, why?
3. We have processes in place to verify vaccines, that's why you got news about janssen or whatever throwing away millions of doses due to contamination.
These are not vaccines but gene therapies that have never been tested. History proves risks do exist when new therapies are given to people.
I suppose when a normal vaccine like the novavax is coming out there won't be as much opposition.
Alas... not my business... I took the vaccine and there are no side effects. Same for all people I know. Same for countless others.
If you bring up risk, I think a much bigger risk is the virus destroying a good part of your lungs/kidneys/heart/etc... Ending up in ER and dieing...
And without everyone vaccinating it won't disappear. Either way, good luck
There are big doubts about it.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.20240309v...
Also: many people that look into the data of how therapies are going, have high hopes for Novavax, which seems very promising and works in a more "classic way". Sure some people will never get inoculated with anything but that's a different story.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33688681/
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
This in essence states that given a immune population (either vaccine or natural), virus will evolve strains to escape anti-bodies... which is logical... if one such variant evolves, it will have a huge potential for multiplication.
It then states that strategies for viral elimination should be diversified... I would argue vaccinating everyone will lead to viral elimination... Otherwise virus is free to mutate in non-immune people.
> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33688681/
It's a study on the viruses natural mutation potential... and it's worrying... nothing regarding vaccines and so on... it's basically a warning that it can evolve to bypass vaccines and we'll be back to square one...
Again... nothing to help your argument about 'leaky' vaccines...
Have you read them yourself?
2)Wrong again: "In the presence of mixed sera from multiple previously infected and/or vaccinated individuals these infections would create the appropriate conditions both for genetic recombination to occur, and for selection to rapidly sort multiple recombination-generated combinations of input immune evasion, cell entry and replication impacting mutations."
My original point is that people that made use of covid mrna therapy can be the source of new versions of the virus (because the therapy doesn't prevent infection nor spreading of the virus).
While it's true that the second study talks about mutations in both vaccinated and unvaccinated hosts, the first is clearly looking into the spike protein based therapy:
"The spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) of SARS-CoV-2 is the molecular target for many vaccines and antibody-based prophylactics aimed at bringing COVID-19 under control. Such a narrow molecular focus raises the specter of viral immune evasion as a potential failure mode for these biomedical interventions."
Here's the flaw in your argument. All vaccines provide immunity so the study does not apply.
> because the therapy doesn't prevent infection nor spreading of the virus)
Wrong. Biontech - 95% of the population is immune. It prevents spread to 95% of vaccinated people. The rest for some reason or another it doesn't work.
So you build your whole argument on a logical fallacy.
I think I repeated this a few times so no point in continuing if you can't wrap your head around this.
95% is based on faulty/old data.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
Oh man... so you do agree with me it prevents infection...
You are contradicting yourself...
So, its not 95 its 64, it still gives immunity... check mate?
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm
If it prevents infection in 64% of cases it doesn't grant immunity.
64% or 95% or whatever of the population are IMMUNE.
It's not 'prevent infection 64% of the timr' as you would in a videogame... It's 'get vaccinated and you have X% chance to develop antibodies, if you do, you are immune.'
And this sentence is from the study. A study about Covid "vaccines". Not me.
And those vaccines are which?, does the study allege any of the current vaccines does not provide immunity?, is so please put the quote and the study for that.
Otherwise this is a hypothetical... if x then y... when x is false in reality...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.27.20240309v...
47 in link above is a study of the cruise ship, not what you think.
If you meant the actual link above, it clearly states vaccines give immunity but it might be waning, i.e: won't last, same as natural immunity
Best of luck, thought I might help with your logic, but I admit defeat there.
Society bends over backwards to accomodate ever-increasing levels of obese people. The majority of baseline hospital "stress" is due to morbidities caused by, and strongly associated with, obesity.
Why are we shunning the unvaccinated, a rapidly decreasing proportion of the population, but promote plus-size models, build ever-larger movie theater seating, and denigrate "fat shaming" in response to a problem that 1. exists largely as the baseline hospital "stressor", and 2. increases among the population monotonically?
