I mean, the alternative where you don’t get the vaccine includes much higher risk of lung damage, nervous system damage and total organ failure.
I think even if there was data to back this up (that somehow vaccine gives less protection than a real infection…), getting a booster every year or 6 months is well worth it given what happens with an unvaccinated covid infection. People do seem to get reinfected and die after already having it once.
I don’t think that your model of how vaccines work really makes sense. I mean, the point is to prime your immune system with antibodies to something similar but relatively harmless so you can fight off the disease immediately rather than waiting for it to get a strong foothold… in a way that is safe.
Saying it is less effective than getting sick is like totaling your car to avoid regular maintenance.
I believe OP is referencing "Original antigenic sin" [0].
"This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections."
This is just bad science and isn't supported by real-world outcomes.
https://twitter.com/Karl_Lauterbach/status/14516437827855564...
The general mechanism is that recognition of the antigen by memory B cells produces a response that also inhibits (non-memory) B cells from reacting to the antigen. So when the antigen has drifted enough that memory B cells still recognize it, but the antibodies are less effective then at that point B cells are actively inhibited by the memory B cells so new and retargeted antibodies are not produced.
(Social media reports aren’t exactly reliable and everything seems to indicate that your chances of serious complications are worse without a vaccine).
Right now, there’s a deadly virus going around and there might not be a “later” for me if I don’t get the vaccine. I think I’ll take my chances with the vaccine. It seems like a no brainer to me.
I don't think this is how this works.
They "see" antibodies sticking to a target, as successful antibodies are presented for replication and refinement. This implies a functional response. If the vaccine antibodies wouldn't work on a new strain, the B cells wouldn't recognize them as suitable candidates.
(I don’t agree: I think there is risk of chronic damage that doesn’t appear as acute symptoms)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/fed...
despite this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be
Oops, you can't watch that. Senators holding an expert panel is "dangerous misinformation". Here you go:
https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-feder...
Given the strains circulating now I don’t think your concern is valid. Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Maybe that will change with a future strain (though I’d bet against it), but it isn’t the case now.
> The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.
The vast majority of people testing positive for the virus are not dying from it.
> The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated.
The comment to which I'm responding said there's little evidence that natural immunity is better than vaccines. That's just not true. There's pretty strong evidence, actually.
That natural immunity plus a booster is better than either is interesting, but not responsive to the question.
Yes, they did this, and showed that natural infection was superior to vaccination alone.
> but not (yet) infected.
Incorrect.
> Note the "previously infected" category did not exclude the vaccinated, but the vaccinated category did exclude the previously infected.
No. You only have to read the link to see that your understanding of the study is entirely incorrect.
> The study...found in two analyses that never-infected people who were vaccinated in January and February were, in June, July, and the first half of August, six to 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the coronavirus. In one analysis, comparing more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher.
> The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated.
"the higher hospitalization rate in the 32,000-person analysis was based on just eight hospitalizations in a vaccinated group and one in a previously infected group. And the 13-fold increased risk of infection in the same analysis was based on just 238 infections in the vaccinated population, less than 1.5% of the more than 16,000 people, versus 19 reinfections among a similar number of people who once had SARS-CoV-2."
These numbers are very small for distinguishing between the effectiveness of two different and effective immunization methods (natural and vaccine). By now, we should have more data to support if the effect size is that strong. Do we?
Nobody in their right mind would choose such a tradeoff.
The point is: people who have recovered from the illness are immune, and should be treated as such.
I'm not sure the guy on the street is actually interested in properly understanding the risks associated with Covid.
My neighbour is in his 70s, he had Covid in November 2020 and (in his words) he wasn't particularly poorly with it. He subsequently had his vaccinations.
He and a couple of friends have been having blood tests to check on antibody titres. His antibodies are still really high, his friends (who haven't had Covid) have antibodies which have dropped significantly since they were vaccinated. He told me he wasn't sure why.
We were talking out on the street, my kids were out and around on their bikes, he told me he thought it was really important that children (like mine) should get vaccinated in order to keep people like him "safe".
What do you say at that point? I'm honestly not sure where we go from here.
