Going forward, pretty much everyone is either going to get infected or get vaccinated. There's no 'risk' of exposure, it's pretty much inevitable. On average, people that get vaccinated will be exposed to much, much, much less spike protein than those that get infected. So if you are concerned about exposure to spike protein, vaccination is a good course of action...
That direction only ends in war, because you will discover that I don’t care whether you agree with my choices, and I am 100% ready to die over them. Are you?
Being concerned about exposure to spike proteins is fine, whatever. Infection results in far more exposure to those proteins and is basically inevitable for people that aren't vaccinated, so any analysis of the risk of vaccination needs to include that context, the risk due to infection (which is as I have said, is essentially a 100% chance of a larger exposure to the spike protein).
None of this is relevant to the conversation, unless your goal is to imply (without actually claiming) that the risk/reward is in fact robustly understood, and that the choices made by the out-group are indefensible?
I have tried arguing rationally with these folks, but this is one of the situations where the right strategy is simply: “No, fuck you too!”
Ironically people who do live under fascist regimes don't even get access to Covid vaccines...
This is a non sequitur. Someone was responding to you specifically about spike proteins and was demonstrating why your assumption was based on some incomplete understanding.
Why talk about the two weeks thing?
If you're frustrated about covid, well ... join the club. It includes literally everyone.
If instead you mean little (not no) threat to you, sure. If you mean the response was not commensurate with the threat, you might be able to make that case.
But not a threat? Sorry. Once you know someone in their late 30s with no comorbidities who dies from this your perspective changes a bit.
To be honest I find the histrionics about this horrible, draconian fascist response a bit ludicrous.
There's also the question of biodistribution. Do the spikes from the vaccine wind up in more sensitive, easily damaged cells than the ones which occur from a SARS-CoV-2 infection? Anecdotally, most of my close contacts who were vaccinated spent more time out of commission and had a far worse time than I did with COVID (although I did start treatment early on the second day of symptoms with the FLCCC ivermectin protocol). Theoretically all the vaccine is doing is creating a bunch of spike protein -- if the dose is so much lower why does it affect people so much more?
I still see so much discussion premised on the idea that there is still some tradeoff to be made between mutually exclusive outcomes of "get vaccinated" or "get infected" and it's simply not the case.
Many fewer vaccinated people are getting infected than unvaccinated, so the comparison between people that do get infected isn't the whole story.
I think the data is showing that isn't true, that the numbers are nearly equal in places with a high percentage of the population vaccinated. The only benefit is that the vaccinated don't get as severely ill.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9511...
In the UK every age group over 30 is seeing a higher case rate in the vaccinated. I think this is probably explained by a higher prevalence of natural immunity in the unvaccinated cohort but it also shows the vaccines are not providing a high level of prevention of infection: https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/ukhsa-efficacy-stats-death-...
"The evidence is fake, take the mectin".
https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/scicheck-why-its-easy-to-m...
As far as the cases go the eugyppius post deals with all the supposed caveats and speculations raised in your fact check link. Very funny how they only get raised when the reported case rates are higher in the vaccinated, and not when it was time to kvetch about a "pandemic of the unvaccinated."
It even supports my natural immunity theory at one point:
> Plus, COVID-19 infections among the unvaccinated in the prior four-week reporting period may be “artificially reducing” the case rate for that group in the latest report.
None of these gymnastics would be necessary if the vaccines were genuinely preventing infections at a rate of 6x.
My father is an extremely high risk individual who was vaccinated and then ended up having a breakthrough infection. I highly doubt he would be alive today if he had not been vaccinated.
My mother-in-law who was in her early 60s and healthy suffered a severe adverse event from her second Pfizer shot. 3 hours after receiving the second shot she went into cardiac arrest in the midst of a fever. This adverse event ended up not being reported to the CDC due to a bureaucratic error at the hospital. No conspiracy or anything it's just a 30 minute process to enter the event into the VAERS system and there's no penalty for not doing it. Translation most physicians put it on a list of to-do items and then forget to get to it.
