Or continue an existing reason:
"Information is not yet available about potential long-term health outcomes."
There is uncertainty about long-term effects of both. There is no uncertainty about the short-term effects of COVID, which are magnitudes worse than the short-term effects of a vaccine. COVID for me was a multi-week flu that scared the shit out of me because I didn't know how bad it would get or if I'd live through it. I took months to get my smell/taste back, three months to get back to previous fitness levels, hair loss, and significant mental fog and memory problems. The jab was one day of tiredness and I ran a marathon two days after no problem.
I really can't fathom how anyone could put themselves and those around them at such great risk, rather than taking a vaccine.
Vaccine or not, you can still get covid and suffer the consequences depending on your body. So I dont see the point in getting a vaccine and suffer its long term consequences when it basically does nothing.
If you are saying it prevents covid death - you are wrong. Check England's data. More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less. Vaccinated people are getting covid less but the ones who died after getting covid are more. The math isn't adding up for the vaccines.
If only there was a way to objectively assess these things... Oh wait there is, it's called "doing a randomized controlled trial on more than 3 people" and "numerous observational studies from real world data"
And guess what ? From this data, you're 90% less likely to get severely ill and 95% less likely to die if you've been vaccinated, even with Delta.
> If you are saying it prevents covid death - you are wrong. Check England's data.
No he's right. Still about 95% protection against death from Delta.
> More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less.
Wrong.
> Vaccinated people are getting covid less but the ones who died after getting covid are more.
Still wrong. Unless you've been comparing vaccinated 80 year olds with unvaccinated 20 year olds maybe ?
Being vaccinated makes you 20-30 years younger in terms of your risk to die from Covid (source : https://www.ft.com/content/0f11b219-0f1b-420e-8188-6651d1e74...)
> The math isn't adding up for the vaccines.
Thanks for the brilliant demonstration.
Right
>the vaccine does nothing
Right
>there's zero reason to think there's any(side effects) from vaccines
Wrong
>More unvaccinated people are getting covid but they are dying less.
Right
>Being vaccinated makes you 20-30 years younger in terms of your risk to die from Covid (source : https://www.ft.com/content/0f11b219-0f1b-420e-8188-6651d1e74...)
Wrong(Lol medical advice from a Financial blog)
> Thanks for the brilliant demonstration.
Your welcome :*
As a 30-odd year old knowledge worker (vaccinated), that's the thing that affects my personal risk assessment the most right now.
I have a lot of trouble arguing with these people (friends, family) because I read daily about how bad covid is and they are simply ignorant. For some of them it's basically "he said, she said" (so like: who should I trust?) as if anti-vaxxers and science are on the same level of trustworthiness. And also when you talk about data they say something like "I don't trust the data" and rather trust some stupid people in their social circle. Also it appears like they feel like "vaccination can be bad", "covid can be bad (but not necessarily, my daughter had it and it was like the flu!)", so they rather try to avoid both. Yeah, logic...
It's like worrying about the long-term impact of breathing fire extinguisher powder while being engulfed by flames.
But the local fire department isn't doing anything about it. Nobody around here is installing sprinklers as a precaution. They act like there is no fire at all.
Covid is a serious thing. But "engulfed by flames" is the exact overstatement that causes people to question the motivation of fear-mongers.
I'm vaccinated. I wear a mask. I think too many people are whipping up a frenzy for profit. Why don't we lockdown our highways when there are 600,000 deaths from auto accidents? Why not lockdown breweries when there are 2 million drunk-driving incidents? Why isn't there a frenzy over influenza?
Covid frenzy has a better marketing campaign. It's the kind of thing that has people claiming we are "engulfed by flames" when things get smoky.
We mandate seat belts, air bags, guard rails, road construction standards, backup cameras, crumple zones, and quite a few other elements involved in road safety. Per-mile road deaths have been on a precipitous decline for decades due to ongoing increases in safety mandates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
500000 hospitalizations (influenza)?
What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.
Also, according to [2], "The majority of people with diabetes have type 2 diabetes." So the majority of deaths are possibly preventable, which sounds familiar to the debate around COVID.
Finally, to suggest diabetes and coronaviruses are at all the same is an ignorant statement. It's not like _nobody_ cares about diabetes. It just happens to be its own tough nut to crack. What have you contributed to the body of knowledge about it?
> What deserves such incredible non-stop daily attention? Answer: whatever makes the most money.