Now as to the body positive trend. I don’t quite agree with it, but there is a current belief that body shaming tends to backfire with individual weight loss, and that being pro body helps lead to better general health.
Personally I think much of the obesity epidemic is more a mental health epidemic. There are a lot of people who use food as a short term mood enhancer, and I’m reminded of experiments with rats showing that rates of drug addiction go way down when the rats are provided with an environment that better suites their needs.
That said, the current over abundance of highly processed food is probably the hardest thing to overcome in terms of obesity. Processed foods tend to act in the body quicker than our feedback mechinisms can handle, short term feelings of full happen too late, and long term satiation is harder to maintain. I’m not sure that fat shaming isn’t in the same category as victim shaming, the real vitriol should probably be pointed at much of the food industry instead.
Sure, but it's far less likely to be severe even if you're in an at-risk group.
> 3. No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated.
Until it burns through the unvaccinated population and people build up natural immunity. I'm not arguing against vaccines, I got mine and I encourage everyone else to, but don't act like vaccines are the only way to get immunity or that they're enough to get rid of it entirely.
I don't know who people have this kind of narrow (and a little bit selfish) idea that it's only about 'them' and 'if they catch it'.
COVID is not that deadly on a unit level. It's dangerous because of how incredibly viral it is, then it becomes 'net scary' for the community.
By being unvaccinated - even if you survive - which you likely will you are passing it to others and you become a propagating agent of death.
Take the purely libertarian perspective of 'my body my choice' - well in that view, you'd have to be responsible for your actions as well, and therefore arguably liable for everyone you infect and all the damage you cause.
It's not going to work.
If we're going to live as a community and share services, resources and spaces ... then we have do adjust our behaviour at least temporarily so that this diseases doesn't kill a lot of people.
It's very troubling to me that this isn't obvious to every adult.
Secondly, I'm getting the COVID vaccine not because they believe that there is a high risk of getting serious COVID myself, but to help others -- some at-risk people can't get the vaccine at all, and immune-suppresed people are still at significant risk post-vaccine (although still lower risk than without).
People not getting the vaccine who are able are being incredibly selfish. They are exercising the opposite of personal responsibility. It's your personal responsibility not the harm those around you as much as possible. I know they are mostly ignorant, but frankly I find them to be disgusting people.
Especially if you consider the social landscape in the USA, where having beliefs misaligned with your in-group's is extremely damaging. It doesn't leave a lot of room for people to exercise independent thought and climb out of their ignorance.
As an aside, I never called you (or anyone else I was referring to) a bigot.
I didn't mean to claim that you did, but after re-reading the two sentences, I can see how it could be read as such. Sorry for the confusion!
Sure. But there is also a bigger responsibility to oneself. To not do things that might harm themselves.
So with that conflicting forces, it becomes a matter of opinion and perception. So it becomes no longer selfish, and just common sense.
All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine. It's not common sense to avoid it. It's highly irrational. If people are really concerned with not harming themselves, they _will_ get vaccinated.
No, at some point you are trusting some external entities. You trust the information because you trust the entities that provide it.
When you say that someone else is irrational, you are doing that because that person does not share your trust. And to that person, in all probability, what you are doing might be irrational.
In the end, I think no one have the right to impose their standard of trust on to anyone else.
But I guess believe whatever you want if it makes you feel better.
Replace "research" with "stuff a bunch of people you believe say", and the situation will become much more clear.
E.g. here is a point you made that doesn't even remotely apply here:
> If you do an experiment that very few people in the world is able to replicate, because it is hard or due to lack of resources, then the rest of the world have to trust you.
These vaccines have been taken by _millions_ of people. They have been given by many different independent organizations. So yeah this doesn't even apply at all.
> The trust of people should be won, research by research, not authority by authority, and the non-requirement of mandates goes along automatically with that idea.