You should check the number of deaths in the original trials used to approve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. You might be surprised. Even in big trials in immunologically naive populations, only a small number of people became seriously ill -- a total of 10 people became seriously ill across the entire Pfizer trial. No deaths occurred. [1]
Once you've vaccinated your population (or otherwise allowed them to become immune), you're talking about incredibly small effect sizes.
This is a very strong claim to make without any evidence or proof.
To the contrary, there is strong evidence that natural infection brings considerably better immunity than any vaccination does. [0]
Study analyzed:
> 2.5 million people in Israel, spanning March 1st 2020 to August 14th 2021.
Full study can be read in detail: [1]
[0] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/312538 [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
Being vaccinated and then boosted offers as worst equal protection, probably better, against infection and disease, with much much lower risk of side effects, serious disease, long covid or death.
1: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7044e1-H.pdf
It basically says unvaccinated people who are already or recently sick (with any "covid-like" symptoms) are more likely to go to the hospital once they catch covid (vs vaccinated). (Duh.)
Worse, it presumes any of those sick people with respiratory symptoms had natural immunity to covid without any confirmation.
So it's not comparing natural immunity to vaccinated immunity, but vaccinated individuals vs anybody-unvaccinated-thats-been-sick-with-anything-in-the-last-6-months.
Put another way, it presumes any "covid-like" symptoms results in natural immunity to covid, then puts that assumption to the test.
And instead of admitting it's a bad assumption and that most of this group didn't previously have covid, they attribute it to natural immunity not being effective.
I’m not suggesting it is a perfect study, but the methodology makes sense. The point is that if somebody gets hospitalized for covid-like sickness, then they’ll be hospitalized (and trackable), and they hope that is a stable cohort.
So you start with hospitalized patients with covid-like symptoms, then look among them and see who was vaccinated (and when), vs who previously had covid (and when), and then by looking at the percentage of cases caused by covid you are attempting to effectively compare the susceptibility to covid in the broader population. It works as long as the person is getting all of their medical care in your system and you have full tracking of them (which they do in the study).
And again, it isn’t perfect but there is no perfect study for this. And when they redo the study with boosters whatever the result is we know the real world effectiveness of boosters is 10x non-boosted do the results would be even better.
They claim to be comparing efficacy of natural immunity to that of vaccination, but they're not. They're not really "measuring" prior natural immunity at all, but just assuming it's there.
How's that misinterpreted?
That's not even close to "not a perfect study".
Yet it's being presented, like here, as evidence against the efficacy of natural immunity, which is something it's not, and as being applicable to the general public, when the sample population is self-selected to be only the sickest of the sick (2 hospital visits in a year).
> presumes any of those sick people with respiratory symptoms had natural immunity to covid without any confirmation.
This is an accurate statement to make about the study. Until you can effectively prove somehow this is not the case, it's only you who
> shows your internal bias in this matter
Do you genuinely believe a study with such a massive and obvious methodology problem would get published and cited by the CDC? (and yes I know bad studies do get published from time to time but it isn’t common).
The criteria for inclusion in the study:
> Hospitalized adults aged ≥18 years with COVID-19–like illness were included if they had received testing at least twice: once associated with a COVID-19–like illness hospitalization during January–September 2021 and at least once earlier (since February 1, 2020, and ≥14 days before that hospitalization).
This is a terrible methodology. It says nothing of a positive or negative test result, and the duration of time in between hospitalization and testing is absurdly arbitrary. It is simply assumed to be a COVID infection with no reasoning for this decision.
We've then got this nugget:
> Laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was identi-fied among 324 (5.1%) of 6,328 fully vaccinated persons and among 89 of 1,020 (8.7%) unvaccinated, previously infected persons
Perhaps they should have found 5,000 more unvaccinated people before concluding their study. They are not hard to find.
> Do you genuinely believe a study with such a massive and obvious methodology problem would get published and cited by the CDC?
This is a joke, right? The CDC are frequently derided for their terrible methodologies and this goes back for decades. Not an uncommon outcome where you are an inherently political organization that is also in charge of distributing enormous sums for research funding. So of course, I would expect a terrible study like this from the CDC.