Indeed. This is why I strictly limit my news consumption, but it's not completely useless. I scan for trends and dig into sources and details. The stuff I linked in this comment took me all of 5 minutes to find with Internet searches.
[1]: https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/
[2]: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
I think initially the correct answer in the case of COVID-19 was more specifically: whatever endangers existing profits most. The whole situation spelled uncertainty at the beginning, and that's bad for everything where "business as usual" is highly profitable. The rushed response and large scale mismanagement this caused is what brought into existence the "never let a crisis go to waste" part that came after.
The idea of conflating other causes of death with COVID is just perfection over progress. Sure there are other systems that aren't perfect but that doesn't mean COVID isn't worth addressing.
GPs point is: compared to other drama, covid's hype seems out of proportion. I agree.
She's never had to do that because of a bad flu season. More than 90% of the adults in the hospital for COVID and 100% of the kids are unvaccinated.
People wouldn't even be discussing shutting down schools and businesses to get this under control if we had a 90% vaccination rate.
In nearly all other aspects of life, inflicting harm on others results in some sort of liability. Unsafe activities are regulated. However, in this time of massive death, massive hospitalization, massive long term health complications, basic safety is being thrown out the window to appease political tribalism.
The government is not forcing me to get a security clearance.
In this world, people with jobs are being fired for not getting vaccinated. It's not a small cohort either; it's the government and giant corporate entities.
There are a few notable exceptions, though, of employers that are not mandating vaccination. Pfizer, for one. The White House, for another. When the pharma that makes the thing, and the POTUS, who is making vaccination priority #1, don't require it, that is some laughably awful PR.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook/2021... says the White House has as well.
> The White House didn’t even establish a vaccine mandate for its own staffers until last month, despite the shot being available to them early in the year.
The fact that some people don't recognize that gift as what it is because they've been misinformed is irrelevant because, well, whatever they believe is simply not true.
Source? Are you saying unvaccinated people are out there murdering others? Do people no longer have functional immune systems?
If you want to take part in exchange, you must do it in terms acceptable to both parties. You are not entitled to take from society on whatever terms you dictate on your own.
NYC is notable for requiring it for indoor dining, gyms, and a few others. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mand...
Apart from facing one's cognitive dissonance, fears and ignorance, there is none. Just overwhelming benefits. It's perfectly okay for society to require it.
Make "vroom vroom" noises while you wait, if it makes you feel better.
Depending on where you live and who your political alignment is, the government is absolutely compelling you to get COVID.
1) Risk of potential negative long-term health outcomes from COVID-19 vaccine.
2) Risk of potential negative health outcomes (long and short term) from COVID-19 infection.
As well as
3) Risk of potential negative non-health outcomes from COVID-19 infection (social and economic, risk of infecting others, risk of overrunning ICUs)
With a proper risk analysis vaccine 100% wins for the vast majority of people and it's not even close.
There are also sufficient rates of infection of even healthy subjects to warrant concern considering that Covid cases are far more serious than most Flu cases - another illness that affects the healthy far less but can still lead to hospitalisation or even death. Also, before you mention it, the fact that there are more deaths caused by the Flu than Covid statistically per year is due to the greater proliferation of the Flu virus and it's variants over Covid.
On an individual basis, you are far more likely to develop complications from Covid than Flu, even for healthy subjects.
You're misquoting me. What I said was "negative selection". My belief is, we need to let the immune systems of humans do what they're designed to do, and stop artificially selecting all humans to live for as long as possible, without regard for the quality of that life. Effectively, we need to live, die, and decay in a much more natural way, just like the plants and animals under my care do. Nothing healthy or positive, from a long-term genetic-health perspective, has ever come from me rescuing a feeble lamb, and bottle feeding it, medicating it, throughout most of its life. In fact, only the opposite happens. But I understand, most humans tend to only value today instead of 30-40 years down the road.
>Superbugs have nothing at all to do with vaccinations. You're getting tunnel vision'ed. Superbugs have been created by chemicals being sprayed onto fields, for no longer than 30-40 years. Superbugs have been created or emboldened by broad spectrum sanitization.
>On an individual basis, you are far more likely to develop complications from Covid than Flu, even for healthy subjects.
Maybe; though this seems largely a function of time at this point seeing how its been such a short time since Covid's been around. However, the likelihood of "complications" due to Covid is slim to none, on an individual basis, especially for healthy folks (according to the CDC.gov data, assuming our census numbers are correct'ish).
(Referenced studies are linked in the article).