Essentially all the research points towards the vaccines being much much better than the disease. It's your choice to stick your head in the sand if you so wish, but no one need respect your decision. You're not somehow wise simply due to your being contrarian.
On the contrary being this naive...
Even today, in their newest letter, they are still trying to obfuscate the real situation and are certainly not apologizing for their prior stance.
At any rate, this claim that scientists are never dishonest or wrong, they just "update their beliefs" as more information becomes available, is getting very tedious. That's not what they're doing. "Science" is constantly bombarding our political leaders with wildly extreme statements delivered not just with 100% confidence, but the assertion that you aren't even allowed to disagree because it's a "scientific consensus". People read the papers and point out that they're making false assumptions or are otherwise pseudo-scientific, but they're suppressed and ignoring. Then when that "consensus" turns out to have been completely wrong a bunch of apologists appear to explain that scientists can never be wrong by definition.
Well, guess what? If a certain type of person constantly make confident statements as a group and insists reasoned disagreement is illegitimate, then is repeatedly proven to be wrong, all their statements become seen as less reliable. As a group.
> All information points the disease being worse than the vaccine.*
* : for the population cohort above approximately 50 years old or a BMI greater than 30.
For better or for worse (for society), it appears healthy-weight people under 50 making the choice to not get vaccinated on a calculus of myocarditis, menstrual complications, blood clotting, and various other longer-term risks are, in fact, not being "highly irrational"
I'd be curious to read source of the statistics you're referring to (i.e. what rates of these complications you see and how they compare to the complications of covid itself in the same age groups).
> Especially as we are now getting the fuller picture that covid can lead to last lung and brain damage.
Yes, we are just now getting the fuller picture of COVID-19 that it can lead to this and that. The very same can happen to the vaccines, and it is actually happening to some of these vaccines.
Inflammation/swelling of the heart, not enlarging, very rare given the number of shots that have been rolled out, and people recover pretty quickly. Definitely a concern, not a showstopper.
> We did not know this before either, nor did we know about the AstraZeneca's blood clots.
Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.
> we just simply have no idea.
This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.
> A CDC committee will hear about reports of 300 cases of the heart enlargement that have happened after children were vaccinated against COVID-19. The ailment is fairly common and easily treatable.
The heart inflammation happens too, though.
---
> Again, an incredibly low risk and less risk than harm from the virus.
But that is not the point. The point is that we did not know this would be the case. Other side-effects may come up as time goes on.
> This is not really true, we have a ton of data from this vaccine and from previous ones that can inform our expectations.
Again, are you talking about the mRNA vaccines? I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.
What source are you quoting there? I can find that line in an abc news feed, but no attribution and nothing much else about it. Every other source seems to be talking about inflammation of one sort or another (myocarditis or pericarditis), primarily in young men, very rarely and easily recoverable.
> The point is that we did not know this would be the case
We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.
> I asked the question twice with regarding to it so I am not going to do it again here.
See my other answers then.
I cannot find the source where I found it first, but that could be the case that they confused the two, I am not sure. Some are talking about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. In any case, it can lead to chronically enlarged heart, which is dilated cardiomyopathy. Whatever.
> We are learning all the time, that's true, but these side effects are very rare, and are becoming visible due to the large scale of the rollout. It doesn't fundamentally change the calculus, especially when we are now learning that the disease itself can cause lasting lung and brain damage.
I suppose continuing discussing this is not very useful. If there are long-term side-effects, then we will know about them. If there are no long-term side-effects, same story.
You're being irrational. It's true side-effects can take time to manifest. It's also true that problems due to the disease also can manifest. Taken together the fact that _something_ can possibly happen in the future gives you _no_ information today. For example, one of the side-effects of the vaccine that might manifest might be that you're _healthier_.
So yeah if you take the possibility of negative side effects, but not positive side-effects, you are being irrational. Said in another way, if you are taking statements devoid of information ("something can happen with some likelihood in the future"), you are being irrational.
All actual current information points overwhelmingly to the fact that the disease (even considering that not everyone will get it) is much worse than the vaccinations. That is information. That information points to one conclusion and it's not "wait forever and see what happens".
Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.
There's nothing scientific about any of that. You could have some natural immunity. You could also simply have been lucky. You might never be infected. You might also someday die from the disease. This is entirely anecdotal and basically useless information.
> Plus I do not know if I was talking against getting vaccinated, I merely said that more side-effects may come to light, which I mention because many people seem to have excluded it from the list of possibilities.
People shouldn't exclude that from the list of possibilities. But people _should not_ take it into account with their decision-making. If they are going to give weight to the future possibility of negative side-effects coming to light, they should also give weight to the future possibility that positive side-effects may come to light.
Said simply, there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now".
Not for me though it is not, and that is the only reason I mentioned it, that there are such occurrences, too. Whether or not you believe me, well, that is up to you, and you can do whatever you want with it. :) I did add "personal experience", so yes, of course, it is anecdotal.
> there's nothing very useful in the statement "we might know more in the future than now"
OK, time will tell regardless.
I never said I don't believe you. I just said there was nothing scientific in your reasoning. It's completely obvious that not all people get covid that are exposed to people. I've also been exposed to covid and not been infected. But it's just anecdotal information. I could get covid and die just the same. Drawing any conclusions off of these individual occurrence is not very intelligent.
Does it sound a good enough reason for not getting vaccinated?
But none of that has to do with the issue that something may happen in the future. You are making your choices with the information you have _now_.
By the way, something related: I cannot get a job because I am not vaccinated. No one cares here about people who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. It is tough.
For Americans: https://www.axios.com/republicans-coronavirus-vaccines-discr...
> Republicans push to ban "discrimination" against unvaccinated people
I am sure many people are against it, but if we push people to get the vaccine because of society and its people, then surely they should care about those who cannot get vaccinated for health reasons. They are currently unable to get a job here.
I _do_ care. Which is why I find those who choose unnecessarily not to get the vaccine for unspecified and irrational fears all the more unforgivable. Their selfish irrationality is despicable.
In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).
> But in general the chances are much higher for a neutral/bad result in case of an external intervention for which our body was never put in contact before (not even in past generations as in the case of lipid nano particles).
What is this even saying? The virus is external to the body. The vaccines are external to the body as well. Study after study shows that the side-effects of the vaccine are lower than the issues caused by the disease.
> In general people hates to accept that not everyone reasons in the same way. Many societies aren't as trustworthy as you are to whatever decision is taken by their elites (being either for historical or cultural reasons). You need to accept that many would consider something in front of them poisonous until the contrary is proven (as opposed to more trustworthy people who sees everything safe until proven poisonous).
It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already. But yeah if your point is that there are many people who for cultural/societal/ignorance/etc. reasons act irrationally, the of course that's true. I just don't understand why you're pointing it out.
Saying that the virus is dangerous doesn't make the vaccine safe in the long term. You might be right, but you have no basis to suppose it's safe in the long run. You are just betting it because tv told you so.
> It's been proven non-poisonous hundreds of millions of times already.
You are talking about possible future unknown effects. No it hasn't been proven at all. They aren't even looking for possible long term damage.
Anyway they downplay it in the leaflet but its there: "The COVID-19 vaccine has gone through the same clinical trials and safety checks as all other licensed vaccines, however the vaccine is new and long-term side effect information is limited."
https://www.hse.ie/eng/services/news/newsfeatures/covid19-up...
The bullshit you have to sign before receiving the vaccine here is not downplaying anything here at least, but not that it stops people from signing it; they might as well just sign their rights to health care away altogether.
We literally have to sign our rights away for compensation in case something happens to us due to the vaccine, ANY time in the future. If you have complications from the vaccine, you cannot sue anyone, and you cannot get compensation from anyone.
They tell you straight that it is a new vaccine and we have no information with regarding to its safety, especially long-term, and that you are receiving the vaccine at your own risk, and that you are on your own if something bad happens.
