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Some people think that the chance of death from a vaccine is not worth it, however slight that chance is. For the young and healthy, risking catching the vaccin

Some people think that the chance of death from a vaccine is not worth it, however slight that chance is. For the young and healthy, risking catching the vaccine shouldn't be that big of a deal despite all the hype about "long covid". With the virus having been around for two years now, there's a strong argument to be made about natural immunity. I think they knew that they had a lot of ways to make a better vaccine, and they will work on that, but I don't think it's going to be done quickly enough. So, I guess we all just have to go along with the booster shots until they "get it right". The government got heavily involved in the process, so it was bound to end up half-assed. There were people that said they would never let the government force them to take Trump's rushed vaccine. They wanted to create a disruption and a huge resistance to his efforts. Biden came along and "changed" it, and now they sing the praises of the vaccine and the unbelievable science behind it endlessly. You have an enormous pressure to take the vaccine by the behemoth government and the people that write the paychecks. If people use one of the only avenues they have to not get forced into something they have their own reasons for not buying into, I don't really blame them. The people you argued with about the vaccine have nothing to do with ordinary people and their decisions. If I was a lowly worker, I would probably just take it because I guess I would have bigger problems. There may not be much weight behind the anti-vaccine argument, but there's a lot to be said about better governance that probably would have involved doing things that actually work instead of having to point to things that didn't happen, especially with the angst about not enough people having complied with the emergency measures. Of course, the skeptics believe we mostly did the wrong things in a bout of panic and the need for post-hoc justification grew alongside the mass hysteria. There was the option of focused protection, yet it seems we neglected many people in care homes while the government got busy fighting windmills. We also seriously tampered with natural processes and normal lifestyles. That may have been counterproductive. We are now in a situation where there is no herd immunity, high-risk people are finding it impossible to avoid the infection forever, and we lost a lot of opportunities as the world was on pause that it everyone's life may objectively be worse than should be expected even after all this time.

xcjs 5y ago
I registered an account just to respond to this: "So, I guess we all just have to go along with the booster shots until they 'get it right'." The Pfizer and especially Moderna vaccines were as close as we could get to an ideal vaccine and had a high efficacy rate - for the Alpha variant. We did get it right. Additionally, the risk of death from the vaccine is effectively zero outside of extremely rare and very specific circumstances that are much less common than death or long term to permanent side effects of COVID-19. The target is a moving one, especially when a substantial part of the population allows (or can do nothing to stop) the virus to mutate unchecked. The Delta variant has a slightly different spike protein, and we are very lucky the vaccines remain effective at all against it.
- Lochleg 5y ago
  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/spike-protein-vaccines-covid/618954/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/spike-pr... If there was a tradeoff between making the vaccine safer or more effective, I guess I would agree to making it safer. That's what it seems like they did by focusing on the spike protein, which was said to not be a defining characteristic of coronaviruses in general. You should understand that the spike protein they did produce may not be nearly close enough to resembling an easily recognizable virus for the immune system to do exactly what we want it to do. This is also one of the reasons that natural immunity seems to be so much stronger than vaccine-acquired immunity. The vaccine might be called good enough by some, but the delta variant overwhelming all our efforts so soon has to be called less than ideal. In fact, the vaccine was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's obviously not. Little has changed, and we aren't doing all that much besides chasing after a magical vaccination or booster shot rate even as Israel is showing us that it's all for naught and mutations are still appearing. Teenage boys are at a higher risk of heart complications from the vaccine. If one of them dies from a sudden heart condition, are we supposed to say something that make it seem like getting the jab was the honorable thing to do? Imagine if a parent went through the trouble of proving that their child has already been infected with the virus and has a family history of heart conditions or something. With the current, inflexible thinking about vaccine mandates, the powerful might end up pressuring or forcing them to get vaccinated anyways. I think you only implied it, but the idea that the unvaccinated were the source of mutations was based largely on estimates that the viral load would be higher when they get infected. That turned out to not be the case when looking at the high viral load of people with breakthrough infections. In fact, as a lockdown skeptic, I think it's becoming clear that locking down indefinitely and losing sight of hospital capacity was a mistake that can explain our current plight. The perfectly healthy and young population normally become our shield from viruses each year. The vulnerable were the ones that needed to avoid infection, and they can't do it forever (and a booster shot may still not even be enough). Then again, we listened to Dr. Neil Ferguson and told Dr. Sunetra Gupta that she didn't know what she was talking about, so I am sure you see it differently.

xcjs 5y ago

I registered an account just to respond to this: "So, I guess we all just have to go along with the booster shots until they 'get it right'." The Pfizer and especially Moderna vaccines were as close as we could get to an ideal vaccine and had a high efficacy rate - for the Alpha variant. We did get it right. Additionally, the risk of death from the vaccine is effectively zero outside of extremely rare and very specific circumstances that are much less common than death or long term to permanent side effects of COVID-19. The target is a moving one, especially when a substantial part of the population allows (or can do nothing to stop) the virus to mutate unchecked. The Delta variant has a slightly different spike protein, and we are very lucky the vaccines remain effective at all against it.

Lochleg 5y ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/spike-protein-vaccines-covid/618954/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/05/spike-pr... If there was a tradeoff between making the vaccine safer or more effective, I guess I would agree to making it safer. That's what it seems like they did by focusing on the spike protein, which was said to not be a defining characteristic of coronaviruses in general. You should understand that the spike protein they did produce may not be nearly close enough to resembling an easily recognizable virus for the immune system to do exactly what we want it to do. This is also one of the reasons that natural immunity seems to be so much stronger than vaccine-acquired immunity. The vaccine might be called good enough by some, but the delta variant overwhelming all our efforts so soon has to be called less than ideal. In fact, the vaccine was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's obviously not. Little has changed, and we aren't doing all that much besides chasing after a magical vaccination or booster shot rate even as Israel is showing us that it's all for naught and mutations are still appearing. Teenage boys are at a higher risk of heart complications from the vaccine. If one of them dies from a sudden heart condition, are we supposed to say something that make it seem like getting the jab was the honorable thing to do? Imagine if a parent went through the trouble of proving that their child has already been infected with the virus and has a family history of heart conditions or something. With the current, inflexible thinking about vaccine mandates, the powerful might end up pressuring or forcing them to get vaccinated anyways. I think you only implied it, but the idea that the unvaccinated were the source of mutations was based largely on estimates that the viral load would be higher when they get infected. That turned out to not be the case when looking at the high viral load of people with breakthrough infections. In fact, as a lockdown skeptic, I think it's becoming clear that locking down indefinitely and losing sight of hospital capacity was a mistake that can explain our current plight. The perfectly healthy and young population normally become our shield from viruses each year. The vulnerable were the ones that needed to avoid infection, and they can't do it forever (and a booster shot may still not even be enough). Then again, we listened to Dr. Neil Ferguson and told Dr. Sunetra Gupta that she didn't know what she was talking about, so I am sure you see it differently.