You're actually going to compare this crap-tastic shitfest of a study with the rock-solid study I provided, containing ~3mil participants and a far more verbose & informative outline of the study's methodology?
> Previous infection was ascertained based on SARS-CoV-2 testing from rapid antigen tests or molecular assays (e.g., real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) performed before mRNA vaccination and ≥14 days before admission; testing performed after February 2020 was primarily within network partners’ medical facilities.
This is why it’s recommended for people to get vaccinated even after infection. They might already have robust immunity, or they might not. The vaccines are so incredibly safe and cheap it’s simply not worth the risk.
Agreed. However, many people are not in that position. For those who have been infected but not vaccinated, they have experienced immune systems and must evaluate information from that starting point.
I am in relatively lower risk group, and in good health. I got it and recovered on my own. I got blood test and have Dr. letter to prove it.
It appears I now have sterilizing immunity, which is not available with the present vaccines. I suggest sterilizing immunity is better for everyone around me.
Both infection- and vaccination-produced immunity decays over time. So everyone's choice is between keeping up their vaccination, or getting COVID repeatedly.
Which boils down to a question of whether you think being vaccinated or getting COVID is less risky.
Yes, there's some +/- on the decay rate, but in a relative weighting between risk (COVID without immune system primed) and needing more frequent boosters, why pick the COVID option and roll the dice on death or permanent organ damage?
Personal choice, I stay vaccinated, at least until (fingers crossed) the circulating strains of COVID evolve to be less dangerous.
SARS-CoV-1 (2002), MERS (2012+)
"Of the 7 coronaviruses, the former four can cause common cold symptoms, but SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV can lead to severe respiratory syndromes, with about 6.76%, 9.6%, and 35.5% mortality rates, respectively." [0]
We just dodged a bullet because they were regionally-contained and/or had lower transmissibility. But if you were in Asia before and after 2002, you noticed.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334925/
Edit: And if we want to go to the more-lethal, less-transmissible end of the spectrum (so roughly equivalent in terms of public health risk), the regularly recurring Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Most recently the 2013-2016 campaign.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... (Among RT-PCR-confirmed cases tested by Oct 1, 2020, 342 (2·4%; 95% CI 2·2–2·6) of 14 237 died within 30 days of their positive test. Mortality was 0·4% (95% CI 0·3–0·6) at ages 0–39 years, 2·0% (1·7–2·3) at ages 40–64 years, 7·5% (6·4–8·7) at ages 65–79 years, and 15·4% (11·6–19·6) in those aged 80 years or older (figure 4))
[2] https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 (The absolute risk of death in this group of community identified participants, however, remains relatively low, increasing from 2.5 to 4.1 deaths per 1000 cases.)
[3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...
The study I cited was (broadly) CFR. That Lancet study is (broadly) IFR. If you proactively surveillance test 13.5% of Madurai's population, you're going to get a different class of people in your denominator, and your calculated mortality is going to decrease.
The BMJ study is probably the most broadly compatible, which leaves us at 2.5% (non-Delta) or 4.1% (Delta), which appears to be case fatality rate?
If we want to argue apples:apples, we should use EMR-based studies that attempt to calculate IFR, as at least they're reasoning with the same population composition.
This [0] has SARS-CoV-2 at somewhere between 0.26% and 0.83% IFR. Which for context, is compared to respiratory flu at 0.0088% (estimated total population EMR due to flu) [1]. So we'd expect about 29.5x as many people to die from SARS-CoV-2 (using the high end estimate of flu and the low end estimate of SARS-CoV-2, to generate the lowest possible multiple). If you want to, you can probably dig European numbers out of this excess mortality calculation [2], although that's all-cause mortality, with no attempt to isolate cause.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543961/
Isn't this disregarding (or generalizing) the fact that age plays a significant role with SARS-CoV-2? Those numbers are vastly different between, say, teenagers and 60+ year olds.
I don't see many 60+ running around protesting. Mostly it's the 0.01% IFR crowd.
For some perspective, Chicken Pox killed roughly 100 Americans every year and that vaccine was mandated in effectively all schools and universities across the country.