Why should people who already have antibodies take marginal unnecessary risk for no gain?
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
“Among Kentucky residents infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, vaccination status of those reinfected during May–June 2021 was compared with that of residents who were not reinfected. In this case-control study, being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated.”
While it might be fair to challenge the credibility of WSJ, you should know that the CDC study you cited had a relatively small sample size and was limited to a small geographic area over a 2 month period. Recent large scale multicentre studies with ~100x more participants have provided strong counter evidence that natural infection confers highly effective protection [3].
> A previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with an 84% lower risk of infection, with median protective effect observed 7 months following primary infection. This time period is the minimum probable effect because seroconversions were not included. This study shows that previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces effective immunity to future infections in most individuals. [3]
For reference here's high quality publications supporting GP's claim that natural infection provides robust and durable immunity that is at least as protective as vaccination [1][2][3][4].
[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf
[2] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...
[3] SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
[4] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...
Hospitalizations from Covid19 among the fully vaccinated stands at "thirty six per million fully vaccinated" and steadily increasing.
Since both outcomes come at the end of a process (get vaccinated -> get exposed to the virus -> get an infection -> require a hospital visit -> die from illness), there is naturally at least five or weeks lags between someone completing the full vaccination schedule and the hospitalization/death outcome occurring.
Given that about half the full vaccinations in the U.S. happened since April and given that the consensus seems to be that vaccine conferred protection lasts about 6-8 months, I would not expect the "deaths from Covid19 per million fully vaccinated against Covid19" to stabilize until October.
In the mean time, the unvaccinated will either have to submit or driven into the shadows with the current policies. Pretty soon, it will be a miracle to find anyone whose natural immune response without vaccination can be measured/tested at all.
[1]: Current version: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
[2]: Snapshots since April: https://archive.ph/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hea...
> Prof. Zywicki’s immunologist, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, has advised him that, based on his personal health and immunity status, it is medically unnecessary to get a Covid-19 vaccine — and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
> the Policy is unmistakably coercive and cannot reasonably be considered anything other than an unlawful mandate. And even if the Policy is not deemed coercive, it still represents an unconstitutional condition being applied to Professor Zywicki’s constitutional rights to bodily integrity and informed medical choice, respectively.
> GMU’s Policy infringes upon Professor Zywicki’s rights under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2003/12/judge-or...
I think the focus on a small minority of people who don't want to take a vaccine is unhealthy.
It's not this simple. Not taking a vaccine during a pandemic has negative externalities, since you're increasing the risk of infection and death of those you interact with, you increase the likelihood of consuming scarce resources (such as ICU beds), etc.
I largely agree with you, but framing it as a simple "individual choice" issue is reductive at best.
2. Some vaccinated people have been found to carry the same levels of the virus as unvaccinated people, so stating that unvaccinated people could be increasing risk to others is also a moot point
3. Once the so called "R" rate is below one, the virus is on a path to fizzling out
It's not as though unvaccinated people will be dying in their thousands for centuries to come. Herd immunity just needs to kick in which many countries have already achieved.
Some is in this case a small minority. In general you have the same level up to about day 5, then vaccinated drops down to zero over the next few days while vaccinated levels keep raising for several more days.
Are you saying it would be legal to ban cars for those reasons?
Israel would like a word with you.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/20/1029628...
The focus is just, these folks are robbing everyone else of their freedom and happiness.
>The same people that don't understand vaccines are also likely to think masks don't work
I don't see how this is relevant. It just seems like a strawman argument to dismiss people who might have legitimate reasons for not having the vaccine or otherwise just want to exercise their right not to have it.
Who are they killing? Others that didn't get the vaccine?
for instance in Czechia there were 17K excess deaths, 10K with main cause COVID, the other 7K thanks to restrictions and doctors treating people over phone to keep hospitals empty for obese/old
I hope you didn't know it or didn't think it through, otherwise mention of Fox News seems to me a blatant hypocrisy. Either way it was an unnecessary ad hominem attack.
This is categorically false, sorry : https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/1429449468261322759
> Ct-values decreased throughout the first 3 days of illness.
Days of illness are those 3 days "when immune system kicks in and defeats the virus", as I wrote. When host is ill, it is obvious and things like masks and social distancing are being used. But not for those 4-6 days of asymptomatic virus replication, when most transmissions are taking part.
What about people with immune dysfunction? Are you going to dismiss them as Fox News viewers too because aren't having the vaccine?