So the lack of nuance in your analysis has to do with where the spike proteins are in the body in a natural infection versus with an mRNA vaccine.
The study is specifically talking about spike proteins in the nucleus of cells. That is not something that occurs with natural infection.
I'm not against the vaccine. I caught the virus before I was eligible and it's not a great way to get immunized compared to a well-designed vaccine. For older folks or people who are at higher risk it's a deadly way to get immunized versus getting vaccinated.
That being said it's important to note that this vaccine is not going to be the final one. It obviously has design flaws that could only have been discovered after a lengthy period of time. It appears based on studies like this one that the full spike protein is not a great payload. One of the reasons there are so many breakthrough infections is because the immune system doesn't even develop antibodies to the entire spike protein. It instead focuses on individual components of it which are not as evolutionary expensive to discard for new variants of the virus.
They will be able to develop a new MRNA vaccine that creates a much more targeted spike protein payload that will likely have far fewer side effects in the long term. That's my crappy analysis on this anyway.
If it's not about protecting others, then how can you justify forced medical procedures?
For example it's not great that some older folks will inevitably die of COVID over the next 20 years, but it's better than just letting happen over the next 12 months.
I bought the "flatten the curve for 2 weeks" argument a year ago, not so much anymore.
Except unlike a natural infection with a gradual ramp up, the vaccine is effectively an immediate megadose of an inflammatory and apparently potentially mutagenic protein. Blindly presuming that the vaccine is preferable to natural immunity from infection is, frankly, dangerous.
In addition, during the course of a natural infection, your cells are producing the full, assembled virus from the full viral genome. With the vaccine your cells are producing a single inflammatory protein which then embeds itself in the surfaces of your own cells, producing an autoimmune response in effect. Given the hysteresis of the human immune system there is a nonzero risk of semipermanent to permanent autoimmune effects/disorders. And obviously a side effect like a subtle autoimmune disorder would be extremely difficult to detect in such a short time scale, doubly so if clinicians and researchers are not actively looking for evidence. Just diagnosing known autoimmune disorders can take years...and there's no guarantee that such a side effect would manifest in the near term.
Two years in and the danger of COVID in healthy people, as in complication rate, has clearly been overstated. Ask yourself, if it weren't for news reports, would you even be aware from your day to day life that we are still in the midst of a pandemic? If the answer is no, then mandating an experimental vaccine, based on an untested technology, for what amounts to a bad flu, is unjustifiable.
Edit: and on top of all that, considering that the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic or mild, there's no reason to suspect that the total exposure of someone who builds natural immunity will produce a comparable exposure to spike proteins. Not to mention the assertion that everyone eventually will be exposed is also unfounded, and likely does not apply to rural populations.
Also the Pfizer vaccine's been approved, it's no longer 'experimental'.
>Also the Pfizer vaccine's been approved, it's no longer 'experimental
This is dishonest. The fact that a political machine suspended due process and rushed a politically and financially motivated approval does not imply that the vaccine is no longer experimental. We still don't even know how well or for how long it works, judging by the rapidly falling efficacy numbers over time. In addition to the paradoxical statistics showing record cases in the most highly vaccinated countries.
It took five years for the mutagenicity of thalidomide to be discovered, but not before causing severe birth defects in thousands of children. Meanwhile we've just given the green light to billions of doses with absolutely no medium or long term safety data, in a political climate where questioning vaccine safety/efficacy is social and career suicide. Practically asking for trouble under such circumstances.
Not only that, but you can't actually get the approved Comirnaty version of the Pfizer shots. The "legally distinct" EUA injections are still the only ones available. The FDA's "approval" is a bait-and-switch.
It doesn't matter that what I eat, or the fact that I drive a car, or other medication I take is several orders of magnitude more risky than getting vaccinated. I just don't want others to decide what's good for me.