1. COVID
You might be "set" with long COVID, sure [1]. It's like wishing to be mugged so you can learn to fight the muggers next time you get mugged instead of practicing mugging defense with say, a martial arts teacher.
The act of being mugged could injure you for life or kill you.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknow...
I'm still interested in how resistance to the disease emerges in the unvaccinated population. It will help to inform our response to the next pandemic.
In the group of vaccinated survivors there will be more folks who would have died from infection without the vaccine, because of insufficient immune response.
People who survived an infection without prior vaccination are more likely to have a good immune response to the disease.
Speaking as someone who got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines, I'd gladly trade our positions. And my case would be considered "mild"--I never lost my sense of smell, for example.
I'd rather take boosters every year than risk a horrible death.
"Original antigenic sin has the advantage that a response can be rapidly mobilized from memory. However, the downside is that in some cases, such as dengue, the response is dominated by inferior-quality antibody. In influenza, original antigenic sin has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of vaccination (13, 34, 51). In dengue, the effect of original antigenic sin has considerable bearing on vaccine strategies. Once a response has been established, it is unlikely that repeat boosting will be able to change its scope, meaning that balanced responses against the four virus serotypes will need to be established with the first vaccine dose."
I don't intend any hostility here. But I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life, and it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of mild illness. A quick poll of my acquaintances reveals that almost no one in my social circle gets flu shots, either. This makes me wonder whether the antagonism to mandatory COVID boosters is just an intensification of an existing divide between people who already get yearly jabs and people who don't, a divide which was mostly unobserved until now because it wasn't politically relevant.
(Minor grammatical edits.)
Getting my first real flu since childhood is definitely what got me back on the vaccine train. All this talk about mortality, I want to minimize even basic inconvenience to myself!
To the GP's question, about whether catching something gives you better protection than having a vaccine, my (non-expert) expectation is that Covid is like the flu - my having had the flu won't give me protection for all future strains, so I'll keep on needing new vaccines periodically for those new strains.
It's also medically incorrect. When you get a vaccine you are literally getting a live virus injected into you. There's no difference for your immune system. One isn't "fake" and the other "natural". Period.
To your point, viruses mutate and so similar to the flu and flu vaccine, if COVID-19 continues to mutate in ways that are different enough we'll have to get new COVID shots which use modeling to predict the likely virulent strains. People that are aghast about this concept are not really understanding the new reality we're in. The only hope is that if enough people get vaccinated quickly enough, a new strain won't mutate and cause the vaccines to lose some effectiveness. I think that's a wildly naive hope, though and the best path forward is just treating this like a worse flu and moving on with our lives.
This is false for the mRNA vaccines according to the CDC:
mRNA vaccines do not use the live virus that causes COVID-19 and cannot cause infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 or other viruses.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...
In my previous comment I was unclear about what I was addressing and when, though ultimately the point is that this distinction of contracting a virus "naturally" versus "artificially" is not scientifically based. Applies to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines as well as flu vaccines.
If there's evidence to suggest otherwise though we should get that out there.
That has caused resistance among friends I know, who say that its not a real vaccine, since vaccines give you a small dose of a live virus to trigger one's immune response. Perhaps the mRNA injections should have used a different name to clear misconceptions.
Getting vaccinated not only helps yourself, it helps those around you.
I've had the feeling all along that once we've started getting people forced into perpetual Covid vaccinations it's gonna move into seasonal influenza vaccines. Judging by this discourse my hunch is not far off.
Now real flu viruses may have not yet given you symptoms since you stopped vaccinating. But it's possible you're becoming a carrier of the virus that spreads it to more vulnerable people. Some of whom may not be able to get vaccinated.
But your decision to not take flu shots sounds totally reasonable given you apparently get a bad adverse reaction every time.
You therefore belong to that group of people whose health is too weak to get vaccinated, I guess.
I hope you won't catch the flu, and will keep getting vaccinated whenever I get the chance since I'm lucky enough that I've never felt any illness from any vaccine (but got flu once and had to stay in bed, half unconscious, for almost a day).
It definitely has nothing to do with "not caring about others". What a malicious human being you seem to be. The vast majority of people just aren't that worried about the flu. It's a natural part of life for most people. For old people and immunocompromised it's relevant, and for them it's obviously their choice to defend against it - and I've started recommending elders in my community to get flu shots (if they want!), even though it only has around 40% efficacy.