How sketchy is that? More than 5.6 million people signed it. If needed, I will dig it up and translate the entire thing, but I think it is obvious what it is about. :)
I'm not supposing it's safe in the long term. I'm supposing _nothing_ about the long term because we don't have that information. Maybe it is not safe in the long term. We'll find out some day I guess. Maybe it will lead to unexpected health _benefits_ in the long term? Who knows? So why would you weigh the potential dangers over any other potential advantages of taking it?
Anyway here are two serious questions to you:
1. Specifically how long is long enough before you'd consider the vaccine safe (compared of course to all the problems that can be caused by not taking the vaccine).
2. Do you feel ashamed allowing your fellow citizens to take on this potential risk and you forgoing when it helps end the pandemic for you and them? (Feel free to ignore this question if you are vaccinated, but are just being argumentative.)
2. You cannot force people into taking experimental therapies even if you tricked half of the population into taking them.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/17/1007447...
" 7 million U.S. teens and preteens (ages 12 through 17) had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine" [...] "more than 300 cases of heart inflammation have been documented [...] mostly in teens and young adults between 12 and 39 years old"
Assuming every single one of those 400 (rounding up) cases was between 12 and 17, that's 400 out of 7 million or 0.0057%.
"The rate seen after these vaccines is slightly higher than the "background" rate. [...] Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine."
Which could well mean that only a handful of these cases are actually down to the vaccine, no?
And it's not even that drastic a problem; mainly just scary - "In a case study of seven teenagers who got myocarditis following vaccination published last week in the journal Pediatrics, all seven got better after routine treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs."
[edit: forgot to round one of my 300s up to 400]
If you look at VAERS then it's clear that this is by multiple orders of magnitude the most dangerous vaccine ever deployed.
https://swprs.org/us-vaccine-deaths-increasing-rapidly/
"The latest weekly US VAERS update added a shocking 2,083 post-vaccination deaths – by far the largest weekly increase to date – raising the total of reported post-vaccination deaths to 9,048. Not all of these 2,083 deaths occurred within a week, as there is a very significant reporting backlog. In total, close to 1,000 post-vaccination miscarriages, more than 3,000 heart attacks, about 7,500 disabilities, close to 20,000 severe allergic reactions, and close to 1,000 cases of heart muscle inflammation in people under 25 have already been reported to VAERS."
Even if all those deaths were directly attributable to the vaccine (and that is unlikely), the US has vaccinated 159M people - that's 0.0057% or 99.9943% safe.
If you want to include all the illnesses as well to bring it up to 41,500 incidents, that's still only 0.026% or 99.974% safe.
For what is almost certainly the single biggest vaccination project in human history, with more scrutiny than any other mass medical intervention, those are pretty damn good numbers.
But there's a deeper problem. Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine. A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe" and in particular that the vaccine is much safer than actually getting COVID. What this data shows is that these vaccines don't meet expectations established by prior campaigns, and that actually we have no real idea whatsoever of how dangerous they are, especially in the young.
Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline despite that COVID deaths have dropped to nearly zero. Something is raising mortality, and according to the largest virus surveillance programme in history combined with the laxest classification process imaginable, it isn't COVID.
I don't think anyone has ever said that, have they? They've said things like "vaccines are pretty safe" and "the risk of something going wrong is tiny compared with the risk of being unvaccinated", sure, but I doubt any medical professional has said "perfectly safe"?
> Those are not good numbers because they are drastically higher than would be expected for a vaccine.
Probably the smallpox vaccination program is the only one even vaguely comparable in size to this and, yeah, that had many fewer deaths (68 in the US in 10 years, I think, but I couldn't find out how many vaccinations were actually done.)
But then smallpox is a much easier thing to a) spot, b) treat, c) isolate people from, and d) create a vaccine for.
> Consider that US all cause mortality for the under 65s is still seriously above the expected baseline
Do you have a URL for that?
"These vaccines are perfectly safe and are extremely effective at preventing serious illness from these infectious diseases"
Pennsylvanian officials: [2]
"PA (WBNG) -- Despite natural concern and curiosity over the coronavirus vaccine, Pennsylvania officials held a scientific panel Thursday to explain the vaccines are perfectly safe, even for children."