Marjorie Taylor-Greene, a congresswoman from Georgia, is a huge rising conservative star in the style of Trump. She's downright anti-vaccine. "These vaccines are failing and do not reduce the spread of the virus and neither do masks".
But please don't lump people like me concerned about infringement on rights and bodily autonomy with people who deny facts and cannot understand what a mitigation measure is.
And more importantly, please don't make vaccination a political issue. Because you will be dividing everyone over this much more dramatically.
They can just pass on the cost onto the consumer and raise their profits.
Sorry for not wanting to inject myself with unproven technology with unknown long term effects. Why politicians and certain pharma companies keep pushing these vaccines instead offering conventional inactivated virus vaccines? Heck maybe I'd go even for protein based one (Novavax).
As healthy non-obese non-smoking relatively young person I'm not afraid of COVID, but I'd be willing to take safe vaccine with technology proven by decades of track record to make some people happy (though ideally everyone should have same rights vaxxed or unvaxxed and this should be entirely voluntary same as influenza, hepatitis and other vaccines nobody requires when you travel to neighboring country or visit restaurant).
For instance these are currently my options in EU, if I want conventional vaccine against COVID approved by EMA or any COVID vaccine using any technology approved more than 2 years ago:
EDIT: I wonder if all those people defending these new technoloy vaccines also use all their software running Alpha/Beta versions and don't wait for Stable version. But it seems when it comes to one's own health it's less important than software for most.
You're refusing the "beta" (installed by billions of users) version of something that can save your life because you (mistakenly) believe the choice is between that, and staying as you were before.
It's not. That's no longer true with the Delta variant. Now it's really a choice between "carefully designed, just officially declared stable" vaccine with billions of users vs getting the "totally unstable, totally doesn't care about your health, completely unknown long term effects" SARS-CoV-2 virus forcefully installed on you.
You will get antibodies one way or another, and there is orders of magnitude more risk and uncertainty associated with getting them through infection rather than controlled vaccination.
Furthermore, there has never been in history any vaccine side effect that occurred later than a few weeks after administration at most.
There is just no theoretical basis for why anything wrong would happen here.
Are you demanding 100% certainty ? Sure, you won't get it here but you also didn't get it with anything else you ever did in medicine and you can live with that.
With Delta, ICUs (and even more so long covid clinics) are full of unvaccinated "healthy non obese non smoking relatively young" guys like you.
If you're not afraid of Covid, rationally you should be even less afraid of getting a vaccine.
To put things in perspective, here are the odds in young males for the most talked about vaccine side effect (myocarditis, which usually resolves in a few days), vs the odds of getting severe Covid at your age :
Do you have a source for this? I’d like to read more about it. Also, what about people who have antibodies from prior infection with covid?
It's kind of hard to give you one single source, simply because it's hard to demonstrate the absence of something. What usually happens instead is that somebody with specific concerns raises them and explains the plausible mechanism they see as problematic, then it's either debunked immediately as BS or if the theory has legs, it's supported by other scientists and put the test.
None of that has happened with mRNA vaccines. This is a great read about the Pfizer one : https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...
I mean, you can't technically rule out somebody coming up with a revolutionary theory that changes our understanding of immunity like Einstein did for physics, but there is no sign of that, no theoretical basis for trouble, and the vaccine is saving lives in the meantime
>Also, what about people who have antibodies from prior infection with covid?
Research is moving fast on this, but AFAIK the consensus is that prior symptomatic infection gives longer lasting but also less broad (against different variants) immunity compared to an mRNA vaccine.
The best protection seems to be in people with prior infection + 1 shot of mRNA vaccine (of course, that does not imply one should try to get infected then vaccinated, because the risk of damage from that first infection vastly outweighs the benefit of a slightly better immunity if you pulled through unscathed, then got vaccinated)
I can't figure out what these vaccines do that could even have long term effects beyond getting your immune system to recognize the protein.
The existing mRNA vaccines were pretty close to having a sterilizing effect (unexpected and very good surprise) on the previous variants.
There is still hope that the Delta-specific updates (Moderna is already testing theirs) will restore that level of efficacy, and there's also ongoing research on intranasal vaccines which should work even better for that.
https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-eff...
So with that in mind, I'm much more keen on seeing how employers will decide on vaccination mandates now that at least one vaccine is fully approved. Any news yet on whether any more employers are likely implementing mandates (if they haven't already this morning) based on the news? Guessing a few probably had their policies and news pre-written in anticipation.