Vaccinating kids or young people? Wow. I was sacked for 2 days both with my first and second jab. Next one I'm just gonna let my immune system ride it out. Arrogant people like you convince me.
The flu isn't always mild, especially as you get older. Depending on the year a couple hundred thousand Americans wind up in the hospital and about 10-20k die. [1] Compared to COVID-19 (hence the "politicization of getting the vaccine) it's not that bad but it's still not great.
Now what is the cost of getting a flu vaccine every year? Well, for most people it's 0. You walk in, get a shot, walk out. Arm is sore for a day or two at most and that's it. Then in getting the flu shot you reduce your own chance of getting the flu and reducing severity if you do get it anyway (which many people do), and you lower the risk for others who might be immunocompromised, susceptible to the flu, etc. Now I understand if you want to make the case that society shouldn't pay for it or that it's not worth it or w/e, but on an individual level there seems to be a ton of upside versus the downside.
So what's the downside of the flu shot? You're inconvenienced. That's about it. Unfortunately it's hard to measure the value of that inconvenience versus the upside, so, as typical human nature goes, you just value your inconvenience and then decide not to get a flu vaccine. Unfortunately it's just human nature. The same human nature manifests in all sorts of "I got mine" kinds of ways, ranging from global warming to opposing healthcare for all (why don't they just get insurance like me?).
If anything I think the dividing line isn't so much political (though it's now being used politically), it's who is willing to make sacrifices for the good of society. In the case of the flu vaccine here what I'm hearing you say is basically "welp, I don't see how it benefits me so I don't care". Is that not the case?
> it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of mild illness
As someone who now just grabs the flu shot whenever it's available and I happen to be in a convenient spot the 1-3 days I might feel like crap seem like an awfully high price to pay for not getting a shot that takes 5 minutes. At least practically speaking. Idk. I don't like getting sick and the shot doesn't bother me at all.
Is it silly to get a shot in order to cut down on the chance of someone else having a mild illness turn severe or fatal?
What is new is that those who get yearly jabs, now wants to mandate the other group to get yearly jabs.
This is what I never want to see happen, we should have as much control as possible over our own body.
Secondly, the flu vaccine isn't the same vaccine every year. It is reformulated to target the flu strains that are predicted to be dominant that season.
Thirdly, the flu vaccines effectiveness varies wildly from pretty darn good to almost worthless. Usually depending on how accurately flu strains were predicted.
This is how vaccines work toward public health. Not by preventing illness in all cases, but by lessening the pool of potential cases to ease the health burden on the population.
It’s good practice as a citizen and a neighbor to get vaccinated.
The risks vary with different diseases, and in different people, and in different demographic environments. But with covid, it's quite clear that for all adults, the risk reduction by vaccine far outweighs the risks of vaccine complications.
Now that these are being mandated it also becomes a risk of validating medical tyranny as an authoritarian methodology.
I don't really know what you are talking about with the murder analogy. Obviously the uncomfortable issue at play here is the duality of:
Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever.
Who's doing what to who here? Are you punching me with the mandate or am I punching you with my hypothetical infection and hypothetical ICU bed? Do we have to put numbers to how hypothetically infectious I am or we must fall in line and "Do whatever we can" which today happens to be getting injected with a drug that fails to prevent infection.
Literally zero. I know enough about science and economics to know that the US president has no bearing on the efficacy of the COVID vaccine whatsoever, just like politicians have exactly zero bearing on how well the flu vaccine works or how well Ibuprofen works.
> Your right to swing your arms ends at my face or whatever.
Right, so why in your mind doesn’t that extend to my right to not get infected by you in public?
P.S. you dodged the question: why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny? Do you think the mandate to buy car insurance in order to drive on public roads is tyranny?
https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/ (granted the numbers have been going down recently, but it still illustrates the hysteria quite well)
And I also wouldn't trust big pharma to have my best interest in mind.
Absolutely not. I meant the total number of people who have actually died from it compared to the near zero vaccine fatalities.