A professor advising the UK government via the primary COVID vaccination committee: [3]
"There is the concern that what’s happening in Europe might make people in the UK less confident in the AstraZeneca vaccine, unnecessarily so, because it’s perfectly safe"
Maybe you don't consider an academic to be a medical professional, so here's a doctor in San Diego saying the same thing: [4]
"“There’s no reason to think that a 16-year-old or 17-year-old is going to have a reaction that an 18-year-old is going to have. I think it’s perfectly safe,” Sawyer told ABC 10News."
Re: mortality. Go to https://www.usmortality.com/ and click the 25-44 and 45-64 age check boxes, the graphs will then appear.
[1] https://www.immunology.org/celebrate-vaccines/public-engagem...
[2] https://wbng.com/2021/06/17/pa-officials-insist-vaccine-is-s...
[3] https://inews.co.uk/news/health/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-s...
[4] https://www.10news.com/news/coronavirus/san-diego-doctor-say...
[3] and [4], though, I stand corrected, they do say "perfectly safe".
A big part of the argument for getting vaccinated is that vaccines in general are "perfectly safe"
I was describing the scientific establishment's description of all vaccines, not just for C19.
You're right about [2], it may be an interpolation by journalists. Still, it's ascribed to them and I doubt any of those officials complained about this characterisation.
At any rate, this is a bit of an odd thing to be debating. "Perfectly safe" is a common turn of phrase in English. I doubt anyone who says it means it literally, and I didn't intend it to be read as such. It can be taken as a synonym for "so safe it's not worth anyone worrying about it".
If you are immunocompromised, or possibly allergic to the vaccines, then you may not be able to have one.
And as mentioned by the other poster, if the virus is still running rampant in the unvaccinated population, new variants may appear which skirt immunity.
Vaccination is a group effort, and while it's great that I am largely protected now, it makes a difference that society at large gets vaccinated too.
WHO is against discrimination based on covid vaccine passports. I suspect because they deal with disease based discrimination all the time.
So you can be one of those people screaming at school meetings to kick out the kid with HIV in the 80's or take a step back.
Perhaps it is ok to discriminate, but it's not simple. This also should not involve heath care workers, as the article mentions these laws exclude them.
I would be surprised if the next best step to controlling this is to start discrimination.
The discrimination against non-vaxxed people is based on the fact they are non-vaxxed and potential sources of risk.
It's a little bit like discriminating against those who don't have a drivers license who want to drive a car i.e. reasonable grounds for discriminating.
Obviously, it's more complicated than that. British Coloumbia (at least at some point) refused to enact discrimination policies for public serves over fears of inequity in vaccine access for example.
But the nominal issues is legit: non-vaxxed people at least today, represent some kind of risk factor.
Poor people can be thought of a being more risky to be around, because they have low standard of living, can't afford prompt health care and so on, so there are chances that they might be carriers of contagious diseases..
So you can argue that being around poor people is riskier than being around rich people. Do you want to discriminate against them based on that?
No, if you don't want to be around poor people, you are free to do that. But you should not be able to mandate that poor people must not show up in community places.
>It's a little bit like discriminating against those who don't have a drivers license who want to drive a car i.e. reasonable grounds for discriminating.
Driving a car is not a fundamental right. Freedom is.
2) There's the issue of inequity i.e. poor people don't have access to healthcare, whereas everyone has access to vaccines.
3) Driving the car that you own seems to be more of a freedom, frankly than the ability to enter a restaurant. You have neither the right nor freedom to go on someone else's private property.
COVID is real, it's a deadly virus that spreads rapidly for which we have a variety of vaccines.
If a restaurant wants to keep their patrons safe and you don't want to have a vaccine, then you'll have to go to another restaurant at least for several months until COVID subsides to the point where there's little material risk to anyone.
It's just the reality of the situation.
You are answering to some argument that I didn't make.
