> The right answers

The right answers, but for the wrong question ;)

Not disagreeing with you, but parent was asking why is Germany so bad relative to their European peers.

Pacific peers actually!-)

And

1. The recommendation to take the vaccine goes exactly against anything the doctors said pre-covid. Before covid, nobody would recommend you to take a vaccine against something you are not in a risk group for, and double doses and boosters were unheard of. This makes me suspicious, and I don't think that is unreasonable. 2. You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine, which also is not normal, you are not supposed to get sick from vaccines, you are supposed to take them to avoid getting sick

So the whole vaccination situation is something that's new and confusing, why do what my doctor always said to not do? Why get sick from vaccines, aren't they supposed to stop you from getting sick? Why double and triple vaccines?

I'm sorry but your post is completely wrong. >Before covid, nobody would recommend you to take a vaccine against something you are not in a risk group for How about the Flu vax? I'm a healthy middle aged guy with no risk factors who gets a flu vax every year. Why wouldn't I?

>double doses and boosters were unheard of Completely wrong. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine is given in two doses. The Chickenpox vaccination is I think three doses? Same with hepatitis B. You need a tetanus booster every 10 or so years.

>You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine Uhhhh myself, my partner, my kids and nearly everyone I know and work with has had two doses of the Pfizer covid vax. No-one I know has gotten really sick from either dose. A bit of a headache and sore arm and perhaps feeling a bit blah for half a day after is the worst I've heard of.

I've learned that it's more common to get flu vaccines in the US, so I have to adjust that statement to Europe where I live. And even if you do get the flu vaccine, isn't that purely a nice to have? Did they really recommend you to take it?

Yeah but you didn't have mRNA, which makes you really sick.

I'm not in the US, I'm in Australia.

And I picked the flu vax just as an example. I should have instead questioned your statement that I wasn't in a risk group. Everyone is at risk from covid, admitedly some much more than others.

According to this data: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort... I'm at a 0.4% risk of dying of Covid, and a 8% risk of hospitalization. Those aren't small risks, the vaccine reduces that approximately 10x so clearly its a good idea

Actually, I've just thought of another good example - Whooping cough. Adults are actually at no risk whatsoever of this, but small babies are at severe risk so parents are reccommended to get this vaccination to prevent them passing on what is a very mild or unnoticeable disease for them to their babies. Oh and when I looked up info on this and the vaccine, yes you should get booster shots for this as well https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/whooping-cough-pertu...

And, uhh yes Pfizer, which was the main covid vaccine used in Australia, is a mRNA vaccine.

Few years ago we asked a GP doc in Melbourne if we should get a flu vaccine, free and widely advertised back then. The doctor said:

- If you really want, go ahead, but it is mostly a waste

- The vaccine is unlikely to help much because it only partially protects against few variants out of hundreds in circulation

- They do not generally recommend flu vax outside of risk groups (small kids, elderly people and medical workers)

- Vaccine is generally safe, but not completely without risks.

Exactly. And I'm just not willing to accept that these recommendations change overnight and now politicians are making these recommendations in place of doctors.

Question is, how much are you going to decrease your risk of hospitalization by force-vaccinating the rest of the unvaccinated population, given that the vaccine doesn't really do much to stop the spread with delta?

If the vaccine was sterilizing - i.e. vaccinated people wouldn't be contagious and spread it symptomatically or asymptomatically - then every vaccination would count. But given the current state vaccination is just going to reduce symptoms and ultimately reduce hospital capacity. Anyone who is in danger (or scared) of Covid can get vaccinated. There's little point in vaccinating children (or even non-consenting adults, although this depends on hospital capacity).

Also, that chart is based on averages. Unless you have co-morbidities (you're fat, have diabetes, heart condition, whatever) the risk is way lower.

You're a 48 year old male? If you're healthy the risks are way lower than the chart indicates (off the top of my head maybe 1% hospitalization, <0.1% death?).

> You're a 48 year old male? If you're healthy the risks are way lower than the chart indicates (off the top of my head maybe 1% hospitalization, <0.1% death?).

And if you're healthy and think about what kind of people are included in the remaining 99% you should feel quite safe.

> and double doses and boosters were unheard of.

Double doses and boosters are very common in standard vaccination practice. Your kids should be getting them.

Within two weeks?

This is an exceptionally bad disease and we had to develop vaccines in a very short time.

They aren’t perfect.