> why is a mandate that the majority wants equivalent to tyranny?
I doubt the dead people (the vast majority being 60+) are the ones mandating it.
It's the same people who think it's imperative that we vaccinate children when a) children are barely affected by the virus b) the vaccine doesn't do much for the transmission rate anyways.
And if that's a majority then the majority is simply misinformed (or stupid).
What’s with the silly straw man? Your last comment was a straw man too. I’m interested in a rational discussion if we can have one. Are you uninterested in that?
> if that’s a majority then the majority is simply misinformed (or stupid).
Then it seems like you’re saying the vaccine mandate is not tyranny, it’s just in your opinion stupid people, right?
Do you believe that Tyranny of the Majority is a valid concern with the vaccine mandates? Which minority groups are being oppressed?
Personally, I don't see why it wouldn't be a concern with the mandates, but I think this conversation has already been repeated by others ad nauseum:
I say bodily autonomy, you might say we mandate all sorts of vaccines, I say these aren't those vaccines, you might say well they're safe and effective, and I say talk to me in 5 or 10 years when we have long term data, and you might say well we've never linked adverse effects to previous vaccines after n days, to which I'd say good luck actually finding those impacts if they do exist and again these aren't those vaccines, and we eventually arrive at a difference in beliefs/biases and an impasse.
It’s strange to me that the arguments against vaccines are all self-centered, about personal risk, and the arguments in favor are all addressing net social benefit. I kinda want the bodily autonomy to not get infected by someone refusing to take any social precautions over political beliefs.
We have more than enough data already, enough people have died from COVID, to prove the vaccine is a net benefit to society, and enough data and solid evidence to know that the personal risk is much lower than the risks that come from getting COVID.
> because something is approved by the majority doesn’t disqualify it from being tyrannical
We’re talking about something specific, not vague platitudes. Tyranny is defined as being oppressive, arbitrary or cruel assertions of power. None of that is true for the COVID vaccine.
Regular testing, distancing, masking, foregoing normal activities are examples of other ways to look out for each other. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think we'll eventually find that folks who just got vaccinated and went about life like normal probably caused more spread than folks who didn't but kept up all the other precautions. I think if you assume everyone thats going about it differently from you is selfish, you're going to be missing chunks of the picture.
> We have more than enough data already...
And this is where we find our difference in beliefs/biases. Same for your opinions on what is and isn't tyranny, which you're welcome to.
Why do you believe this? What evidence do you have to ignore the overwhelming conclusions of all the experts actually studying the disease and the vaccine? The idea that vaccinations cause more spread has in fact been studied on the COVID vaccine and on others. It’s generally not true for most vaccines, why do you think it’s true for this one?
Why are you talking about spread and not also hospitalizations and fatalities? The vaccine considerably lessens the risk of dying. Even if the spread rate were to increase a little (which I don’t really buy), but the risk decreases by an order of magnitude, isn’t a lower total death rate a social net benefit?
How many people have died of COVID to date? How many people have died of COVID vaccines so far? Seriously, please find and compare those two numbers.
Tyranny is defined in many dictionaries. It’s not my opinion, the word has a specific meaning. You haven’t answered the question of why a vaccine mandate should be considered tyranny, or how it compares to any other case of action mandated by law, or personal freedoms limited by law, of which we have many.
It would be lovely if anti-vaxxers were distancing and wearing masks, but that seems like a fantasy to me. How many anti-vaxxers really are wearing masks and taking all other precautions? There seems to be a lot of data that there’s a large correlation and significant overlap between people who are anti-vax and anti-mask and anti-lockdown. We had the chance to stop COVID spread, and we bungled it by politicizing the solutions, people are screaming tyranny over mask mandates and social distancing mandates too.
Forgive the snarkiness, but do you have some sort of machine that knows who all of the true experts are, and figures out the sum of all of their knowledge? Even better if it comes with daily updates. I'd love to borrow it if you do.
My point is you yourself would have to be an expert to be making the assertion that you're making. Are you? If not, it comes down to us just trusting different sources. I personally like published literature. I don't like the news or Twitter personalities or bureaucrats.