Sorry but this is wrong and feels like it's straight from a telemovie.
It was around body fluids and how often people swapped them in practice. Could someone throw up on someones eyes. Do kids fighting swap much blood, this was addressed in 1990's Degrassi High as an unknown. https://degrassi.fandom.com/wiki/Bad_Blood_(2)
Countries today discriminate on HIV, not because they are afraid of touch.
"Some 59 countries, territories and areas deny the entry, stay or residence of HIV-positive people because of their HIV status only" https://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/jc173...
People with HIV are a risk especially in countries without adequate treatments, if America wants to discriminate based on risk, there's no reason other countries can't also discriminate on risk.
And if you want to do it based on intent, it opens up a Pandoras box of whether murders get blood transfusions, or hookers or junkies. It's a mess.
When Princess Diana visited some people with AIDS and literally just shook their hand - it was a huge deal.
It went far beyond the hard medical issues of fluid exchange.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-39490507
These mRNA vaccines are safe for children? How on earth would you know that if the vaccines have only been studied on a handful of healthy kids for a couple of months. Does nobody understand the amount of time needed to do this kind of study properly and thoroughly?
I'd also love some scientific studies that prove that the following claims are true, because as far as I know they aren't:
"No chance of wiping it out without everyone vaccinated."
"It's like wearing seatbelts, but for other people."
"Variants develop primarily in unvaccinated people"
"The main goal of all these actions is to end the pandemic in just a few years."
"In the UK, most people getting into hospitals now with severe Covid are young and unvaccinated"
Oh and I expect to be thoroughly downvoted for this because, you know, group think and all.
I am saying this because of such statements:
> From a societal standpoint, he said people who skip the vaccine could compromise the safety of others.
> I hear everyone saying deciding to get vaccinated is an individual choice, but the calculus in that choice is twofold — one is to vaccinate yourself and the other is protect others. I think we have a responsibility to protect our communities.
It is absolutely disgusting to appeal to emotions and shame to make me have something injected into me that has not been extensively studied and of what we have literally no clue with regarding to its long-term effects[1] especially given that I have an immunologic autoimmune disorder.
In any case, what happens to those who cannot get the vaccine passport due to not being able to get the vaccine due to health reasons? Nobody seems to talk about this, or at least I am not informed on this.
[1] On top of that, recent evidence seems to be piling up about their serious adverse effects that are coming to light now. I am expecting more to come.
But this is a discussion of fact, not an appeal to emotions.
> we have literally no clue with regarding to its long-term effects
Except we have a great deal of information on the long term effects of vaccination, from studying many vaccines. It's quite wrong to say we have no idea.
Are you talking about mRNA vaccines? How many people have gotten such a vaccine before the COVID-19 vaccines and when?
Are you? You seemed to be talking about all vaccines.
> How many people have gotten such a vaccine before the COVID-19 vaccines and when?
I don't have the exact figures but if you search for human mRNA trials, they seem to go back about 10 years.
Plus they do not get that new vaccines (I am not referring to vaccines using the same technology as the previous ones, I thought that was obvious) usually take 10-15 years (!) to develop. How long did it take to develop this one with a tech that has not yet been used on humans? Months?
This is outdated info, vaccines don't typically take that long any more, and there was a bit of a head-start here due to the work on SARS and MERS.
> How long did it take to develop this one with a tech that has not yet been used on humans?
Which tech are you talking about? And which vaccine? J&J and AZ, for instance, are more 'traditional' and based on adenovirus.
I was talking about the mRNA vaccines. When was the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been approved for human use?
---
To the down-voters of my previous comment:
This is the source of my claim: https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/vaccine-d...
Or take a look at https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/coronavirus-disea... which says:
> The process of getting a vaccine approved for use in the general public is no picnic and can take several years
---
If you know it differently, let me know. Please consider that I was not referring to seasonal flu vaccines and the like.
In fact, currently, no coronavirus vaccine is fully approved by the FDA, but three (or more by now?) were given emergency use authorization by the agency.