Yeah except it's not an exceptionally bad disease. For a person who is not in a risk group, it's the same thing as the flu.

> it's the same thing as the flu.

Not at all. How many people experience long-term crippling effects from the flu?

BTW, the care we are taking has reduced the number of flu cases too.

And even if it were just a flu for you, there’s a 3% chance each person you infect will die a horrible death after a month of agony.

Yes, not at all. For young kids flu is way worse.

It's good, then, that the measures we took to contain COVID also reduced the incidence of influenza.

COVID is still new, while flu has been with us for millenia. Give it time and opportunities and it'll perfect itself.

3%? I'd take that risk any day, even if I was in a risk group. Who want destroy society over that, only a lunatic

Steady on. Hyperbole does not behove you. Nobody is destroying society. Nobody here is a lunatic.

3% is too high.

Great. If you want to take that risk, self infect and isolate. You have no right to make this choice for others by willingly being a host that can infect others.

> You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine

What? That's not a universal truth at all. Anecdotally just a few people I know felt a little run down for a day, but everyone else (myself included) experience felt zero ill effects

What do your anecdotes matter? The original clinical trial for Pfizer mRNA vaccine has 20% of the treated group (younger than 55) reporting moderate or worse side effects. We don't know how long these last because they did not release any data on that. Could be days, could be a year for some people. for all I know.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

20% is _not_ the same as the general and extremely broad statement made by GP. Making such a broad statement is either ignorant or disingenuous. I'll let you decide which

Everyone I know got really sick from second dose of mRNA, myself included. Probably the people who already had covid in the past and were recovered.

Opposite experience for me. I only knew one person who felt a little under the weather, and they have cystic fibrosis meaning they are immunocompromised, so not surprising. For them they felt a little sweaty one night, that's all

That was exactly my experience! So you think it’s linked to a previous infection?

From what my limited research could find, is that the more immunity you have, the worse the side effects.

So a booster shot would make me feel even worse. I wasn’t gonna take a booster anyway. My heart hurt like hell after both shots. Both times exactly after the same amount of days.

Yeah my heart hurt as well, and it's associated with heart inflammation especially in men and athletic people. I really really don't want to take the booster shot since it's only 100% negative for me with no benefit whatsoever, and an extremely far fetched and vague benefit for society/someone else.

I didn't get sick from Biontech/Pfizer at all. I was a bit sleepy for a day, that was the whole extend of it.

Truth is, we have no idea about long term consequences from these novel vaccines yet, it's a pretty crazy experiment really.

The actual truth is "long term consequences" from a vaccine, besides immunity are just not a thing.

I bet you can't name one vaccine that has had a "long term consequence" that has emerged more than a few months after the vaccine was administered. It just doesn't happen.

Its a bit like saying I've just developed an upset stomach, from that dodgy curry I ate last year.

Ok, find some significant published studies that tracked side effects (like headache or arm ache) of BNT162b2 over time (not just the typical "there was XYZ in first 7 days, and we don't care further") since the first dose. And tell me what % of people still reported the new onset symptoms still present say 3 months later. I'll wait. :)

Or are you just sharing an opinion?

That's easy. Pandemrix caused brain damage in teenagers and it took five years+lawsuits for the authorities to finally admit it and pay compensation. Obviously, nothing was learned. That was for swine flu which was also subject to a mass hysteria at the time.

Imagine the horrific consequences if Pandemrix had been mandated!

I am aware of Pandemrix, but do you know that the likelyhood of getting narcolepsy was much higher when contracting the swine flue than from getting vaccinated? Of course it was not mandated, as the swine flu didn't become that large as initially feared. But if it had, the number of cases would have been orders of magnitude larger than those caused by the vaccine, as they were based on the same effect. And yes, a completely new flu is something to be afraid of, it can have very high death tolls.

I just read up on Pandemrix, thanks for the info.

However, this does prove my point: The people who developed narcolepsy after this vaccine started showing symptoms one to two months after their vaccine.

You really believe that?

Then why are the hospitals filling up with vaccinated people?

How about developing cancer from whatever?

Yeah and becoming really sick from taking the vaccine is not really a positive sign in any way.

Depends how you define "sick". The purpose of a vaccine is to create an immune reaction. That can be unpleaseant for a short time, but does not qualify as being "sick" in the deeper sense. Especially it doesn't compare to the effects a Covid-19 infection has, up to long suffering or death.