That aside, I think you're responding to something I didn't (or at least didn't mean to) claim. I'm not saying the vaccine itself makes you spread covid, I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if the people who heard "safe and effective" and thought "great, no need for any of that other stuff, let's party!" [Edit:] might be generating more cases than someone who takes every other precaution.
I believe this because there is published evidence that these vaccines only reduce spread, they don't stop it. (More exposure + some reduction in transmissibility) could be greater than (minimal exposure + full transmissibility). I'm not claiming this is fact. It's just the prediction of some dummy on the internet.
> Why are you talking about spread and not also hospitalizations and fatalities
Can't have hospitalizations or deaths without spread. I'm talking about looking out for each other here, the social good that you referred to. If my own personal odds of spreading to other people is low enough (for example because I regularly test and have previously recovered, and all the other precautions I mentioned), I've done my part. If someone is vaccinated but engaging in high risk activities, I've done more than them.
> Tyranny is defined in many dictionaries
Lots of things are defined in the dictionary. It's then on us humans to interpret them and apply them. I'm not necessarily saying the mandates are tyranny, I'm saying they could be. The mandates may turn out to be illegal. If they do, that might be considered the president unlawfully enforcing rules, which to some might be considered tyrannical.
> The idea that vaccinations cause more spread has in fact been studied on the COVID vaccine and on others.
The studies done since at least August (after delta) suggest that the vaccine doesn't do much for stopping transmission. For example: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
> Why are you talking about spread and not also hospitalizations and fatalities? The vaccine considerably lessens the risk of dying.
It all boils down to hospitalization. The problem here is that the vast majority of hospitalizations are old people and/or with co-morbidities. Vaccinating young and healthy (or children) does very little to help this (except line the pockets of pharma companies (and politicians if you believe in conspiracy theories)).
I got two jabs because I was under the false impression (as were many others) that I'd be protecting my parents (and other members of society), but now since that's out of the window thanks to delta (and omicron lurking behind the corner) I see very little reason to get a lifetime Pfizer subscription.
> It would be lovely if anti-vaxxers were distancing and wearing masks
Given that I've had two jabs but am strongly considering not getting a third, does that make me a pro-vaxxer or anti-vaxxer? I'm fairly young (in my 30's) and in good health. I'm not worried about Covid. I'm worried about older members of my family getting it and have recommended them 3rd jabs. For me, no thanks.
Re: masks, it's difficult to speak about this (due to being labeled an "anti-vaxxer" or "spreader of misinformation"), masks don't ultimately don't do that much. Assuming you're socially distancing you're already protected against droplets, and against aerosols you'd have to use N95's to get any kind of protection. Sure if someone is talking to you directly (or coughing at you) wearing a mask makes sense. But by that logic it means that we should be wearing masks everywhere (unless we stay isolated) for the rest of our lives. Not an attractive option.
We all hoped vaccines were gonna solve this, but the situation we're facing now is one of denial, where no one is prepared to admit that we don't know what to do, so governments are panicking and hoping that vaccine mandates or Covid passports are going to do anything other than make already angry/scared/frustrated people more angry/scared/frustrated. Hint: It won't. Covid is here to stay.
People are yelling "pandemic of the unvaccinated". Think ahead a bit. If we were to get to 100% vaccination rate, which is practically impossible, it would just become the "pandemic of the vaccinated". Which kinds of variants would we be worrying about then?
Which leads into the fact that research shows (as logic also dictates) that natural immunity offers better protection than just that of the vaccine. I'll take my chances and let my immune system do the work, thankyouverymuch.
We don't force fat people to go on diets either, even though they're a burden on the healtcare system. And here in Europe we have to pay taxes for their healthcare as well. We accept that.
> We had the chance to stop COVID spread
Did we, seriously? It's becoming increasingly clear to me that there's not really much we could do after maybe March/April 2020. We can only mitigate the damages, try to protect risk groups. And that's what we should be focusing on. Not broad senseless measures like for example Covid passports.
That's much higher than I would have guessed. I would have thought it was around 20%... medical workers and the old/infirm. I never have; I might when I get into my 70s or 80s.
Keep in mind that reinfection was always still possible after getting Covid, regardless of vaccination status.