Plus, I did say the word "develop", but I was thinking about the whole process, my bad.
> When was the first time that any mRNA vaccine has been approved for human use?
Approved for widespread use? Certainly, this is the first, but that doesn't mean we don't have useful data on the likely effects.
Particularly this table calls out some of the trials that were completed or ongoing at the time - https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd.2017.243/tables/2
I imagine the cancer vaccine trial wasn't successful, as the current mRNA vaccines are indeed the first to enter public use.
Yeah, but you see how non-reassuring it is. :P
I imagine it didn't proceed as the treatment wasn't effective, rather than because everybody died from the vaccine. And if there were problems with the vaccine itself, then I would think that knowledge would feed into the design/implementation of future iterations of mRNA vaccines.
So yeah, that's what I take from that. I find the existence of a decade of trials of the tech, and the approval of these two vaccines after a bunch of their own trials, and the ongoing monitoring of outcomes, to be fairly reassuring.
That said, I got the AZ vaccine, because that's what I was offered!
Which two? If it is still the case, Pfizer and Moderna were not approved at all by the FDA. They were given emergency use authorization only by the agency. As I said before, the whole approval process takes years, unless they are authorized for emergency use, as it is the case with COVID-19 vaccines.
You have to realize that they did not have their own "bunch" of trials. It would have taken years to properly go through the process. We are studying them now, some time passed since first vaccinations, hence why there is emerging information about side-effects.
> You have to realize that they did not have their own "bunch" of trials.
Yes, they did. Sorry but this is where you veer into outright misinformation. There have been trials ongoing for a while. The specific two mrna vaccines you are concerned about have had trials, with phase 1/2 reporting last summer and phase 3 interim reporting starting late last year. Your own link above puts these at the end of the process, and your other link says development can take years, not that it must or always does.
Are all trials complete? No, they aren't. But to state they haven't had trials is incorrect.
So in summary -
The tech has been studied for 30 years.
Human vaccine trials using it started 10 years ago.
Trials have taken place and have reported, though phase 3 is ongoing and will continue to report (this is not the same as it not happening, there has already been useful clinical data).
We now also have several months of data from worldwide rollout, with multi-hundred-million doses administered, all of which is continuing to make these things look incredibly safe.
That's not enough for you? Do you need some sort of an absolute guarantee of safety handed down by god himself, amidst a raging pandemic?
There's no reason to think that there should be long term health consequences to these. We have lots of data saying short/mid term consequences are rare and mostly very mild, we have a fair body of data going back ten years which leads us to expect that mRNA vaccines are not long term dangerous as a category (or they would not be given their emergency authorisation)... at this point I think the judgement needs to be that any long term consequences that might appear are far less likely to be a problem than covid itself, yes, even for those age groups affected by pericarditis/myocarditis.
By the way, the "I would be willing to bet" is what I am talking about. We do not know, we can bet and all. All my comments started because I know that many people excluded the possibility that there could be any potential side-effects that may manifest a year from now or so. I am not talking against vaccination, just that we should not exclude this possibility. That really is all there is.
One could also argue that there's the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 will trigger an epidemic of extreme early-onset Alzheimer's in people who are currently suffering from long COVID. I don't think this is likely either, but I would argue it's significantly more so than an abstract unknown unknown about mRNA vaccine side effects surfacing in the future.
The stats I can find are here - https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...
AFAICT they don't give a lot to work with, thought the 18-54 crowd do now make a large proportion of hospital intake than earlier in the pandemic.
The ONS - https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Report that "The proportion of deaths involving COVID-19 has been highest in those aged 75 years and over throughout the pandemic, however, this proportion has been lower since the start of January 2021. This likely reflects the impact of vaccinations."
And we have the independent reporting that hospitalisations are now mostly among the under-45 and unvaccinated groups, and that as a result there is less pressure on the intensive wards - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-hospital-adm...
So I would say the claim that "most people getting into hospitals now with severe Covid are young and unvaccinated" is probably overstated.